Here's a bombshell I should have run three days ago. Been sitting on this for a couple of months and it slipped through the cracks. Check it out:
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YOUNGER BROTHERS –
THE LOST INTERVIEWS
Late in the day on September 21, 1876, hordes of newspaper
reporters converged on the little burg of Madelia, Minnesota – three of the Northfield
bank robbers had been captured alive after two weeks on the run. The robbers admitted that they were the
Younger brothers, part of the notorious James-Younger gang, but they were cagey
in their interviews with the newsmen.
They would not name their cohorts in the botched robbery, nor would they
identify the two men who were reported to have escaped to Missouri, except to
strongly deny that they were brothers Frank and Jesse James. The Youngers also refused to identify the
robber who killed the First National Bank’s acting cashier.
Bob Younger did
explain why they had come to Minnesota (“for pleasure”), why they had decided
to rob a bank there (“to pay expenses”), and why they had settled on Northfield
(“one of the boys had a spite against” Radical Republican Adelbert Ames, an
investor in the bank). But the brothers
were evasive about where they had been and exactly what they had done in
Minnesota prior to the robbery. Even
after they were incarcerated for life in Stillwater Penitentiary, they declined
to elaborate on the Minnesota venture.
However, they never failed to refute their participation in previous
holdups, and they remained steadfast in denying that the James brothers had
journeyed with them to Northfield.
Then, in June of 1889, an unnamed reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer visited Stillwater
and spent several hours interviewing brothers Cole and Jim. Cole was especially forthcoming, perhaps
because his brother Bob was dying of tuberculosis and a favorable interview
might build sentiment for the pardon several interested parties were trying to
get him. The lucky reporter ended up
with what must have been the biggest scoop of his career, for contained within
the article’s three long columns in the June 30 issue of the Enquirer was the story of the Northfield
Raid – as told by Cole himself. Never
before had he given such a detailed accounting.
And somehow, even though the Enquirer’s piece was picked up by a few other papers, that account
has remained unknown to scholars and buffs for the last 126 years. Cole’s interview is provided here not as it
appeared in the Enquirer (the scan is
difficult to read) but as it was copied in the Butler Weekly Times (Butler, Missouri) of July 10, 1889. Bear in mind that Cole remains as cagey as
ever. Outside of Northfield,” Cole
asserts, “no man can charge me with a single crime.” And, he claims, the two bandits who famously got
away are now dead; Frank James was not in Minnesota because he was then in
California running a ranch.
But while Cole’s account must be read with a dose of
skepticism, there remain significant revelations, some of which support what we
know or previously suspected about the gang’s thinking and activities. Other details, if true, force us to
reconsider the commonly accepted “facts” of the Northfield Raid. Highlights to look for include:
1. The gang went to
Minnesota for “pleasure, the trip being merely for a few weeks.” This is in agreement with Bob Younger’s
statement to the Minneapolis Tribune
shortly after their capture. Additionally,
the gang traveled to Minnesota by rail.
Cole was pretty consistent in subsequent interviews in giving their mode
of transportation as the railroad. He says
this in his 1903 autobiography. We also
have several documented reports of gang members purchasing horses in
Minnesota. Yet numerous authors and
filmmakers have insisted on having the boys ride horseback to Minnesota.
2. They were flush with
cash, Cole says from $500 to $600 per man.
Just a few weeks earlier, the gang had robbed a Missouri Pacific train
of approximately $10,000 in cash near Otterville, Missouri. This bold train robbery was actually another
strong incentive to leave Missouri temporarily, especially as one of the gang
had later been captured, providing identifications and other useful information
about his accomplices.
3. They decided to
rob a bank while in Minnesota because they became “comparatively broke” from
gambling and drinking. Again, Bob
Younger told the Tribune the same
thing, that it was to “pay expenses.” It
is well documented that some gang members visited the St. Paul gambling house
of Chinn and Morgan.
4. They did not
decide on the First National Bank until after
arriving in Minnesota. In fact, Cole
says they “looked around at some of the adjacent towns and finally the choice
fell on Northfield.” This, too, is in
agreement with Bob Younger’s statement to the Tribune and sightings of gang members casing the banks in
Mankato.
For Cole’s 1903 autobiography, he composed an entirely
different tune. He claimed that Adelbert
Ames and his father-in-law, former Union general Benjamin Butler, whom they
learned had “a lot of money invested” in the First National Bank, was their
primary reason for making the Minnesota trip.
Cole even title’s that chapter in his book “Ben Butler’s Money,” although
Butler was not one of the bank’s investors.
Providing this motive for the Minnesota venture was a calculated effort
by Cole to put him and his cohorts in a more sympathetic light: they were still
fighting the Civil War, as opposed to committing bloody robbery simply because
they had frittered away their cash gambling and drinking.
5. Here is by far the
most intriguing revelation from the Enquirer
interviews: Jim Younger did not leave with the gang from Missouri but bumped
into them accidentally on the train in Council Bluffs, Iowa. One might be inclined to dismiss this as
another of Cole’s fabrications but for the fact that Jim Younger said the same
thing in a separate interview with the journalist. The Jim Younger interview is not included in
the Butler Weekly Times printing, so
here is what he said: “My being at Northfield was a matter of chance. I had been out in California with my
uncle. While returning home and walking
through the sleeping-car at Council Bluffs, I felt some one kick me on the
ankle. Turning around, I recognized my
brother Cole and his friends. They were
bound for the Northern lakes, and it took very little urging to induce me to go
with them. It has cost me any amount of
suffering and thirteen years imprisonment so far.”
Although the reporter did see Bob, the youngest sibling was
apparently too ill to say much. It is
important to note, however, that Cole, the oldest of the brothers, was the only
one who would talk about the Northfield Raid.
“When Northfield was mentioned,” wrote the newsman, “Jim, like Bob,
referred the questioner to Cole, the spokesman of the brothers.”
—Mark Lee Gardner
Poor Jim Younger: he thought he was joining his brothers on
a fishing trip and he ended up being shot in the mouth at Hanska Slough,
serving 25 years in prison and committing suicide
after being paroled and unsuccessfully trying to sell tombstone. Some fishing trip!
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