“And there was Bob Lee and the Peacocks”:
One of Robert E. Howard’s Favorite Texas Feuds

Robert E. Howard loved the history of Texas and the Southwest. He used it in writing many of
his stories. Famously, he wrote the last Conan tale, “Red Nails”, after his 1935 trip to New
Mexico, where he got the chance to see the sleepy town of Lincoln and walk its streets reveling
in the history of the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid, an incident from history that he loved.

His story tells of the long-running feud between the inhabitants of the fabled city of Xuchotl,
where red and black nails were pounded into a post to keep score of which side’s followers had
been killed by the other. Howard was inspired by his knowledge of the Lincoln County War and
recent trip, as well as some other bloody feuds that had occurred in Texas to write this bloody
tale. Some of the Texas feuds Howard talks about in his letters are the Mason County Hoodoo
War between the German Unionist settlers and the Texan Confederate sympathizers, and the
Taylor-Sutton feud, which took place between two families over control of DeWitt county.

However, one of Howard’s favorite Texas feuds that may also have helped in his creating “Red
Nails”, is the Lee-Peacock feud, which was the bloodiest feud in Texas history, and perhaps the
second bloodiest in the United States.

While the Lincoln County War is famous, and the Taylor-Sutton Feud is still mentioned, the Lee-Peacock Feud has faded from general knowledge, whichis a shame, as it is every bit as exciting and interesting as the Lincoln County War, and certainlymore bloodier than that famous New Mexican War, or the Hatfield-McCoy Feud. Howard wrote about this feud in a few of his letters to August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft, which is more than enough reason to take a look at it, especially since June happens to be the month with the anniversaries of the deaths of the two leaders of the feud, Bob Lee and Lewis Peacock.

Howard on the Lee-Peacock Feud

In a letter to August Derleth regarding feuds in US history, Howard wrote:

Texas feuds were short and bloody. They did not, as in Kentucky [referring to the
Hatfields and McCoys], drag on through the generations. The Sutton-Taylor, and the
Lee-Peacock feuds were probably the most famous — the latter the more obscure
because it was fought in the thickets and river bottoms of eastern Texas. It lasted from
1867 to 1871, during which time more men were killed than in the whole course of the
famous Hatfield-McCoy feud of Kentucky.(Derleth, ca. March 1933)

Howard characterized the Lee-Peacock Feud as being a reaction from Texans to the hated
imposition of Reconstruction on Texas after the Civil War. Those darned old Carpetbaggers and
Yankees coming down here to take over the State and take the property and livelihoods from
honest Texans for their thieving selves and give the former Black Slaves preferential treatment
over the Whites was too much for self-respecting men to bear. He wrote to H.P. Lovecraft:

Concerning your remarks about violence being as despisable as trickery, it may
be that my comments on western outlawry (which I do not doubt have proved boresome)
led you to believe that I take a too tolerant viewpoint regarding crimes of violence. I
hardly think such is the case. It would be hypocritical for me to pretend that I did not feel
a certain keen admiration for such men as John Wesley Hardin, Simp Dixon, Bob Lee,
etc. But I do not consider these men ordinary criminals, in the first place. Anyway,
whatever crimes they may be said to have committed were more than balanced by the
war they waged against the vandals who were looting the South at that time. A regard
for fact forces me to the statement that most of the outlawry in the West was the result of

conflicting forces engineered from the outside. The period of Southwestern outlawry at
its wildest, was between 1865 and 1885; especially in the years immediately following
the Civil War. Texas was in the grasp of the carpet-bag vultures, who were only intent on
looting the state. …Resistance against oppression resulted in outlawry; men were
hunted like mad dogs simply because they tried to protect their property and their lives
and the lives of their family. And they were trying it on the wrong breed. Wars? I could
tell you of wars; of ambushes and midnight raids and men kicking at the ends of ropes,
and rolling out of their saddles in the teeth of a blast from the thickets. In such conditions
the men I have mentioned grew up; they were neither thieves nor train-robbers nor
highwaymen, though a few, because of the conditions under which they lived, became
such in later life.(Lovecraft, ca. July 1933)

Yes, as far as Howard was concerned, the Civil War was one of the main causes of the bloody
feuds in Texas. And, as is commonly accepted by historians, the Lee-Peacock Feud was a
continuation of the Civil War here in Texas that lasted for years until just before Reconstruction
was officially ended in 1876:“The Civil War did not end at Appomattox or at Palo Alto; it didn’t
end until 1875 in Texas, though we kicked that bastard E.J. Davis [last Republican Governor of
Texas until the 1970’s] out of the capitol in 1873.”(Lovecraft, ca. Jan. 1935)

In that January 1935 letter to Lovecraft, Howard wrote a brief synopsis of the Lee-Peacock
Feud:

There was Bob Lee. Lived in the big thicket country, near Red River. Served
through the war under old Bedford Forrest, and was honored and respected in his
community. He made the mistake of carrying gold pieces in his pockets. The Union
Leaguers thought he had money; kidnapped him and made him write a ransom note in
his own blood; found he couldn’t raise the money and made him sign a note. When he
got away he refused to pay the note — who wouldn’t? — and tried to get redress in the
courts. The court was dominated by Federal bayonets and threw the case out. A few
days later a Union Leaguer walked into a blacksmith shop where Lee was and shot him
in the back of the head without warning. A physician who lived nearby took Lee in and
kept him there until he recovered. A Union Leaguer shot the physician in the back. Lee
took to the thickets and lived there until 1869, in a hut hidden deep in a big thicket, and
camouflaged with black oilcloth. Altogether he and his men killed about fifty Union
Leaguers. A neighbor and supposed friend finally betrayed him to the soldiers and
helped murder him. A nephew of the murderer was a friend of Lee’s. Learning of his
uncle’s perfidy, he rode all night, called the murderer out in the dawn, and shot him down
on his own doorstep.(Lovecraft, ibid)

In his brief paragraph recounting the feud to Lovecraft, Howard got the overall course of events
right but was wrong on one of the details (no ransom note written in his blood). Let’s take a
closer look at the events of this vicious mini-war of Northeast Texas.

The Beginnings

Robert Lee (not THAT guy) was living with his family in Northeast Texas on a farm near the town of Pilot Grove. He went by Bob, and was married with children when the Civil War broke out. He joined up as a Confederate cavalry soldier in the Ninth Texas Cavalry, under the great Confederate General, Nathan Bedford Forrest. He survived the war and returned home to his farm near the town of Leonard, allegedly having obtained the rank of Captain in the army. (1)

Lewis Peacock was a North Carolinian who had migrated to Texas and had his own farm and blacksmith shop near the town of Pilot Grove. He was a Union man, and stayed out of serving in the Union army during the war. Once Texas officially learned that the war was over, Peacock committed the unpardonable hat trick for Texans at the time by becoming a Republican, a UnionLeaguer, and giving money to the Freedman’s Bureau. (2)

The Union League was a political organization that formed in 1862 to promote Republicans and
freedmen, and after the war ended, began to enact revenge on former Confederates in much
the same way as the Ku Klux Klan started going after Blacks and Carpetbaggers. The Federal
army stationed in Texas would often back the Republicans and Union Leaguers in conflicts
regardless of whether they were the cause of the conflict or not. Peacock became a leader of
the Union League in the area.

Lee lived in Grayson County near the huge Wildcat Thicket, a forest so dense with trees and
brush that you had to stick to the trails cut through it, and perfect for guerilla fighting in its ability to thoroughly hide any sign of men secreting themselves in it. Peacock also lived in the county of Grayson. Their feud would engulf both Grayson and three adjacent counties, Fannin, Collin, and Hunt, in the war. It had such a lasting effect on the area that I’m sure Howard heard about it from folks who had lived through it when the Howards were living in Bagwell, a town about 80 miles away to the East from the heart of the feud, in the years just before they moved to the Cross Plains area.

According to the Peacock side of the story, Lee ran afoul of Peacock and the Union League
when he refused to release his slaves as freedmen upon his return home. No other source says
this, so who knows if it was true. Because of his service, Lee became the de facto leader of the
former Confederates in the area in their unhappiness at having to deal with the rule of the hated Republicans and Carpetbaggers. It was also a common but false belief that the Lees were fairly rich and had large stores of gold coins they were hoarding. Peacock and his cronies hatched a plan to kidnap Lee for a share of this gold and get him removed as a focal point for rebellion to their rule.

Sometime between 1865 and 1866, this plan was put into action. Lee, in a letter he wrote to a
local newspaper, the Bonham News in 1868 (3) , said that one night, as he was laying sick in bed, a group of Union League men, led by Lewis Peacock, broke into his home and dragged him off
under the letter of an alleged warrant for committing a war crime of having shot two Union soldiers in New Orleans. They were going to take him to the town of Sherman to await his trial. During the journey, the captors revealed their ransom scheme to Lee. According to Lee, the party never got to Sherman;

… [I]nstead they took him to the Choctaw Creek bottoms and held him for what
amounted to ransom. “I finally accepted their offer and obtain (sic) my release,” Lee
wrote. “I agreed to give them my mule, saddle and bridle, a $20 gold piece which I had in
my pocket, and executed my note to ‘Doc’ Wilson with my father’s name for security for
$2,000 in gold payable on demand and to leave the country forever.” (4)

