Recently, I got a chance to visit the James family farm north of Kearney, Missouri and while I was there, the director of the museum brought out the original ambrotype of Jesse James taken when he was just a lad. It is an amazing image to ponder.
What I was struck with was how innocent he looks and I wondered just how and why he turned into the most notorious and legendary outlaw America has ever produced. Or, as Allan Pinkerton basically put it, "The worst man in America, bar none."
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For one thing, I knew Jesse had to have had a teacher, someone who schooled him on the finer points of brutality and living outside the law.
When the census taker visited the James farm in June of 1860 to count the family, Jesse Woodson James was twelve and attending school, together with his sixteen-year-old brother Frank and ten year old sister Susan. In the fall when Jesse turned 13 he was enrolled for another year of studies, not realizing at the time it would be his last. So, what happened and who was Jesse's teacher?
The Teacher
He was born in Hopkins County, Kentucky when his family—two brothers and three sisters—moved to Missouri where his father got a job working on a farm. He was a typical farm boy growing up outside of Huntsville, Missouri. His schoolmates remembered him as a well-behaved and a reserved child. In 1857, the Anderson family relocated to Kansas Territory, on the Santa Fe Trail and settled 13 miles east of Council Grove, Kansas. They didn't realize it at the time but they had moved into the epicenter of a flashpoint that would tear the country apart. The boy's name was William T. Anderson and, in short order, he would become known as "Bloody Bill"
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Taking Sides On A Bloody Trail
May 25, 1863
Frank James is riding with a rag tag group of Missouri Bushwhackers. After a raid, they 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 neighbors.
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, and they are hell bent on tracking down and eradicating what they see as vermin.
Of course, Jesse's mother and step-father feign ignorance about Frank's whereabouts, but one of the militiamen procures a rope and throws it over a tree branch. Putting the rope around Samuel's neck they begin to hoist him up over the protestations of Mrs. James. Accounts vary on how many times they hoisted him up, but at some point Samuels breaks down sobbing and tells them where the Bushwhackers are (in one version, he leads them to the spot!). In a running fight, five of the Bushwhackers are shot and killed but Frank escapes. This is often sited as the turning point in Jesse's young life.
Soon enough, both Frank and Jesse are riding with William T. Anderson who they called the "Old Man." Bloody Bill was 25 years old.
How Dangerous Were These Youngsters?
Under the tutelage of Bloody Bill, the Bushwhackers often wore stolen union uniforms and passed as Federals. It was not uncommon for them to ride up to a farm, call out the man of the house and ask his allegiance and when he saw the uniforms and said he was a Union man they would shoot him down. When they departed with the poor man's wife weeping over her husband's body the young partisan rangers would tip their hat to the lady because, of course, they weren't barbarians, they had manners!
One time they caught two troopers on the road, cut their throats ear to ear and then scalped them, tying the bloody scraps to their saddles. "Drunk on blood," as someone described them, they crushed faces with rifle butts, carved noses off, sliced off ears, or sawed off heads and switched their bodies for comic effect. One of them pulled the trousers off one of their victims and then cut off his penis and shoved it in the dead man's mouth. The teenager, Jesse James, had matriculated and completed his education in this culture of atrocity. Now he was about to graduate.
The Battle of Centralia
On September 27, 1864 Bloody Bill and about 80 men took over the small railroad village of Centralia, looting stores and discovering a barrel of whiskey that they hauled out in the street. Wild enough when sober they soon were roaring drunk. They robbed the passengers of a stagecoach and then stopped an express train on the North Missouri Railroad full of 125 passengers and 25 Union soldiers on furlough from Sherman's army, which had recently taken Atlanta. The passengers were robbed and the soldiers stripped and brutally gunned down with the exception of one sergeant who Anderson intended to keep as a possible hostage exchange. They then torched the train, tied down the whistle and sent it roaring down the tracks. They burned the depot and another train before leaving in the early afternoon.
At around 4 P.M. a detachment of about 147 Union troops from the 39th Missouri Infantry, led by A.V.E. Johnson arrived. They were mounted on horses confiscated from "disloyal persons." In other words they were riding horses they had purloined from secessionist sympathizers. They were armed with muzzleloading Enfield rifles, while the Bushwhackers are armed with multiple pistols.
Bushwhacker Dave Pool lured the detachment to an open field above a river bottom about three miles southeast of Centralia. The Union troops dismounted and formed a skirmish line. The rebels came out of the trees on the jump charging up the hill at about 225 strong. Two confederates were hit on the first volley, but most of the shots went high. The Federals never had a chance to reload.
"We were laying low on our horses, a trick the Comanche Indians practice and which saved our lives many a time."
—Frank James
It was over in a flash and most of the Union troops were slaughtered, with Jesse James taking the claim for killing the commander, although Jim Cummins later stated that several in the group took that "honor."
The Bloody Death of Bloody Bill
Major Samuel P. Cox a native of Gallatin, Missouri (a significant location in the later outlaw career of the James brothers) gathered 300 men to take down Bloody Bill and his vicious Bushwhackers. When he receives word where Bloody Bill is camped, Cox sets a trap near Albany, Missouri on October 27, 1864.
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"Bloody Bill Caught Red-Handed"
So why were these youngsters so vicious?
"You're going to learn that one of the most brutal things in the world is your average nineteen-year-old American boy."
—Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War
The Boys Who Became Killer
So, were the James and Younger boys the exception to the rule? Hardly. Historians now 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. And by one count 27,000 people died in the Missouri-Kansas conflagration.
Jesse's Dark Turn
He came out of the war, severely wounded and it took him quite some time to heal. He joined the local Baptist church and a parishioner, Dr. W. H. Price, remembered him: "Jesse joined the Baptist church in this place, after he came out of the army, in 1866. I think he was baptized, and for a year or two acted as if he was a sincere and true Christian. In his early years, and after he came out of the army, he was quiet, affable, and gentle in his actions. He was liked by every one who knew him."
In September of 1869, he resigned from the church. Was he bored, was he blank? Somehow, he and Frank became obsessed with killing Samuel Cox, the commander of the unit that brought down Bloody Bill. . .it was a dark turn. One that offered no return.Born in that flash of anger that never goes away.
"Jesse James Born In A Flash of Anger"
Now you know how Jesse James was educated to become a stone cold killer.
He is, at best, a composite, like one of those rough police sketches of a suspect described by multiple eye witnesses who can't agree.
By my count there have been at least 37 movies, so far, on the life of Jesse James. And what does this say about us?"A distinctly American bandit has been remembered in a distinctly American fashion, through tourism, mass media, and show business."
—Erin H. Turner
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