1874: Jesse James' exploits in Missouri
From Bensonwiki
Jesse James first started down the road to violence at the age of seventeen when he joined “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s Confederate Guerrilla regiment, where he committed a multitude of atrocities against local unionists.[1] Starting in 1869 and escalating in the early 1870s, James began his career of robbery along with his brother and gang. In Postbellum Missouri, law enforcement was relatively weak and mostly relegated to Union militiamen rather than any local task force.[2] It was for this reason that James was able to evade arrest for so many years, as he was able to seek refuge and alibis from both family and neighbors who sided with him over the Northern occupiers.[3] Jesse James was also able to curry a great deal of local and national favor through the media, who likened him to “Robin Hood.” During one train robbery in 1874, James passed out a written account of the event among the passengers to be handed to the media, "exaggerating the heights of the outlaws."[4] During one train robbery inJesse fully utilized these outlets, both through maintaining a close friendship with local newspaper editor John Edwards and through submitting his own letters to the media for publication. One such letter spoke out against true “thievery” perpetrated by President Grant, which far outstripped any of the actions of James himself.[5] James would continue his robberies throughout Missouri until his death at the hands of a fellow gangmember in 1882, by which time Democrats had regained control of the state and he had fallen from public favor. [6]
While in actuality James may have been little more than a locally popular bandit, he represented the idea that the South could not be beaten. He portrayed his gang to the media and the people as having been “hounded into banditry by vindictive Union men who would not leave them alone after the war. They fought only for self-protection and revenge.” [7]
Sources:
[1]Block, Lawrence. Gangsters, Swindlers, Killers, and Thieves: The Lives and Crimes of Fifty American Villians. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 117. [2]White, Richard. "Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits." The Western Historical Quarterly Vol. 12, No. 4 (Oct 1981) (JSTOR) p. 388 [3]Ibid. 390 [4]Block, 118. [5]James, Jesse. The Kansas City Times. October 15, 1872. From PBS American Experience Newspaper accounts([1] (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/james/sfeature/sf_papers_03.html)) [6]From PBS American Experience Jesse James biography ([2] (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/james/peopleevents/p_j_james.html)). [7]White 402.
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