Jesse James, a youthful-looking man with piercing blue eyes and a solemn face is sitting on
his horse surveying his victory, the wind carrying the coppery smell of blood into his
nostrils.
At his side is the tyrant known as “Bloody Bill”, an American psychopath of the first
degree, a man whose short life was dictated by violence.
James wipes a bloodied knife against his pants.
Almost 80 men are surrounding him, cheering, holding up trophies ripped from the 120 or
so Union soldiers they’ve just slain.
One man screams like a banshee while holding a dead man’s scalp in the air; air that’s
still tainted with clouds of gun smoke.
Another man slips a nose into his pocket.
To his right, his comrade is slicing off an ear.
This is the sound of victory.
James is content.
He’s killed the leading officer.
This is his time, or so he thinks.
He can’t possibly know he’ll become one of the most well-known and divisive outlaws
in American history.
Was Jesse James a great American outlaw, a kind of Robin Hood-type criminal who only
fought back against the authorities that had hurt him and his kind?
Was he merely a product of his surroundings, a pawn in a political game he could not understand?
Or was he just a ruthless, psychopathic criminal that didn’t have an ounce of goodness in
him?
It’s a topic that divides people to this day, so watch this episode and make your own
mind up.
This is his story, a gripping tale if ever there was one.
Jesse Woodson James was born on September 5, 1847, to Zerelda Cole James and Robert
James.
He had two full siblings, an elder brother, Alexander Franklin ‘Frank’ James, and
a younger sister, Susan Lavenia James.
This family it’s said were of English and Welsh descent.
Robert James was a slave-holding preacher who didn’t exactly embrace the abolitionist
movement.
He died when James was only three years old after going to California in search of gold.
He left his wife facing the possibility of poverty, although she married again, first
to a Mr. Benjamin Simms then to Dr. Reuben Samuel.
With her last husband, she acquired seven slaves to work on a tobacco plantation they
owned.
With their farm they had a fairly comfortable existence.
It looked to them that their children would grow up without the difficulties the very
poor were cursed with, but times in the U.S. were changing, and not to the James family’s
liking.
The James’s saw themselves as hard-working pioneers who’d worked their fingers to the
bone to make a living in the vast rural areas of the country, and they also didn’t have
any scruples about owning slaves.
Many people on the other side of the border did, and that’s what led to the outbreak
of the Kansas-Missouri border war in 1854.
This would become a hostile and bloody conflict that would span five years, and the James
family were very much embroiled in it.
More so because Clay Country where they lived had a larger population of slaves than the
average county in Missouri, and of course the James’s made their money on the backs
of the unfortunate enslaved.
They stood firm on the side of the pro-slave so-called “Border Ruffians”, who went
over the borderline into Kansas to cause mayhem.
The James’s slaves were a valuable asset to them, accounting for close to half of their
wealth.
In their eyes, their human property was theirs and no government was going to tell them how
they should live their life.
Then in 1861, the American Civil War began, a war between the Union and Confederate armies
that would claim the lives of almost three-quarters of a million soldiers as well as countless
civilians.
Still today, it’s the deadliest war in U.S. history.
Union soldiers became an occupying force in Clay County, and while there was support for
the Union, there was more support for the Confederates.
It was a recipe for bloodshed.
Confederate Guerrillas hunted down people they called traitors.
Houses of Confederates were raided in the middle of the night by Unionist militias.
Folks were summarily killed on both sides for their beliefs.
People like the James family who supported the Southern cause could at any time find
themselves at the hands of a savage militia, dragged outside their house and strung up
from trees while with their last few breaths they saw their home burned to the ground.
If something like that happened, which it did many times, then Confederate mobs return
the violence on folks they deemed the enemy.
This was the environment Jesse James grew up in.
This mayhem was the genesis of a brutal criminal career.
One day James’s step-father was tortured within an inch of his life after being hanged
from a beam.
His mother was arrested, too, and all this happened in front of Jesse’s eyes.
As the story goes, Jesse, just 16 years old, was whipped during the ordeal.
The reason for the violence was James’ brother Frank was running with a guerrilla group,
and a bloodthirsty one at that.
After that, the mother swore an oath of allegiance to the Union, signing on the dotted line with
her teeth clenched and revenge on her mind.
Later that night, whispering in her children’s ears, she spilled out her hatred for the people
that had destroyed her family.
“Vengeance will be yours,” she said to those boys, and they heard it loud and clear.
And vengeance they got, in the most brutal fashion.
They joined the Bushwhacker guerrillas with the intent to kill as many of the enemy as
they could.
Their reign of terror was not an order from above.
They had no commander outside of their own murderous coterie.
Revenge is all they needed and when they got it they wanted everyone to know what damage
they’d done.
