Common Criminals
or Slandered Gentlemen?

Here is part of the amnesty presented to the Missouri Legislature by Confederate sympathizers for Jesse James, Cole Younger and the rest of the gang. It is taken from Robertus Love's, The Rise and Fall of Jesse James, Putnam, 1926.

Whereas, Under the outlawry pronounced against Jesse W. James, Frank James, Coleman Younger, Robert Younger and others who gallantly periled their lives and their all in the defense of their principles, they are of necessity made desperate, driven as they are from the fields of honest industry, from their friends, their families, their homes and their country, they can know no law but the law of self-preservation, can have no respect for and feel no allegiance to a government which forces them to the very acts it professes to deprecate, and then offers a bounty for their apprehension, and arms foreign mercenaries with power to capture and kill them; and

Whereas, Believing these men too brave to be mean, too generous to be revengeful, and too gallant and honorable to betray a friend or break a promise, and believing that most, if not all, of the offenses with which they are charged have been committed by others, and perhaps by those pretending to hunt them..... that the return of these men to their homes and friends would have the effect of greatly lessening crime in our State by turning public attention to the real criminals, and that common justice, sound policy and true statesmanship alike demand that amnesty should be extended..... for all acts done or charged to have been done.....

Return to Cole's Tale