The Top 5 Most Notorious Outlaws (2 page)

The James family began its long association with Clay County, Missouri in 1842 when Robert Salle James moved there with his wife, Zerelda Cole James. Robert, a 24 year-old student at Georgetown College, a Baptist school in Kentucky, had gone to Clay County to visit his mother-in-law, but he and his new wife took a liking to the area, which reminded them of Kentucky. Robert left Zerelda in the care of his mother-in-law and returned to Kentucky to finish his education, earning a bachelor of arts on June 23, 1843. By all accounts, Robert was well regarded by his classmates.

Robert was also busy starting a family. Zerelda gave birth to Alexander Franklin James on January 10, 1843. Another son, Robert R. James, died shortly after his birth in 1845. And by the time Jesse Woodward James was born on September 5, 1847, Robert was the pastor at New Hope Baptist Church with a growing congregation approaching 100 people. In 1848, Robert earned a master of arts degree from Georgetown College and a year later, he helped found the Baptist college William Jewell in Liberty, Missouri. That was the same year that his daughter, Susan Lavinia, was born. Like many in Missouri, Robert James was also a farmer and a slave owner.

The James Farm in Kearney, where Jesse lived as a child

All of these facts make it surprising that Robert James decided to leave his family and his congregation to follow the gold rush to California in 1850. Theories vary; some say he went to escape the consistent nagging of headstrong Zerelda, while others say he went to preach and save the souls of the prospectors. His brother, Drury James, was there too, so it was also possible he went to visit him. Perhaps he simply wanted to get rich. Whatever the cause, three year old Jesse cried and begged his father not to go.

Robert’s decision was fateful, and his stay out west proved short lived. On August 18, 1850, Robert came down with cholera and died in a gold camp near what is now Placerville, California. Zerelda remarried Benjamin Simms two years later, a man a bit older than her who had little affection for her children. By the time Benjamin died in 1854 after being thrown by a horse, he and Zerelda had already separated.

In 1854, Dr. Rueben Samuel moved to Greenville, Missouri, just three miles from Zerelda’s farm. He opened a medical office in the store owned by William James, Robert’s brother. A year later, on September 26, 1855, Rueben and Zerelda were married. Zerelda requested that Rueben sign a prenuptial agreement, leaving her the six slaves and 200 acres of land should the marriage not last. The marriage did last, and Rueben eventually gave up medicine to work the family tobacco farm.

Zerelda James

Not much is known about the details of Jesse’s childhood. Frank was said to be one that liked to instigate trouble, then stand back and watch. Jesse was not much different from other boys growing up in rural Missouri, finding himself in a scuffle from time to time, but nothing out of the ordinary for the time or place. Both boys went through at least elementary school, and somewhere along the way Frank developed an affinity for the works of William Shakespeare.

Even though Jesse hardly knew his father, he inherited Robert’s views on slavery and abolition. Robert James wanted no part of Northerners encroaching on what he viewed as the South’s God-given right to own slaves and conduct business as they saw fit. The mid-19th century was a time of divisiveness in the nation as the United States looked toward westward expansion while having to address the institution of slavery, which threatened to tear the country apart. Missouri was a center of that battle since its application for statehood in 1819, and even though Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state, the issue was an extremely volatile one.

As it turned out, Jesse James would grow up during one of the most precarious eras in American history, and ultimately it would help lead him down the path he chose. The issue of whether Missouri would be a free state or slave state had been decided over a generation earlier, but throughout the 1850s, American politicians tried to sort out the nation’s intractable issues. In an attempt to organize the center of North America – Kansas and Nebraska – without offsetting the slave-free balance, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act eliminated the Missouri Compromise line of 1820, which the Compromise of 1850 had maintained.  The Missouri Compromise had stipulated that states north of the boundary line determined in that bill would be free, and that states south of it could
 
have slavery. This was essential to maintaining the balance of slave and free states in the Union.  The Kansas-Nebraska Act, however, ignored the line completely and proposed that all new territories be organized by popular sovereignty.  Settlers could vote whether they wanted their state to be slave or free.

