A wounded Cole Younger, after his arrest in 1876
Cole Younger as a young man
Thomas Coleman Younger (January 15 1844 –
March 21 1916) was a famous Confederate guerrilla and an outlaw after the
American Civil War.
With his brothers Jim, John and Bob Younger, he joined with Jesse and Frank James to lead the James-Younger gang of Missouri bandits.
Biography
Birth
Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger, born in 1844, was a son of Henry Washington
Younger, a prosperous, slaveowning farmer from what is now Lee's Summit,
Missouri and Bresheba Leighton Fristoe Younger, daughter of a promenant Jackson County farmer.
Civil War
During the American Civil War, savage guerrilla warfare wracked Missouri. Henry Younger, who reportedly was pro-Union, was killed by a
detachment of Union militiamen whose captain was said to owe Younger
money.[citation needed] The murder of his father is
believed to have been what drove Cole Younger to become a pro-Confederate guerrilla. The fighting in Missouri during the Civil
War was largely between pro-Union and pro-Confederate Missourians, though the bushwhackers held special hatred for the Union
troops from Kansas who frequently crossed the border and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. Younger joined the notorious
bushwhacker leader William Clarke Quantrill in a retaliatory raid on August 21 1863, taking part in the slaughter of some 200 men and boys at
Lawrence, Kansas, which the guerrillas looted and burned.
Younger later claimed he left the bushwhacker ranks to enlist in the Confederate Army, and was sent to California on a recruiting mission. He returned after the Southern defeat to find Missouri
under the rule of a militant faction of Unionists, the Radicals, who soon took over the regular Republican Party in the state. In the closing days of the war, the Radicals pushed
through a new state constitution that barred Confederate sympathizers from voting, serving on juries, holding public office,
preaching the gospel, or carrying out any number of public roles. The constitution also freed the slaves ahead of the
ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It enacted a number of reforms, but the restrictions on former
Confederates proved divisive.
Bandit career
Most of the former bushwhackers returned to peaceful lives. Many left Missouri for friendlier places, particularly Kentucky,
where many had relatives. Most of their leaders, including Quantrill and "Bloody Bill"
Anderson, had been killed in the war. But a small core of Anderson's men, led by the ruthless Archie Clement, remained
together. State authorities believed that Clement planned and led the first daylight peacetime armed bank robbery in U.S.
history, holding up the Clay County Savings Association on February 13, 1866. The bank was run by the leading Radicals of Clay County, who had just held a public meeting for their party.
The Radical Republican governor posted a reward for Clement, but he and his men conducted further robberies that year. On
election day of 1866, Clement led his men into Lexington, Missouri, where they
intimidated Radical voters and secured the election of a conservative slate of candidates. A state militia unit entered the town
shortly thereafter, and they killed Clement when he resisted arrest.
It is uncertain when Cole Younger and his brothers joined with this gang. The first mention of his involvement came in 1868,
when authorities identified him as a member of a gang who robbed Nimrod Long & Co., a bank in Russellville, Kentucky. Jesse and Frank James were also suspected of taking part in that robbery, though Jesse would not be publicly
identified as an outlaw until December 1869, after the robbery of a bank in Gallatin, Missouri, and the murder of the cashier, John W. Sheets. By that time, the more senior
members of Clement's gang had been killed, captured, or quit, and its core would thereafter consist of the James and Younger
brothers.
Witnesses repeatedly gave identifications that matched Cole Younger in robberies carried out over the next few years, as the
outlaws robbed banks and stagecoaches in Missouri and Kentucky. On July 21, 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing a locomotive and looting the express car on the Rock Island Railroad in Adair, Iowa.
Younger and his brothers were also suspects in hold-ups of stage coaches, banks, and trains in Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, and
West Virginia.
Following the robbery of the Iron Mountain
Railroad at Gad's Hill, Missouri, in 1874, the
Pinkerton National Detective Agency began to pursue the James and
Younger brothers. Two agents (Louis J. Lull and John Boyle) engaged John and Jim Younger in a gunfight on a Missouri road on
March 17, 1874; Boyle fled the scene, and both John Younger and
Lull were killed. Simultaneously, another agent who pursued the James brothers was abducted and later found dead alongside a
rural road in Jackson County, Missouri.
