On May 11, 1865, Archie Clement wrote a letter to the commander, Maj. B.K. Davis, at Lexington, in which he threatened retaliation if any of his friends were hurt.
"Sir: This is to notify you that I will give you until Friday morning, 10 a.m., May 12, 1865, to surrender the town of Lexington. If you surrender, we will treat you and all taken as prisoners of war. If we have to take it by storm we will burn the town and kill the soldiers. We have the force and are determined to have it. I am, sir, your most obedient servant. A. Clement"
So polite when making threats!
May 12 came and went without so much as a burp on the radar.
There were, however, about 100 guerrillas that had made it known they wanted to surrender, but wanted to be treated as citizens and not punished for war crimes. Nevertheless, according to James friend and biographer, Jesse Edwards, Jesse and Archie Clement were not in favor of surrender.
So it was that on May 15, 1865, part of the Third Wisconsin and perhaps a few of the Johnson County militia skirmished with guerrillas southeast of Lexington, in the area now known as Tabo Creek.
A Major Davis reported that he believed Clement was on the Missouri River scouting for a way to cross and that he and his group were fired upon the previous day about six miles out on Salt Pond Road as they returned from the Missouri River.
Jesse himself said that he and a handful of guerrillas were headed for Lexington to surrender when they ran into some drunken soldiers.
"My horse was killed and I was shot through the breast," he said. "I was running through the woods, pursued by two men on horseback ... they were pressing me hard, every jump that I made, the blood would spurt out of my wound.
"That ended the fight. I was near a creek. I lay in the water all night, it seemed that my body was on fire. The next morning I crawled up the bank and a man was plowing nearby and he helped me get to my friends."
While the guerrillas had been looking for a way to cross the river, it seems they were looking to flee to Mexico instead of surrendering. No matter what the plans were, Jesse now was in no shape to surrender.
The farmer who found Jesse, took him to a Mr. Bradley's home on Tabo Creek, where Bradley's wife nursed him back to a point where they could bring him into Lexington to surrender.
About 18 months ago, a group of us researchers went looking for Salt Pond Road and believe we found it – a narrow gravel road right off Tabo Creek that is still marshy and surrounded by cornfields. I can never pass this area without thinking of Jesse lying in that creek throughout that night after being shot.
Fellow guerrilla and sometime James gang member Jim Cummins later remarked about the location and that it was not far from the Higginsville Confederate home and indeed, that is true.
Jesse was cared for by the kindly farmer's wife until May 21, when he was put in a wagon and driven to Lexington, about nine miles north of Tabo Creek, where he surrendered at the Virginia Hotel. It was there that he also took the oath.
It is believed that John Jones of the Third Wisconsin is the man who shot Jesse and allegedly, Jesse met the man before he departed Lexington. Oh to know what was said betwixt the two!
This was the second shot to the right lung that Jesse had sustained in a short period of time. This shot, however, left a lead minie ball in his lung – something that I believe caused much of his bizarre behavior in distant years from lead poisoning.
His wound was very serious and it was over a month before he could travel anywhere, but a Captain Rogers, upon learning of Jesse's mother and stepfather's exile to Nebraska, arranged passage on a steamboat up the Missouri to Kansas City where Jesse was to stay with his aunt and uncle, Mary James and John Mimms. These are the same folks who cared for him after his 1864 shot to the same lung.
And, they were the parents of Jesse's future wife, Zee Mimms – Jesse's first cousin, whom he would later marry.
Jesse stayed with the Mimms' through the rest of June and first half of July. Jesse recounted that, "Dr. Johnson Lykins ... visited me daily and did everything for my wound possible ... So did Dr. Jo Wood ... on the 15th of July, 1865, I went up the river to Rulo, in Nebraska, where my family were."
The trip was hard on Jesse and despite having a physician for a stepfather, Jesse's wound was very bad. His mother reported that "Jesse was often so near death in the eight weeks he was with me in Nebraska that I would bend over his bed and put my ear to his breast to see if he was breathing or his heart was beating."
