Judge James Hall, while living in Illinois, wrote a brief account of one of the crimes committed by these outlaws, and in April, 1824, published it in The Port Folio of Philadelphia. In his introductory remarks he comments: “Neither avarice nor want nor any of the usual inducements to the commission of crime, seemed to govern their conduct. A savage thirst for blood—a deep-rooted enmity against human nature, could alone be discovered in their actions.... Plunder was not their object; they took only what would have been freely given them, and no more than what was necessary to supply the immediate wants of nature; they destroyed without having suffered injury, and without the prospect of benefit.... Mounted on fine horses they plunged into the forest, eluded pursuit by frequently changing their course, and appeared unexpectedly to perpetrate new horrors, at points distant from those where they were supposed to lurk.”
Judge Hall, up to that time, had done little more than describe one of their last crimes, yet The Cincinnati Literary Gazette, May 28, 1825, came out with a statement admitting that there may have been two outlaws by the name of Harpe, but added: “We have no hesitation in asserting that their history, as published in The Port Folio, is unworthy of belief.... The horrible details concerning these men ... such disgusting sketches of human depravity and barbarism manifest either a vitiated taste or a total disregard of the morals of the community.”
As far as is now known, at least two papers published in the month following came to the defense of Judge Hall’s account. The Illinois Gazette, of Shawneetown, among other things, declared: “The depravity and bloodshed which marked their existence ... are circumstances too strongly impressed upon the recollections of our early settlers to be contradicted at this date.”
The Columbian, of Henderson, Kentucky, in a half column article devoted to the same subject, asserts: “The account published in The Port Folio is correct in every essential point.... However it may be regretted that such monsters as the Harpes ever should have existed to disgrace humanity, yet it is an uncontrovertible fact.” [[56]]
In the August, 1825, issue of The Port Folio Judge Hall published an account of another murder committed by the Harpes—the killing of Thomas Langford, who was among their first victims in Kentucky. In the same number he devotes a few pages to a verification of the statements he published then and a few months previous. And before half had been told about the Harpes, The Cincinnati Literary Gazette was convinced of its error in doubting and disputing the veracity of Judge Hall. Judge Hall wrote several pages justifying the publication of the weird and wonderful facts of the career of the Harpes. His arguments published in 1825 in his own defense hold good today and may be equally well applied to the story of the Harpes here given, which, as far as is known, is the first attempt to compile a complete history of these notorious outlaws:
“If it is intended to be objected, that these ‘horrid details,’ even if true, are not proper for publication—I reply, that whatever tends to develop the history or character of a people, is a legitimate subject of public discussion. History to be of any value must be true. It must disclose not only the truth but the whole truth. In vain would the historian seek this in the frail monuments vaguely preserved in the uncertain legend of tradition. He must resort to national records and to the testimony of writers contemporary with the events which he attempts to describe, and if the latter abstain from the narration of ‘disgusting sketches of human depravity and barbarism,’ history must be curtailed of her most fruitful source of incident, and men and nations stripped of their boldest peculiarity. It is perhaps forgotten that ‘depravity and barbarism’ constitute almost the sole basis of history, tragedy, and the epic song; that kings and courts are nothing without them; that they revel amid ‘the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war;’ and stand forth in bold relief in every department of civil subordination. It is to be deplored that such is the fact; but while crime and folly continue to predominate in the affairs of men, they will be found to swell the pages of those who attempt to exhibit correct pictures of human nature.
“In describing the American backwoodsmen, a class of men peculiar to our country, I have thought it proper to introduce among other authentic anecdotes the story of the Harpes. My object was to display as well the extraordinary sufferings to which the earliest emigrants to the western country were exposed, as the courage with which they met and repelled those hardships.”
The Harpes were believed to be brothers. They were natives of North Carolina. Micajah, known as Big Harpe, was born about 1768, and Wiley, known as Little Harpe, was born about 1770. Their father was said to have been a Tory who fought under the British flag at King’s Mountain and took part in a number of other battles against the colonists. Before the close of the Revolution and immediately thereafter many of the Tories living in the south Atlantic colonies fled toward the Mississippi. Those who still sympathized with the King of England and continued to live in the “Old States” were, in most sections, ostracized by their neighbors. It was to this class that the parents of the Harpes belonged; and it was, therefore, in an environment of hatred for and by neighbors that the two sons grew up.
About the year 1840 Colonel G. W. Sevier, son of Governor John Sevier, in an interview with Lyman C. Draper, the historian, stated that Big Harpe, when asked shortly before he was killed why he had committed so many crimes, answered that he had been badly treated and consequently had become disgusted with all mankind. [[12G]] The same statement is made by J. W. M. Breazeale, another well-known early Tennesseean, who had lived in Knoxville the greater part of his life and had investigated the careers of the outlaws.
One writer attributes their acts of fiendish inhumanity to the fact that they believed every man’s life, whether good, indifferent or bad, was predestined and that the All Wise had foreordained for them a hatred of humanity and a career of crime. [[121]] Draper, in his “Sketch of the Harpes,” comments on the fact that “their tawny appearance and dark curly hair betrayed a tinge of African blood coursing through their veins.”