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8. Jules Tygiel, Past Time: Baseball as History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 38; William A. Berkey, The Money Question: The Legal Tender Paper Money System of the United States (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969, orig. pub. 1876), 16–17, 164–73, discusses the use of bonds as currency. The selling of U.S. bonds to private individuals was a wartime innovation; see McPherson, 442–3.
9. Bogue, 304–5; Clay County Savings Association advertisement, Liberty Tribune, June 2, 1865. Lists of country banks, with correspondent banks in New York, can be found in the issues of the Bankers’ Magazine and Statistical Register for the late 1860s; see, for example, the January 1866 issue, 584–7. This assessment of small-bank lending is based partly on a study of the discount book, 1859–1881, of Hughes & Wasson, a bank in Richmond, Ray County, Missouri; J. S. Hughes & Co., vol. 3, coll. 277, WHMC. Bogue notes one possible reason that loans were for such short periods is that interest rates trended downward, a disincentive to long-term borrowing.
10. For the Paw Paw controversy and Bird’s minor part in it, see chap. 6, and O.R. 1: XXII, part 2: 584, 587, 591, 1143; see also a receipt for payment to Greenup Bird, county clerk, out of the estate of Robert James, Robert James Probate Records, Clay County Archives. Judging by an advertisement for the Clay County Savings Association in the Liberty Tribune, June 2, 1865, Bird became cashier in late 1865, at a time when the Radical identity of the bank was becoming firmer. James Love, for example, became president of the bank, replacing A. J. Calhoun, at about the same time that he replaced Calhoun as circuit clerk under the Ouster Ordinance; Calhoun appears nowhere in documents recording the names of Clay County Republicans, in newspapers, the Missouri State Archives, or anywhere else.
11. Bird gave the amounts as $5,008.46 in coin (mostly gold) from special deposits, $8,668.18 in greenbacks and national banknotes, $3,096 in state military bonds, $300 in old Farmer’s Bank notes, and $40,000 in U.S. 7.30 bonds; Greenup Bird, “Clay County Savings Association Robbery Description, 1866,” typed copy, coll. 693, WHMC; Bird’s tally varies slightly from the one published in the Liberty Tribune, February 16, 1866; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, February 16, 1866; Robert J. Wybrow, “ ‘Ravenous Monsters of Society’: The Early Exploits of the James Gang,” Brand Book 27, no. 2 (summer 1990), published by the English Westerners’ Society, 1–24; Republican Central Committee Meeting, Clay County, January 1, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 161, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC; Yeatman, 85–6. The detail of the rearing horse was repeated by Wymore’s father, William H. Wymore, Sr.; see Portrait and Biographical Record of Clay, Ray, Carroll, Chariton, and Linn Counties, Missouri (Chicago: Chapman Brothers, 1893), 146; for Mount Gilead Church, see W. H. Woodson, History of Clay County, Missouri (Topeka: Historical Publishing Company, 1920), 202.
12. Settle, 34; Liberty Tribune, February 16, 1866. For an insightful look at the prominent place of professional thieves in American crime, see Larry K. Hartsfield, The American Response to Professional Crime, 1870–1914 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985), 11–37. Hartsfield’s notion that burglary was the primary problem for police detectives reflects the author’s findings in an extensive review of crime reports in newspapers and professional journals such as the Bankers’ Magazine. (Of the sixteen crimes it reported in the March 1866 issue, for example, the Liberty raid was the only holdup.) The relative—perhaps total—absence of antebellum bank holdups is partially explained by the lack of revolvers; see chap. 9 for a discussion of the postwar arming of the population. As late as 1876, a prominent detective argued that violent crime was foreign to the American criminal (Hartsfield, 51). See also David R. Johnson, Policing the Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American Police, 1800–1887 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), esp. 41–67. As late as 1897, two Boston police officials cast the armed robber as a relatively marginal kind of criminal; in Our Rival the Rascal (Boston: Pemberton, 1897), Superintendent of Police Benjamin F. Eldridge and Chief Inspector of the Detective Bureau William B. Watts devoted ten of thirteen chapters on the various types of criminal to nonviolent burglars, safecrackers, forgers, and confidence men; one to arsonists, one to “highwaymen,” and one to train robbers, with much emphasis placed on pilferers and sneak thieves.
13. Liberty Tribune, February 16, 1866; Portrait and Biographical Record of Clay, 184, 196–7; 2nd Lieutenant James B. Burbank to General, October 25, 1866, B 232, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, box 20, A-C 1866, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA.
14. Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, February 13, 1866.
15. Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), 253–61.