Lee was released, and after he had recovered from his illness allegedly filed charges against
the group of Lewis Peacock, Israel Boren, James Maddox and others. Here, the two sides
disagree on whether this legal action occurred or not. The Lee side says he either won his case,
or that he was thwarted by a Republican controlled court system, or that the Union Leaguers
broke the men out of jail. The Peacocks say no legal action was ever filed. There are no court records in existence, which doesn’t necessarily disprove the Lee claim as the Republican
controlled courts were in a mess for years during and after the Reconstruction period, and many records were lost. (5)

The Feud Turns Deadly

In 1867, Lee was in Pilot Grove, and came across James Maddox, one of his kidnappers. He stopped Maddox and demanded satisfaction. Maddox declined claiming he was unarmed, so Lee offered Maddox a pistol to use. Maddox again refused, so Lee walked away. A little later that day, Maddox snuck up behind Lee and shot him in the head with a borrowed pistol. Lee miraculously survived the shot, and was taken in by a local doctor, William Pierce, who cared for Lee until he was well enough to leave. After Lee left, a Peacocker, Hugh Hudson, went to Dr. Pierce’s house looking for Lee. When Pierce told Hudson that Lee was gone, Hudson shot and killed Dr. Pierce. This infuriated the area, and shortly thereafter, Hudson received his reward on the road to Saltillo, Texas, when he was shot dead by unknown assailants.

Shortly after the murder of Pierce, two men went to Lee’s house to kill him, but Lee, being the
old well-trained Confederate Cavalryman, was able to evade them, and with the help of his
brother tracked them down and killed one of the men and badly wounded the other one.

One group of the Lee supporters, the Dixon family, had three sons, “Simp” Dixon (previously
mentioned by Howard in the letter to Lovecraft), Billy and Charlie. They got into the fight when a
Peacocker, Elijah Clark, after being rejected by a Dixon sister he came calling on, in anger,
attacked and shot Billy with Billy’s gun. Clark had left his gun inside the Dixon home, so Billy
was able to get Clark’s gun and shot him dead. The Peacocks and the Federal army then
tracked Billy and Charlie down while they were out delivering goods, and according to Charlie,
murdered Billy in cold blood. The Army and the Peacocks claimed Billy resisted arrest and died
in the struggle. (6) The Dixons were now actively looking for revenge, and many more folks were
very sympathetic to Bob Lee and the Dixons because of the intolerable rule of the
Reconstructionists. Frontier justice, of a sort, was coming for the Unionists. As Bob Lee wrote in
his letter to the Bonham News on June 26, 1868 explaining the start of the fight:

Now I will not cease to punish these men so long as I can find them. Peacock still
hires men to kill me, and they must take the consequences.

I will trust the U.S. troops will cease their interference and I will clear the country
of this band of thieves. Finally I am perfectly willing to surrender myself to any impartial
civil authority at any time, but will not give myself up, unarmed to thieves and robbers. (7)

A Bloody Little Guerilla War

The feud devolved into a tit-for-tat fracas, much like in “Red Nails”, with Lee-istas and Peacocks
and the Army hunting each other in the area and gunfights breaking out with and without
casualties. Peacock himself was wounded in one such shoot-up, and asked the Federal
authorities to send more troops to the area to quell these troublesome ex-Rebs, but the Feds
didn’t take it seriously until after a battle broke out at a farm that was a center for the Peacocks
to meet at. Lee and his fellows attacked the farm after receiving word that several of the Peacocks and Union Leaguers, including Lewis, were there, and the fight resulted in the death
of two or three Peacocks, depending on the source. The Government put a $1000 reward for the capture of Bob Lee in August, 1868, and sent more soldiers to Northeast Texas to catch him.
Unfortunately, the area was very unhelpful to the Federals and Peacocks. An officer in charge of
a force of soldiers on the hunt for Lee wrote: “Lee seems to be the most popular man in this
section of the country, and I am sure that the citizens of that neighborhood would not only give
him all the aid in their power, but will even help him with force of arms if necessary.” (8)

Bob Lee had faded into the impenetrable thicket of the area, and was as safe as if he had taken
up residence on the moon. Additional killings took place of soldiers, Peacocks and Lee-istas.
Some bounty hunters showed up at the Lee farm looking to trap Bob. However, they were
themselves trapped when they were bushwacked by the Lee-istas and three of them went to the Bounty Hunters’ Happy Saloon in the Sky.

As the violence dragged on, the Feds decided that the only way to stop it was to declare anyone
aiding and abetting Bob Lee to now be wanted for $1000 each. This finally got Bob’s attention
as he didn’t want his family and friends to be outlaws and at the mercy of the hated Federals.

