These things defined the boy who became a very angry man. The man Jesse became is the one we are still talking about 131 years after his death.
He was complex, youthful, gregarious, aggressive, a prankster, a bloodthirsty killer, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a vengeful desperado.
It's easy to criticize what Jesse and his brother did throughout those years following the war. Like other guerrillas, the war didn't end for them, it continued and they seemed to want to keep it alive.
They wanted to keep their hatred alive and right the wrongs they saw during the war. This is where they've gotten the Robin Hood image and it's a distorted one. They didn't rob from the rich and give to the poor. They went after entities that they felt wronged them. Once in a while they were lenient on a victim, other times they weren't.
As the boys drifted between the states of Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Nebraska and Kentucky, and occasionally, somewhere on the east coast, during the years leading up to 1874, they sometimes committed the robberies of which they've been accused and other times they did not – though they were blamed.
It would have been easy to lay the blame on the James gang.
One needs to remember too, that greed and sleazy doings were occurring all over the United States and not just being committed by criminals, but by those appearing to be upstanding citizens. Somehow, somewhere the romanticism of the James gang was cast at them and it stuck, forever cementing them in the minds of the public – then and now – as the first, the baddest, the biggest, the meanest bandits in the world.
Over these ensuing years, the boys were on the run – a lot. They had to live off the land, they rode hard, and they had to constantly be looking over their shoulders.
They aged very quickly. By 1873, Frank was 30 years old, just about middle-aged for the mid-19th century and he had to be growing tired of the lifestyle by now ... longing to settle down with a wife and children and stop looking over his shoulder. Frank would marry Anna Ralston of Independence in June of 1874.
Jesse was still in a very long engagement to his cousin Zee, who herself, had to be tired of waiting for her man to decide to settle down. They wouldn't marry until April 24, 1874.
Jesse just wasn't the type to settle down. He was always looking for the next hit, the next kick, the next con he could come up with. He was adept at lying, at discerning who was friend or foe and he was good at what he did, as was Frank.
These two just never got caught.
In January of 1875, the horrific attack at the James/Samuel house in Kearney by the Pinkerton detectives left the boy's little brother, Archie dead and their beloved mother without her right arm.
It was one more travesty enacted on their family that added to their anger and fueled their thirst for revenge.
In September of 1876 when Jesse and Frank, Cole, Bob and Jim Younger, Charlie Pitts, Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell headed to Northfield, Minnesota to rob the bank, little did they know that they would create the perfect storm of mistakes and choose a town that stood up and fought them tooth and nail.
Only two of the eight men would escape.
Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell were killed right in Northfield. Inside the bank, Frank got tired of the clerk who wouldn't open the safe, Joseph Heywood, and with mayhem erupting in the street between citizens standing up to the crooks who were supposed to be the lookouts, Frank put a gun to Heywood's head and shot him dead.
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| Joseph Lee Heywood, the bank clerk from the Northfield, Minn. robbery who refused to open the safe for Frank James. James shot Heywood in the head, killing him instantly, when he was urged to hurry up and leave, due to the gun battle raging outside in the street between citizens and outlaws. |
Nicholas Gustafson, a Swedish immigrant who understood and spoke little English, was killed in the crossfire in the streets. That left four dead in Northfield – two robbers and two innocent men and the citizens and law enforcement out for more blood.
Cole, Bob and Jim Younger escaped with Jesse and Frank, along with Charlie Pitts, but the three Younger men were injured. Jim was shot in the jaw, a bullet lodged in the roof of his mouth and Bob's elbow was shattered, rendering his firing hand useless. Cole was shot in the thigh, and Frank had been shot in the leg as well.
The men all took off, but their horses quickly became winded and were frothing at the mouth. Day after day passed as the men rode through swamps, pouring rain, through field and forest just a bare step ahead of the posses that had been assembled and were chasing them with vengeance on their minds.
Finally, after several days of attempting to escape, exhausted, hungry and the three injured Younger men vowing they couldn't go any further, Jesse and Frank split from the Youngers, and Pitts, who was so tired he just couldn't go any further.
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| Cole Younger after his capture by the posse from the botched Northfield, Minn. bank robbery. He was shot in the head, which caused the swollen right eye. |
They led lives in Stillwater prison as model prisoners. The youngest, Bob Younger, would died in prison of tuberculosis in 1889, while Jim and Cole would be paroled in 1901. However the tragedy continued. Jim committed suicide on Oct. 19, 1902 when he realized that as a condition of his parole, he could not return to Missouri and marry his love. In 1903, Cole's parole conditions were changed and he was told he was to leave Minnesota, but must never return.
Throughout it all, Cole Younger refused to divulge the identity of the two men who got away.
It was always ... honor among thieves.
Returning to September 1876, as Jesse and Frank parted from the Youngers and Pitts, they cut a wide trek through Minnesota and neighboring states (Dakota territory, Iowa, Nebraska) until they found their way back to Missouri – the posse coming extremely close to catching them, but never quite getting close enough.
They were the slipperiest of crooks.
Frank and Jesse spent many days and nights in the cold and rain, with little food or sustenance, and Frank himself was suffering from a bullet wound to the leg. Sometimes the boys had horses to ride, sometimes they walked. Their boots, made for riding not walking, were worn through and the prosperity they expected to reap from the robbery in Northfield a distant memory as the only thought in their heads was to keep going and elude the men after them.
I am guessing, however, that their years of riding with Quantrill had built these two brothers into men who could endure just about any condition – for they not only escaped like ghosts in the night, they survived the conditions as well.
Little is known about the men during the winter after Northfield. It has been rumored that they went to Adairville, Kentucky and stayed with their Hite cousins. Other rumors had them in Arkansas. Still, after the botched robbery and the capture of their most trusted gang members, it appeared that life on the lam was about over.
It was over 10 years since the war had ended and Reconstruction had come to an end. Life was changing in the U.S., people were moving forward and there was a lot less sympathy for Frank and Jesse James.
The men took their families – Jesse, Zee and Jesse Jr., and Annie, Frank and young Robert James, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland for a time, then left Maryland and headed to Nashville, Tennessee.
It was time to lay low. It would be one of the few times the two brothers attempted to live normal lives with their wives and children – trying to hold down jobs, and always ... always ... under an alias.
Meanwhile, Jesse discovered horse racing.
His frenetic mind was always thinking, conniving and planning.
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