|
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847–April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, the most famous member of the James-Younger gang. Since his death, Jesse James has become a figure of folklore. He has at times, and mostly inaccurately, been labelled a gunfighter.
Pre-Civil War Jesse Woodson James was born in Clay County, Missouri (later renamed Kearney). His father, Robert James, was a farmer and Baptist minister from Kentucky who helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri and who later died in California. His family included his wife, Zerelda Elizabeth Cole, Jesse's brothers Robert Jr., Alexander Franklin, John Thomas and his sister Susan Lavenia. Zerelda later married again, first to a wealthy man, who soon died, and then to a timid doctor named Reuben Samuel who moved into the James home. In the tumultuous years leading up to the American Civil War, Zerelda and Reuben acquired a total of seven slaves and grew tobacco on their well-appointed farm. Together they had Archie Peyton Samuel, John Thomas, Fannie Quantrell and Sarah Louisa (sometimes Sarah Ellen.) Sarah later married a man named John C. Harmon. Bandit Career The end of the American Civil War left Missouri in shambles. The pro-Union Radical Republicans took control of the state government, barring former Confederates from voting or holding public office. Jesse himself was shot by Union cavalrymen a month after the war ended, leaving him badly wounded. During Jesse's recovery his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms (named after his own mother), nursed him back to health and he started a nine-year courtship with her. Meanwhile, some of his old war comrades, led by Archie Clement, refused to return to peaceful life. In 1866 this group (possibly including Jesse, though he may still have been suffering from his wound) staged the first armed robbery of a bank in peacetime, holding up the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty. They staged several more robberies over the next few years, though state authorities (and local lynch mobs) decimated the ranks of the older bushwhackers. By 1868 Frank and Jesse James had definitely joined their old friends in outlawry, when they joined Cole Younger in robbing a bank in Russellville, Kentucky. But Jesse did not become famous until December 1869, when he and Frank (most likely) robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little, but Jesse (it appears) shot the cashier, believing him to be Samuel Cox, the militia officer who defeated and killed "Bloody Bill" Anderson during the Civil War. Jesse's self-proclaimed attempt at revenge for the Civil War, 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 robbery marked Jesse's emergence as the most famous of the former guerrillas-turned-outlaws and it started an alliance with John Newman Edwards, a Kansas City Times editor who was campaigning to return the old Confederates to power in Missouri. Edwards published Jesse's letters and made him into a symbol of rebel defiance of Reconstruction through his elaborate editorials and praiseful reporting. Jesse James's own role in creating his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers, though politics certainly surrounded his outlaw career and enhanced his notoriety. Meanwhile, the James brothers, along with Cole Younger and his brothers, Clell Miller and other former Confederates—now constituting the James-Younger Gang—continued a remarkable 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 audience. In 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa. Their later train robberies had a lighter touch—in fact only twice in all of Jesse James's train hold-ups did he rob passengers, as he limited himself to the express safe in the baggage car. Such techniques fostered the Robin Hood image that Edwards was creating in his newspapers. Pinkertons engaged The express companies 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 such as counterfeiters, safe crackers, con men, and sneak-thieves. The former guerrillas, supported by many old Confederates in Missouri, proved to be too much for them. One agent (Joseph Whicher) was dispatched to infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's farm and turned up dead shortly afterward. Two others (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 (though he killed John Younger before he died). Allan Pinkerton, the Agency's founder and leader, took on the case now as a personal vendetta. Working with old Unionists around Jesse James's family's farm, he staged a raid on the homestead on the night of January 25, 1875. An incendiary device thrown inside by the detectives exploded, killing Jesse's half-brother Archie and wounding his mother Zerelda, forcing the amputation of her lower arm. The bloody fiasco did more than all of Edwards's columns to turn Jesse James into a sympathetic figure for much of the public. A bill that lavishly praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty was only narrowly defeated in the state legislature. Former Confederates, now allowed to vote and hold office again, voted a limit on reward offers the governor could make for fugitives (when the only reward offers higher than the new limit previously made had been for the James brothers). But Frank and Jesse, both now married (Jesse to his cousin Zee Mimms), moved to the Nashville area—probably to save their mother from further assaults. Downfall of the gang On September 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted their most daring raid to date, on the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Cole and Bob Younger later stated that they selected the bank because of its connection to two Union generals and Radical Republican politicians: Adelbert Ames, the governor of Mississippi during Reconstruction, and Benjamin Butler, Ames's father-in-law and the stern Union commander in occupied New Orleans. However, the robbery was thwarted when 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. By this time, the citizens of Northfield had taken notice and were arriving with guns. Before they left the bank, either Frank or Jesse murdered the unarmed Heywood. The bandits who had entered the bank exited empty-handed, only to find the men standing guard outside, including Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger, all dead or wounded amid a hail of gunfire. Suspicious townsmen had confronted the bandits, ran to get their arms, and opened up from under the cover of windows and the corners of buildings. The gang barely escaped, leaving two of their number and two unarmed townspeople (including Heywood) dead in Northfield. A massive manhunt ensued. The James brothers eventually split from the others, and escaped to Missouri after a long and daring ride. The Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts, were soon discovered; a brisk gunfight left Pitts dead and the Youngers all prisoners. