"Vignettes"
of the Civil War
By
Francis McRae Ward
Chapter
Eight
The eminency of Cole
Younger's birth and family added much to the fascination of his tragic life, and
his vivid, fabulous, colorful character. He was born, Thomas Coleman Younger,
January 15, 1844, in Jackson County, Missouri near the town of Lee's Summit. He
was the son of Bersheba Fristoe and Colonel Henry Washington Younger. He was a
direct descendant of "Lighthorse Harry" Lee, of Virginia on his
father's side of the family, and on his mother's side of the family he
descended from the Sullivans, Ladens and Percivals of South Carolina, the
Taylors of Virginia and the Fristoes of Tennessee. His grandfather Fristoe was
a grand nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall of Virginia. The Youngers were
naturally Southerners, and were in sympathy with the Southern cause. Colonel
Younger was a wealthy man of the time, and his children, fourteen in all, Cole
being the seventh, were reared in ease and comfort. (The latter part of the
first sentence in the above paragraph is my own opinion.)[1]
The railroads had not
reached Missouri, Kansas City was not incorporated until 1856, St. Joseph still
had a frontier atmosphere, but was to grow to a prosperous trade center, then
its importance was to decline as Kansas City grew from a Missouri River landing
to a great city, with its large network of railroads opening up the Southwest.[2]
The great freighting
firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell, headquarters at St. Joseph, inaugurated
the Pony Express April 3, 1860. The whole town turned out for this historical
important event. When the appointed hour came, the first rider crossed the
Missouri River by ferry, and started on his hazardous route from St. Joseph to
Sacramento, California.[3]
Among the most daring,
adventurous, and resourceful Pony Express riders assigned to this great
venture, were Robert Haslam (known as Pony Bob), John Fry, Buffalo Bill (only
fourteen years old at the time) and Joseph A. "Jack" Slade, who later
became a ruthless outlaw. The Pony Express riders were crack shots, armed with
Spencer rifles and Bolt revolvers.[4]
Lincoln's inaugural
address after leaving St. Joe reached Sacramento in seven days and seventeen
hours; the Pony Express breaking all records of speed, which was a great
achievement and a glamorous page in the history of our country. But the
overhead and expense of this great venture bankrupted the firm of Russell,
Majors and Waddell. There were 400 station employees, 190 relay stations, 80
riders and 500 horses. To comprehend the magnitude of the firms great
operations, it used 6,000 teamsters, 6,200 wagons, 1,000 mules and 75,000 head
of oxen. The failure of this great firm was a severe blow and loss to St.
Joseph, but the "Iron Horse" was soon to appear, and the machine age
was to move all over America. The Indians moved back into their reservations,
and the great colorful herds of buffalo disappeared from the great wide plains.
"The Pony Express was a last magnificent and romantic gesture of the Wild
West."[5]
By 1872, progress had
made greater strides. In that same year at St. Joe, Milton Tootle opened
Tootle's Opera, House, known as "the finest west of Chicago.” On the
opening night, Margaret Julia "Maggie" Mitchell, (native New Yorker
and noted actress) performed and starred in "Fanchon." In this same
year, Eugene Field, author of "Little Boy Blue" made a trip to St.
Joe to see his sweetheart and wife to be, lovely Julia Comstock, daughter of a
banker and merchant.
