Free Days of Darkness by John Ed Ed Pearce

assassinate Governor William Goebel. Governor Augustus Willson, who later pardoned Powers and Howard, said he considered Youtsey the guilty party. From Caleb Powers, My Story.

    The remains of the home of Ballard Howard on Crane Creek, built around 1845, where his sons, including Jim, were born. Originally log, it is now covered with boards. After Bal was shot from ambush by the Bakers, he was brought back home to recuperate. Courtesy of Stanley DeZarn.

    The Reverend John Jay Dickey, a lovable, selfless Methodist minister who founded the first newspaper in Breathitt County and the first school, now Lees College. He went from Breathitt to Clay County, hoping—and failing—to bring peace through religion. Courtesy of Richard Weiss, Archivist, Kentucky Wesleyan College.

    Delia and Esther Davidson, students at Clay County’s Oneida Institute, whose father and brother were killed in the Clay War. Courtesy of the Matlack Collection, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville.

Captain Strong’s Last Ride
    Big John Aikman was home from the penitentiary in little more than a year, having been given the pardon that seemed routine at the time. Obtaining pardons for men in prison was one of the strongest weapons of state legislators and officials; relatives did not forget at election time the official who had gotten their husband or brother pardoned, and governors were inclined to go along, especially with members of their own parties. As a result, a life sentence was often little more than an extended vacation away from home.
    Captain Bill Strong was still in command of his forces on the North Fork. But as Breathitt County entered the 1880s, peace of a sort reigned, partly because new clan leaders were emerging and a realignment of forces was taking place. The roots of the feud between the Callahan and Deaton families, usually called the Callahan-Strong feud, grew out of the old Civil War rivalry between Captain Bill Strong and Wilson Callahan. Captain Bill, according to legend, had condemned Wilson Callahan to death at one of his courts-martial. Ed Callahan, leader of the Callahan forces, was Wilson’s grandson. The aging Captain Strong, who as he grew older was known almost affectionately as “Uncle Bill,” was allied with James Deaton in opposition to the Callahans. It would prove to be Captain Bill’s last ride.
    Ed Callahan was a tall, heavy-featured man, a shrewd businessman and a ruthless competitor. He had inherited considerable land on the Middle Fork of the Kentucky River containing rich stands of timber and good farmland. Though his family had fought for the Union during the Civil War, Callahan became influential in the Democratic Party in Breathitt. More important, perhaps, he had managed to become the captain or leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and under his leadership the Klan grew to more than a thousand members. Some historians insist that these mountain groups were not klaverns of the real Ku Klux Klan, which had prescribed uniforms or robes, rules, and hierarchy, but can more accurately be termed Regulators, ad hoc informal armies, like the one in Rowan County, that usually operated under a loose leadership in the absence of accepted legal order. Butby whatever designation, it exerted a strong influence throughout the county. It also helped Ed Callahan accumulate, for his time, considerable wealth. As he approached thirty, he was a man to be reckoned with. Young men volunteered eagerly to serve him. On election days, or when the Democrats were holding a convention, he would often ride into Jackson leading a force of four or five hundred men.
    On the other side of the ledger was James Deaton, Callahan’s rival in business and politics. He also had the support of a small army, most of them enemies of the Callahans and/or former followers of Captain Strong, and on convention days Deaton, like Callahan, rode at the head of several hundred men. Deaton was arrogant and boastful and