16. Liberty Tribune, February 16, 1866; the evidence regarding the names of the robbers is catalogued by Wybrow, “Ravenous Monsters,” 6–7. Frank Triplett claimed that former guerrillas told him that Arch Clement planned and led the robbery, The Life, Times, and Treacherous Death of Jesse James (New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1970, orig. pub. 1882), 330; Jim Cummins confirmed this in Jim Cummins’ Book Written by Himself (Denver: Reed Publishing, 1903), 97. James D. Horan, Desperate Men: The James Gang and the Wild Bunch (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997, orig. pub. 1949), 53, claims to have seen an account by Jackson County farmhand R. I. Stepp relating the Minter identification in the papers of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency. Unlike myself, Yeatman, 85–6, accepts the long-standing alibi regarding Jesse James’s May 1865 lung wound. For more on Munkers, see Woodson, 202. Dick Liddil later claimed that Jesse James told him he did not take part, though Frank did; the reliability of this secondhand account, however, is highly questionable, as other lists of robbers Liddil provided in the same statement proved flatly wrong; St. Louis Republican, September 9, 1883.
17. H. H. Williams to Thos. C. Fletcher, March 10, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 376, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC.
18. Thomas C. Fletcher to the Adjutant General, March 10, 1866, and H. H. Williams to Thos. C. Fletcher, March 10, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 376, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC; Shoemaker, 4: 222–3, 280–1; John Glendower Westover, “The Evolution of the Missouri Militia, 1804–1919” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1948), 169–70.
19. Tho. C. Fletcher to Col., March 19, 1866, coll. KC 200, WHMC-KC.
20. Liberty Tribune, March 30, 1866; Wybrow, “Ravenous Monsters,” 7; Albert Castel and Thomas Goodrich, Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1998), 136–7.
21. Lexington Caucasian, May 2, 1866; Castel and Goodrich, 137.
22. Yeatman,87.
23. Shelby M. Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service: Personal Recollections of Shelby M. Cullom (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1911), excerpted in T. J. Stiles, ed., Robber Barons and Radicals: Reconstruction and the Origins of Civil Rights (New York: Berkley, 1997), 33. For a full discussion of the differences between moderate Republicans and the Radicals in Congress, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 1863–1877: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 228–39.
24. Foner, 177, 44; for Johnson’s attempt to reconstruct the South, see 176–227, the primary basis of the discussion that follows.
25. Stiles, Robber Barons, 34. For the text of Johnson’s proclamations, see Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States During the Period of Reconstruction, 2nd ed. (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, orig. pub. 1875), 7–18.
26. Quoted in Patrick W. Riddleberger, 1866: The Critical Year Revisited (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), 179; McPherson, Political History, 29–44.
27. Joseph B. James, The Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 3–20.
28. Foner, 239–51; quotes from 250–1; McPherson, Political History, 68–81.
29. Riddleberger, 180–97; Foner, 261–3.
31. Edward Bates to Andrew Johnson, July 12, 1866, in Paul H. Bergeron, ed., The Papers of Andrew Johnson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 10: 538–9; Putnam County quote from Parrish, Radical, 79–81; Vernon County quote from M. C. Anderson and Robert W. McNeil to Andrew Johnson, June 7, 1866, in Johnson Papers, 10: 568–9.
32. Blair’s relationship with Johnson, his intense racism, and his role in building the Conservative Party is discussed in William E. Parrish, Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 230–40; Frank Blair to Andrew Johnson, March 1866, Johnson Papers, 10:270.
33. Parrish, Radical, 64–71; Parrish, Blair, 241–50.
34. Abner L. Gilstrap to Andrew Johnson, May 26, 1866, Johnson Papers, 10: 538–9; George N. Early to Samuel P. Simpson, Adjutant General, May 4, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 376, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC; Thomas J. Gantt to John Hogan, August 10, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA; Shoemaker, 4: 186; see especially Parrish, Radical, 89–96.
35. Thomas C. Ready to Andrew Johnson, July 24, 1866, Johnson Papers, 10: 727–9; Brigadier General F. Cooley to Sam P. Simpson, Adjutant General, May 5, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 376, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC.
36. Montgomery Blair to Andrew Johnson, August 1866, and William T. Sherman to Andrew Johnson, August 9, 1866, Johnson Papers, 11: 3, 51–3; see also 10: 727–9; Thomas J. Gantt to John Hogan, August 10, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part:, NA; Parrish, Radical, 92–5. Fletcher, of course, was being pilloried for necessary steps he had taken to fight the guerrillas; see, for example, the Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, September 6, 1866; Parrish, Radical, 92–5.
37. John W. Sheets to Col. J. McFerran, August 14, 1866, John W. Sheets to Col. McFerran, August 21, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA.
38. James N. Primm, “The G.A.R. in Missouri, 1866–1870,” Journal of Southern History 20, no. 3 (August 1954): 356–75; Robert B. Beath, History of the Grand Army of the Republic (New York: Bryan, Taylor, & Co., 1889), 546–8; Riddleberger, 203; History III, 138–40; Parrish, Radical, 82–92; F. R. Sieg to James, August 26, 1866, Sieg Papers, Duke.