The James and Younger brothers survived for so many years, in contrast to most Western outlaws, because of their strong
support among former Confederates. Jesse James became the public face of the gang, appealing
to the public in letters to the press (even press releases left behind at robberies), claiming to be the victim of vindictive
Radical Republicans. The gang, and Jesse James in particular, became a major
electoral campaign issue, as pro-Southern Democrats defended the outlaws and Republicans attacked them.
Downfall of the gang
On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted to rob a bank in Northfield,
Minnesota. Cole Younger and his brother Bob would both later say that they selected the bank because of its connection to
two former Union generals and Radical Republican politicians, Benjamin Butler
and Adelbert Ames. Three of the outlaws entered the bank, as the remaining five, led by
Cole Younger, remained on the street to provide cover. The crime soon went awry, however, when the townspeople sent up the alarm
and ran for their guns. Younger and his brothers began to fire in the air to clear the streets, but the townspeople (shooting
from under cover, through windows and around the corners of buildings) opened a deadly fusillade, killing gang members Clell
Miller and Bill Chadwell and badly wounding Bob Younger through the elbow. The outlaws killed two townspeople, including the
acting cashier of the bank, and fled empty-handed. As hundreds of Minnesotans formed posses to pursue the fleeing gang, the
outlaws separated. The James brothers made it back to Missouri, but the three Youngers (Cole, Bob, and Jim) did not. They and
another gang member, Charlie Pitts, waged a gun battle with a local posse in a wooded ravine along the Watonwan River west of Madelia, Minnesota. Pitts was killed,
and Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger were badly wounded and captured. Cole, asked about the robbery, responded, "We tried a desperate
game and lost. But we are rough men used to rough ways, and we will abide by the consequences."
Cole, Jim and Bob pleaded guilty to their crimes to avoid being hanged. They were sentenced
to life in prison at the Stillwater Prison at Stillwater on November 18, 1876. Frank and Jesse James fled to Nashville, Tennessee, where they lived peacefully for the next three years. In 1879, Jesse returned
to a life of crime, ending in his murder on April 3, 1882, in Saint Joseph, Missouri. Frank James surrendered to Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden on October 4, 1882. Eventually Frank James
was acquitted, and lived quietly and peacefully thereafter.
Bob Younger died in Stillwater prison on September 16, 1889, of tuberculosis. Cole and
Jim were paroled on July 10, 1901, with the help of the prison warden. Jim committed suicide on
October 19, 1902. Cole wrote a memoir that portrayed himself as a Confederate avenger more
than an outlaw, admitting to only one crime, that at Northfield. He lectured and toured the south with Frank James in a wild west
show, The Cole Younger and Frank James Wild West Company in 1903.
On August 21, 1912, Cole declared that he had become a Christian and repented of his criminal past.
Frank James died February 18, 1915. A year later, Cole
Younger died March 21, 1916, in his home town of Lee's Summit, Missouri, and is buried in the Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery.
Films
- The 1941 movie Bad Men of Missouri was a Robin
Hood type movie, that featured Cole (played by Dennis Morgan) and his two outlaw
brothers fighting the bank.
- The 1958 movie Cole Younger, Gunfighter featured a strangely middle-aged Cole played
by Frank Lovejoy.
- The 1972 movie The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid depicts this failed bank robbery
(with Cliff Robertson playing Cole).
- The 1980 movie The Long Riders depicts this era of the James-Younger gang
exploits (with David Carradine playing Cole). This movie is the most historically
accurate of the James-Younger films, down to preserving the historical dialogue.
- The 1994 movie Frank and Jesse depicts the James-Younger gangs outlaw days
(with Randy Travis playing Cole.
- The 2001 movie American Outlaws depicts the early years of the James-Younger
Gang (with Scott Caan playing Cole)
References
- Brant, Marley. The Outlaw Youngers - "A Confederate Brotherhood", 1992
- Wellman, Paul I. A Dynasty of Western Outlaws. 1961; 1992.
External links
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