In 1872, the St. Joseph
meat packers processed 93,000 hogs; St. Joe boasted of two string bands, two
bathrooms, three portrait painters, and ninety saloons. There was "Uncle
John" Abel's Pacific Hotel, Studebaker's "gentlemen’s buggies,"
Westheimer Brothers "Native American Stomach Bitters," and Goetz
Beer. William Eckhart sold the latest fashions on Felix Street, Photographers,
or Daguerrean Artists, Alex Lozo and Spencer Landon did a lucrative business in
tintypes. There was nothing lacking in the entertainment world in St. Joe; Miss
Breslaw was a fixed star at the St. Joseph Theatre; there was an institution
known as Varieties, "where there was good dancing, questionable singing
and a scarcity of crinoline amongst the women," and in a certain section
of St. Joe the world’s oldest profession was flourishing. There was a rampant
era of lawlessness all along the border, and this was the same great era that
produced the rise of the James boys.[6]
The trend of the times,
geographical location, background, (family, historical, or otherwise) social
atmosphere, progress, and more, all play a great part in ones physical and
mental make-up, and in weaving the course of ones life. The region described
above along the western border of Missouri was Cole Younger's country. In 1872
at the age of twenty-eight, Cole Younger had witnessed great transition. Four
years later he entered the gates of the Minnesota State penitentiary to spend
the next twenty-five years of his life for his participation in the Northfield
bank robbery. He had fought for Missouri in the Border Wars, served with
distinction in the Confederate States Army; his father had been robbed and
murdered by a band of Kansas Jayhawkers, his cousin, (Charity Kerr) had been
murdered in a filthy Federal jail at 1409 Grand Avenue in Kansas City, and at
the time his three sisters were prisoners in the same jail, and his mother had
been brutally mistreated at the hands of Federal forces. There will be more
about these tragic events in pages to follow.[7]
John Brown started the
Border Wars and was the leader of a group of men known as "Red Legs"
or freebooters, who used the slave issue as an excuse to kill, steal, rob and
pillage for their own personal gain. The Jayhawkers operated in the same capacity
and both groups had the backing of General James H. Lane, and Montgomery
Jennison, both of Kansas. Missouri was a slave State and wanted Kansas to be
admitted into the Union as a slave State. Kansas abolitionists wanted Kansas to
remain a free State at any cost, and Missourians were extremely determined that
Kansas should have slavery when it came into the Union. Kansas abolitionists
founded an immigrant aid society known as the Underground Railroad, and its
purpose was to give aid in the smuggling of escaped slaves from the South. New
people were brought to Kansas and Missouri, many from the East, to assist in
this movement. John Brown was born in Massachusetts, and sympathizers from that
State sent him funds and a supply of rifles. This internal dispute caused
intense, bitter hatred all along the border; Missouri landowners were
constantly missing their livestock and other possessions; the Missourians
started raids in an attempt to recover their stolen property, and within a
short time the border guerrilla warfare reached a merciless and deplorable
state.[8]
During the night of May
24, 1856, and this was just a short time after pro-slavery, fighters made an
attack on Lawrence, Kansas when John Brown personally conducted the massacre of
five pro-slavery opponents, and in August of that same year his enemies burned
his home and killed his son.[9]
On October 16, 1859,
John Brown made his daring raid on Harper's Ferry and seized the national
arsenal. Colonel Robert E. Lee, then in the United States Army, suppressed the
raid, and captured John Brown and his followers. The audacity and boldness of
this act further embittered the South, and was a prelude to the Civil War.[10]
Northern newspapers pictured
him as a martyr; in the South he was looked upon as a fanatic. He was sentenced
to be hanged on November 2nd, and was led to the gallows on December 2nd.[11]
The Jayhawker and Red
Legs raids on Missouri was the order of the day for William Clarke Quantrill,
(a mixture of a patriot and a bandit) as he had been made to leave the State of
Kansas, which caused his hatred for Kansas to become an obsession. Not being
capable of taking orders, he organized his men into bands, or pro-Confederate
troops, and cast his lot with the South.[12]
William Clarke Quantrill
At Harrisonville,
Missouri, Colonel Mockbee, a Southerner, gave a dance for his daughter at his
home. Cole Younger and one of his sisters were invited and attended the dancing
Party. Cole was only seventeen years old at the time. Some of the Missouri
State Militia troops (who were fighting on the Northern side) were stationed at
Harrisonville. Some of the men decided to intrude on the dancing party, among
whom was Captain Irvin Walley, a married man, who became extremely obnoxious in
forcing his attentions on the young ladies. Walley asked Cole Younger's sister
for a dance, which she refused. This infuriated Walley, and he immediately
picked a row with Cole, and asked him with a sneer: “Where is Quantrill?"
