The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1876-12-01

The camp became their school and college.
1t was the warfare of the savage that they
carried on; rarely, almost never, q square
stand-up fight, but forced marches and I'M
} expected descents on unprotected settle
ments Naturally enough they graduated
from such training as this into lifelong
outlaws and robbers. In the war the
James boys and Youngers had won the
title of leaders, and it was in their brains
that this series of bank and train robberies
was conceived and planned. The Others
were common desperadoes. l have sketch
ed hastily the career of these men since
the war for every one of these outrages is
but chapter in their respective lives, OF
the desperate, bloody deeds in their war
record, volumes might be written. Wood
craft, riding and Workmanship have been
their studies since boyhood, but the truth
full events in their lives seem almost in
credible.
WHY THE JAMES BOYS BECAME OUTLAWS.
Jesse and Frank James are the sons of
the Rev. Thomas James, Baptist preach
er He was a graduate at Georgetown
college, Kentucky, and after marrying Miss
Zerelda Cole, of Scott county Kentucky
settled in Clay county, Missouri, where
the mother of the James boys still
lives, the wife of DR.. Samues. The father
of the James boys was one of the founders
of William Jewell college, of this State,
and became leading man in his denomi-
nation in the West, but died before the
| war;
At the very beginning of the irrepressi-
BILE conflict, Clay county became the bloody
debatable ground. Frank James, eighteen
years old, joined Quantrell. One day
company of militia visited the farm, and
taking out old DR.. Samuels put q rope
about his neck and ran him up three or
four times, letting him down in time to
save his life. They took Jesse from the
plough, put rope about his neck and led
him round, beating him with the fiat of
their sabres Then they went away, say
ing this was warning not to harbor
bushwackers. Jesse joined his brother
with Quantrell, and from that time out
was an outlaw. Both of these boys, with
Cole Younger, were in at the sack of Law
renee. Later, band of twenty of
the guerillas, headed by the James boys,
fell upon a detachment of the Fifteenth
Kansas cavalry, at Cabin Creek, in the
| Cherokee nation. There was thirty-two of
the cavalry men, and the guerillas killed
twenty-nine of the thirty-two, Jesse James
disposing with his own hand of the Cap
tain, Goss, and the Chaplain of the Thir-
teenth Kansas Rev. L. p. Gardner.
THE cENTRALIA SLAUGHTER.
Joining Bill Anderson, another guerilla
chief, Quantrell's men, with the James boys
and the Youngers, for the latter joined the
band as fast as they became old enough to
carry weapon, they were at Centralia,
Missouri when train was stopped. The
cars were full of soldiers, most of them
unarmed. They surrendered and the
guerilas led them out and shot them down
till not man was left Then they burned
the town and turning on a full head of
steam sent the train tearing down the
track toward Sturgeon, the next station
A detachment of three hundred Federal
troops, under Major johnson, came down
to avenge this outrage, and they fell into
an ambush and were slaughtered, barely
score escaping. Jesse James to this day
claims that he killed Major johnson and
seven others with his own hand. Two
years ago Congress passed an act grant
ing pensions to the widows and children,
dependent mothers and fathers or orphan
brothers and sisters of those soldiers MUIR
dered by guerillas at Centralia in 1864"
THE LEADER, JESSE JAMES.
At Lexington, Mo-, at the very close of
the war, Jesse James received q mimic ball
through the right lung which nearly killed
him. He suffered repeated hemorrhages,
and fingered along until 1867, when one of
the band of vigilants who were picking
up the returning guerillas and lynching
them on general principles, visited the
Samues farmhouse. They demanded en-
trance. Jesse, with pistol in each hand,
crept down to the door, and firing through
the panel dropped the leader; then fling
ing open the door he wounded three more
and fled in his condition through the snow.
Strange as it may seem, the poor wounded
men were taken into the Samuels farm
house and nursed until they could be re-
moved.
Finding no relief from his wound, Jesse
James went to New York in the spring of
1868, to take q sea voyage. 1t was just
after the Russellvlle bank robbery, the
initial one in this series, and it is believed
that robbery was planned and executed
by the comrades of Jesse to furnish him
the means for the trip. He went by the
Santiago de Cuba in June, 1868, and on
board made the acquaintance of a United
States officer named Major Gregg, who,
upon reaching California, introduced the
guerilla to Halleck, with whom he had
long conversation respecting the border
warfare and the deeds of Quantrell and
his men.
Jesse spent some week sat the San Louis,
Obispo county, Sulphur Springs, in Cali
fornia, and then came back to Missouri,
healed He is the leading mind in the
bandit gang, and he will probably be the
last man captured. In personal appear
ance these outlaws are all tall, muscular
men, with countenances expressive of great
determination. and bearing no evidences
of dissipation. They very seldom drink
anything, but are gamblers.
THE YoUNGERs.
The history of the James boys is in the
main that of the Youngers. The latter
were four in number. Their father Henry
N. Younger, was strong Union man, but
in the early days of the war the dividing
line between Kansas and Missouri was the
only distinction recognized by the Jay
hawkers on the one side and the guerillas
on the other. The elder Younger was
killed near Harrisonvile by Jennison.-
He was wealthy, and money supplied the
motive for his murder. He left an estate
worth over one hundred thousand dollars,
but most of it had disappeared before the
war closed Before the murder Coleman
Younger had joined Quantrell. During
the pilage of Harrisonville he had been
sentenced to death by Jennison's men,
The execution was delayed until morning,
and Younger, taking the rope provided
for his death, let himself down from the
window, and joined the guerilas. Mrs.