Bøger af Cole Younger

Many may wonder why an old "guerrilla" should feel called upon at this late day to rehearse the story of his life. On the eve of sixty, I come out into the world to find a hundred or more of books, of greater or less pretensions, purporting to be a history of "The Lives of the Younger Brothers," but which are all nothing more nor less than a lot of sensational recitals, with which the Younger brothers never had the least association. One publishing house alone is selling sixty varieties of these books, and I venture to say that in the whole lot there could not be found six pages of truth. The stage, too, has its lurid dramas in which we are painted in devilish blackness. It is therefore my purpose to give an authentic and absolutely correct history of the lives of the "Younger Brothers," in order that I may, if possible, counteract in some measure at least, the harm that has been done my brothers and myself, by the blood and thunder accounts of misdeeds, with which relentless sensationalists have charged us, but which have not even the suggestion of truth about them, though doubtless they have had everything to do with coloring public opinion. In this account I propose to set out the little good that was in my life, at the same time not withholding in any way the bad, with the hope of setting right before the world a family name once honored, but which has suffered disgrace by being charged with more evil deeds than were ever its rightful share.

The story of Cole Younger, the last outlaw.

Missouri guerrilla, Confederate officer, bank robber, notorious outlaw, Wild West showman--Cole Younger's life was the stuff of myth and legend. In The Story of Cole Younger, long out-of-print, he tells his story in his own words after his parole from prison at the age of 59.

To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War, Diversion Books is publishing seminal works of the era: stories told by the men and women who led, who fought, and who lived in an America that had come apart at the seams.When the Great War ended, his violent life began. Cole Younger served as a captain in the Confederate Army, overseeing some of the bloodiest battles in the guerilla warfare that bloodied Missouri. But it was after the Civil War when Younger joined in with a group of outlaws, including Jesse James, and set about robbing banks and stagecoaches. Here, he sets his extraordinary story down, the tale of a war and all the battles that followed.

"This is an intelligent, articulate, Cole Younger-not the blood-thirsty desperado of myth. Now he tells HIS side of the story."The Kansas-Missouri border was a bitter place in the 1850''s, and no one knew that more than the Younger family. Southern sympathizers, the Younger brothers saw their father murdered, their mother burned out of her home, their cousins imprisoned, and their property pillaged.This led Cole Younger to join Quantrell''s Raiders and later to become a lieutenant in the Confederate army; where he acquired a reputation for bravery to the point of recklessness.After Appomattox Younger was prepared to settle down, but the war was not prepared to let him. In Missouri the brutally unfair Drake Constitution gave amnesty to Union soldiers for deeds done during the war, but held Confederates account-able. No former confederate soldier or sympathizer could practice any profession, hold any office, or even vote. In effect, Cole Younger was forced to become a criminal-literally as a continuation of the war he wanted so desperately to quit.At that point the legend began."On the eve of sixty, I came out into the world to find a hundred or more books, of greater or lesser pretensions, purporting to be a history of "The Lives of the Younger Brothers." I venture to say that in the whole lot there could not be found six pages of truth."This then is HIS side of the story.