T. J. Stiles

by Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War

  They stood at either end of the small dining room, cocking and firing their revolvers as fast as their fingers could work. A bullet tore through Liddil’s right thigh, but Hite was fatally wounded, perhaps by twenty-one-year-old Bob Ford, who had walked into the room after the fight erupted and opened fire.39

  Ford and Liddil had just crossed a terrible line. Their victim was a blood relative of Jesse James, the most dangerous man they had ever met. The implications filled Liddil with dread. He could not forget the fate of Ed Miller, whose ties to Jesse had been far closer than his own. “On the night of Thursday, 29th of December,” Liddil recalled, “Jesse and Charley Ford came down to Mrs. Bolton’s, where I had been since being wounded, and tried to get me to go with them. I declined to go. I mistrusted that Jesse wanted to kill me, and so [they] left.”40

  Liddil was caught between the law and Jesse James. The law struck first. On or about the night of January 6, 1882, Sheriff Timberlake stormed Bolton’s house with a posse. The wounded outlaw crept out a back door and hid in a nearby field, remaining there all the next day. Clearly he could evade neither side for long, so he decided to take his chances with the authorities, sending his mistress to Jefferson City to make a deal.

  “There was a mysterious individual that came to me,” Governor Crittenden later told the press. “She was dressed in black and heavily veiled, and desired to negotiate for the surrender of Dick Liddil. She was, I think, a widow named Bolton.” She soon returned to her boyfriend’s hiding place at her uncle’s farm in Ray County and presented the governor’s terms: Liddil was to surrender to Sheriff Timberlake; if he testified against the James brothers, he would not be prosecuted. He agreed. He arranged to meet Timberlake in a nearby pasture, and on January 24 he gave himself up.41

  Liddil felt himself to be a victim of circumstances. Bob Ford, on the other hand, had been diligently manipulating the situation to his own advantage for some time. Ever since Crittenden issued the enormous reward proclamation in July, he later said, he had been trying to think of ways to bring down Jesse. Of course, the twenty-one-year-old had not yet joined the gang, but his older brother Charley had. “I talked with him a good deal about killing Jesse for the large reward,” Bob said a few months later. “He agreed to assist me.”42

  To murder the famous outlaw was in itself a daunting mission, but Bob also faced an entire retinue of followers. So when Liddil and Hite suddenly began to blast away at each other in Bob’s sister’s dining room, he saw an opportunity to do away with two foes with a single shot—by killing one and turning the other against Jesse.

  When Bolton whispered through her veil into Crittenden’s ear, she spoke not only for her frightened lover, but also for her greedy brother, Bob. He had information to relay, she said, and a plot to carry out, provided the governor offered assurances. He replied with encouraging words, and agreed to meet the young man. On January 13, 1882, Crittenden came to Kansas City for the annual ball hosted by the Craig Rifles at the St. James Hotel. At some point during the evening, the governor retired from the festivities to a room where Ford waited. The agreement was made: a pardon and the reward money in return for Jesse James.

  The first fruits of Liddil’s surrender and Ford’s pact with the governor came with a midnight raid on the Hite farm in Kentucky, led by Timberlake and Commissioner Craig, on February 11. Unlike previous searches in the state in late 1881, this one resulted in the capture of Clarence Hite. Having learned the lesson of Deputy Marshal Overton’s problems the year before, the Missourians struck without the knowledge of local officials. Hite was quickly hustled back to Missouri. Faced with Liddil’s detailed confession, he pleaded guilty to participation in the Winston robbery.43

  Between Jesse’s own vengeance, bad luck, personal enmities, and Ford’s scheming, the entire gang had been wiped out, leaving only Charley Ford. (Frank had since departed for the East.) On March 22 or so, Bob heard from Jesse himself. He needed help, he said, and he invited the young man to move with Charley into his new house in St. Joseph. Bob readily agreed.44 Jesse James had only two followers remaining, and both were plotting to killing him.

