Cole Younger
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Thomas Coleman Younger (January 15, 1844 – March 21, 1916) was a famous Confederate outlaw during and 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 outlaws.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Birth
Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger, born in 1844, was the son of Henry Washington Younger, a prosperous, slaveowning farmer from what is now Lee's Summit, Missouri.
[edit] 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 to exact revenge. This conflict was in some respects a continuation of the conflict in neighboring Kansas in the late 1850s, between antislavery and proslavery settlers. The fighting in Missouri during the Civil War was largely between Unionist and Confederate Missourians, though the bushwhackers reserved special hatred for the Unionist Kansas troops who 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, when he took part in the slaughter of some 200 men and boys at Lawrence, Kansas, which the guerrillas looted and burned.
Younger later claimed that 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 the state of Missouri under the rule of a militant faction of Unionists, the Radicals, who soon became 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, and enacted a number of reforms, but the restrictions on former Confederates proved divisive.
[edit] Bandit career
Most of the former bushwhackers returned to peaceful lives; many left Missouri for friendlier terrain, particularly Kentucky, where many had family. During the war, many of their leaders, such as Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, had been shot and killed. But a small core of Anderson's men, led by the ruthless Archie Clement, remained together and under arms. 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 happened to be run by the leading Radicals of Clay County, who had just held a public meeting for their party. The Radical governor posted a reward for Clement, while he and his men conducted further robberies that year. On election day of 1866, Clement led his crew 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 killed Clement when he resisted arrest.
When Cole Younger and his brothers joined with this group is uncertain. The first suspicion of his involvement came in 1868, when authorities identified him as a member of a group of outlaws 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 a suspected outlaw until December 1869, after the robbery of a bank in Gallatin, Missouri, and the murder of the cashier, John W. Sheets. By that point, the more senior members of Clement's old crew had been killed, captured, or abandoned a life of violence, and its core would thereafter consist of the James and Younger brothers.
Witnesses repeatedly gave identifications that matched Cole Younger in robberies carried out by the gang over the next several 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 over the next several years.
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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Films
- 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).
- The 2001 movie American Outlaws depicts the early years of the James-Younger Gang(with Scott Caan playing Cole)
[edit] References
- Brant, Marley. The Outlaw Youngers - "A Confederate Brotherhood", 1992