Their campaign was designed to instill fear in their enemy, hence their propensity for
mutilation.
This blood lust culminated with the “Centralia Massacre”, the end of which we discussed
in the intro.
In the morning of that massacre, 80 or so guerillas including Jesse and Frank James
rode into the town of Centralia, Missouri.
After looting the town and drinking copious amounts of whisky, the men boarded a train
they’d blocked on the track.
There they massacred and mutilated 24 unarmed Union soldiers that were returning home from
the war.
The Bushwackers rode out of town, leaving a train carriage in flames behind them.
At around three in the afternoon that same day, a Union infantry major without much military
experience took 146 men from the 39th Missouri Infantry Regiment to the town.
The residents warned them about the force they might be met with, but the major ordered
his men to stay put.
Soon the guerillas arrived on horseback, each carrying a number of pistols, precluding the
need to reload.
It was hardly a battle.
The Union soldiers fired their guns and a handful of guerrillas were killed, but after
that, they were encircled and shot to pieces from all sides.
A few got away, but most were killed quickly.
Those who laid injured on the floor were finished off, being given no quarter even though their
hands were up.
The Union was furious.
The Bushwackers were a force to contend with, not just some yokels with a gripe.
The order came down to show no mercy.
This is what one high-ranking Union officer wrote:
“Depopulation and devastation are extreme measures, but if this infernal warfare continues
it will be humane and economic of human life to adopt and vigorously enforce such measures
wherever the bushwhackers have more friends than the government.”
Such was the widespread violence that Union General Thomas Ewing, Jr. demanded the entire
depopulation of four counties, which included every last man, woman, and child, regardless
of their views.
Entire families were dragged from their homes; they were stripped of their livelihoods, and
were forced to fend for themselves someplace else.
After they were removed, the order decreed that everything should be destroyed and burned,
even the animals on the farms.
It was a dark moment in American history, and something Jesse James would never forget.
This order, called “Order No. 11”, was intended to reduce the material support the
Confederate guerrillas were receiving from people in those counties, but it was a myopic
move, because the displaced and bitter only supported the guerillas more after that.
They were further embittered when occasionally they walked through towns only to see Confederate
sympathizers hanging from beams on porches.
On the other side of the coin, supporters of the Union were shot down like wild animals.
The war came to an end in 1865 after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General
Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Appomattox Court House.
A month after, James was seriously injured after trying to surrender to Union men.
As he’d earlier done to them, instead of doing the right thing they put a bullet in
his chest.
This was actually the second time he almost died after being shot.
Needless to say, here was an angry young man.
The Civil War may have ended but that didn’t mean the differences of people in that state
didn’t remain.
Folks were still just as divided and that meant more violence to come.
New laws devised by anti-slavery Republicans were not so kind to the pro-slavery folks
that mostly allied with the Democrats- before you go ranting in the comments section, keep
in mind both parties have switched ideological positions so frequently that neither one resembles
what they were after the civil war.
The upshot to this situation was that former Confederates couldn’t vote.
Neither could they serve on juries or even preach in churches, this item being something
of great importance in those days.
As we know now from looking at history, when the victors are too oppressive to the losers
the outcome is usually the losers uniting and forming another kind of beast.
It’s a complicated tale, but let’s just say that marauding gangs of violent guerillas
didn’t just hang up their gloves and do what they were told.
James had some downtime convalescing from the injury that nearly killed him.
His nurse for much of that time was his first cousin, Zerelda “Zee” Mimms.
The two dated and courted for a number of years until they were married.
In time, they had two kids together.
That might sound romantic if not a bit incestual, but what’s more important is that all the
time James had vengeance on his mind.
He was about to become a hero to some and a villain to others.
On February 13, 1866, he and his Bushwhacker gang were about to commit a crime against
the Republican authorities that they despised so much.
They rode into Liberty, Missouri, that day and successfully committed what’s now called
the first daytime bank robbery ever in the United States.
The bank, the Clay County Savings Association, was owned by outspoken Republicans who’d
just before held the first Republican rally in Clay County.
Of course, the money was one objective, but so was stealing from the other side.
An innocent person lost his life that day, something that would happen time and again
during the James gang robberies.
We should add that some people think James wasn't involved in this crime, but you can
also say that for lots of crimes he was accused of committing.
Other gangs that supported the Confederate cause were also causing mayhem, but they were
often reduced in size when the law got hold of them or posses of men decided to lynch
them.
When that happened, some of the gangs joined together to have strength in numbers.
It’s thought the James gang and members from another gang robbed another bank on May
23, 1867, and in doing so shot the local mayor and two other people.