  NOVEMBER 8, 1881, was moving day. Zee James never publicly complained about the family’s frequent relocations, but they must have exhausted her; this would be the fourth move since they came to Missouri seven months earlier, passing under the name of Jackson. Now Jesse had decided it was best to load their possessions into a wagon and cart themselves from Kansas City to St. Joseph. There they unloaded their furniture and clothing at the corner of Lafayette and Twenty-first Streets, where Jesse rented a house under the name of Thomas Howard.45

  Charley moved in with them, at Jesse’s request. “He loved Charley,” Frank declared. Jesse trusted the twenty-four-year-old recruit as much as he trusted anyone, and he took comfort in his companionship. He was increasingly lonely as his comrades disappeared. Frank was gone, Bill Ryan had been convicted, Clarence Hite was in Kentucky, and Wood had vanished. Sometime in November he scribbled a letter to Clarence. “It stated, in substance,” his cousin said, “that he was getting lonesome and he wanted me to come out and live with him.”46

  On Christmas Eve, Jesse moved his family for the last time. “He said he had just the place he wanted—on a high hill,” Charley Ford said. “He could see everybody and no one could see him, and he said he would not be afraid of a hundred men if he knew they were coming.” The house was literally around the corner, on 1318 Lafayette Street. Five days later, after Jesse settled his wife and children into their new home, he took Ford to Ray County to get Liddil. He discovered to his alarm that this former stalwart had turned sullen and disagreeable; he may have noticed Liddil’s leg wound as well. He made no connection between Liddil and Hite’s disappearance, however, and he left Liddil in peace. But he continued to mull over his strange behavior. Shortly after returning home, he wrote another letter to his cousin. “He said … that I had better leave home,” Clarence recalled. “Dick was in with the detectives and they would soon take me away.” (Hite was soon captured. He would die a year later from tuberculosis.)47

  Despite the grim omens and his own mounting suspicions, Jesse remained outwardly calm, even cheerful. He regularly stopped to buy cigars at a drugstore on Sixth Street in St. Joseph, where he would sit for half an hour or more and tell funny stories, winning the warm friendship of the owner. He reportedly applied for a job at the new train depot, claiming—with his characteristic sense of humor—to have extensive experience in the express and railroad business.

  He also plunged ahead with his profession. “Jesse went to Nebraska … to find a place to live where he could go farming,” Zee claimed. He did, in fact, open negotiations to purchase a farm there. But it appears to have been a ploy to learn more about the local banks, much like the feigned farm purchase before the Northfield robbery. In mid-March, he took Charley on a tour of eastern Kansas, moving from town to town in search of a ripe bank. “He wanted to know if I knew anybody who would help us,” Charley recalled. It was exactly the opportunity Ford had been waiting for. “I told him I thought I could get my brother to help us if I could go down and see him.” They went to Zerelda’s farm to see Jesse’s half-brother John, who had been shot after getting drunk at a party and was not expected to live. Then they rounded up Bob Ford, who moved in with them on March 23.48

  “Jesse told me to be very particular about what I said to Bob, as he might not be true,” Charley said. Charley promised that his brother could be trusted. “Well,” Jesse replied, “it is better for us to know our own business. My wife don’t know anything about my exploits, and I never want her to.” He tried to keep both brothers in sight at all times, Charley claimed, and “watched every move we made.”

