Yet, I find myself studying those men whose photos I come across who have piercing blue eyes and wonder whether Jesse's looked like this one or that one. The actor Bradley Cooper comes closest to what I believe Jesse looked like – next time you see a photo of Cooper, check out his eyes.
When you become an historian of people like the James family, you find yourself hungering for more and more information. You want to know height, weight, hair color, eye color, personality, voice inflections, habits.
Jesse had many habits and oddly, reports of those have been recorded, so I have gotten an image in my head of Jesse James and I guess one could say I've become fixated. That is one of the caveats of studying these men as perhaps my Jesse pal, Michelle, would say – it's a controversy. Jesse and Frank were, after all, bushwhackers and outlaws. They robbed and killed many a man. Yet they were human beings with feelings – they had dreams, aspirations and each was married to the love of their lives, two surviving children for Jesse and one for Frank.
The things Jesse's piercing blue eyes saw in his 34 years can boggle the mind even today. At the age of 2 1/2, a young, Jesse James clung to his father's leg as he prepared to leave for California, just as any child would, were a parent getting ready to leave on a lengthy journey. Perhaps deep down, the toddler knew he would never see his father again.
He was right and that would forever change his life.
Little is known about Jesse and Frank from those early years. They attended school, their mother remarried and promptly filed for divorce, her second husband dying before divorce proceedings could move forward. Zerelda married again, this time for good – to Dr. Reuben Samuel – a gentle country doctor. At least this union would be a happy one for her and for her three children by Robert James.
The boys seemed to like their stepfather for he was good to them and importantly, good to their mother.
As the 1850s grew to a close and the Missouri/Kansas border wars grew hotter and hotter, one could almost hear the talk around the supper table – Zerelda hot-headed and opinionated, Frank quiet, studious, yet fired up to defend the Confederate cause; and Jesse - only 13 1/2 when the war broke out in 1861 – hormones raging, even more opinionated than Frank and Zerelda together, and ready to go out and kill himself a bunch of Federals.
It was Frank who would go off to war first, being four years older than Jesse. Frank first served in the Missouri State Guard, fighting in the bloody Battle of Lexington (Missouri), also known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, in which the Confederates won, and the Battle of Wilson's Creek. After that battle he contracted measles and ended up being sent home.
Frank signed the loyalty oath to the Union and paid a $1,000 bond on it, but it was just a piece of paper and soon he was hooting and hollering with the rest of the Rebels, heading off to join William Quantrill and his raiders in early 1863.
One can imagine Jesse, a young teenager, sitting rapt at the kitchen table listening to his brother's tales of guns firing, cannons blasting, the blood flying, men falling, the screams, the terror of battle – making Jesse swell with determination and pride that he would go out and join in the fight.
And so he did.
After the terrible beating Jesse took around May 25, 1863, following the Missouri City raid in which several Union soldiers were ambushed and killed, resulting in a unit of Federals coming to the James farm looking for the bushwhackers, Jesse's ire was up and he was determined to join Quantrill.
It would be a while before he could, yet he probably had plenty of time to fester on what was happening all around him. Southern sympathizers were being burned out of their homes, crops razed, families displaced, and in many cases, the Federals were raping the women, while killing the menfolk.
Jesse had seem some of this first-hand when, after beating him and leaving him for dead in the field of hemp in which he was working, Union soldiers – two of whom were former neighbors – proceeded to torture Jesse's stepfather by hanging him until he nearly passed out ... three times ... until they got him to confess as to the whereabouts of Frank and his fellow bushwhackers.
Jesse had spent time practicing with his gun, to the point that early on, he shot off the tip of his left middle finger, either while cleaning his gun or due to a misfire. The incident most likely made him more determined to become an expert for he was frequently described as such. He became proficient with firearms and accurate in hitting his targets.
He had to be efficient – or be killed.
 |
| Jesse James, about 1864 – age 16, wearing a guerrilla shirt with multiple pockets – to hold the extra pistols needed. You can see his eyes, intense, penetrating – a handsome youth, not yet jaded by years of living in the wild, on the run and witnessing the horrors yet to come. |
He saw a lot in those years with Anderson. I've written about some of the atrocities committed. It is unknown what Jesse actually participated in. Knowing his charismatic, take-charge personality, I frankly think he may have been right up there participating. No one will ever know. It's not something he ever disclosed, nor did any of his fellow bushwhackers. Their code prohibited it.
In fact, even after the three Younger brothers, Cole, Bob and Jim, were captured after the Northfield, Minnesota raid in September 1876, they all steadfastly refused to name Jesse or Frank as the two that "got away," even though they knew they themselves were going away for a long time.
Every time I drive past Tabo Creek a few miles south of Lexington, I think of Jesse, lying wounded in the creek, a bullet in his right lung – the same lung in which he'd been shot less than a year before. The creek was muddy, cold, and had critters in it. I imagine he could hear Union soldiers searching for him, perhaps far off gunfire and he knew his comrade Archie Clement was dead.
The thoughts that must have run through his head ... did he think he would survive the night? What was going to happen to him if he did? And then there was the deflating knowledge that the war was ending and the northerners were going to win. He would have believed that all that fighting, all the blood that was shed, it was all for nothing.
He knew Frank was in Kentucky with Quantrill. Anderson was dead as was Clement. Jesse's family was in Nebraska in exile – he had to have felt more alone that night than any other time previous. And he probably thought he was going to die alone.
Did he stare up at the stars wondering if God existed? Did he wonder if he would join his father in heaven or had his heinous deeds cancelled out any hope of eternity for this young boy, not yet 18. Did he regret anything? Did he simply want his mother?
How blue were those eyes that night as he lay in that creek? Were they dark with evidence of his pain or fading as he struggled to breathe. His breathing was, at most, difficult and wheezy. He had been living off the land for nearly two years by now and despite being wiry and strong, it was a hard life – even for a 17-year-old. He'd been shot several times by now, beaten, and I've often wondered if he just wanted to give up that night in Tabo Creek. Did he think he could just close his eyes and let God take him home?
Not Jesse James. The fire that kept him going all the years after the war was already in him during the war and must have grown strong that night. For in the morning a farmer found him, took him home and nursed Jesse's wound until he was strong enough to be brought into Lexington, now in Union hands – where he could surrender.
The war was over, but it would not end for Jesse until the coward Robert Ford put a bullet in the back of his head 17 years later.
No comments:
Post a Comment