Blood & Bullets: The Story of the James-Younger Gang: Back When The West Was Wild

By Nick Vulich

One of the biggest concerns as the Civil War wrapped up was that Confederate troops might disappear into the Appalachian Mountains where they could conduct guerrilla raids with relative impunity. If they did, the war could have been extended for years, maybe even decades as the insurgents crept out of their strongholds to conduct hit-and-run raids.

Fortunately, that didn't happen. Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee and Pete Longstreet reminded Southerners they lost the war. It was time to get on with their lives.

Most southern veterans accepted the situation. A few, like Jesse and Frank James and the Younger brothers, couldn't accept defeat. They holed up in the backwoods of Missouri and fought a new kind of war, using tactics they'd learned under William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson.

Most members of the band had already robbed banks, derailed trains, and looted towns. The transition to outlaw was relatively easy.

This is the story of the James-Younger Gang.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Vulich
• Release date: Jun 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798227676610

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Introduction

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The Civil War made Jesse James a robber and a killer. John Newman Edwards, the editor of The Kansas City Times, turned him into an American legend. But after Jesse’s death, papers had mixed feelings. One day they reported that his death was good for Missouri. The next, they published stories portraying Jesse as Robin Hood, giving his last dime to help poor Missourians.

For example, The Kansas City Times printed an interview with Jackson County attorney Fred A. Mitchell, a friend of the James family that perpetuated the myth of Jesse as a modern-day Robin Hood. He was impulsive and generous to a fault, said Mitchell. Instances of his kindness to poor Missourians are absolutely innumerable. If he found a man that he ever knew so poor he could not put in his crop, his first inevitable act would be to put his hand into his pocket and give him the money he needed, though it be the last shot in his own locker. If a poor friend needed a mule and Jesse met him, he would dismount and give him his horse.

And yet, having said that, Mitchell believed Jesse’s death would be good for Missouri by ridding the state of its lawless image.[i]

A week later, the Kansas City Times reprinted John Newman Edwards’s obituary of Jesse from the Sedalia Weekly Bazoo. 

We called him an outlaw, said Edwards, "and he was, but fate made him so. When the war came, he was just turned of 15. The border was aflame with steel, and fire, and ambuscade, and slaughter. He flung himself into a band which had a black flag for a banner and devils for riders. What he did, he did, and it was fearful. But it was war. It was Missouri against Kansas. It was Jim Lane and Jennison against Quantrill, Anderson, and Todd.

When the war closed, Jesse had no home. Proscribed, hunted, shot, driven away from among his people, a price put upon his head—what else could the man do, with such a nature, except what he did? He had to live.

And therein lies the question: What else could the man do except what he did? Millions of Americans, blue and gray, returned home after the war and resumed their lives. Thousands of Missouri rebels and bushwhackers lived peacefully after the war. So why couldn’t Jesse, Frank, Cole, John, Jim, and Bob Younger?

Edwards made it seem as if outlaw life was the only option left to the boys, so they entered a life of crime and murder the Jayhawkers and Redleggers forced upon them.

But in the end, none of that mattered to Edwards. Jesse didn’t deserve to die as he had.

There never was a more cowardly and unnecessary murder committed in all America, continued Edwards, "than this murder of Jesse James. It was done for money.

If Jesse had been hunted down as any other criminal and killed when trying to escape or in resisting arrest, not a word would have been said to the contrary. He had sinned, and he had suffered. In his death, the majesty of the law would have been vindicated, but here the law itself becomes a murderer.[ii]

Jesse James was dead, murdered by the state. But instead of capturing Jesse and giving him a fair trial, Missouri put a price on his head, then plotted and paid someone to kill him.

Once again, John Newman Edwards transformed Jesse James from a killer into a martyr, a boy forced into outlawry by the war, then hunted down and killed like an animal.

Jesse James’s death stoked the flames of the legend.

And that’s the catch. Getting reliable information on the James-Younger Gang is a lot like pulling teeth. Everything is out there, but it is nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction. Unfortunately, the myth surrounding Jesse James has washed away the truth.

All we can be sure of is that Jesse and Frank James and Cole Younger and his brothers were badass robbers and cold-blooded killers. They might have shared a few dollars with poor Missourians along the way, but you can bet your ass it wasn’t out of kindness. The James-Younger Gang traded money for food, lodging, and alibis. But there was one catch, if you took their money, you were indebted to them. Forever.

Meet the Gang

The James-Younger Gang was fluid, changing with the needs of the job and who was available. The core members of the original gang were Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger, Arthur McCoy, Clell Miller, and Bill Chadwell, men battle-hardened in the civil war. Most of them had joined with Bloody Bill Anderson or William Clarke Quantrill in their teens and had participated in the raids on Lawrence and Centralia, Kansas.

Jesse James was the face of the gang. He was tall, thin, wiry, good-looking, and craved publicity. Jesse had sandy-brown hair (some said reddish), a big bushy beard, and steely-blue eyes that could cut you to the core. Today he’d likely be a YouTube influencer or rockstar, but Jesse was a badass outlaw in his day. His brother, Frank James, stood an inch or two taller than Jesse, was quiet, reserved, and preferred to stay out of the limelight.