  For the Fords, the last week of March was a time of unrelenting stress. “My brother and I had made it up to kill him,” Charley said. “I knew he was quicker than I, and I would not try it when he had his arms on. He was so watchful no man could get the drop on him.” Bob agreed. “We waited a
long time to catch Jesse without his revolvers,” he noted, “knowing that unless he put them off we could not fetch him.” The tension rose still higher when the story of Liddil’s surrender broke on the last day of March. The betrayal infuriated Jesse, but the thought of defying his enemies filled him with pleasure. On April 2, he lay back on his bed and listened to Bob Ford read a press account of the gang’s activities, culminating in the prediction that Jesse would soon be captured. Jesse laughed, Bob reported, “and remarked that he might have to go under eventually, but before he did he would shake up the country once or twice more.”49

  He had a specific exploit in mind: to rob the bank in Platte City (Plattsburg, by some accounts), while a dramatic murder trial diverted the town’s attention. “We intended to start for Platte City Monday night [April 3] and rob the bank Tuesday morning,” Charley said. “Jesse said on Monday morning … that it would be a fine scheme and would be published all over the United States as a daring robbery.”50

  After breakfast that morning, Jesse and Charley went out to the stable to feed and curry the horses. By the time they returned, Jesse had become uncomfortable in his customary finery. “It’s an awfully hot day,” he complained. He took off his coat and unbuttoned his vest and threw both on his bed. “I guess I’ll take off my pistols,” he mused aloud, “for fear somebody will see them if I walk in the yard.” He unbuckled his belt and tossed aside his holstered revolvers. 51

  As Zee and the children busied themselves in the kitchen, Jesse glanced up at the pictures on the walls of the main room. He picked up a brush, pushed a chair forward, stepped up, and began fastidiously to sweep away the dust. Then he heard a sound more familiar to him than any other: the metallic clack of cocking pistols. He turned his head toward the noise just as an enormous roar erupted, accompanied by the brief sensation of his skull disintegrating just behind his ear.52

  * This reluctance on the part of law enforcement in Kentucky was not unique to the case of Jesse James; the state was notorious for its toleration of crime. See Robert M. Ireland, “Law and Disorder in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky,” in The South, part 1, ed. Eric H. Monkkonen (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1992), 230–48.

  This lithograph shows the officials of the Radical administration that triumphed in Missouri in 1864 and emancipated the state’s slaves. The Radicals also drafted and enforced a state constitution that extended new civil rights to African Americans, and barred former Confederates from the ballot box, juries, many professions, and the pulpit. (Library of Congress)

  After the war, President Andrew Johnson accepted white supremacy in the South and extended pardons to all former rebels, helping to trigger a Northern blacklash. This 1866 cartoon by Thomas Nast illustrates Northern revulsion by casting the conservative president as Iago, linking him to white-supremacist violence in the South. (Library of Congress)

  The Reconstruction Acts (passed over President Johnson’s vetoes) extended new political rights to African Americans. Former Confederate soldiers responded with paramilitary organizations that terrorized black activists and their white allies. Many adopted the garb and rituals of the Ku Klux Klan, which first appeared in Tennessee in 1866. The disguises of the James-Younger outlaws in their first train robbery, in 1873, were described by witnesses as Klan masks. (Library of Congress)

  Union general Ulysses S. Grant served as president from 1869 to 1877. He supported congressional Reconstruction policies and pushed prosecutions of the Klan in the South. In his letters to the press, Jesse James repeatedly attacked Grant as a tyrant. (Library of Congress)

  This 1870 photograph shows a locomotive, a coal tender, and a baggage car of the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad. The James-Younger bandits concerned themselves almost exclusively with this section of the trains they stopped; they held up passengers only twice in eight years of railway robberies. Their target was the cash and valuables in the express safe in the baggage car. (Denver Public Library)

  Union general and Republican Thomas C. Fletcher was governor of Missouri from 1865 to 1869. Jesse James and his mother frequently singled out Fletcher and the militia he deployed aggressively against the ex-Confederate guerrillas as the direct cause of Jesse’s fugitive status. (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia)

  Charles H. Hardin, governor from 1875 to 1877, made the hunt for the outlaws a centerpiece of his administration—only to see them emerge as statewide heroes after a bloody raid by Pinkerton operatives on the Samuel farm in 1875. (Missouri State Archives)

