The approach of the American Civil War overshadowed the James-Samuel
household. Missouri was a border state, sharing characteristics of both North
and South, but 75% of the population was from the South or other border states.
Clay County was in a region of Missouri later dubbed "Little Dixie,"
as it was a center of migration from the Upper South. Farmers raised the same
crops and livestock as in the areas they migrated from. They brought slaves
with them and purchased more according to need. The county counted more
slaveholders, who held more slaves, than other regions of the state. Aside from
slavery, the culture of Little Dixie was Southern in other ways as well. This
influenced how the population acted during and for a period of time after the
American Civil War. In Missouri as a whole, slaves accounted for only 10
percent of the population, but in Clay County they constituted 25 percent.
After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Clay County
became the scene of great turmoil, as the question of whether slavery would be
expanded into the neighboring Kansas Territory came to dominate public life.
Numerous people from Missouri migrated to Kansas to try to influence its
future. Much of the tension that led up to the Civil War centered on the
violence that erupted in Kansas between pro- and anti-slavery militias.
The Civil War may
have shaped Jesse James' life. After a series of campaigns and battles between
conventional armies in 1861, guerrilla warfare gripped the state, waged between
secessionist "bushwhackers" and Union forces which largely consisted
of local militia organizations ("jayhawkers"). A bitter conflict
ensued, bringing an escalating cycle of atrocities by both sides. Guerrillas
murdered civilian Unionists, executed prisoners and scalped the dead. Union
forces enforced martial law with raids on homes, arrests of civilians, summary executions,
and banishment of Confederate sympathizers from the state.
The James-Samuel
family took the Confederate side at the outset of the war. Frank James joined a
local company recruited for the secessionist Drew Lobbs Army, and fought at the
Battle of Wilson's Creek, though he fell ill and returned home soon afterward.
In 1863, he was identified as a member of a guerrilla squad that operated in
Clay County. In May of that year, a Union militia company raided the
James-Samuel farm, looking for Frank's group. They tortured Reuben Samuel by
briefly hanging him from a tree. According to legend, they lashed young Jesse.
At the end of the
Civil War, Missouri was in shambles. The conflict split the population into
three bitterly opposed factions: anti-slavery Unionists, identified with the Republican
Party; the segregationist conservative Unionists, identified with the Democratic
Party; and pro-slavery, ex-Confederate secessionists, many of whom were also
allied with the Democrats, especially the southern part of the party. The
Republican Reconstruction administration passed a new state constitution that
freed Missouri's slaves. It temporarily excluded former Confederates from
voting, serving on juries, becoming corporate officers, or preaching from
church pulpits. The atmosphere was volatile, with widespread clashes between
individuals, and between armed gangs of veterans from both sides of the war.
Jesse recovered
from his chest wound at his uncle's boardinghouse in Harlem, Missouri (north
across the Missouri River from the City of Kansas' River Quay [changed to
Kansas City in 1889]), where he was tended to by his first cousin, Zerelda
"Zee" Mimms, named after Jesse's mother. Jesse and his cousin began a
nine-year courtship, culminating in marriage. Meanwhile, his old commander Archie
Clement kept his bushwhacker gang together and began to harass Republican
authorities.
These men were the
likely culprits in the first daylight armed bank robbery in the United States
during peacetime, the robbery of the Clay County Savings Association in the
town of Liberty, Missouri, on February 13, 1866. This bank was owned by
Republican former militia officers who had recently conducted the first
Republican Party rally in Clay County's history. One innocent bystander, a
student of William Jewell College (which James's father had helped to found),
was shot dead on the street during the gang's escape. It remains unclear
whether Jesse and Frank took part.
After their later
robberies took place and they became legends, there were those who credited
them with being the leaders of the Clay County robbery. It has been argued in
rebuttal that James was at the time still bedridden with his wound. No concrete
evidence has surfaced to connect either brother to the crime, or to rule them
out. On June 13, 1866 in Jackson County, Missouri two jailed members of Quantril's
gang were demanded to be freed by a gang and the Jailor killed. It is believed
the James Brothers were involved.