Cole told him he didn't know where Quantrill was; Walley called Cole a liar and
Cole knocked him to the floor. Captain Walley drew his pistol, but friends interceded,
and upon the advice of his friends Cole went home and told his father what had
happened to him at the Mockbee home. Cole's father told him to go and stay for
a while on their farm in Jackson County, and stay away from Walley in order to
avoid any further trouble.[13]
Cole left the next
morning for the farm. That night Walley and some of his men came to Colonel
Younger's home, and told the Colonel that his son was a spy and demanded his
surrender. Colonel Younger told them that Cole was not a spy, and denounced the
whole affair as a lie.[14]
Colonel Younger, tried
to persuade Cole to attend a college in Kansas City, but Walley kept a constant
close watch on the boy. Even the railroad stations were closely watched, and as
Cole Younger said; “the only school I could reach was the school of war close
at home." so within a short time he rode into Quantrill's camp on the
Little Blue River, and joined the ranks of Quantrill’s Guerrillas, who were
playing havoc with detachments of Union troops and Kansas Jayhawkers.[15]
Colonel Younger was one
of the most highly respected men in Western Missouri. He was elected to the
Missouri State Legislature three times, representing Jackson County, and was
Judge of the same County for a number of years. He owned two six hundred acre
farms, a large livery stable of fine blooded horses, a thriving had mercantile
business, had a mail contract with the United States Government which covered a
route of five hundred miles, and was a livestock dealer which was great wealth
for the time.[16]
On one of Jennison's
raids in the fall of 1862, he ransacked and burned the town of Harrisonville
where Colonel Younger's livery stable was located. He stole from Colonel
Younger, forty head of fine-blooded horses worth about $500 each, $4,000 worth
of hacks, carriages, and buggies, and then all immoveable property was burned.[17]
At the time of the raid,
Colonel Younger was in Washington. D. C. on business. As soon as fie returned
home he made a trip to Kansas City, and called on the Federal troop commander
who was stationed there, and protested the affair, but with unsuccessful
results.[18]
Colonel Younger got in
his buggy and left Kansas City for his home in Harrisonville, and about a mile
South of Westport (a little suburb of Kansas City) he was shot and killed by a
band of Jayhawkers. They tied his horse to a tree; the body fell from the buggy
and was left lying in the road. Colonel Younger was unarmed. Mrs. Washington
Wells and her son had been to Kansas City and were on their way home in Lee's
Summit, and in passing by, came upon the tragic scene and recognized the body
of Colonel Younger.[19]
Nannie Harris, (later
Mrs. McCorkle) and Charity Kerr, cousins of Cole Younger, met Colonel Younger
in route, and within a short distance down the road the two girls met Captain
Walley. Walley had the girls arrested and thrown in the old jail on Grand
Avenue in Kansas City, thinking they had recognized him. Cole's three sisters
were jailed there because Walley wasn't taking any chances of any members of
the Younger family testifying against him in court.[20]
The jail was an old
dilapidated two-story house; the upper floor was used for the jail, and the
lower floor for a grocery store. There were about twenty women in the jail
besides Cole's sisters and cousins.[21]
Some Federal soldiers
were boarding with a Mrs. Duke, and Mrs. Duke overheard the soldiers making
plans to undermine the jail so it would collapse and kill all the prisoners.
The grocery man moved his stock of goods out of the building a few days before
it fell apart, which was more evidence that the whole sordid affair was
planned. At this time the girls had spent six months of torture in the old
filthy jail. Mrs. Duke rushed to see the Federal Commander, and while pleading
with him to remove the poor girls, the purposely damaged building collapsed,
and there were only five who escaped injury or death.[22]
Charity Kerr was ill
with fever in a prison bed when the building collapsed; she fell with the
wreckage, was killed by a piece of falling timber, and her body was badly
mangled. The Younger girls and Nannie Harris escaped.[23]
Cole Younger didn't know
his father had been murdered until the following day. He was grief stricken as
he and his father had had a very close affection for each other. Of course, the
terrible ordeal relative to his sisters and cousins coming so soon after his
fathers death caused more grief and anxiety for Cole, and the other members of
the Younger family.[24]
Cole Younger, and five
of his friends and fellow guerrilla fighters, disguised in Federal cavalryman's
uniforms rode into Kansas City on Christmas day, 1862, to track down the men
they believed had wrecked the jail. Cole Younger also believed that the same
men who wrecked the jail were the ones who were responsible for the death of his
father. They made a tour of all the Kansas City saloons, and in one of the
barrooms found six of the men they thought were responsible for the crimes.