When popular sovereignty became the standard in Kansas and Nebraska, the primary result was that thousands of zealous pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates both moved to Kansas to influence the vote, creating a dangerous (and ultimately deadly) mix. Numerous attacks took place between the two sides, and many pro-slavery Missourians organized attacks on Kansas towns just across the border. Living in Clay County, young Jesse grew up in a part of Missouri that was dubbed “Little Dixie” for its pro-Southern sentiments and Southern culture. Jesse was nine years old when the Kansas-Missouri Border War broke out, but for five years he witnessed the bloody violence that accompanied the border war. By the time the Civil War started in 1861, there was little doubt which side Jesse and his brother, Frank, would take.

Jesse was still too young to fight in the unofficial border war, but the best known abolitionist in Bleeding Kansas was a middle aged man named John Brown. A radical abolitionist, Brown organized a small band of like-minded followers and fought with the armed groups of pro-slavery men in Kansas for several months, including a notorious incident known as the Pottawatomie Massacre, in which Brown’s supporters murdered five men. Over 50 people died before John Brown left the territory, which ultimately entered the Union as a free state in 1859.

When the Civil War finally broke out in 1861, the border states of Kentucky and Missouri became even more important. By remaining neutral and not seceding, they became battlegrounds between the Union and Confederate forces, and Kentucky was so important that President Lincoln himself famously said, “I hope to have God on my side but I must have Kentucky.”

The unsettled nature of the politics also dictated the nature of the fighting there, which would be dominated by guerrillas and “bushwhackers”. By 1862, the battle lines in the Western theater had shifted well south of Missouri, leaving it firmly in Union control. Frank James joined the Confederate army, but when the Union dominated the rebel forces in Missouri, Clay County became occupied territory. Meanwhile, the state had its own militia and took the position that anyone associated with the Confederacy was a traitor. Anyone believed to be a Confederate or assisting the Confederacy risked a raid from the militia.

Thus, Confederate sympathizers fought what could loosely be called a counterinsurgency, sparking savage guerilla warfare in the woods and fields of Missouri. Cattle were confiscated on behalf of the Union, houses were burned, and pro-slavery sympathizers were lynched on their own property. Union civilians were murdered in their own fields in retaliation.

By 1864, the violence within the state began to slow down, but a small, militant faction remained committed to aggression against the Union for humiliating the Confederates, as well as persuading others from supporting the federal government. Known as the bushwhackers, the guerilla soldiers of western Missouri operated outside of the chain-of-command of the Confederacy, seeking vengeance with no small dose of extreme violence.

Frank joined one of the dozens of bushwhacker groups, with Jesse, now 15 years old, sometimes serving as a messenger between his mother and the band of guerillas Frank rode with. When Union soldiers came to the Samuel-James farm to get more information on Frank’s location, Rueben initially would not comply. However, when the Union men strung him up and hung him from a tree, with Zerelda standing nearby, unleashing a verbal barrage upon the Union militia, Rueben eventually gave in and led the men to the bushwhackers’ hiding place. The militia interrupted a poker game and the guerillas scattered. Frank got away with some of the other men, leaving two dead bushwhackers behind. After the bushwhackers regrouped, they were attacked again and lost more men in the fight.

Though he ultimately relented and gave the Union militia the information they wanted, Rueben was taken to Liberty, Missouri and jailed for aiding the Confederacy. Soon after that, he was transferred to St. Joseph. He was paroled on June 24, 1863. Zerelda was paroled in St. Joseph on June 5 after she signed an oath pledging her loyalty to the Union, which she, of course, had no intention of honoring. A letter dated July 8, 1863 was found in Rueben’s file with the provost marshal and was signed by three neighbors. It addressed the incident at the farm and his initial refusal to assist the Union men, which led to his arrest. The letter said:

“In the case of Dr. Reuben Samuel, held as prisoner by the military, to report at Saint Joseph, we his neighbors, desire to state that we regard him as a peaceable, quiet, and inoffensive man, who would harm no one. He is, we hesitate not to state, under the control of his wife [and] stepson, and is really afraid to act contrary to their wishes on anything. This fear, we believe, caused him to make a false statement, which he would not, otherwise, have done. We know no man who is more peacefully inclined and who is more inoffensive. We therefore request you to discharge him.”

Though Jesse wanted to join his brother with the bushwhackers, he was brushed off as being too young, not to mention the fact he had other responsibilities at home with his parents in jail and a tobacco farm to tend. It did not help his cause when he blew off the tip of a finger cleaning a gun, earning him the nickname “Dingus” from the guerillas.

