Biography: The state of Missouri played a distinct and ambiguous role in the American Civil War, since it was largely pro-slavery yet never fought on the side of the Confederacy.
This was thanks to timely manoeuvring by Abraham Lincoln and his followers, who established a regime in St Louis which came close to military dictatorship. In the event, Missouri predictably proved a breeding-ground for post-bellum violence in the South.
The South never accepted its defeat of 1861-65 at face value; potent myths and alibis lingered on, rather similar to the "stab in the back" legend propagated by Ludendorff and others in Germany after 1918. There was, after all, some justification for this attitude. General Sherman's ruthless scorched-earth policy in Georgia and the Carolinas, plus Phil Sheridan's ravaging of the Shenandoah Valley, convinced many Southerners that the North, having failed to beat the Confederacy fairly in the field, had resorted to terror against unarmed civilians.
The so-called years of Reconstruction, with its enforced (and ultimately ineffective) policy of racial levelling between whites and blacks, merely enhanced hatred and resentment against the conquering, interfering Yankees. The South had never been conspicuous for law and order, but the postwar years produced a proliferation of small arms for sale and the cult of the revolver-toting male. It was the old story of war creating a civilian climate of violence. This lasted well into the 1880s when gradually the outlaws, the train-robbers and the bushwackers died away - but not the Ku Klux Klan, formed originally by former Confederate officers embittered by defeat and occupation.
Jesse James was a personification of this phase in American history. His father was a Baptist preacher who was also a slaveholder and a hemp farmer; he died in the 1850 Gold Rush when Jesse was three. The big influence on his life seems to have been his formidable mother, Zerelda, a vehement advocate of secession and slavery, and a well-educated woman equipped with a powerful will and a fierce tongue. Young Jesse was fighting for the South at the age of 16, though not as a regular soldier. Guerrilla gangs led by William Quantrill and the notorious "Bloody Bill" Anderson ran their own private war, indiscriminately raiding whole townships for loot or ransom money, and ambushing ("bushwhacking") Northern military convoys and detachments.
In 1864, Anderson and his gang held up a train in Centralia, Missouri, took two dozen Federal soldiers off it, and shot them in cold blood. Pursued by more soldiers under a Major Johnston, they led their pursuers into an ambush and then shot them down in turn, allegedly mutilating their bodies afterwards. The bullet which killed Johnston was probably fired by young Jesse - the first of his famous exploits.
Anderson was eventually hunted down and killed, but Jesse, with his older brother Frank, formed his own gang and when the war ended he became a legend for his daring and ruthlessness. Train robberies were his specialty, but he also raided banks and other businesses - though at times the payout money was small and scarcely worth the risk. One of his very last exploits was to hold up a train, shoot dead the conductor, and make off with a strong-box which turned out to contain only $600. Like other bushwhackers, he was expert in lying low or melting into civilian life, and for years the tactics of his gang were to scatter after pursuit, then come together again secretly for the next raid.
Jesse found time to marry his cousin Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, who stayed faithful to the end and bore him two children. She put up loyally with repeated house moves to escape the law, her husband's long absences, and his occasional patronage of dubious "houses". But the times were changing, and the forces of law and order were growing while militant pro-Southern sentiment had started to fade. James's followers began to shrink in numbers, as some members fell away - including his brother Frank, who opted for civilian life - and others were killed, either in action or in internecine feuds. Juries were still reluctant to convict him, but a new Governor of Missouri, Thomas Crittenden, was intent on getting rid of bushwhackers, outlaws and troublemakers generally. They were bad for business, above all, and the railway and express companies were exerting strong pressures.
Unable to catch James by legal means, Crittenden virtually hired two assassins, Bob and Charley Ford, one of whom had served formerly in the James gang. At this time, Jesse was living with his wife and children in Kansas City but he moved them to St Joseph, a town in Missouri where he lived under the name of Howard. In March, 1882, while he was standing on a chair dusting the frame of a picture, the Fords shot him down and duly claimed the reward offered. It was scarcely genuine law enforcement, but it was the end of both Jesse and his gang. His brother Frank quietly gave himself up later, and was duly amnestied.
T.J. Stiles's excellent account of this strange career emphasises that James was not, as has often been stated, merely a guerrilla fighter turned professional criminal. He might be classified, in modern terms, as a terrorist rather than as a robber and killer for gain. James honestly believed that he was fighting for the South, and the underdog, against Yankee tyranny and the financial power of the banks and railroad companies. Certainly the volume of popular support he achieved is quite astonishing - and not merely through underground ballads and legends, but from certain newspapers. One of his greatest admirers, for instance, was the journalist John Newman Edwards, a former major in the Confederate army who became an influential editor and Democratic Party politician; his published reports of James's exploits depicted him as a latter-day Robin Hood. Like the hardline Orangeman in Ulster, the mentality of the hardline Southerner is often difficult for an outsider to understand.
Brian Fallon is an author and critic
Brian Fallon