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38 chapters
Why This Book Is Here
Why This Book Is Here
In concluding these remarks, I wish to say that from cover to cover there is not a statement which could not be verified. Political hatreds are always bitter, but none were ever more bitter than those which existed along the border line of Missouri and Kansas during my boyhood in Jackson county in the former state from 1856 to '60. These hatreds were soon to make trouble for me of which I had never dreamed. Mine was a happy childhood. I was the seventh of fourteen children, but my father had pro
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1. Boyhood Days
1. Boyhood Days
Walley afterwards caused the arrest of my cousins fearing that they had recognized him and his men. These young women were thrown into an old rickety, two-story house, located between 14th and 15th streets on Grand avenue, Kansas City, Mo. Twenty-five other women were also prisoners there at that time, including three of my own sisters. The down-stairs was used as a grocery store. After six months of living death in this trap, the house was secretly undermined and fell with the prisoners, only f
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2. The Dark and Bloody Ground
2. The Dark and Bloody Ground
But under the care of friendly Indians, Charles Quantrell lived. Changing his name to Charley Hart, he sought the Jayhawkers, joined Pickens' company, and confided in no one. Quantrell and three others were sent out to meet an “underground railroad” train of negroes from Missouri. One of the party did not come back. Between October, 1857, and March, 1858, Pickens' company lost 13 men. Promotion was rapid. Charley “Hart” was made a lieutenant. No one had recognized in him the boy who had been lef
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3. Driven from Home
3. Driven from Home
Though a slave-owner, father had never been in sympathy with secession, believing, as it turned out, that it meant the death of slavery. He was for the Union, in spite of his natural inclinations to sympathy with the South. A demand that I surrender was conveyed to my father by Col. Neugent, who was in charge of the militia at Harrisonville, again charging that I was a spy. I never doubted that his action was due to the enmity of Walley. My parents wanted me to go away to school. I would have li
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4. The Trap That Failed
4. The Trap That Failed
Quantrell, listening within, fired through the panel. The visitor fell. While we barricaded the windows with bedding, the captain polled his men. “Boys,” he said, “we're in a tight place. We can't stay here and I do not mean to surrender. All who want to follow me out can say so; all who prefer to give up without a rush can also say so. I will do the best I can for them.” Four voted to surrender, and went out to the besieging party, leaving seventeen. Quantrell, James Little, Hoy, Stephen Shores
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5. Vengeance Indeed
5. Vengeance Indeed
Thirty-eight had started to “round up” Cole Younger that morning; seventeen of them lay dead in the cut that night and the rest of them had a lively chase into Independence. To this day old residents know the Blue Cut as “the slaughter-pen.” Early in May, 1862, Quantrell's men were disbanded for a month. Horses were needed, and ammunition. There were plenty of horses in Missouri, but the ammunition presented more of a problem. Capt. Quantrell, George Todd and myself, attired as Union officers, w
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6. In the Enemy's Lines
6. In the Enemy's Lines
“Good morning, grandmother,” bantered the first picket. “Does the rebel crop need any rain out in your country?” The sergeant at the reserve post seized her bridle, and looking up said: “Were you younger and prettier, I might kiss you.” “Were I younger and prettier, I might box your ears for your impudence.” “Oh, ho! You old she-wolf, what claws you have for scratching!” he retorted, and reached for her hand. The quick move she made started the horse suddenly, or he might have been surprised to
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7. Lone Jack
7. Lone Jack
Boone Muir and myself met Coffee and the rest below Rose Hill, on Grand river. Col. Cockrell, whose home was in Johnson county, had gone by a different route, hoping to secure new recruits among his neighbors, and, as senior colonel, had directed the rest of the command to encamp the next evening at Lone Jack, a little village in the southeastern portion of Jackson county, so called from a solitary big black jack tree that rose from an open field nearly a mile from any other timber. At noon of A
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8. A Foul Crime
8. A Foul Crime
Despairing of peace south of the Missouri, mother crossed into Clay county, remaining until the War between the States had ended. But not so the war on her. A mob, among whom she recognized some of the men who were pretty definitely known to have murdered my father, broke in on her after she had returned to Jackson county, searched the house for Jim and me, hung John, aged fourteen, to a beam and told him to say his prayers, for he had but a little time to live unless he told where his older bro
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9. How Elkins Escaped
9. How Elkins Escaped
I jumped to my feet, and said that the men that made the charges lied, and that I stood ready to ram the lie down their throats with a pistol point. Quantrell laughed, and chided me about letting my hot blood get the better of cold judgment. I insisted, however, and told him further that Elkins' father and brother were Southern soldiers, and that Steve was a non-combatant, staying at home to care for his mother, but that I was in no sense a non-combatant, and would stand as his champion in any f
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10. A Price on My Head
10. A Price on My Head
