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AN OUTLAW'S PLEA
Mr. Jesse James thinks it is high time that this
cruel war were over. Pursued as he is by a
bloodthirsty radical (Republican) press, he
addresses a letter to a Nashville newspaper
asking in terms of great bitterness why the
bloody chasm is not closed..... Jesse James,
according to his own account, is a high-toned
gentleman, persecuted for the sake of the
ex-Confederacy, of which he was an active
defender..... This accomplished outlaw, stung to
madness by the sharp comments of the newspapers
(says that)..... So long as the "slanders" of
which he complains were confined to Northern
journals he submitted to them with "silent
contempt." But when these stories were re-echoed
in the South, his noble nature broke quite
down..... "It is enough persecution for the
Northern newspapers to persecute us without the
papers in the South, persecuting us. The land we
fought for four years to save from Northern
tyranny, to be persecuted by papers claiming to
be Democratic, is without reason.".....
It is as a partisan, however, that Jesse James
makes his strongest plea. Why, he urges, should
he, a Democrat and a Southron (sic), be
reproached with horse-stealing and burglary by
Democratic and Southern newspapers? This sort of
persecution, he admits, he expects from "the
radikl papers here in Mo"...... He may have
"lifted" a horse or two; he may have broken into
the Columbia Bank; but why should his friends
make trouble about it? What is the use of
belonging to a party unless one's party stands by
one when difficulty comes in the shape of a
Deputy Sheriff.....? That is the burden of the
James complaint.....
The remarkable effrontery of this person,
burdened with innumerable crimes, is thoroughly
characteristic of the times...... The thief is
angry if the newspapers call him by that name;
and he considers himself a very ill-used man
indeed if his friends do not indorse (sic)
him..... James, after all, is only a coarse type
of a very numerous class of scoundrels.
Sentimental people think it very cruel that the
hardened villain of innumerable murders and
burglaries should not have "another chance."
Jesse James appeals to this large class of
soft-hearted people when he asks to be left alone
and his name kept out of the newspapers. When a
few of these miscreants are punished in the
old-fashioned manner, we shall not hear of
thieves writing cards and statements asking for
the suspension of public opinion.....
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