This was a time of
increasing local violence; Governor Fletcher had recently ordered a company of
militia into Johnson County to suppress guerrilla activity. Archie Clement
continued his career of crime and harassment of the Republican government, to
the extent of occupying the town of Lexington, Missouri, on Election Day in
1866. Shortly afterward, the state militia shot Clement dead, an event James
wrote about with bitterness a decade later.
The survivors of
Clement's gang continued to conduct bank robberies over the next two years,
though their numbers dwindled through arrests, gunfights and lynchings. While
they later tried to justify robbing the banks, these were small, local banks
with local capital, not part of the national system that was an object of
popular discontent in the 1860s and 1870’s. On May 23rd, 1867, for example,
they robbed a bank in Richmond, Missouri, in which they killed the mayor and
two others. It remains uncertain whether either of the James brothers took
part, although an eyewitness who knew the brothers told a newspaper seven years
later positively and emphatically that he recognized Jesse and Frank James
among the robbers. In 1868, Frank and Jesse James allegedly joined Cole Younger
in robbing a bank at Russellville, Kentucky.
Jesse James did not
become famous, however, until December 7th, 1869, when he and (most likely)
Frank robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The
robbery netted little money, but it appears that Jesse shot and killed the
cashier, Captain John Sheets, mistakenly believing him to be Samuel P. Cox, the
militia officer who had killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the
Civil War. James's self-proclaimed attempt at revenge, and the daring escape he
and Frank made through the middle of a posse shortly afterward, put his name in
the newspapers for the first time.
The 1869 robbery
marked the emergence of Jesse James as the most famous of the former guerrillas
and the first time he was publicly labeled an "outlaw," as Missouri
Governor Thomas T. Crittenden set a reward for his capture. This was the
beginning of an alliance between James and John Newman Edwards, editor and
founder of the Kansas City Times. Edwards, a former Confederate
cavalryman, was campaigning to return former secessionists to power in
Missouri. Six months after the Gallatin robbery, Edwards published the first of
many letters from Jesse James to the public, asserting his innocence. Over
time, the letters gradually became more political in tone, denouncing the
Republicans and voicing James' pride in his Confederate loyalties. Together
with Edwards's admiring editorials, the letters turned James into a symbol of
Confederate defiance of Reconstruction. Jesse James's initiative in creating
his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers, though the
tense politics certainly surrounded his outlaw career and enhanced his
notoriety.
Meanwhile, the
James brothers joined with Cole Younger and his brothers John, Jim and Bob as
well as Clell Miller and other former Confederates to form what came to be
known as the James-Younger Gang. With Jesse James as the public face of the
gang (though with operational leadership likely shared among the group), the
gang carried out a string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, and from Kansas to West
Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches and a fair in Kansas City, often in
front of large crowds, even hamming it up for the bystanders.
On July 21st, 1873,
they turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa
and stealing approximately $3,000 ($51,000 in 2007). For this, they wore Ku
Klux Klan masks, deliberately taking on a potent symbol years after the Klan
had been suppressed in the South by President Grant's use of the Force Acts.
Former rebels attacked the railroads as symbols of threatening centralization.
The James' gang's
later train robberies had a lighter touch. In only two train hold-ups did they
rob passengers, because James typically limited himself to the express safe in
the baggage car. Such techniques reinforced the Robin Hood image that Edwards
created in his newspapers, but the James gang never shared any of the robbery
money outside their circle.
The Adams Express
Company turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1874 to stop the James-Younger
gang. The Chicago-based agency worked primarily against urban professional
criminals, as well as providing industrial security, such as strike breaking.
Because the gang received support by many former Confederate soldiers in
Missouri, they eluded the Pinkertons. Joseph Whicher, an agent dispatched to
infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's farm, shortly afterwards was found killed. Two
others, Captain Louis J. Lull and John Boyle, were sent after the Youngers;
Lull was killed by two of the Youngers in a roadside gunfight on March 17,
1874. Before he died, Lull fatally shot John Younger. A deputy sheriff named
Edwin Daniels also died in the skirmish.
Allan Pinkerton,
the agency's founder and leader, took on the case as a personal vendetta. He
began to work with former Unionists who lived near the James family farm. On
the night of January 25th, 1875, he staged a raid on the homestead. Detectives
threw an incendiary device into the house; it exploded, killing James's young
half-brother Archie and blowing off one of the arms of the James family's
matriarch Zerelda Samuel. Afterward, Pinkerton denied that the raid's intent
was arson, but biographer Ted Yeatman located a letter by Pinkerton in the Library
of Congress in which Pinkerton declared his intention to "burn the house
down.”