During this amalgamation of gangs, Jesse James was still not a household name and in no way
was his face on the front pages of New York newspapers, but then on December 7, 1869,
James, brother Frank, and other members of the gang, cemented their infamy.
They walked into the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri, and after
taking a minimal amount of cash killed a totally innocent cashier.
James said that happened as revenge for the killing of “Bloody Bill”, since it was
mistakenly thought that the cashier was the officer that killed him.
He was just a guy doing his job.
James was now an outlaw with a bounty on his head.
He was dubbed the last surviving murderous Bushwhacker, although as you can imagine after
watching so far, he was cheered on by a lot of people in Missouri and beyond.
James’s fame grew when he befriended the editor of the Kansas City Times, one John
Newman Edwards.
Edwards didn’t exactly paint a picture of a mindless killer when writing about James,
but of a loyal Confederate who’d faced harsh times.
In those editorials, James looked like an innocent man, but that was far from the truth.
When the James gang hooked up with another group of loyal Confederates, the Younger gang,
they were an outfit to be reckoned with.
Together they moved across states in the U.S. robbing numerous banks and stagecoaches, and
as strange as it sounds, they were sometimes admired by the locals that saw them at work.
They even acted out for the locals at times, right after a robbery.
You could say the gang were the very first celebrity criminals in the U.S.
Were they truly bad people?
Well, when they turned to trains as a means of making money, they didn’t rob the passengers
and instead concentrated on the safes.
Ok, so they robbed passengers a couple of times, but in the vast majority of the robberies,
they left the regular folks alone, if not occasionally hurting people working on the
train.
It was after this spate of robberies that James’s friend at the newspaper started
making out he was some kind of Robin Hood character since the stolen cash belonged to
banks and businesses – in today’s parlance, the ruling elites.
An anonymous letter once appeared in that paper that read, “We are not thieves, we
are bold robbers, we rob from the rich and give to the poor.”
The truth is, though, while some people bought into this.
the gang never shared the spoils with the needy.
At this point, James had amassed a fair bit of cash, but he’d also awoken a beast in
the authorities from Missouri all the way to Washington.
They were outraged that a killer and a thief who seemed to have no regard for human life
was supported by a great many people in America.
His gang had also robbed so many trains the train companies were afraid to run.
It was those companies that asked for help from a Scottish detective named Allen Pinkerton,
the man behind the Pinkerton Agency, an outfit that had once saved the life of President-elect
Abraham Lincoln.
It became the biggest private detective agency in the world, and it thought it could easily
get rid of uneducated train robbers in the South.
Jesse James had other ideas.
The agency sent one of their highly trained men named Joseph Whicher down to Missouri
to take out the leaders of the gang, but what they didn’t know is that James had many
friends in his locale, people who’d help the gang after their many robberies.
They’d hide them, feed them, even give them horses.
Word soon got out that a new man in town that didn’t look too local had been asking about
the James farm.
Could one man really succeed where local police had already failed many times?
With a hot tip that the James gang was holed up in a local farm, the agent was warned by
the sheriff that if he went to that farm he would not come back.
The agent disagreed, and bravely or stupidly he headed off to the farm.
The next day his body was discovered with four bullet holes in the chest and two in
the head.
He’d been bound and tortured, and later wild hogs had made a feast of the corpse.
On his body was a note that read, “This is what happens to all detectives.”
Three other Pinkerton detectives and a local sheriff were sent to go after the Younger
brothers, Cole, Jim, John, and Bob, and only one detective made it back to Chicago.
One agent had his hat shot off, which was a miss, not great gunmanship.
He survived.
John Younger was also killed in the gunfight.
Back in Chicago, the fierce and fearless Allan Pinkerton who’d had a rough life himself,
was infuriated.
He’d sent four of his best men down to deal with a bunch of bushwhackers and only one
had returned.
Let’s not forget this was an agency that claimed to “never sleep” and proudly said
it used tactics as well as brawn.
Pinkerton had never known defeat and so with his own cash, he made it his personal mission
to rid the world of Jesse James and the gang.
He had his own message for James, too, “When we meet it must be the death of one or both
of us.”
Pinkerton didn’t send any more men until he was sure he had an ally in the local town.
Then on January 25, 1875, Pinkerton detectives arrived at the farm armed with explosives.
A bomb was thrown into the house, which killed James’s younger half-brother immediately.
The blast also blew off the mother’s arm, but Jesse and Frank were nowhere to be seen.
Even in those days, the attack on the farm was seen as unethical.
How did they know who was in the house?
They killed a brother that wasn’t part of the gang and they maimed an innocent mother.
Allen Pinkerton denied the intent was to burn the house down, but we now know it was because
of a letter that was later discovered.
The act was quite simply murder with intent.
It was hard to not feel sorry for the James family and so yet again there was ambiguity
among people as to how they felt about them.