Packing him up behind me, we returned to our camp in safety. This was the McDowell who less than three months later betrayed one of our camps to the militia in Independence and brought down upon us a midwinter raid. Todd had his camp at Red Grenshaw's, Cunningham was on the Little Blue, and mine was near Martin O. Jones' farm, eight miles south of Independence. Todd's spirit of adventure, with my hope to avenge my father's murder, combined in a Christmas adventure which has been misrepresented b
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11. Betrayed
11. Betrayed
Making our way out to Napoleon and Wellington we got new coats and gloves and also located some of the red sheepskin leggings worn by the Red-leg scouts, with which we made a trip over into what was known as “Hell's corner” on the Missouri, near Independence. Col. Penick's men, who had in many cases “collected” more horses than they really had use for, had left them with friends at various points. As we went in we spotted as many of these as we thought we could lead out, and took them out with u
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12. Quantrell on War
12. Quantrell on War
“What of our prisoners?” “There would be no prisoners,” exclaimed the fiery captain. “Do they take any prisoners from me? Surrounded, I do not surrender; hunted, I hunt my hunters; hated and made blacker than a dozen devils, I add to my hoofs the swiftness of a horse and to my horns the terrors of a savage following. Kansas should be laid waste at once. Meet the torch with the torch, pillage with pillage, slaughter with slaughter, subjugation with extermination. You have my ideas of war, Mr. Sec
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13. The Palmyra Butchery
13. The Palmyra Butchery
“Butchered!!” “By the hell-spawned and hell-bound, trebly damned old blotch upon creation's face, John McNeil, until recently by the grace of bayonets, Tom Fletcher, and the devil, sheriff of St. Louis county.” “Shot to death!!” “There was our poor, handsome, gallant boyhood friend Tom Sidener—” “As pure a soul as ever winged its flight from blood-stained sod to that God who will yet to all eternity damn the fiendish butcher, McNeil.” “Poor Tom!” “He was engaged to be married to a young lady in
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14. Lawrence
14. Lawrence
“Todd?” called Quantrell. “Lawrence, if I knew that not a man would get back alive.” “Gregg?” This was Capt. William Gregg, who still lives in Kansas City, one of the bravest men that ever faced powder, and in action the coolest, probably, in the entire command. “Lawrence,” he relied. “It is the home of Jim Lane; the nurse of Jayhawkers.” “Jarrette?” “Lawrence, by all means,” my brother-in-law answered. “It is the head devil of the killing and burning in Jackson county. I vote to fight it and wi
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15. Chasing Cotton Thieves
15. Chasing Cotton Thieves
We were to intercept all messages between Price and Marmaduke, and govern our movements by their contents. About half way between Pine Bluff and Little Rock we came up with a train of wagons, followed by an ambulance carrying several women and accompanied by mounted Federal soldiers. The soldiers got away into Pine Bluff, but we captured the wagons and ambulance, but finding nothing of importance let them proceed. We made a thorough examination of the interior of Little Rock, and satisfied ourse
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16. A Clash with Apaches
16. A Clash with Apaches
While I was on the Pacific slope, April 8, 1865, to be exact, the state of Missouri adopted what is known to the disgrace of its author as the Drake constitution. Confederate soldiers and sympathizers were prohibited from practicing any profession, preaching the gospel, acting as deacon in a church, or doing various other things, under penalty of a fine not less than $500 or imprisonment in the county jail not less than six months. Section 4 of Article 11 gave amnesty to union soldiers for their
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17. The Edicts of Outlawry
17. The Edicts of Outlawry
Our faithful negro servant, “Aunt Suse,” had been hung up in the barn in a vain endeavor to make her reveal the whereabouts of my mother's sons and money; my dead father's fortune had been stolen and scattered to the winds; but our farms were left, and had I been given an opportunity to till them in peace it would have saved four wasted lives. In the summer of 1866 the governor of Kansas made a requisition on the governor of Missouri for 300 men, naming them, who had taken part in the attacks on
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18. Not All Black
18. Not All Black
I left Missouri soon after Judy's raid for Louisiana, spending three months with Capt. J. C. Lea on what was known as the Widow Amos' farm on Fortune fork, Tensas parish. We then rented the Bass farm on Lake Providence, in Carroll parish, where I stayed until 1867, when chills and fever drove me north to Missouri. When the bank at Russellville, Ky., was robbed, which has been laid to us, I was with my uncle, Jeff Younger, in St. Clair county, and Jim and Bob were at home here in Lee's Summit. At
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19. A Duel and an Auction
19. A Duel and an Auction
In the crowd that was present at the race was one Capt. Jim White, to whom I had sent word during the war that when I met him again he would have to apologize or fight because of circulating some scandal about a young woman friend of mine. White introduced himself to me after this race, where a friend of mine had been swindled out of considerable money, and we went over to a neighboring plantation to shoot it out. At the first fire his right arm was shattered at the shoulder. He thought he was f
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20. Laurels Unsought
20. Laurels Unsought
June 3, 1871, Obocock Bros.' bank at Corydon, Iowa, was robbed of $40,000 by seven men in broad daylight. The romancers have connected Jim and me with that, when as a matter of fact I was in Louisiana, Jim and Bob were at Dallas, and John was in California. April 29, 1872, the day that the bank at Columbia, Ky., was raided and the cashier, R. A. C. Martin, killed I was at Neosho Falls, Kansas, with a drove of cattle. September 26 of the same year the cash-box of the Kansas City fair was stolen.