The raid on the
family home outraged many, and did more than all of Edwards's columns to create
sympathy for Jesse James. The Missouri state legislature only narrowly defeated
a bill that praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty.
Allowed to vote and hold office again, former Confederates voted to limit
reward offers that the governor could make for fugitives. This extended a
measure of protection over the James-Younger gang. (Only Frank and Jesse James
previously had been singled out for rewards larger than the new limit.)
Jesse and his
cousin Zee married on April 24th, 1874, and had two children who survived to
adulthood: Jesse Edward James (b. 1875) and Mary Susan James (later Barr) (b.
1879). Twins Gould and Montgomery James (b. 1878) died in infancy. Jesse, Jr.,
became a lawyer who practiced in Kansas City, Missouri, and Los Angeles,
California.
On September 7,
1876, the James-Younger gang attempted a raid on the First National Bank of Northfield,
Minnesota. After this robbery and a manhunt, only Frank and Jesse James were
left alive and uncaptured. Cole and Bob Younger later stated that they selected
the bank because they believed it was associated with the Republican politician
Adelbert Ames, the governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Union
general Benjamin Butler, Ames' father-in-law and the Union commander of
occupied New Orleans. Ames was a stockholder in the bank, but Butler had no direct
connection to it.
The gang attempted
to rob the bank in Northfield about 2 p.m. on September 7, 1876, but the
robbery was bungled because several gang members had been drinking that
morning, something Jesse James would never have permitted had he been present
in Northfield. This was a primary reason Jesse James was never indicted for the
Northfield crimes. Jesse James was highly disciplined; he never drank alcohol and
never permitted his gang members to drink alcohol on the job because he had
seen the disastrous results of drunken raids during and after the Civil War.
Northfield residents had seen the gang members leave a local restaurant near
the mill shortly after noon, and they testified in Faribault at the Younger
brothers' trial that they smelled of alcohol and that gang members were
obviously under the influence when they greeted General Ames near the mill. To
carry out the robbery, the gang divided into two groups. Three men entered the
bank, two guarded the door outside, and three remained near a bridge across an
adjacent square. The robbers inside the bank were thwarted when acting cashier Joseph
Lee Heywood refused to open the safe, falsely claiming that it was secured by a
time lock even as they held a bowie knife to his throat and cracked his skull with
a pistol butt. Assistant cashier Alonzo Enos Bunker was wounded in the shoulder
as he fled out the back door of the bank.
Meanwhile, the
citizens of Northfield grew suspicious of the men guarding the door and raised
the alarm. The five bandits outside fired in the air to clear the streets,
which drove the townspeople to take cover and fire back from protected
positions. Two bandits were shot dead and the rest were wounded in the barrage.
Inside, the outlaws turned to flee. As they left, one shot the unarmed cashier
Heywood in the head. Historians have speculated about the identity of the
shooter but have not reached consensus on his identity.
The gang barely
escaped Northfield, leaving two dead companions behind. They killed two
innocent victims, Heywood, and Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant from the
Millersburg community west of Northfield. A massive manhunt ensued. It is
believed that the gang burned 14 Rice County mills shortly after the robbery.
The James brothers eventually split from the others and escaped to Missouri.
The militia soon discovered the Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts.
In a gunfight, Pitts died and the Youngers were taken prisoner. Except for
Frank and Jesse James, the James-Younger Gang was destroyed.
Later in 1876,
Jesse and Frank James surfaced in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, where they
went by the names of Thomas Howard and B. J. Woodson, respectively. Frank
seemed to settle down, but Jesse remained restless. He recruited a new gang in
1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, Missouri (now part
of Independence, Missouri, on October 8th, 1879. The robbery was the first of a
spree of crimes, including the holdup of the federal paymaster of a canal
project in Killen, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang did
not consist of battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other
or were captured, while James grew paranoid to the point where he scared away
one of his gang, and it is believed by some that he killed another.