It is believed that Jesse finally got his chance to join up with the bushwhackers in the spring of 1864. Lt. Charles “Fletch” Taylor was in Clay County on a recruiting trip and likely encountered Jesse at that time. As a bushwhacker, Jesse saw violence on a horrific level. Men were not simply murdered, but some were scalped or disemboweled. Other Union men had their noses and ears cut off, their skulls crushed, or their throats cut. Fighting occurred at close range with revolvers rather than rifles. Bushwhacker units often carried multiple guns with them, allowing them to fire off six shots from one gun, six from another, and sometimes, six more shots from a third revolver, all at close range. Jesse survived a gunshot that passed through his upper chest and out the other side of his body. He was taken to Kansas City and spent two months recuperating at the home of his uncle, John Mimms. His cousin, Zee, kept a close watch over him until he was ready to return to the fighting.

The man who served as Jesse’s mentor was a cold-blooded psychopathic killer named William T. Anderson, also known as “Bloody Bill.” Before the Civil War, Anderson was a horse thief, and when it began he was part of the pro-Union “Jayhawkers” before he switched sides and worked with William Clarke Quantrill, perhaps the most famous bushwhacker in the region and considered by many to be the most vicious killer of them all. It is believed that Frank James may have also been part of Quantrill’s Raiders, which became notorious for the August 1863 massacre of 200 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas, an abolitionist center. Jesse’s mother would later name her daughter Fanny Quantrill Samuel after the notorious killer.

Bloody Bill Anderson

Quantrill

In the summer of 1864, Jesse joined Anderson, who led his band of guerillas on a murderous rampage. Known to decorate the saddle of his horse with Union scalps, Anderson was not afraid to take risks and start a fight even if he was outnumbered. His campaign of violence peaked in Centralia, Missouri on September 27, 1864, when he led a group of guerilla soldiers into Centralia and pillaged the town, murdering 22 unarmed Union soldiers along the way. When over 100 Union soldiers pursued the rebels, Anderson and his men were waiting and successfully ambushed them, killing even those who attempted to surrender. Many of the soldiers were tortured, and some were beheaded. This bloody massacre was Jesse’s introduction to a violent life that he would never leave behind. When Anderson was caught and killed near Albany, Missouri a month later, a rope that he used to track the number of murders he was responsible for had 54 knots.

After the Centralia massacre, Zerelda was very proud of her sons, never swaying from the belief that they were Confederate heroes. However, in January 1865, Rueben and Zerelda received official orders from the Headquarters of the Department of Missouri accusing Zerelda of being disloyal to the federal government. She and her family were ordered to go under the supervision of an armed guard to either Memphis or Little Rock, whichever location they chose. However, they opted to hide out in Rulo, Nebraska, where Zerelda may have taught school and Rueben might have tried to revive his medical practice. They did not return to Missouri until the Civil War was over.

As the war finally drew to a close in April 1865, the bushwhackers initially did not believe it and thought it was just another Yankee lie. However, even after it was verified, Jesse James and the bushwhackers did not quit fighting on behalf of the Confederacy. After heading to Texas with Anderson’s bushwhackers near the end of the war, Jesse returned to Missouri in time for a Wisconsin cavalryman to shoot him during a skirmish in May 1865, sending a bullet through his lung. Jesse was sent back to Kansas City to recuperate once again and made his way to Rulo, no doubt under the care of his stepfather. He was also tended to by first cousin Zerelda Mimms, who was named after Jesse’s mother, and nearly a decade later Jesse would make her his wife. During his recuperation, according to his mother, Jesse said that he did not want to die but, if he did, he did not want to be buried in a northern state. She vowed that would not happen.

In May 1865, Missouri crafted a new, voter-approved state constitution. The state’s slaves were freed and in order to vote, men had to take an oath verifying that they had not committed disloyal acts against the United States. This resulted in sweeping changes in local politics, including in Jesse James’s home county, as any last vestiges of the Confederacy were removed. That August, Zerelda and her husband returned home, and soon after that Jesse and Frank joined her. As Missouri politics shifted toward an acceptance of Union values, particularly regarding emancipation, Jesse and other guerilla fighters resisted. While some former Confederates were able to move forward, Jesse either could or would not. He, like many of the other bushwhackers, viewed himself as a victim and believed he was being persecuted because of his role in the Civil War. Thus, the resistance of the bushwhackers would continue, albeit in another form.