They shot and killed all six of them and safely returned to Quantrill's
headquarters.[25]
Captain Davidson, a
Union Army officer, and about a hundred men with him came to the home of Mrs.
Younger, Cole's mother. It was after dark, the weather was bitter cold, and the
ground covered with snow. Captain Davidson and some of his men came to the
door, gave a loud knock, and finally pushed the door in. They had set a trap
for Cole, as they knew he was in the house at the time, but he made a
miraculous escape, which infuriated Captain Davidson. Mrs. Younger was sick in
bed, but they forced her and the children out of the house and tried to force
her to burn her own home. Mrs. Younger, in desperation, begged them to let her
wait until morning, as she had no means of transportation, the nearest friends
lived eight miles away, and was horrified to think of walking eight miles
through two or three feet of snow in the darkness of the night with her four
youngest children. The Union officer agreed not to put them out if she would
burn her home at daybreak. The Federals returned early the next morning and
forced Mrs. Younger to set the torch to her own home. Mrs. Younger, the little
children, and a faithful Negro woman servant, Suse, started their eight-mile
journey to Harrisonville, and looking back over their shoulders could see their
home in smoldering flames.[26]
When Cole Younger was in
the Confederate States Army he saw a great deal of the country. During the
month of May 1864, Colonel George S. Jackson and a force of 300 men, Cole being
among them, were sent across the plains into Colorado to capture some wagon
trains, and cut the transcontinental telegraph line from Leavenworth to San
Francisco. When they came upon the wagon trains they found them empty, but cut
the telegraph line, and then proceeded to a point on the Rio Grande River where
orders were waiting to select a party of veteran scouts to cross the continent
on a top secret mission for the Confederacy. Cole's brilliant record as a scout
and partisan raider prompted his promotion to a tour of recruiting service in
California, and later he was commissioned to command two small ships built by
the British, which he delivered to Confederate States Naval officers at
Victoria. British Columbia. When he reached Victoria, he found out General Lee
had surrendered at Appomattox, and the war had ended.[27]
The cowardly outrages
inflicted upon the Younger girls and their cousins, and the murder of Colonel
Younger, weighed heavy upon the heart and mind of one of Cole's younger
brothers, James Henry Younger, (known as Jim); and only fifteen years old in
January, 1863. Jim Joined Quantrill's guerrilla band against the advice of
Cole.[28]
Near the end of the war
Quantrill, accompanied by a small group of his men, tried to escape into the
State of Kentucky. They were severely attacked by Federal forces, and Quantriil
was mortally wounded and taken to a military hospital at Louisville, Kentucky,
where he died a few days later. Jim remained with Quantrill throughout the war,
and was captured with him in Kentucky and sent to Alton, Illinois, where he was
placed in a military prison, and released in the latter part of 1865.[29]
At the close of the war,
two of Cole's brothers were just young boys, John was fourteen and Bob hadn't
quite reached his twelfth birthday. Jim came home from Alton, Illinois as soon
as he was released from the military prison, and Cole arrived a little later
from California. 0f course, most of the family fortune was lost during the war,
but the farm land was in good shape and the boys wanted to settle down and make
a living for their mother and the other members of the family, but Jim, John,
and Cole were constantly harassed, accused of crimes they were not guilty of by
the so-called vigilantes, a carpetbag sheriff, and Federal army men of the
carpetbag variety. There was no family along the Missouri border who had been
mistreated as outrageously and unjustly, as the Younger boys and the other
members of the Younger family.[30]
Cole was the principal
figure of the Younger family that the vigilantes sought out, so in 1866 he left
home and went to Northeast Louisiana and spent three months with Captain J. C.
