“The duel was forced upon me by a man named Captain James White. He circulated a scandalous tale about the young woman Bob was in love with. I sent word to him that he would have to apologize or fight. After the race I referred to White and I went to a neighboring plantation and fought it out. At first shot his right arm was shattered at the shoulder. When he thought he was dying he apologized and admitted that he had circulated the story for the purpose of forcing a fight upon me.”
“It was about this time that the Kansas City fair was robbed. This was charged against the Younger brothers, although not one of us had anything to do with it. Bob felt so keenly the notoriety that resulted from my duel and from the stories of the Kansas City robbery that he left Dallas, and later Jim and I followed him. About this time my brother John, was only 14 years old when the war closed, was forced into a quarrel and murdered as wantonly as a man was ever murdered in the history of the west.”
“When I was on the Pacific slope Missouri adopted the famous Drake constitution, which prohibited Confederate soldiers and sympathizers from practicing any profession, preaching the gospel or doing many other things under a penalty of a fine of not less [pg 128] than $500 or imprisonment for not less than six months. One section of this constitution gave amnesty to Union soldiers for all they had done after January 1, 1861, but held Confederates responsible for what they had done either as citizens or soldiers.”
“The result of this was persecution for all men who were not friendly with the carpet-bag adminstration following the war, and there was no mercy shown to any of them. After a few days of seeing my friends and old comrades hounded and imprisoned I saw there was nothing left for me to do but gather together with those that were left and do the best we could.”
“In passing swiftly over the scenes of violence in which we took part, I will take up the Northfield case by saying that we had decided to find a good bank, make a big haul, get away with the money, leave the country and start life anew in some foreign land.”
Convicts entering train at Stillwater bound for new prison.
Warden Wolfer chaperoning convicts to their new “home”
“We were told that General Benjamin F. Butler had a big lot of money in the First National bank at Northfield, and that A. A. Ames, son-in-law of Butler, who had been carpet-bag governor of Mississippi after the war, had a lot there also. We were not very friendly to Butler because of his treatment of Southerners during the war, and accordingly decided to make a raid on the Northfield bank.”