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LORNA BENSON: It's All Things Considered on Minnesota Public Radio

[BELL DINGS]

SPEAKER 1: It occurred at about 11:00 o'clock at night, the fire bell ringing. Fire trucks were on their way. But there was still not enough time to get the prisoners out.

LORNA BENSON: The warden needed help evacuating the female prisoners. He handed a revolver to a confessed murderer. The man who with Jesse James led the Northfield raid, one of the bloodiest bank robberies in Minnesota history. The year was 1884, and the prison was Stillwater, Minnesota. The prisoner with a gun was the notorious outlaw Cole Younger this month in our Minnesota Century Series, the story of a charismatic bank robber who the nation made into a legend because of its fascination with the untamed western frontier.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

To understand Cole Younger, you have to understand the Missouri Kansas border region he grew up in. Intense guerrilla fighting over slavery destroyed families and farms creating a war state even before the civil war began.

COLE YOUNGER: I was only a boy, born January 15, 1844. This was before the conflicts and troubles centered on our home that planted a bitterness in my young heart, which cried out for revenge.

MARLEY BRANT: Cole was nearly 6-feet tall, husky, with light brown, curly hair. When he was 18 years old, union troops killed his father. Soon after, he joined a group of confederate guerrilla fighters.

COLE YOUNGER: This feeling of bitterness was only accentuated by the cruelties of war which followed. I refer in particular to the shameful and cowardly murder of my father and the cruel treatment of my mother at the hands of the Missouri militia.

LORNA BENSON: The war left Cole angry and destitute. The northern occupation of Missouri made it difficult for confederate sympathizers to resume the life they had once known. With few options, Cole decided to join up with two other former rebels, Frank and Jesse James.

MARLEY BRANT: They had a lot of animosity against the people involved in the reconstruction of Missouri, and they hated being losers, and they hated the fact that they could never live their lives as they wanted to live them.

LORNA BENSON: Marley Brant is the biographer of The Younger Brothers.

MARLEY BRANT: Jesse had the idea that maybe if they're not allowing us to live regular lives, well, maybe we ought to make some attacks on some of their financial institutions, i.e. the banks, and get a little retribution here and, at the same time, get some money so that we can live and our families can at least have food on the table.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LORNA BENSON: Brant says while the James-Younger gang did commit robberies, many other crimes were unduly attributed to the men. Cole Younger was personally involved in no more than eight robberies, all with the exception of Northfield well-planned raids where nobody was killed. But due to the nation's fascination with the Wild West, Cole Younger and Jesse James quickly became known across the country as cold-blooded killers.

MARLEY BRANT: Pretty soon, everybody knew who they were, and the media in the east started doing the little dime novels, which glorified their actions and created the legends of Jesse James and the Younger Brothers. Most of the dime novels had nothing to do with who they really were. But it was fun. It was good reading.

LORNA BENSON: The James-Younger gang was accused of many more robberies than they could have possibly committed.

COLE YOUNGER: Every daylight robbery in any part of the country from the Alleghenies to the Rockies was laid at our doorstep. We could not go out without a pair of pistols to protect ourselves from the attack of we knew not whom.

LORNA BENSON: Publicly, Cole and Jesse denounced the dime novels as outrageous fabrications. But privately, they enjoyed the notoriety. A prominent Missouri newspaper editor helped glorify their anti-Yankee campaign on the editorial page of local papers.

SPEAKER 2: These men never go upon the highway in lonesome places to plunder the Pilgrim that they leave to an ignoble pack of jackals. But they ride at midday into the County seat while court is sitting take the cash out of the vault and put the cashier in and ride out of town to the music of cracking pistols.

LORNA BENSON: In 1876, the James-Younger gang decided to take their cause to Minnesota, unmistakably, union territory. The eight-member gang made plans to hit the First National Bank in Northfield, rumored to be full of union money.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

As the band fled from town empty-handed on wounded horses, they left behind four dead, including two of their own. Ultimately the James brothers got away. But Cole Younger and his brothers, Bob and Jim, were captured 15 days later near Madelia, Minnesota, 100 miles from Northfield.

COLE YOUNGER: Our last hope was gone. We were at Bay on the open prairie, surrounded by a picket line of 40 men. Some of whom would fight. We were prepared to wait as long as they would. But they were not of the waiting kind. All of us but Bob went down at the first fire.

LORNA BENSON: While the Youngers were still recovering from their bullet wounds, a judge sentenced the three brothers to life in prison for murder, although historian Marley Brant says Cole did not kill either of the two men who died in Northfield. Once behind bars, the Youngers became model prisoners, recognizing it was their only hope for parole.

Prison officials quickly granted the brothers special privileges, like allowing them to grow their hair out, write two letters a month, and smoke a small ration of tobacco. Cole Younger, who once had a $1,500 bounty on his head, worked in the library, and eventually settled into a job as head nurse in the prison hospital. If there was any doubt that the brothers had truly given up their outlaw past, the Youngers put it to rest eight years into their term when the prisoner cell block went up in flames.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Weapons in hand, Cole and his brothers led all the female prisoners to safety.