An amnesty was almost given to the brothers if they handed themselves in, but it didn’t
happen.
What did happen was the murder of Daniel Askew, the man the brothers thought had helped the
agents.
The gang was on the loose again, but now it seemed karma was catching up with them.
On September 7, 1876, a failed bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, led to the end of
most of the gang.
They’d savagely beat a cashier but the cashier didn’t falter in his lie and insisted he
didn’t know the combination of the safe.
More minutes passed and the gang members outside were getting restless as locals peered over
at them.
As the alarm was raised, two of them were shot dead and another was injured.
Inside, an unarmed cashier was shot in the head.
The gang got on their horses and fled, on the way killing another innocent man, a Swedish
immigrant named Nicholas Gustafson.
His English was likely not good enough to understand that the James’s were telling
him to get out of the way.
The gang split up sometime later, only for one man to be killed by the militia.
The three remaining Younger brothers were later arrested.
It’s said they actually became model prisoners, with one of them founding the longest-running
prison newspaper in the U.S..
Now there was just James and Frank left.
They stayed hidden in Nashville, Tennessee.
Together they farmed.
Frank seemed content, but after almost three years, Jesse felt the need to turn to crime
again.
He started a new gang, but after successful train, post office, and stagecoach robberies
the authorities were on to them.
Back they returned to Missouri.
In July of 1881, they robbed a train and killed the conductor and a passenger.
The second train robbery would be his last.
This time the safe was empty, so they robbed the passengers.
So much for a Robin Hood...
James knew only too well that at any moment he or his family could be set upon by the
authorities or someone looking to claim a reward.
For that reason, he asked his new gang members Charley and Robert Ford to move in with him
and help out as protection.
This would be his downfall: trust.
Robert Ford had secretly been talking to Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenden.
Ford had earlier been arrested and had made a pact with the authorities to take James
down.
He wanted his freedom and he wanted the reward: $5,000 (about $130,000 in today’s money).
On April 3, 1882, the James’s and the Fords were getting ready to rob a bank in Platte
City.
They had breakfast, and upon reading something in a newspaper about another gang member being
arrested, Jesse started to wear a look of suspicion on his face.
Bob Ford should have known about this, but he’d said nothing about it.
Ford sat nervously in a chair as Jesse walked past him, trying not to let Ford know he was
unsettled by the atmosphere of the morning.
Something just didn’t feel right.
Jesse then shocked Ford by laying his revolvers down on a chair, something he hardly ever
did.
Those guns were pretty much glued to him.
Standing in the middle of the room, Jesse noticed that quite a lot of dust had collected
on a picture.
He went over to remove the dust with his hand, having to stand on a chair to do it.
At that moment, Ford walked up behind him and shot him behind the ear.
That was it.
Instant death.
James was 34 years of age.
It was international news.
Crowds came to see the body of the outlaw they’d followed for so long in the papers.
In one day, Robert Ford was convicted of murder and sentenced to death and then immediately
pardoned by the governor.
In the end, he only received a little bit of the reward, mere scraps compared to what
law enforcement got.
Still, it was enough to take off and entertain townsfolks from far and wide when he reenacted
the murder on stage.
Two years after James was shot, Charles Ford took his own life.
Eight years after that, a man named Edward O'Kelley walked up behind Robert and said,
“Hello Bob.”
He then blasted Ford’s throat with a double-barrel shotgun, killing him on the spot.
James was buried at the farmhouse, where his mother later charged people for tours.
She even sold pebbles from his grave, and after she’d sold them, she collected more
from the stream and put them on his grave.
By the time she was done hundreds of people all over the U.S. claimed to have a pebble,
or one of his belts, or guns, or something else.
The only surviving member of Jesse’s immediate family, Jesse James Junior, was later accused
of robbing a train but he didn’t do it.
His lawyer claimed there was prejudice given who his father was.
He was rightfully acquitted of the crime.
On Sunday, February 20, 1910, a small column in the New York Times mentioned a witness
who testified against Jesse James Junior 12 years prior.
He’d just come out and admitted he’d lied about James being part of the robbery.
The story only took up a little more space than, “Woman of 107, Helpless from Injury.”
The James family were yesterday’s news, no longer a spectacle for the American people.
Jesse James Junior moved to California to become a lawyer, after which in 1921 he played
his father in a silent movie.
In the film, James was depicted as a hero.
The truth is, he was a callous thief; a man forged into a criminal by the vagaries of
a difficult life wrought by the politics of the day.
Now you need to watch, “Australia's Most Notorious Outlaw - Ned Kelly.”
Or, watch a video about another bad boy, “Machine Gun Kelly: The Life & Crime of Public Enemy
Number One.”