Blue-grass and Rhododendron: Out-doors in Old Kentucky

Civilizing the Cumberland

Civilizing the Cumberland Civilizing the Cumberland H ALF a century ago the Southern mountaineer was what he is now, in the main-truthful, honest, courageous, hospitable-and more: he was peaceable and a man of law. During the last fifteen years, fact and fiction have made his lawlessness broadly known; and yet, in spite of his moonshining , his land-thieving, and his feuds, I venture the paradox that he still has at heart a vast respect for the law; and that, but for the war that put weapons in his Anglo-Saxon fists, murder in his heart, and left him in his old isolation; but for the curse of the revenue service that criminalizes the innocent, and the system of land laws that sometimes makes it necessary for the mountaineer of Kentucky and Virginia, at least, to practically steal his own home-he would be a lawabiding citizen to-day. But he is not law-abiding, and, therefore, the caption above these words. Of course, the railroad comes first as an element of civilization; but unless the church and the school, in 209 Blue-grass and Rhododendron the ratio of several schools to each church, quickly follow, the railroad does the mountaineer little else than great harm. Even with the aid of these three, the standards of conduct of the outer world are reared slowly. A painful process of evolution has been the history of every little mountain-town that survived the remarkable mushroom growth which, within the year of 1889-90, ran from Pennsylvania to Alabama along both bases of the Cumberland. With one vivid exception: in one of these towns, civilization forged ahead of church, school, and railroad. The sternest ideals of good order and law were set up at once and maintained with Winchester, pistol, policeman's billy, and whistle. It was a unique experiment in civilization , and may prove of value to the lawful among the lawless elsewhere; and the means to the end were uniqlie. In this town, certain young men-chiefly Virginians and blue-grass Kentuckians-simply formed a volunteer police-guard. They enrolled themselves as county policemen, and each man armed himselfusually with a Winchester, a revolver, a billy, a belt, a badge, and a whistle-a most important detail of the accoutrement, since it was used to call for help. They were lawyers, bankers, real-estate brokers, newspaper men, civil and mmmg engineers, geologists, 210 Civilizing the Cumberland speculators, and several men of leisure. Nearly all were in active business-as long as there was business -and most of them were college graduates, representing Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Virginia , and other Southern colleges. Two were greatgrandsons of Henry Olay, several bore a like relation to Kentucky governors, and, with few exceptions, the guard represented the best people of the blue-grass of one State and the tide-water country of the other. All served without pay, of course, and, in other words, it was practically a police-force of gentlemen who did the rough, every-day work of policemen, without swerving a hair's-breadth from the plain line of the law. These young fellows guarded the streets, day and night, when there was need; they made arrests, chased and searched for criminals, guarded jails against mobs, cracked toughs over the head with billies, lugged them to the" calaboose," and appeared as witnesses against them in court next morning. They drilled faithfully, and such was the discipline that a whistle blown at any hour of day or night would bring a dozen armed men to the spot in half as many minutes. In time, a drunken man was a rare sight on the streets; the quiet was rarely disturbed by a disorderly yell or a pistolshot , and I have seen a crowd of mountaineers, wildly hilarious and flourishing bottles and pistols as they 2II Blue-grass and Rhododendron came in from the hills, take on the meekness of lambs when they crossed the limits of that little mountaintown . I do not believe better order was kept anywhere in the land. It was, perhaps, the only mountain-town along the border where a feud, or a street fight of more than ten minutes' duration, was impossible. Being county policemen, the guards extended their operations to the limits of the county, thirty miles away, and in time created a public sentiment fearless enough to convict a certain desperado of murder...