Appalachian History Series
A county at war with itself
By the turn of the twentieth century, Breathitt County, Kentucky, had become a byword for political killings and courthouse cliques. The flashpoint came on May 4, 1903, when attorney and United States commissioner James Buchanan Marcum was shot at the entrance to the Jackson courthouse. Early wire stories noted that the assassin fired as Marcum reached the doorway, and that he died where he fell.
Roots of the violence
Local memory calls it a feud, but the trouble grew from contested elections, loyal juries, and a courthouse machine that could place allies in key jobs. The attached research manuscript collects chronology and names from contemporary coverage and county histories, and its picture fits what newspapers outside the mountains observed at the time. Reformers complained that witnesses were afraid to speak, that jurors were connected to the factions, and that men carried pistols to the polls. For Jackson and the North Fork valleys, politics had become a blood sport.
The killing on the courthouse steps
On that Monday morning in 1903, Marcum went to the courthouse to attend to legal business tied to the recent election contests. As he reached the threshold, shots rang from inside the corridor. He dropped in the doorway and died before help arrived. An Associated Press dispatch that week reported that he was “shot and instantly killed” as he was entering the courthouse. The wire copy was reprinted from California to the Atlantic seaboard, proof that a Breathitt County murder had become national news.
Who held power, and who resisted it
At the center of county patronage and policing stood Judge James H. Hargis and Sheriff Ed Callahan, a partnership whose allies dominated juries and shaped local law enforcement. Opposing them was attorney J. B. Marcum, a former federal commissioner who worked for the fusionist opposition in the election contests. When he took cases against the Hargis circle and represented defendants outside the machine, he crossed a line that made him an open enemy in courthouse gossip. In the weeks after the assassination, attention fixed on Curtis Jett and Tom White, Breathitt gunmen with close ties to the Hargis faction whose names appeared over and over in the trial coverage that followed.
Trials on the move
Early proceedings in Jackson stalled amid claims of jury bias and threats to witnesses, so the state moved the trials. By August 1903, a jury at Cynthiana returned verdicts of guilty against Curt Jett and Tom White for Marcum’s murder. Contemporary papers recorded the sentences as life imprisonment for both men. Reports from Kentucky and beyond followed each motion and ruling through the summer, including the denial of a new trial the next day.
Soldiers on the streets of Jackson
The murder set off months of military presence in the county seat. State troops guarded court sessions and patrolled the streets. One Kentucky weekly described a town in panic while soldiers stood to arms at night. The occupation lasted through the summer training period, an extraordinary response by Frankfort to restore order in a mountain courthouse town.
Aftermath and long shadows
Violence ebbed, then flared again. Former county judge James H. Hargis was shot multiple times by his son Beach inside the family store in February 1908, an event widely reported as the fall of a man long connected to the Breathitt machine.
Former sheriff Ed Callahan was ambushed and killed in May 1912 near his home on Long’s Creek. A later Kentucky Court of Appeals opinion recounted that he had previously been shot and dangerously wounded at the same store door, and that he was finally killed in May 1912. New York papers looked back on the case in 1914 as the prosecutions moved forward.
Memory, music, and meaning
Within a few years, the murder became a ballad sung across the region. “The J. B. Marcum Song,” often titled “The Ballad of J. B. Marcum,” preserved names and places and kept the courthouse doorway in Appalachian memory. The Library of Congress has documented the song and its variants, which shows how mountain communities used music to record public violence and to pass judgment when juries could not.
Why it still matters
Marcum’s killing was more than a lurid episode. It marked the high tide of machine politics in one county, and it showed what follows when public office controls juries, payrolls, and prosecutions. The Cynthiana verdicts, the militia that kept a tense peace, and a ballad that outlived the gunmen together signaled a turning toward state oversight and away from courthouse warlords. Breathitt County’s reputation for violence would linger, but the political system that made such murders likely began to break under the scrutiny that followed the shots on the courthouse steps.
Sources & Further Reading
“J. B. Marcum, an attorney, was shot and instantly killed as he was entering the courthouse,” Associated Press dispatch reprinted in the Humboldt Times (Calif.), May 6, 1903. cdnc.ucr.edu
“Jett and White convicted,” reports from the Cynthiana trial noting guilty verdicts and life sentences, including the Norfolk Landmark (Va.), Aug. 15, 1903, and the Nappanee Advance-News (Ind.), Aug. 19, 1903. Virginia ChronicleHoosier State Chronicles
“New trial denied … Jett and White taken to jail by the soldiers,” Savannah Morning News (Ga.), Aug. 16, 1903. Georgia Historic Newspapers
“Last night was a veritable night of horror … the troops were in a state of alarm,” Weekly Kentucky New Era, May 29, 1903. Murray State Digital Commons
“Shot by his son … Judge Hargis … dies with boots on,” The Manning Times (S.C.), Feb. 12, 1908. Historic Newspapers
“Case against men accused of the murder of Ed Callahan,” The Sun (New York), June 28, 1914. New York State Historic Newspapers
Deaton v. Commonwealth, 157 Ky. 308, reciting that Ed Callahan had been shot and later killed in May 1912. Midpage
Library of Congress, Folklife Today, “Caught My Ear: The Ballad of J. B. Marcum,” background and audio examples. The Library of Congress
Selections in the attached manuscript, “Bloody Breathitt: Feud and the Courthouse Murder of J. B. Marcum,” which compiles local histories and press accounts.
“The Militia Invades Jackson,” Bookhiker, summary of the 1903 occupation with citations to Lexington papers. Bookie on the Trail
J. E. Pearce, “Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky,” for broader context on courthouse machines and partisan violence.
Author Note [Blank]