COLE YOUNGER: I can say without fear of contradiction that had it been in our minds to do so, we could have escaped from the prison that night. But we had determined to pay the penalty that had been exacted. And if we were ever to return to liberty, it would be with the consent and approval of the authorities and the public.

LORNA BENSON: It was 19 more years before the state of Minnesota consented to Cole's pardon. During that time, his brother Bob died of tuberculosis, and his brother, Jim, committed suicide. In 1901, when he walked out from behind the Limestone Prison walls, Cole Younger the infamous outlaw was mesmerized by the sight of a new invention, the trolley. Historian Marley Brandt--

MARLEY BRANT: So much had happened in the time that the Youngers were imprisoned. So many changes in society had happened in everyday life was so much more different, just wasn't a Wild West at that time.

LORNA BENSON: The 59-year-old ex-convict was welcomed back into a society that cared little for his transformation, but was fascinated by his notorious past. He was offered jobs like traveling the state as a tombstone salesman where his reputation as a Wild West outlaw would draw customers.

[TRAIN HONKING]

As he boarded a train to Missouri in 1903, Cole knew in order to honor his pardon, he would never return to Minnesota. Brent Peterson, Library Director for the Washington County Historical Society--

BRENT PETERSON: As he's chugging out of the station of Saint Paul, you wonder if he wasn't thinking what he could have done to save his brothers, what he could have done to make his present and his future better. But I think by the time he was halfway out of the-- halfway down to Iowa on the train, he had already figured out what he wanted to do. He wanted to write his story. He wanted to set the record straight his way. And now that he had the chance to do it, he was going to do it.

LORNA BENSON: That same year, a Chicago publishing house issued the first edition of the story of Cole Younger by himself.

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 60, I come out into the world to find hundreds or more books 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.

MARLEY BRANT: He wrote an autobiography, which was a complete pack of lies, glorifying himself, not owning up to any outlawry.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

LORNA BENSON: Despite the lies about his past, Marley Brandt says Cole was sincere in his regret for the harm he had done, but not so committed to virtue that he didn't break one of the terms of his pardon that he never exhibit himself publicly. Almost immediately, Cole signed on to The Cole Younger and Frank James Historical Wild West Show, which was briefly popular, but ultimately failed because of poor management. In 1909, he started traveling the Midwest and South to give a lecture he called "What My Life Has Taught me."

COLE YOUNGER: Let me say, ladies and gentlemen, that the farthest thought from my mind is that of posing as a character. I do not desire to stand upon the basis of the notoriety, which the past record of my life may have earned for me. Those of you who may have been drawn here by mere curiosity to see a character or a man who by the events of his life has gained somewhat of notoriety will miss the real object of this lecture and the occasion which brings us together. My soul's desire is to benefit you by recounting some of the important lessons, which my life has taught me.

LORNA BENSON: Now in his late 60s, nearly bald, and overweight, Cole didn't want to tell stories about bloody bank robberies and narrow escapes from the law. Instead, he preached the importance of living a good and decent life and told his lecture audience he had learned there was no heroism in being an outlaw. But the audience still thought of Cole as a legendary gunslinger from a dying era and wasn't ready to give up that image. Even today, almost 100 years after he left Stillwater prison, Cole Younger is remembered as a ruthless and daring outlaw, a reluctant symbol of the Old West.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(SINGING) I am a bundle highwayman

Cole Younger's my name

Through many a temptation

I led my friends to shame.

For the robbing of the Northfield bank

They say I can't deny.

To see pictures of Cole Younger, his brothers, and the fire at Stillwater prison log on to our website at MPR.org. Our story on Cole Younger was produced by Annie Feidt with Dan Gorenstein. It was edited by Stephen Smith. Thanks to John Raby, Rosemary Esper, and Kate Kuhn for their help. Terry Hempelman played Cole Younger. And Thanks to Mike Edgerly for his additional voice work. The Minnesota Sentry Project on MPR is supported by Sarah Kinney Professional Real Estate Services, matching people with property for 21 years. Coldwell Banker/Burnet Crocus Hill Office.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

(SINGING) We started then for Texas

That good old Lone Star state

Out on the Nebraska prairie

The James boys, we didn't meet

With guns, cards, revolvers

We all sit down to play

And drink and a lot of good whiskey boys

To pass the time away

It was then we started northward

And northward we did go

To the godforsaken country

Called Minnesotyo

Our eyes being fixed on the Northfield bank

When brother Bob did say

Cole, if you undertake that job

You'll surely curse the day

We pointed out our pickets

Up to the bank did go

And there upon the counter

We made our fatal blow

Saying hand us down your money boys

And make no scarce delay

We are the James and Younger boys

And spare no time to pray

I am a bonded highwayman

Cole Younger is my name

Through many a temptation

I led my friends to shame

For the robbing of the Northfield bank

They say I can't deny.

And now I am a poor prisoner

In Stillwater jail, I lie