haunt my last days in prison, and long stood
between my parole and final pardon, was the story of one John McMath, a
corporal in an Indiana cavalry company, in Pleasanton's command, that I
had maltreated him when he lay wounded on the battle field close by the
Big Blue, near my old home in Jackson county. McMath says this occurred
Oct. 23, 1863. It is true that I was in Missouri on that date, but
McMath's regiment was not, nor Pleasanton's command, and the war
department records at Washington show that he was injured in a fight at
the Big Blue Oct. 23, 1864--3 full year later--much as he says I hurt him.
This was eleven months after I had left Missouri and while I was 1,500
miles away, yet this hideous charge was brought to the attention of Chief
Justice Start, of Minnesota, in 1896 by a Minneapolis newspaper.

In his _Noted Guerrillas,_ Maj. John N. Edwards wrote: "Lee's surrender at
Appomattox found Cole Younger at Los Angeles, trying the best he could to
earn a livelihood and live at peace with all the world. The character of
this man to many has been a curious study, but to those who knew him well
there is nothing about it of mystery or many-sidedness. An awful
provocation drove him into the army. He was never a bloodthirsty or a
merciless man. He was brave to recklessness, desperate to rashness,
remarkable for terrible prowess in battle; but he was never known to kill
a prisoner. On the contrary, there are alive today (1877) fully 200
Federal soldiers who owe their lives to Cole Younger, a man whose father
had been cruelly murdered, whose mother had been hounded to her death,
whose family had been made to endure the torment of a ferocious
persecution, and whose kith and kin, even to remote degrees, were
plundered and imprisoned. His brother James did not go into the war until
1864, and was a brave, dauntless, high-spirited boy who never killed a
soldier in his life save in fair and open battle. Cole was a fair-haired,
amiable, generous man, devoted in his friendships and true to his word and
to comradeship. In intrepidity he was never surpassed. In battle he never
had those to go where he would not follow, aye, where he would not gladly
lead. On his body today there are the scars of thirty-six wounds. He was
a Guerrilla and a giant among a band of Guerrillas, but he was one among
five hundred who only killed in open and honorable battle. As great as
had been his provocation, he never murdered; as brutal