By 1881, with
authorities growing suspicious, the brothers returned to Missouri where they
felt safer. In December, Jesse rented a house in Saint Joseph, Missouri, not
far from where he had been born and raised. Frank, however, decided to move to
safer territory, heading east to Virginia.
With his gang
nearly annihilated, James trusted only the Ford brothers, Charley and Robert. Although
Charley had been out on raids with James, Bob was an eager new recruit. For
protection, James asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family.
James had often stayed with their sister Martha Bolton and, according to rumor,
he was "smitten" with her. James did not know that Bob Ford had
conducted secret negotiations with Thomas T. Crittenden, the Missouri governor,
to bring in the famous outlaw. Crittenden had made capture of the James
brothers his top priority; in his inaugural address he declared that no
political motives could be allowed to keep them from justice. Barred by law
from offering a sufficiently large reward, he had turned to the railroad and
express corporations to put up a $5,000 bounty for each of them.
On April 3rd, 1882,
after eating breakfast, the Fords and James prepared to depart for another
robbery. They went in and out of the house to ready the horses. As it was an
unusually hot day, James removed his coat, then removed his firearms, lest he
look suspicious. Noticing a dusty picture on the wall, he stood on a chair to
clean it. Bob Ford shot James in the back of the head. James' two previous
bullet wounds and partially missing middle finger served to positively identify
the body.
The murder of Jesse
James became a national sensation. The Fords made no attempt to hide their role.
Indeed, Robert Ford wired the governor to claim his reward. Crowds pressed into
the little house in St. Joseph to see the dead bandit, even while the Ford
brothers surrendered to the authorities but they were dismayed to find that
they were charged with first degree murder. In the course of a single day, the
Ford brothers were indicted, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to death by hanging,
and two hours later were granted a full pardon by Governor Crittenden.
The governor's
quick pardon suggested that he knew the brothers intended to kill James rather
than capture him. The implication that the chief executive of Missouri
conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public and added to James'
notoriety.
After receiving a
small portion of the reward, the Fords fled Missouri. Sheriff James Timberlake
and Marshal Henry H. Craig, who were law enforcement officials active in the
plan took in the majority of the bounty. Later the Ford brothers starred in a
touring stage show in which they reenacted the shooting.
Suffering from tuberculosis
(then incurable) and a morphine addiction, Charley Ford committed suicide on
May 6th, 1884, in Richmond, Missouri. Bob Ford operated a tent saloon in Creede,
Colorado. On June 8th, 1892, a man named Edward O'Kelley went to Creede, loaded
a double barrel shotgun, entered Ford's saloon and said "Hello, Bob"
before shooting Bob Ford in the throat, killing him instantly. O'Kelley was
sentenced to life in prison. O'Kelley's sentence was subsequently commuted because
of a 7,000 signature petition in favor of his release. The governor pardoned
him on October 3, 1902.
James' mother
Zerelda Samuel wrote the following epitaph for him: In Loving Memory of my
Beloved Son, Murdered by a Traitor and Coward Whose Name is not Worthy to
Appear Here. James's widow Zerelda Mimms James died alone and in poverty.
Rumors of Jesse
James's survival proliferated almost as soon as the newspapers announced his
death. Some said that Robert Ford killed someone other than James, in an
elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice. These tales have received little
credence, then or later. None of James's biographers has accepted them as
plausible. The body buried in Kearney, Missouri, as Jesse James's was exhumed
in 1995 and subjected to mitochondrial DNA typing. The report, prepared by Anne
C. Stone, Ph.D., James E. Starrs, L.L.M., and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D., stated the
mtDNA recovered from the remains was consistent with the mtDNA of one of James's
relatives in the female line. This theme resurfaced in a 2009 documentary, Jesse
James' Hidden Treasure, which aired on the History Channel. The documentary
was dismissed as pseudo-history and pseudo-science by historian Nancy Samuelson
in a review she wrote for the Winter 2009-2010 edition of The James-Younger
Gang Journal.
One prominent
claimant was J. Frank Dalton, who died August 15th, 1951, in Granbury, Texas.
Dalton was allegedly 101 years old at the time of his first public appearance,
in May 1948. His story did not hold up to questioning from James' surviving
relatives.
Source: Wikipedia
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