Train and Bank Robbers of the West

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: l then came a conflict long and bloody and remorseless. That war-stained page is the saddest, but not the least instructive of all America's young history. That page is damp yet with the blood of the bravest in all the land, and saturated with the tears of the bereaved and broken-hearted. That page...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: l then came a conflict long and bloody and remorseless. That war-stained page is the saddest, but not the least instructive of all America's young history. That page is damp yet with the blood of the bravest in all the land, and saturated with the tears of the bereaved and broken-hearted. That page records? concerning both sides?a bravery that knew no parallel, an endurance that was sublime. One of the chief curses of a civil war is the legacy of bitterness and strife it leaves behind it. The seeds sown through all its gory fields wave in the harvests of subht-quent years. And feuds are engendered that live through many generations. Indeed it is utterly impossible to exaggerate, by any form of speech the monstrous brood of evils to which these bloody wars give birth. The borders of Missouri and Kansas were smitten, as with a curse, by the daring exploits of as wild a band of marauders as ever laughed law and authority to scorn. These guerrilla bands, of which the bloodthirsty Quantrell was a chief, and Jesse and Frank James renowned subalterns?were the offspring of the war. They have been fitly described as The sable fringe on the blood red garments of civil strife. These wild intrepid warriors loved to be feared. To have their names become signs of terror and dismay fed their pride, and the topmost height of their ambition was to be dreaded. They established in their own persons an aristocracy of reckless daring. They were cruel as they were cunning. They blended in their character the remorseless cruelty of the tiger, with the subtlety of the fox. They were prodigal of life. Shedding human blood had no horrors for them. They would spill blood as freely as they would spill water, and with just as little reluctance or care. A guerrilla would ask no quarter he would give...