ZZ Jesse James Meets The Outlaw Josey Wales

 June 13, 2023

   I'm still wrestling with how to graphically portray the real Jesse James, with his legend looming over him. I did these three roughs and then realized something. That isn't Jesse James, that's Billy F. Gibbons!

Daily Whip Outs: "The Legend Looms"

   Nicholas Yannuzzi quips this should be titled "ZZ Jesse." Ha. Good one.

The Honorable Billy F. Gibbons

The Birth of A Bushwhacker

May 25, 1863

   Frank James and a rag tag group of Missouri Bushwhackers stop at his mother's farm north of Kearny and then move on north to a grove of trees not far from the homestead and began to play poker on a blanket, over the goods they have purloined from their Union foes.

   Frank James' little brother, Jesse, age 15 is in the field tending to a crop of tobacco along with a male slave. Jesse does not hear the approach of militiamen, who sneak up on him and quickly catch him up by the throat, and dragging him back to the house. Jesse sees that the entire yard is swarming with armed civilians under the banner of the Clinton County Provisionals and the Clay County Unionists commanded by Captain Garth's Company I. These are not federal troops but local militia, responding to the call of Bushwhackers stealing their property and goods, like thieves drunk on impunity.

   And lest you think I was unaware of a certain movie poster, while doing my sketches of Jesse The Legend, above, well, fear not.

"I guess we all died a little in that damned war."

—Josie Wales

   Thanks to Paul Hoylen for the tidbits, above and below.

How Young Were They?

Some historians estimate that some 100,000 Union soldiers were boys under 15 years old and about 20 percent of all Civil War soldiers were under 18.

A Confederate Boy Soldier

(colorized by Gary M. Wilcox, New River Graphics)

"The search for truth and knowledge is one of the finest attributes of man, though it often is most loudly voiced by those who strive for it the least."

—Albert Einstein