Kentucky's Famous Feuds and Tragedies / Authentic History of the World Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody Ground

by Charles Gustavus Mutzenberg

Returning home, he studied law and was admitted to the bar. The date of this admission, an unimportant point it may seem, was nevertheless responsible for the internecine strife of after years.

In the year 1874, Captain Hargis, who had already won prominence as a lawyer of ability and sagacity, was nominated by the democratic party as its candidate for judge of the circuit court. Opposed to Hargis in this race was Geo. M. Thomas, afterwards United States District Attorney for the District of Kentucky. He was the nominee of the Republican party. The race was exceedingly hot and spirited from the beginning. The contest became bitter. It was charged by the friends of Thomas, among whom were not only the Republicans whose nominee and choice he was, but enemies of Hargis in the ranks of his own party, that he was not eligible to the office because he had not attained the requisite age, and that he was still further disqualified from holding the position of Circuit Judge because he had not been licensed as a lawyer for a sufficient number of years. These reports were industriously circulated against him. Appreciating the danger of such a rumor in a contest like this was, and knowing that only a prompt refutation and repudiation of the charges could prevent his signal and disastrous defeat, he hastened to obtain copies of the records of his age, and of the date of his admission to the bar from the records of the Clerk’s office.

At the time of his candidacy Hargis was a resident of Carlisle, Nicholas County, but when admitted to the practice of the law had resided in Rowan County. So the records of his admission to the bar must be obtained there. He, therefore, went at once to Morehead and instituted an examination of the records, but to his consternation it revealed the astounding fact that the only record and evidence of his admission to the bar had been mutilated and destroyed; the pages containing them had been cut out from the books. Added to this was the unwelcome discovery that the family Bible had also been mutilated in so far as it contained the record of his age. The charges of ineligibility had been widely circulated and published in the newspapers and Hargis’ inability to refute them for lack of record evidence now gave them the stamp and color of truth. The Republicans, and the personal enemies of Hargis among the Democrats, were jubilant, while his friends flatly and broadly accused Thomas’ friends and supporters of the crime of stealing and destroying public records. This further increased the already bitter feeling. The friends of Thomas now charged that if any such records had ever existed Hargis himself had stolen and destroyed them. The result of it all was that Hargis was defeated by his Republican opponent, and this in a district theretofore always safely Democratic. The close of the contest brought out another truth no longer to be denied or overlooked. Every circumstance and condition existing after the election pointed clearly to the fact that something more than factional, political animosity, common in all hotly contested races for position, had been awakened and that in the hearts of many, malice had taken deep root. Each succeeding election only augmented the bitter feeling. Desire for revenge, and, what at first seemed but political excitement and zeal for the favored candidate, now caused friends of old to cancel their friendship and the most prominent leaders of the opposing factions regarded each other no longer as merely political, but as personal enemies.

In the year 1876 the Legislature of Kentucky created a Circuit Court for Commonwealth proceedings alone, the new district being composed of the same counties as the old. Hargis again announced himself a candidate for judge of the newly-organized court. This time he was elected with an easy majority. He continued in this office, which he filled with signal ability, until in the spring of 1879, when an event took place which opened to him the road to still higher honors, and also still further fanned the flame of political and personal strife.

The event referred to was the vacancy created on the bench of the Court of Appeals as the result of a tragedy enacted upon the streets of the capital of the State, at Frankfort,—the assassination of Appellate Judge J. M. Elliott, by one Thomas Bufford. The tragic death of this able jurist horrified all Kentucky.

His slayer pleaded insanity. The trial jury on first ballot stood six for conviction and six for acquittal on the ground of insanity. Finally, the verdict of the whole jury declared him insane. He was transferred to the Asylum at Anchorage where he remained but a short time. He escaped to Indiana where he remained because our requisition laws were then not sufficient to enforce his return to Kentucky.

Immediately after the death of Justice Elliott an election was ordered for his successor and Judge Hargis again became a candidate before the Democratic convention. A number of able and distinguished jurists opposed him before that body, many of these much older and experienced than he. In spite of the powerful opposition brought to bear against him, Judge Hargis again succeeded in obtaining the nomination, another proof of his political influence as well as of his talents and abilities as a lawyer and politician.

This last and most important success of Hargis aroused anew the malign hatred and envy of his numerous enemies in the camps of his own party. The old charges were renewed, remodeled, rehashed, renovated and added to, as the occasion demanded. The story of his wilful, felonious destruction and mutilation of court records was republished and more extensively circulated than ever. Newspapers, circulars, hand-bills and letters telling the story were scattered throughout the district, posted up at all public places, on fences and trees along the highways, thus increasing factional enmity to a dangerous intensity.

Opposed to him in this race was Judge Holt, a Republican politician and lawyer of prominence, and of unassailable purity of character.

The contest between these men was waged with spirit with the result that the mantle of Judge Elliott fell upon Judge Hargis. During the canvass Judge Hargis, through the Courier Journal and other newspapers, had denounced the persons over whose signatures a number of the scandalous accusations and derogatory charges had been made, as liars, calumniators and villains.