The End of the Feud

Bob is alleged to have decided to end his private war, and take his family to the less dangerous
climes of Mexico. On June 25, 1869, as he was leaving his thicket hideout, he ran into an
ambush by the US Army, with a Peacocker, Henry Boren, as their scout. Lee was hit by several
bullets and died at the scene. Boren, who had been friends with the Lee family for years,
apparently decided that the $1000 reward was too enticing not to lead the Army to Lee’s
hideout. For his treacherous act, Henry was met by his nephew Bill Boren the next day, who
shot and killed him for betraying Lee. (9) Lewis Peacock was not satisfied with the death of Bob
Lee, and continued the feud by having his Union Leaguers and the Army hunt down the
surviving Lee-istas, killing the remaining Dixon brothers, Simp, Charlie, and Bob, and wounding
their half-brother Dick Johnson.

Lewis Peacock finally received his just reward on June 13, 1871. It is said that after the last
Dixon brother was killed, Peacock made a threat that if Dick Johnson, who had gone into hiding
after being shot, didn’t turn himself in, Peacock was going to burn the Dixon farm down and
leave the Dixon women homeless. (10) Whether this is true or not, and he certainly had other
reasons to consider, Dick Johnson decided that enough was enough. He enlisted the help of a
friend and fellow Lee-ista, Joe Parker, and according to legend, a third man, alleged to have
been John Wesley Hardin, to finally go take care of Peacock. They went and kept surveillance
on Peacock’s farm. On the morning of the 13 th , Peacock came out of his house to get firewood
and was cut down in a hail of bullets. With the death of Peacock, the Lee-Peacock Feud ended.

Or did it? On March 13, 1877, D.W. Lee, Bob’s father, was murdered by an unknown shooter
while traveling home. In addition, the Boren family apparently had its own feud start up after Bill killed Henry for betraying Bob Lee. (11) The Lee-Peacock Feud had an official death count of fifty men, but many more are alleged to have died during its 4 year long reign of terror.

Final Thoughts

Howard definitely didn’t like the period of Reconstruction and its effects on Texas. He truly
despised the Republicans for their despotic rule over Texas during the Reconstruction and
would sooner have died than vote for a Republican. He felt that the Lee-istas were in the right to defend their families, lives, and livelihoods against people who were trying to take them away.

As Howard wrote to Lovecraft: “A man must believe what his conscience dictates, and if he
believes in pacifism, so be it. But I’d rather be shot down in a battle than live under the heel of
an arrogant alien despotism.”(Lovecraft ca. Jan. 1935)

Notes
1. Blood for Blood without Remorse: The Lee-Peacock Feud, part 1, By Edward
Southerland, Sep 25, 2020
2. Ibid.
3. Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas. – Page 72 – The
Portal to Texas History
4. Ibid.
5. The Lee-Peacock Feud | Searching History (thoughtsfromafar.blog)
6. Lee-Peacock Feud | South & Western Theaters (civilwartalk.com)
7. Grayson County: An Illustrated History of Grayson County
8. Blood for Blood without Remorse: The Lee-Peacock Feud, part 2 – North Texas e-
News (ntxe-news.com)
9. The Lee-Peacock Feud – Civil War Continues in Northeast Texas – Legends of
America
10. Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas. – Page 72 – The
Portal to Texas History
11. Re: Borens in Lee-Peacock Texas – Genealogy.com

Sources

Howard Letters
To August Derleth, ca. March 1933
To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. July 1933
To H.P. Lovecraft, ca. Jan. 1935

Books
Roehm, Rob, and John Bullard. (Eds.) (2023). The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard
Volume 3: 1933-1936. REHF Press

Web Sources
Alexander, Kathy. The Lee-Peacock Feud – Civil War Continues in Northeast Texas – Legends
of America. Accessed June 11, 2024.

Borderruffian. Lee-Peacock Feud | South & Western Theaters (civilwartalk.com) Accessed June
11, 2024.
Downs, Fredie. Re: Borens in Lee-Peacock Texas – Genealogy.com Accessed June 11, 2024.
Landrum, Graham. Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas. – Page 72
– The Portal to Texas History Accessed June 11, 2024.
Mustang. The Lee-Peacock Feud | Searching History (thoughtsfromafar.blog) Accessed June
11, 2024.
N., James. The Lee – Peacock Feud In Northeast Texas, 1867 – 71 | Post-War Reconstruction
(April 1865-1868) (civilwartalk.com) Accessed June 11, 2024.
Southerland, Edward. Blood for Blood without Remorse: The Lee-Peacock Feud, part 1 – North
Texas e-News (ntxe-news.com) Accessed June 11, 2024.
Southerland, Edward. Blood for Blood without Remorse: The Lee-Peacock Feud, part 2 – North
Texas e-News (ntxe-news.com) Accessed June 11, 2024.

John Bullard is a retired attornehy living in San Antonio. His most recent project was edting the revised edition of Robert E. Howard’s letters. He researches Texas history in his spare time.