Most people go back and forth, deciding which brother ran the gang. Some credit Frank as the genius behind it, carefully planning their every move. Others like J. T. Buell, an early authority on western outlaws, called Jesse the administrative leader, saying he managed its finances, carried out its diplomacy, and devised its strategies.[iii]

Still, others say Cole Younger was the leader, at least when Jesse and Frank rode with him. Cole was a meticulous planner and thought out every move he made. And unlike Jesse James, Cole Younger had a heart. He hated murder, said The Kansas City Times, and yet he killed ruthlessly, doing what was right at the moment. In short, Cole lived by his own code of ethics.[iv]

In modern-day parlance, Cole Younger was a biker type. He was big and burly, not one to be messed with. When he rode with the James boys, Cole stood just over six feet two and weighed 180 pounds, all muscle. Twenty-five years later, Cole had bulked up to a muscular 250 pounds when he walked out of the Stillwater Penitentiary.

The Younger brothers were unlikely criminals. They grew up in a good Christian home. Their father, Judge Henry W. Younger, was one of the wealthiest men in Cass and Jackson Counties in Missouri. He owned a large farm ten miles south of Independence in Jackson County that Cole valued at over $100,000 (just over $3 million today).[v]

Henry Younger supported the Union at the start of the war, but that didn’t protect him when Kansas Jayhawkers invaded the state. They looked at everyone as fair game. Early in 1861, Jennison’s Jayhawkers[vi] stole forty horses and burned three of Younger’s buildings, prompting him to move his family to Harrisonville in Cass County.[vii]

The Jayhawkers found sixteen-year-old Cole Younger there, tried him for treason, and sentenced him to hang the following morning. He escaped and joined Quantrill’s raiders. And then, Cole’s father was killed on July 20, 1862, while traveling home from Kansas City.

On another raid, the Jayhawkers chased Jim Younger, 14, into the brush, firing after him as he ran.[viii] After that, two of Cole’s sisters were taken prisoner, and his mother was forced to set fire to her home. Bursheba Younger moved her family to Lafayette County after that, but unfortunately, the raiders followed her, destroying more of her property.

The raiders returned after the war ended to take vengeance on the Youngers. When they didn’t find Cole and Jim, the men dragged John Younger into the barn, threw a rope over a beam, tied a noose around his neck, and let him dangle in the air until he was unconscious. Then they lowered him to the ground. When John came to, they beat, kicked, and poked him with their sabers. Afterward, they dragged him into the fields and left him for dead.

The next day, John Younger crawled home, more dead than alive. His mother died shortly after that, and the boys moved to Texas, hoping for better luck. They ranched, drove cattle, and worked the land but couldn’t escape their bushwhacker past.

Cole was twenty-two when the war ended, and he’d seen enough violence to fill ten lifetimes. He’d ridden with Quantrill and served under General Joe Shelby. And after they turned outlaws, the brother’s fame took on a life of its own. They were blamed for every two-bit robbery over a ten-state area, even if the logistics were impossible.[ix]

In a 1901 interview, Cole explained that their years fighting with Quantrill and General Joe Shelby earned the boys a reputation they didn’t deserve. Then, when the war ended, they found themselves outlaws.

We could not lay down our arms and return to our farm as other men could, explained Cole. The war had not ended for us. Western Missouri was in a chaotic state where people were still fighting, and his family was public enemy number one.

Like Jesse James, Cole Younger wrote letters to the press denying his guilt. An 1874 letter published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch supposedly alibied the brothers for all the robberies they were accused of.

Cole provided a detailed list of his and his brother’s whereabouts at the time most of the robberies attributed to them were committed. And then, in a strange turn, he blamed his current predicament on Jesse James.

"My name would never have been connected with the affair [Kansas City Fairgrounds robbery], had not Jesse W. James, for some cause best known to himself, published in The Kansas City Times a letter stating that John, myself, and he were accused of the robbery. Where he got his authority, I don’t know; but one thing I do know—he had none from me. We were not on good terms at the time, nor haven’t been for several years."

He blamed that letter for connecting his and his brother’s names with the James brothers. As for Arthur McCoy, he knew him during the war but hadn’t seen him since.[x]

In November 1876, Jim, Bob, and Cole Younger were tried in Faribault, Minnesota, for their part in the Northfield, Minnesota, bank raid. They pled guilty and were sentenced to life in the Stillwater Penitentiary. Cole took the sentence in stride, saying, he had seen pretty nearly all the world and was ready to retire to private life.

And it’s true. Life threw Cole Younger many curves. For the most part, he rolled with them. His parents wanted him to be a minister, but the war made him an outlaw and killer. One minute he was joking and having fun with the boys. The next, he was fingering the trigger of his Navy Colt.

Cole admitted doing bad things and didn’t mind being blamed for them, but the things he didn’t do but was accused of bothered him. There was no escaping the notoriety that had attached itself to his family.

In his later years, Cole went on the lecture circuit, talking about his exploits in the war and his time in jail. Every lecture ended with the same words: Crime does not pay.

Strangely, Cole never implicated the James brothers in the Northfield raid, even when it could have won him an early release from prison. Still, everything he said showed a dislike for Jesse. In 1883, he told a reporter, There was just as much difference between Frank and Jesse as one could imagine. The former would bear acquaintance while the latter would not. He thought, Frank would have gladly settled down and led a different life if he had been allowed to do so. Finally, he said, Frank James was always quiet and gentlemanly, while Jesse was inclined to be quarrelsome.[xi]

Jim Younger joined