The Rebel Robin Hood

"Before you leave here, Sir, you’re going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy.” - Phil Caputo, A Rumor of War

A Marine Corps sergeant said those words to Caputo during the Vietnam War, but they could just have easily been spoken with Jesse James in mind. The notorious outlaw could not have been much more than 19 when he sat for that photograph. James cut his teeth at the tender age of 16 as a bushwhacker in one of the various rebel paramilitary organizations that engaged in vicious guerrilla warfare with Union militia organizations in Civil War Era Missouri. The fact that Missouri didn't secede, and was even staunchly Unionist in sentiment, didn't keep the state from descending into barbaric chaos. The war as it was fought in Missouri was one that pitted neighbor against neighbor and it was marked by atrocities on both sides. And that was the cauldron out of which Jesse James emerged as a fully-formed menace to peaceful society.

I am about 3/4s of the way through T. J. Stile's excellent biography titled Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War and thought it might make for an interesting blog post. The subject of Mr. Stile's book has become a fixture in American culture, so it is hardly surprising that I likely first learned of Jesse James from watching an episode of the 1970's sitcom the Brady Bunch. Not to be confused with the New England Patriots, of course. Anyway, the premise of the episode revolves around the fact that young Bobby Brady thinks Jesse James was a hero, and his concerned parents track down a man whose father was killed by James during a train robbery, and invite him over to give Bobby the straight dope. In the words of the old codger, Jesse James was a "coward" and a "mean dirty killer".

My next exposure to Jesse James probably came by way of the terrific 1980 Western about the James and Younger Gang titled The Long Riders. The film cast three sets of brothers to play the gang members, many of whom were in fact siblings in real life. The scriptwriters got it mostly right with the history, although the film's depiction of the disastrous bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota took a few liberties with the record. That scene has bodies dropping left and right, but in reality only two townspeople and two outlaws died during the shootout itself. Still, it vividly captures the raw violence and chaotic confusion of the event. I would definitely recommend the movie.  It is highly entertaining. 

Prior to reading the Stile's biography, I had managed to pick up a fair amount of knowledge about Jesse James because of my interest in the Civil War. From a purely military standpoint the theater of war in Missouri was essentially a sideshow, at least after the first year, at which point conventional military operations shifted away from the state. But, for the many thousands of citizens living in Missouri during the war, it was sheer hell. What I find particularly interesting is that outside of a few counties, slavery wasn't that deeply-rooted in Missouri, which had a very diversified economy. But

the slaveholders in the state had become intensely radicalized by the troubles in Kansas during the 1850, and it would have been difficult to find more ardent secessionists anywhere in the South. And the most ardent one of all was probably a formidable woman named Zerelda Elizabeth Cole James Simms Samuel, the mother of Frank and Jesse James. 

 

Zerelda Samuels deserves to be the subject of a feature length film. Just reading about her strikes terror into my heart. A botched attempt by the Pinkerton's to flush Frank and Jesse out of her house using an incendiary device ended in tragedy when the thing exploded inside the house killing her young son Archie, and blowing off one of Zerelda's arms. Needless to say, the botched raid only resulted in an avalanche of sympathy for the James brothers. That was in 1875 and she would go on to live until 1911, outliving her infamous son Jesse by nearly 30 years. I really need to find a biography of her. There must be one out there.