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21. The Truth about John Younger
21. The Truth about John Younger
The coroner's jury acquitted John, and there were many people in Independence who felt that he had done just right. When I went to Louisiana in 1868 John went with me, afterward accompanying me to Texas. Clerking in a store in Dallas, he became associated with some young fellows of reckless habits and drank somewhat. One day, while they were all in a gay mood, John shot the pipe out of the mouth of a fellow named Russell. Russell jumped up and ran out of the room. “Don't kill him,” shouted the c
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22. Amnesty Bill Fails
22. Amnesty Bill Fails
“Whereas, By the 12th section of the said 11th article of said constitution provision is made by which, under certain circumstances, may be seized, transported to, indicted, tried and punished in distant counties, any confederate under ban of despotic displeasure, thereby contravening the Constitution of the United States and every principle of enlightened humanity; and,” “Whereas, Such discrimination evinces a want of manly generosity and statesmanship on the part of the party imposing, and of
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23. Belle Starr
23. Belle Starr
With that hint I thereafter evaded the wife of my former comrade in arms. Reed was killed a few years later after the robbery of the stage near San Antonio, and Belle married again, this time Tom Starr or Sam Starr. Later she came to Missouri and traveled under the name of Younger, boasted of an intimate acquaintance with me, served time in state prison, and at this time declared that she was my wife, and that the girl Pearl was our child. At this time I had no knowledge of any one named Belle S
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24. “Captain Dykes”
24. “Captain Dykes”
The disguised outlaw became during the remainder of his residence a leading and respected citizen. When the election was held it was “Capt. Dykes” who was called upon to preserve order at the polls, he, of course, having no interest as between the rival candidates, and with pistols in easy reach he maintained perfect order during one of the most exciting elections Lake City had ever had. Bob and I had a close call with the St. Louis police in the fall of that year. The bank at Huntington, West V
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25. Eluding the Police
25. Eluding the Police
But I was determined to take no further chances, and told Bob to get in a hack that stood outside, and if we were stopped I would get on top and drive. As we told the driver to go to a certain hotel we allayed the suspicion of a policeman who stood near and he made no effort to molest us. When we got around a corner and out of sight we paid the hackman and skipped out to Union, where we spent the night, and came up to Little Blue, on the Missouri Pacific, the next day. There was no change in the
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26. Ben Butler's Money
26. Ben Butler's Money
I was accounted a fairly good poker player in those days, and had won about $3,000 the winter I was in Florida, while Chadwell was one of the best that ever played the game. We both played our last game of poker in St. Paul that week, for he was soon to die at Northfield, and in the quarter of a century that has passed since such a change has come over me that I not only have no desire to play cards, but it disgusts me even to see boys gamble with dice for cigars. This last game was at a gamblin
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27. Horace Greeley Perry
27. Horace Greeley Perry
“Will you still be my sweetheart then, and be my friend?” I asked her, and she declared she would, a promise I was to remind her of years later under circumstances of which I did not dream then. Many years afterward with a party of visitors to the prison came a girl, perhaps sixteen, who registered in full “Horace Greeley Perry.” I knew there could not be two women with such a name in the world, and I reminded her of her promise, a promise which she did not remember, although she had been told h
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28. The Northfield Raid
28. The Northfield Raid
So at the last minute our plans were changed, and when we started for town Bob, Pitts and Howard went in front, the plan being for them to await us in the square and enter the bank when the second detachment came up with them. Miller and I went second to stand guard at the bank, while the rest of the party were to wait at the bridge for the signal—a pistol shot—in the event they were needed. There were no saddle horses in evidence, and we calculated that we would have a considerable advantage. W
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29. A Chase to the Death
29. A Chase to the Death
