Devil Anse Hatfield

"If you feel the need to bring up God one more time — whose side he sits on — you won't be making the ride home."

- Devil Anse to Randall McCoy

William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield was one of two main protagonist villains of the 2012 television miniseries Hatfields & McCoys.

He was portrayed by Kevin Costner.

During the Civil War, Hatfield fought alongside his friend Randall McCoy for the Confederacy. The two men were present at several key battles, and had eyewitness experience to the full horrors of war. The two men saved each others lives during one of the battles. Starting to feel that the war was a lost cause, one night Hatfield decided to desert and return home to his family. Hatfield was confronted by McCoy, who felt that Hatfield was wrong to leave, even after Hatfield encouraged McCoy to come with him. Ultimately McCoy allowed Hatfield to leave. A short time later McCoy was captured in battle and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner of war.

Meanwhile, Hatfield had returned home to his wife and family, and resumed his business ventures. Over the next couple years Hatfield did quite well for himself, all while Randall languished in a POW camp. When Randall returned home he was embittered over his treatment, and angered that the deserter Hatfield had prospered during the intervening time.

Hatfield's uncle Jim Vance got into a verbal altercation with Randall's brother Harmon, who had sided with the Union and fought in their army. Despite pleas from Harmon's wife, Hatfield was unable to prevent Vance from murdering Harmon. This marked the first death in the feud between the two families.

A theft of a pig and the impregnating of Rosanna McCoy by Hatfield's son Johnse caused the tensions to flare up again. The feud got worse after Hatfield's younger brother Ellison was murdered in the early 1880s by a group of McCoys.

Feeling that the legal system was not serving or protecting them, Hatfield decided it was time to take matters into his own hands, and fight to protect his family. Over the next several years Hatfield led his family into a series of escalating conflicts with the McCoys, and by the late 1880s had come to the conclusion that Randall McCoy had to die. Sick with pleurisy at the time, the raid on McCoy's home was led by Jim Vance in his place. The raid was a disaster, with Hatfield's nephew Ellison "Cottontop" Mounts murdering one of McCoy's young daughters. Meanwhile Randall had managed to escape with his life.

Seeing the death toll beginning to pile up, Hatfield decided to stop fighting and let those Hatfields arrested face justice. Hatfield deliberately ordered that no rescue attempt be made for his nephew Cottontop, feeling that once Cottontop was hanged for the murder of the McCoy girl the blood lust would go out of the McCoy family.

After Cottontop died, the intensity of the feud diminished somewhat. While there was still some tension, there were no further violent incidents between the families. A drunk Randall McCoy later died when he was burned to death in a house fire. About 50 years after the feud had begun, Hatfield was finally baptised with his wife and surviving family members looking on.