  Missouri governor Silas Woodson, who served from 1873 to 1875, had no sympathy for the outlaws, seeing them as a political liability and an obstruction to the inflow of immigrants and investment. In 1874 he pushed the legislature to pass a secret-service act to fund the hunt for the bandits. (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia)

  Allan Pinkerton, shown here in 1862, led the foremost private detective agency in the country. He was hired by the Adams Express Company in 1874 to hunt for the James and Younger brothers; after the murder of two of his agents, he carried on at his own expense. The struggle proved to be the most serious defeat of his career. (Library of Congress)

  Jesse James around the time of his thirtieth birthday. Here again his striking blue eyes can be seen, along with his somewhat unusual upturned nose. (Library of Congress)

  Jesse and his first cousin Zerelda “Zee” Mimms, named for his mother, married in 1874. They had two children: Jesse Edwards (named after John N. Edwards) and Mary. (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia)

  A graduate of West Point, Adelbert Ames received the Medal of Honor for his wartime heroics in the Union army. A champion of civil rights, he was elected U.S. senator, then governor, of Mississippi. In the spring of 1876 he moved to Northfield, Minnesota, where his family shared an interest in the First National Bank, which is why the James-Younger gang targeted it in September 1876. (Library of Congress)

  This photograph shows the Northfield, Minnesota, town square, viewed from the outlaws’ perspective as they approached the First National Bank. In the foreground is the bridge over the Cannon River. The large building straight across the square is the Dampier Hotel; the Scriver block (with the bank in the rear) faces onto the square at the right. (Northfield Historical Society)

  Here the Scriver block is seen from the perspective of the ground floor of the Dampier Hotel. The bank is in the rear of the building, facing onto Division Street; the square is to the right. The Younger brothers fought the last part of the brief gun battle during the robbery with their backs to the wall, under the exterior staircase. (Northfield Historical Society)

  The interior of the bank, essentially as it appeared in 1876. Joseph L. Heywood sat behind a desk to the right, facing inward; Alonzo E. Bunker sat behind the counter to the left, closest to the teller window, with Frank Wilcox toward the rear. The safe is just visible within the vault. (Northfield Historical Society)

  clockwise from top left: Clell Miller, killed at Northfield; William Stiles, alias Bill Chadwell, killed at Northfield; Cole Younger, captured near Madelia during the escape; Bob Younger, captured near Madelia; Jim Younger, captured near Madelia; Samuel Wells, alias Charlie Pitts, killed near Madelia. (Northfield Historical Society)

  This poster announces a reward, funded by the railroad corporations. The offer has often been misrepresented as “dead or alive”—though that was how it was applied. (State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia)

  Thomas T. Crittenden, a former militia officer, was Missouri governor from 1881 to 1885. He devoted much of his first two years to coordinating the effort to destroy Jesse James’s resurrected gang. He convened a meeting of railroad and express executives to raise money for a large reward, and met with Bob Ford shortly before Ford assassinated Jesse. (Missouri State Archives)

  The house where Jesse James was killed in St. Joseph, Missouri (the building was later relocated). The “bullet hole” noted on the sign was unrelated to the shooting; testimony at the coroner’s inquest indicated that the le
thal bullet (the only one fired) lodged just under the skin above Jesse’s left eye. This modest building was typical of the houses Jesse and Zee rented after their marriage. (Library of Congress)

  The two bullet wounds Jesse James suffered in the Civil War are visible on the right side of his chest. As seen here, he grew his beard and dyed it black toward the end of his life. (Library of Congress)

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Apotheosis

  DEATH REDEEMED THE TRUTH. For twelve years, ever since Jesse James’s name had come to public attention with the murder of Captain Sheets, his comings and goings had remained a matter of conjecture and deliberate misinformation; even his death had been reported falsely in late 1879. On April 3, 1882, however, there could be no mistake about the identity of the dead man on the floor of that small house in St. Joseph, or about the manner of his demise. The single bullet that killed him started a cascade of names and places and details in the days that followed, pouring into public view so much of what had been hidden.