Lea on the Fortune Fork Plantation in Madison Parish, owned by Mrs. Henrietta
Amis. Then Cole and Captain Lea left there and went to Carroll Parish, and
rented the Bass farm on Lake Providence. Cole, suffering from chills and fever,
(which was an illness characteristic of the time in the low damp climate), left
there the following year, 1867, and returned to Missouri.[31]
Mrs. Younger died of
tuberculosis in June 1870, and in March 1874; John was unjustly shot and killed
by a St. Louis detective.[32]
Cole, Jim, and Bob
Younger, Frank and Jesse James and three others, namely Chell Miller, Charley
Pitts and Bill Chadwell decided to make a raid cm the First National Bank of
Northfield. Minnesota. Frank James and Cole Younger had seen service together
in the Civil War, had formed a warm attachment for each other and remained
friends throughout their lives.[33]
They had been informed
that General Benjamin F. Butler, and his son-in-law, Adelbert Ames, had a great
deal of money in the bank at Northfield, and of course, they had no conscience
about taking their money as General Butler had been Federal Commander of New
Orleans, and Ames had been Provisional Military Governor of Mississippi--and
their inflictions upon the citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi during their
rein are well known pages of history. The mistreatment of the James boys and
their family at the hands of Federal forces was about the same as the Younger
family received.[34]
The raid on the
Northfield bank occurred on September 7, 1876. Frank James and Bob Younger had
been drinking which no doubt had something to do the poor timing of the raid,
and was responsible for carelessness. Citizens of the town took up arms in
defense and in the melee a Swedish immigrant unable to understand English,
stood dazed in the streets and was killed, which was possibly accidental. Bill
Chadwell and Chell Miller were shot and killed in the streets; Frank James
killed the bank’s bookkeeper, Lee Heywood.[35]
Two of the remaining members
of the gang, Bob and Cole Younger, were wounded, but they all rode out of
Northfield at a rapid pace, and near Mankato the gang broke up. Frank and Jesse
hit the trail in a westward direction and were never captured.[36]
Two weeks later on
September 21, suspicious characters were seen near Madelia, which turned out to
be the Younger brothers and Charley Pitts.[37]
Sheriff Gilpin organized
a posse of six men and found the hungry bandits hidden in a swamp. There was a short
hard violent fight, in which Charley Pitts was killed; Jim Younger was shot
five times, and one shot shattered the upper part of his jaw and lodged near
his brain; Bob was wounded in the right lung, and Cole received a total of
eleven wounds.[38]
The Younger brothers
pleaded guilty, and Judge Lord sentenced them for life in the Minnesota State
Penitentiary. They became model prisoners and were given jobs of trust. Bob was
made clerk to the steward, Jim was the mail carrier, and Cole was made
librarian.[39]
Bob died in prison of
tuberculosis, the same disease his mother died of. His death occurred on
September 16, 1889, and his faithful sister was with him at the time. [40]
While Cole and Jim
remained inside the prison walls loyal friends on the outside worked
ceaselessly for their liberation, which finally came in July 1901, but they
could not leave the State and could not appear in public for profit.[41]
Cole Younger after
getting out of prison in 1901 Cole
Younger in Later Life
About a year after the
release, Jim Younger took his own life in the Reardon Hotel in St. Paul on
Sunday afternoon October 19, 1902.[42]
A full pardon was
granted to Cole in 1903, and he returned to his Missouri home among friends and
relatives.[43]
Among the first of whom
Cole looked up was his old friend Frank James, and they went into business
together operating a Wild West Show. Cole Younger died March 21, 1916, and was
laid to rest at Lee's Summit. He had been shot between twenty and thirty times,
and there were twelve or more bullets in his body, which had never been
removed.[44]
The origin, background
and history of the Younger family are indeed the kind of heritage that the
Youngers were naturally proud of. I have tried to bring out the good things,
and the outstanding facts about them and have touched very lightly on the lives
in banditry of the Younger brothers. Their acts of lawlessness were for reasons
of necessity.[45]
Captain Jason
W. James