The Lee-Peacock Feud That Refused To Let The Civil War End
Public DomainA scene from Reconstruction, a period which Confederate southerners widely despised.
Although the Civil War officially ended on April 9, 1865, certain individuals in Texas seemingly didn’t get the memo. Specifically, two families in the four-corners area of the Texas counties of Fannin, Grayson, Collin, and Hunt refused to accept that the war had concluded — and kept fighting for four bloody years.
This fierce rivalry came to be known as the Lee-Peacock feud and saw the families of Bob Lee and Lewis Peacock engage in a series of battles from 1867 to 1871.
According to Legends of America, when the Civil War broke out, Bob Lee was quick to enlist with the Confederate Army, despite being married with three children. He wound up serving with the Ninth Texas Cavalry along with some other young men in the area: John, William, Francis, and Jim Maddox, and several of the Boren boys.
But near the end of the war, Lee received news that troubled him. An organization called the Union League had cropped up, and they were working to protect Black Americans and Union sympathizers. Even more troubling for Lee was that this league was being run by a man named Lewis Peacock at Pilot Grove, just seven miles from his own home.
Of course, Union sympathizers weren’t treated with kind regard in the Confederate states, and so by the time Lee and the others returned home, tensions were already high. Many people had begun to look to Bob Lee as a natural leader for the “Civil War” that was still being fought in Texas after the introduction of Reconstruction ideals.
Naturally, Peacock came to view Lee as a problem as well. Should Lee rally people behind him, it could prove to be a detriment to the Union League or even Reconstruction as a whole.
Peacock began targeting Lee, first by “arresting” him for crimes he had allegedly committed during the war. Peacock’s group then took Lee’s watch and a $20 gold coin and forced him to sign a promissory note for $2,000. The Lees refused to pay, though, and the court ruled that they didn’t have to.
Things escalated quickly from there, and soon enough, it was essentially an all-out war between Peacock’s and Lee’s sympathizers. Within just one year, the conflict had become so fierce that Peacock requested help from the federal government, and a $1,000 reward was put in place for Bob Lee’s capture.
Lee was ultimately shot down by U.S. Cavalry on May 24, 1869, but that didn’t put an end to the fighting. It was Lewis Peacock’s death on June 13, 1871, that finally ended the feud. In total, it is estimated that around 50 people died as a result of the rivalry.