Howard and Woods, who had favored killing Dunning, and who felt we were losing valuable time because of Bob's wound, left us that night and went west. As we afterward learned, this was an advantage to us as well as to them, for they stole two horses soon after leaving us, and the posse followed the trail of these horses, not knowing that our party had been divided. Accordingly, we were not pursued, having kept on a course toward Madelia to a farm where I knew there were some good horses, once in
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30. To Prison for Life
30. To Prison for Life
The following Saturday we pleaded guilty, and Judge Lord sentenced us to imprisonment for the remainder of our lives in the state prison at Stillwater, and a few days later we were taken there by Sheriff Barton. With Bob it was a life sentence, for he died there of consumption Sept. 16, 1889. He was never strong physically after the shot pierced his lung in the last fight near Madelia. Every blood-and-thunder history of the Younger brothers declares that Frank and Jesse James were the two member
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31. Some Private History
31. Some Private History
“Shepherd, I am in here; you're not afraid, are you?” “That's all right,” he answered. “Of course I'm not afraid.” The three of us talked till bedtime, when Hudspeth told us to occupy the same bed. I climbed in behind, and as was my custom, took my pistol to bed with me. Shepherd says he did not sleep a wink that night, but I did. At breakfast next morning, I said: “I heard yesterday that you intended to kill me on sight; have you lost your nerve?” “Who told you that, Cole?” he answered. “I met
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32. Lost—Twenty-five Years
32. Lost—Twenty-five Years
Next morning Warden Reed was flooded with telegrams and newspaper sensations: “Keep close watch of the Youngers;” “Did the Youngers escape?” “Plot to free the Youngers,” and that sort of thing. The warden came to his chief deputy, Abe Hall, and suggested that we be put in irons, not that he had any fear on our account, but for the effect on the public. “I'll not put irons on 'em,” replied Hall. And that day Hall and Judge Butts took us in a sleigh down town to the county jail where we remained t
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33. The Star of Hope
33. The Star of Hope
It was at first proposed that the board should consist of the governor, attorney general and the warden of the prison, but before the bill passed, Senator Allen J. Greer secured the substitution for the chief justice for the warden, boasting, when the amendment was made: “That ties the Youngers up for as long as Chief Justice Start lives.” A unanimous vote of the board was required to grant a pardon, and as Chief Justice Start had lived in the vicinity of Northfield at the time of the raid in 18
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35. Jim Gives It Up
35. Jim Gives It Up
Some people obtained the idea that it was Jim's wish that he be cremated, but this idea grew out of a letter he left showing his gloomy condition. It “roasted” Gov. Van Sant and Warden Wolfer and the board of pardons, declared for socialism, and urged Bryan to come out for it. On the outside of the envelope was written: “All relations stay away from me. No crocodile tears wanted. Reporters, be my friends. Burn me up.—Jim Younger.” I think the “burn me up” was an admonition to the reporters. Jim
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36. Free Again
36. Free Again
A few days later I filed with Governor Van Sant the following: “I, Thomas Coleman Younger, pursuant to one of the conditions upon which a pardon has been granted to me, do hereby promise upon my honor that I will never exhibit myself, nor allow myself to be exhibited, as an actor or participant in any public performance, museum, circus, theater, opera house, or any place of public amusement or assembly where a charge is made for admission.” The “Cole Younger and Frank James' Historical Wild West
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37. The Wild West
37. The Wild West
Looking back through the dimly lighted corridors of the past, down the long vista of time, a time when I feared not the face of mortal man, nor battalions of men, when backed by my old comrades in arms, it may seem inconsistent to say that I appear before you with a timidity born of cowardice, but perhaps you will understand better than I can tell you that twenty-five years in a prison cell fetters a man's intellect as well as his body. Therefore I disclaim any pretensions to literary merit, and
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38. What My Life Has Taught Me
38. What My Life Has Taught Me
But I am proud to say, ladies and gentlemen, that no loop of stronger twine that he referred to ever plagued any relation of mine. No member of our family or ancestry was ever punished for any crime or infringement of the law. My father was a direct descendant from the Lees on one side and the Youngers on the other. The Lees came from Scotland tracing their line back to Bruce. The Youngers were from the city of Strasburg on the Rhine, descending from the ruling family of Strasburg when that was
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