The first real violence in the feud was the death of Asa as he returned from the war, murdered by a group of Confederate Home Guards called the Logan Wildcats.

During the early months of the Civil War, Asa joined a company of the Pike County Home Guards, under the command of Uriah Runyon, and it is thought he sustained the wound while serving in this unit.

William Francis also led a company of Pike County Guards during 1862, a group of which attacked and shot Mose Christian Cline, a friend of Devil Anse Hatfield.

McCoy family tradition points to James "Jim" Vance, an uncle of Anse and a member of a West Virginia militia group, as the culprit.

The feud escalated after Roseanna McCoy entered a relationship with Devil Anse's son Johnson, known as "Johnse" (spelled "Jonce" in some sources), leaving her family to live with the Hatfields in West Virginia.

The Hatfield party surrounded the McCoys and took Johnse back to West Virginia before he could be transported the next day to the county seat in Pikeville, Kentucky.

[15] Cline, who was Martha McCoy's brother, is believed to have used his political connections to reinstate the charges and announced rewards for the Hatfields' arrests as an act of revenge.

With his house burning, Randolph and his remaining family members were able to escape farther into the wilderness; his children, unprepared for the elements, suffered frostbite.

[22] A few days after the New Year's Massacre, a posse led by Pike County Deputy Sheriff Frank Philipps rode out to track down Anse's group across the state line into West Virginia.

[24] On August 24, 1888, eight of the Hatfields and their friends were indicted for the murder of Randolph's young daughter Alifair McCoy (sometimes spelled Allaphare), who was killed during the New Year's Massacre.

They included Cap, Johnse, Robert and Elliot Hatfield, Ellison Mounts, French Ellis, Charles Gillespie, and Thomas Chambers.

Seven received life imprisonment, while the eighth, Ellison "Cottontop" Mounts, was executed by hanging and buried in an unmarked grave within sight of the gallows.

Thousands attended his hanging in Pikeville, but though the scaffold was in the open, its base was fenced in to comply with laws that had been passed which prohibited public executions.

[33][better source needed] Tourists travel to those parts of West Virginia and Kentucky each year to examine the relics that remain from the days of the feud.

A committee of local historians spent months researching reams of information to find out about the factual history of the events surrounding the feud.

This research was compiled in an audio compact disc, the Hatfield–McCoy Feud Driving Tour, which is available only at the Pike County Tourism CVB Visitors Center in Pikeville.

The festival commemorates the famed feud and includes a marathon and half-marathon (the motto is "no feudin', just runnin'"), in addition to an ATV ride in all three towns.

[43] The 1946 Disney cartoon short The Martins and the Coys in Make Mine Music animated feature was another very thinly disguised caricature of the Hatfield–McCoy feud.

The 1949 Screen Songs short "Comin' Round the Mountain" features another thinly disguised caricature of the Hatfield–McCoy feud, with cats (called "Catfields") and dogs ("McHounds") fighting each other, until a new school teacher arrives.

[44] In Kurt Vonnegut's 1976 novel Slapstick, a frontiersman dressed like "Davy Crockett" kills a man charged with conveying a message to the former of the United States because he mistakes him for Newton McCoy.

[45] In the story arc "Missouri Mish Mash" in season 3 of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1961–62), the heroes are drawn into the feud between the "Hatfuls" and the "Floys", unaware that both sides are secretly controlled by their nemesis Boris Badenov.

The 1968 Merrie Melodies cartoon "Feud with a Dude" has the character Merlin the Magic Mouse trying to make peace with the two families, only to end up as the new target.

The second-season episode Vanished of NCIS takes place in a rural valley in Virginia, the two sides of which are feuding in a manner that Leroy Jethro Gibbs compares to the Hatfields and McCoys.

[50] In 2013, NBC commissioned a pilot for a television show updating the feud to present-day Pittsburgh with Rebecca De Mornay, Virginia Madsen, Sophia Bush, and James Remar but it was not picked up.

[52] In an episode of Modern Family originally aired January 15, 2014, titled "Under Pressure," Cam is working as a gym teacher who has plans to let parents play dodgeball with each other at the school's open house, and wants to divide the two teams into Hatfields and McCoys.

The fifth season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic featured an episode titled "The Hooffields and McColts", in which two clans have a longstanding feud over whether to use land for farming or construction.

Though Ben and Gwen are able to quell them and stop Hex's plans to create an army of ghost soldiers by revealing that it was meant to be shared by them as a marriage gift, ending the feud.

The song, "Blood Feud", written by Dave Adkins and Larry Cordle, is a retelling of the familiar story of the deadly discord between the Hatfield and McCoy families during the Civil War era.

Waylon Jennings' 1977 song "Luckenbach Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love)" includes the reference "... this successful life we're livin', got us feudin' like the Hatfields and McCoys" [55] A dinner show based on the rivalry is performed year round in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee since 2010.

[57] The 2018 action-adventure video game Red Dead Redemption 2 features a violent feud between two families, the Braithwaites and the Grays, inspired by the Hatfield-McCoy conflict.