Cole Younger
| Thomas Cole Younger | |
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Portrait of Cole Younger taken when he was a prisoner at the Minnesota State Prison ca. 1889
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Thomas Coleman Younger January 15, 1844 Jackson County, Missouri, USA |
| Died | March 21, 1916 (aged 72) Lee's Summit, Missouri, USA |
| Resting place | Lee's Summit Cemetery / Andrews Fist 38°55′2″N 94°21′45″W / 38.91722°N 94.36250°W |
| Nationality | American |
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Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger (January 15, 1844 – March 21, 1916) was an American Confederate guerrilla during the American Civil War and later a leader with the James–Younger Gang. He was the eldest brother of Jim, John and Bob Younger.
Thomas Coleman "Cole" Younger, was born on January 15, 1844 on the Younger family farm. He was a son of Henry Washington Younger, a prosperous farmer from Greenwood, Missouri and Bersheba Leighton Fristoe, daughter of a prominent Jackson County farmer. Cole was the seventh of fourteen children.
During the American Civil War, savage guerrilla warfare wracked Missouri. Younger's father was pro-Union, but he was shot dead anyway by a Union soldier from Kansas. After that, Cole Younger sought revenge as a pro-Confederate guerrilla under William Clarke Quantrill. After the early part of the war, the Confederate Army withdrew from the state and the fighting was mainly between pro-Union and pro-Confederate Missourians. However, the bushwhackers held a special hatred for the "red leg" Union troops from Kansas who frequently entered Missouri and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. Younger rode with Quantrill in a retaliation raid on Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863, during which about 200 citizens were killed and the town looted and burned.
Younger said he left the bushwhackers and enlisted in the Confederate Army. He claimed he was sent to California on a recruiting mission. He returned after the war's end to find Missouri ruled by a militant faction of Unionists Radicals. In the last days of the war, the Radicals had pushed through a new state constitution that barred all Confederate sympathizers from voting, serving on juries, holding public office, preaching the gospel, or carrying out many public roles. The constitution freed the slaves in advance of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It enacted a number of reforms, but the restrictions on former Confederates created disunity.
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Wikipedia