Charles W. Quantrell

by Harrison Trow; John P. Burch

Coleman Younger’s work was like the work of a pioneer in the wilderness, but he did it as became the hardy descendants of a stalwart race of pioneers. He cut logs and built a comfortable log house for his mother. He made rails and fenced in his land. In lieu of horses or mules, he plowed with oxen. He stayed steadfastly at home. He heard rumors of threats being made against his life, but he paid no attention to them. He took part in no political meetings. He tried to hide himself and be forgotten.

The bloodhounds were on his track, however, and swore either to kill him or drive him from the country. A vigilance committee composed of skulking murderers and red-handed robbers went one night to surprise the two brothers and end the hunt with a massacre. Forewarned, James and Coleman fled. The family were wantonly insulted, and a younger brother, John, a mere boy, was brutally beaten and then hung until life was almost extinct. This was done to force him to tell the whereabouts of James and Coleman.

Mrs. Younger never entirely recovered from the shock of that night’s work, lingering along hopelessly yet patiently for several months and finally dying in the full assurance of the Christian’s blessed hereafter.

The death of this persecuted woman, however, did not end the persecution. Cole Younger was repeatedly waylaid and fired at. His stock was killed through mere deviltry, or driven off to swell the gains of insatiable wolves. His life was in hourly jeopardy, as was the life of his brother James. They plowed in the fields as men who saw suspended above them a naked sword blade. They permitted no light to be lit in the house at night. They traveled the public highway warily. They were hunted men and proscribed men in the midst of their own people. They were chased away from their premises by armed men. Once Cole was badly wounded by the bullet of an assassin. Once, half dressed, he had to flee for his life. If he made a crop, he was not permitted to gather it and when something of a success might have come to him after the expenditure of so much toil, energy, long-suffering and forbearance, he was not let alone in peace long enough to utilize his returns and make out of his resources their legitimate gains.

Of course there could be but one ending to all this long and unbroken series of malignant persecutions, lying-in-wait, midnight surprises, perpetual robbings, and most villainous assaults and attempted murders—Coleman and James Younger left home and left Jackson County. They buckled on their pistols and rode away to Texas, resolved from that time on to protect themselves, to fight when they were attacked, and to make it so hot for the assassins and the detectives who were eternally on their track that by and by the contract taken to murder them would be a contract not particularly conducive to steady investments. They were hounded to it.

They endured every species of insult and attack, and would have still continued to endure it in silence and almost non-resistance if such forbearance had mitigated in any manner the virulence of their enemies, or brought any nearer to an appeasement the merciless fate which seemed to be eternally at their heels. The peaceful pursuits of life were denied them. The law which should have protected them was overridden. Indeed, there was no law. The courts were instruments of plunder. The civil officers were cutthroats. Instead of a legal process, there was a vigilance committee. Men were hung because of a very natural desire to keep hold of their own property. To the cruel vigor of actual war, there had succeeded the irresponsible despotism of greedy highwaymen buttressed upon assassination. The border counties were overrun with bands of predatory plunderers. Some Confederate soldiers dared not return home and many Guerrillas fled the country. It was dark everywhere, and the bravest held their breath, not knowing how much longer they would be permitted to remain peacefully at home, or suffered to enjoy the fruits of the labors they had endured.

Fortunately for all, however, the well nigh extinct embers of a merciless border war were not blown upon long enough and persistently enough to kindle another conflagration.

But neither the Jameses nor the Youngers had been permitted to rest long at any one time since the surrender of the Confederate armies. Some dastardly deeds had been done against them, too, in the name of the law. Take for example, Pinkerton’s midnight raid upon the house of Mrs. Zerelda Samuels, mother of the James boys. The family was wrapped in profound sleep. Only women and children were about the premises, and an old man long past his prime. The cowards—how many is not accurately known, probably a dozen—crept close to this house through the midnight, surrounded it, found its inmates asleep, and threw into the kitchen where an old negress was in bed with her children, a lighted hand grenade, wrapped about with flannel saturated with turpentine. The lurid light from this inflammable fluid awakened the negro woman and she in turn awakened the sleeping whites. They rushed to subdue the flames and save their property. Children were gathered together in the kitchen, little things, helpless and terrified. All of a sudden there was a terrible explosion. Mrs. Samuels’ right arm was blown off above the elbow, a bright little boy, eight years old, had his bowels torn out. Dr. Samuels was seriously cut and hurt, the old negro woman was maimed, and several of the other children more or less injured. The hand grenade had done its work, and there had been a tragedy performed by men calling themselves civilized, in the midst of a peaceful community and upon a helpless family of women and children and what would have disgraced Nero or made some of the monstrous murders of Diocletian was as white is to black. Yet Pinkerton’s paid assassins did this because his paid assassins knew better how to kill women and children than armed men in open combat.

Dear Reader, what would you have done under the same circumstances? Put yourself in the Jameses’ and Youngers’ places, and think it over.

When Jesse James was killed at St. Joseph, Missouri, Governor Crittenden, then governor of the state of Missouri, wired me to know if I would go up and identify him.