One day, after two months in Nebraska, Jesse shakily whispered to his mother that he didn't want to be buried in a Northern state. So Zerelda arranged careful passage for Jesse to return to Kansas City.
He was in such poor shape and so weak that four men had to carry him to the steamboat landing and get him on a boat. Even with being carried, Jesse fainted dead away. When he awoke, he asked his mother where he was going and she said he was on a boat going home.
"Thank the Lord," he said.
Zerelda took Jesse back to Harlem, now Kansas City, where the Mimms' lived. She said that he was "wounded so badly he could not sit up in bed."
Cousin Zee nursed Jesse through the end of August and into the latter part of October and it was during this time that the two cousins fell in love with each other – becoming secretly engaged. It wasn't until the end of October before Jesse could even begin to walk a little and at that time, he returned to his family's farm in Kearney.
For a while, Jesse remained at the family farm recuperating from his wound. In 1866, he joined Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, was baptized, and "for a year or two, acted as if he was a sincere and true Christian," said Dr. W.H. Price, a resident of Kearney at the time. "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."
If one considers the extent of the wound Jesse had in his chest – remembering that it was a SECOND shot to the right lung – he was having difficulty recovering. His mother once recalled that every time he breathed, pus would come out of the wound. He was in a great deal of pain, weak and fragile and lost a lot of muscle weight that he'd had while living as a guerrilla during the war.
It is my personal opinion that Jesse was too fragile, too weak and not in a place during the first couple of years after the war, where he could ride a horse and rob banks, while living on the run. That means I am of the opinion that he did not commit the first daylight robbery of the bank in Liberty, nor the bank in Richmond, Missouri (May 23, 1867) in which several men were killed.
Jesse was simply too unwell to carry these deeds out.
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| This photo, taken while Jesse and Frank were in Kentucky after the war, shows a very gaunt, skinny Jesse – evidence of the toll his lung injury took on his health. From left is their old guerrilla buddy Fletch Taylor, Frank (sitting and in Confederate clothing) and Jesse. |
"I went there in June 1867 and remained under his care for three weeks," recounted Jesse.
Despite the skills of this most famous surgeon, the doctor did not have a good prognosis for Jesse James.
"He told me that my lung was so badly decayed that I was bound to die and that the best thing I could do was to go home and die among my people," said Jesse.
However, in later years, Jesse would remember that he did not intuitively feel he was going to die from this wound, but he left Eve's care anyway and went to stay with relatives in Adairville, Kentucky, where his father was from.
At some point in Kentucky, Jesse was joined by his brother, Frank, and the boys decided to head to Paso Robles, California, where their father's brother, Drury Woodson James, was living and co-owner of a large ranch that contained some mineral waters of which Jesse hoped to partake.
Known for their curative powers, the springs contained sulfur – much as the later-discovered many springs in Excelsior Springs would produce by 1880 – two years before Jesse was killed. Excelsior Springs was an area that Jesse and Frank had, many a time, traveled through – indeed – it now houses the golf course on which the two Battles of Fredericksburg were held in 1863. However, in 1867, the springs were unknown to the James boys and they headed to California.
It is believed they traveled by sea from New York via Panama. And while in California, the boys attempted to find the grave of their father, but were unable to locate it.
Gaining some healing from the sulfur waters did help his constantly infected lung begin to heal, though it never was the same again and breathing was difficult at best.
Jesse and Frank returned from California in the fall of 1868 and Jesse requested that Mount Olivet Baptist Church remove his name from its membership. Perhaps he was feeling spiffy enough to get out on the road and start robbing a few banks and trains.
His withdrawal from the church was "for the stated reason that he believed himself unworthy," according to an April 11, 1874 Kansas City Star article.
Jesse always did have a strong sense of intuition, one that would develop as the years began to pass, his life on the run began to take its toll and that old lead minie ball began to leach poison throughout his body ... day by day.
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