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the James-Younger Gang was destroyed. Jesse and Frank returned to the Nashville area, where they went under the names of Thomas Howard and B.J. Woodson, respectively. They tried to live peacefully, as Zee had four children: Jesse Edwards, Mary, and twins who died soon after birth. 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, on October 8, 1879. The robbery began a spree of crimes, including the hold-up of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and two more train robberies. But the new gang did not consist of the old, battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured, while Jesse grew paranoid, killing one gang member and frightening away another. The authorities grew suspicious, and by 1881 the brothers were forced to return to Missouri. 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. Murder
Rumors of survival Rumors of Jesse James's survival proliferated. Some said that Ford did not kill James, but someone else, in an elaborate plot to allow him to escape justice. Some stories say he lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma, as late as 1948, and a man named J. Frank Dalton, who claimed to be Jesse James, died in Granbury, Texas, in 1951 at the age of 103. Some stories claim the real recipient of Ford's bullet was a man named Charles Bigelow, reported to have been living with James's wife at the time. Generally speaking, however, these tales received little credence, then or now; Jesse's beloved wife, Zee, died alone and in poverty. The body buried in Missouri as Jesse James was exhumed in 1995 and, according to a report by Anne C. Stone, Ph.D.; James E. Starrs, L.L.M.; and Mark Stoneking, Ph.D. titled Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Presumptive Remains of Jesse James, does in fact appear to be the remains of Jesse James. The report is available online in pdf format at http://www.eva.mpg.de/genetics/pdf/Stone.JFS.2001.pdf. A court order was granted in 2000 to exhume and test Dalton's body, but the wrong body was exhumed. Legacy Jesse James's legacy is a curious one. During his lifetime, he was largely celebrated by former Confederates, to whom he appealed directly in his letters to the press. Indeed, some historians credit him with contributing to the rise of Confederates to dominance in Missouri politics (by the 1880s, for example, both U.S. senators from the state had been identified with the Confederate cause). His return to crime after the fall of Reconstruction, however, was devoid of political overtones, or allusions to Civil War divisions in Missouri's population, and helped cement his place in American memory as a simple but remarkably effective bandit. During the Populist and Progressive eras, he emerged as America's Robin Hood, standing up against corporations in defense of the small farmer (a role he never played during his lifetime). This image is still seen in films, as well as songs and folklore. Yet he remains a controversial symbol in the cultural battles over the place of the Civil War in American memory, for he is cherished as a hero by the neo-Confederate movement. James's life clearly shows how the war divided the United States down to the grass roots over great issues that had personal repercussions, with consequences that last to this day. Irish-American Lucchese family associate Jimmy Conway a.k.a. James Burke named his two sons, Frank James Burke and Jesse James Burke, after the James brothers. Jesse James in popular culture In Literature Jesse James is a character found in many Western novels, starting with some of the original dime novels, including some that were published while he was still alive. In Movies The life and times of Jesse James has been depicted—with little regard for historical accuracy—in dozens of movies, ranging from the 1921 silent film Jesse James Under the Black Flag (starring James's own son, Jesse James, Jr., in the title role) to 1939's Jesse James (with Tyrone Power as James) to 1972's The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid (Robert Duvall) to 1980's The Long Riders (James Keach) to 2001's American Outlaws (Colin Farrell). In 1966, there was even a low-budget horror movie featuring James entitled Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (John Lupton). Actors who have portrayed James include Roy Rogers, George Reeves,Tyrone Power, Lawrence Tierney, Clayton Moore, Audie Murphy, Macdonald Carey, Robert Wagner, Christopher Lloyd, Kris Kristofferson, James Keach, Colin Farrell, and Rob Lowe. Brad Pitt will star in a movie, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, filmed mostly in Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta, and briefly in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Its scheduled release date is sometime in 2007. In 2006, PBS released a documentary in the American Experience series, dedicated to James. In Music Jesse James is mentioned in the following songs, among others: Bruce Springsteen recorded "Jesse James" with The Seeger Sessions Band on 02 Nov 1997. The song is included on Bruce's 2006 cover album, "We Shall Overcome - The Seeger Sessions". Lyrics: http://www.springsteenlyrics.com/lyrics/j/jessejames.php In the song "Outlaw Blues" on Bob Dylan's album "Bringing It All Back Home", he sings- "Ain't gonna hang no picture, Ain't gonna hang no picture frame. Ain't gonna hang no picture, Ain't gonna hang no picture frame. Well, I might look like Robert Ford- But I feel just like a Jesse James." Television Elsewhere Jesse G. James of the TV Series Monster Garage is a distant cousin of the outlaw. Professional wrestler B.G. James, a member of the Armstrong family of wrestlers, assumed the ring name of "Jesse James" during his run in the WWE. A title in the Lucky Luke series of comic books. Rollerderby star, Jezze James, is the Captain of Tucson Rollerderby's traveling team, The Saddletramps and she plays as a Blocker. Museums Museums devoted to Jesse James are scattered throughout the Midwest at many of the places where he robbed. See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
--> | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |