The story of the raid
on the
First National Bank of Northfield,
Minnesota,
By the James-Younger Band of Robbers in 1876
The Tragedy in the Bank
The Battle in the Street
The Two-Weeks Pursuit
The Final CaptureNorthfield, Minnesota
The Christian Way Company
1895
PREFACE.
Accounts of bank-robberies and other exploits of outlaws and desperadoes are usually supposed to belong to the criminal-news columns of the daily paper and to the writer of sensational literature. When the robber is the only or the principal actor in the scene, and his prowess or brutality the only feature worth mentioning, the less said of it the better. But when a great crime is the occasion of great heroism, courage, fidelity, intrepid resistance, and the triumph of virtue over violence, then there is a story worth telling, and a lesson worth learning.
It is such a story that is unfolded in the following pages. The attempted robbery of the Northfield bank, the refusal of Mr. Heywood to open the safe, his brutal murder by the baffled robber, the brave and successful fight made by the citizens, the flight, pursuit and capture of the bandits,—all this was familiar enough to the whole nation eighteen years ago. But such [pg iv] events easily pass from the recollection of men; while to a generation of young people now growing up it has never been known. To some of us it has seemed, therefore,