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.
To the host of friends in Minnesota and Missouri who have done everything
possible to help my brother and myself during the last few years, with no
other object than the love of doing good and aiding fellow creatures in
suffering, I wish to say that I shall always conduct myself so that they
will never have the least cause to regret having championed our cause, or
feel any shame in the friendship so generously proven to us. Nothing lies
deeper in my heart than the gratitude I feel to them all, except a desire
to prove myself worthy.
In the two states named these friends are too numerous for me to mention
each of their names, but among those in Missouri who traveled long
journeys to Minnesota to plead my cause, even though they knew it to be
unpopular in many quarters, I wish to especially thank Col. W. C. Bronough
of Clinton, Capt. Steve Ragan, Colonel Rogers of Kansas City and Miss Cora
MacNeill, now Mrs. George M. Bennett of Minneapolis, but also formerly of
Kansas City.
In concluding these remarks, I wish to say that from cover to cover there
is not a statement which could not be verified.
Yours Truly,
COLE YOUNGER
Lee’s Summit, Mo.