39. George to Cousins Mat and Kate, August 4, 1866, Watkins Mill. A “dutchman” was a German. (Germans were nicknamed “Dutch” after the German word for “German,” Deutsch.) Secessionists despised Germans as Radicals and abolitionists.
40. Affidavit of Samuel Crawford, September 1, 1866, file 19433, Provost-2; McClair Wilson to Major General Hancock, September 1, 1866, Allan P. Richardson to Maj. Genl. Hancock, September 12, 1866, Affidavit of T. W. McAuthor, September 2, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA. These are only a few of many letters in this file. Probably the best part of Fellman’s work is its discussion of 1866, 238–41, though he omits the role of the national controversy and conflates Unionist Conservatives with secessionists.
41. Johnson Papers, 11: 91–2, 359–60; Austin A. King to General Hancock, October 22, 1866, A. H. Buchanan to A. A. King, October 22, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA; Fellman, 240. Many letters to the army in 1866 relate to arms that each party said the other was ordering.
42. Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, September 5, 1866; D. Peterson to Brother, September 6, 1866, Jane Peterson Papers, Duke.
43. John Cawgill to My Dear Friend, September 3, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA.
44. L. M. Matz to My Dear Cousin, April 2, 1866, L. M. Matz to My Dear Cousin, October 29, 1866, William Dunlap Simpson Papers, Duke; see also Lexington Caucasian, May 2, 1866.
45. Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965); Daniel O’Flaherty, General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000, orig. pub. 1954), 226–326; Thomas B. Alexander, “Political Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1865–1870,” and Ross A. Webb, “Kentucky: ‘Pariah Among the Elect,’ ” in Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment: The Border States During Reconstruction, ed. Richard O. Curry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), 37–145; for typical press coverage of “the Southern exiles,” see the St. Louis Republican, November 3, 1866.
46. Tho. C. Fletcher to Maj. Genl. W. S. Hancock, September 15, 1866, H. D. Branch to Maj. Genl. Wm. S. Hancock, August 24, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA; L. M. Matz to My Dear Cousin, October 29, 1866, William Dunlap Simpson Papers, Duke.
47. Missouri Valley Register, December 27, 1866, also October 25, 1866, and January 24, 1867; Wybrow, “Ravenous Monsters,” 9; Brownlee, 241. The Missouri Valley Register, which pointedly observed Pool’s behavior that day, was a Radical paper, owned by the Republican leader in Lexington, Frank Cooley; see Young, 295.
48. Lexington Caucasian, October 31, 1866; Missouri Valley Register, December 27, 1866; Wybrow, “Ravenous Monsters,” 9. For an advertisement describing the bank’s business, see Lexington Caucasian, October 17, 1866. George N. Moses blamed the robbery on Arch Clement; George N. Moses to William Connelly, box 1, fold. 37, William Connelly Collection, Denver Public Library Mitchell made no effort to catch the bandits; see St. Louis Republican, November 3, 1866. He was called “a prominent Union citizen” in the Lexington Caucasian, October 31, 1866, January 8, 1867, but did not appear in the lengthy roster of Lexington Radicals in a Petition to Appoint Dr. F. Cooley as Supervisor of Registration, December 18, 1865, Thomas C. Fletcher Papers, MSA. A company of federal troops stationed nearby was out of town on the day of the robbery.
49. F. M. Fulkerson to His Excellency Gov. Fletcher, Oct. 9, 1866, Petition to His Excellency T. C. Fletcher, October 1, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA.
50. Woodson, 202; Sheriff James M. Jones to Bvt. Maj. Genl. Wm. Hoffman, November 7, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, part 1, RG 393, NA (Sheriff James M. Jones, Deputy J. H. Rickards, county clerk William Brining, and registrar Harsel signed their names to the appeal); Kansas City Journal of Commerce, November 24, 1866; W. M. Paxton, Annals of Platte County, Missouri (Kansas City, Mo.: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing, 1897), 426; Shoemaker, 4: 315–16.
51. Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, November 24, 1866.
52. Ibid., December 7, 1866.
53. Lexington Caucasian, October 21, October 31, November 14, 1866; John Starrett Hughes, “Lafayette County and the Aftermath of Slavery, 1861-1870,” MHR 75, no. 1 (October 1980): 51–63. The heavily German composition of the Radical Party in Lexington is seen in the names on a petition asking that Cooley be named supervisor of registration, December 18, 1865, Thomas C. Fletcher Papers, MSA.
54. Lexington Caucasian, October 21, 1866.
55. James J. Emerson, Capt. 14th U.S. Infantry, November 6, 1866, and Thos. Adamson, Sheriff, Lafayette County, to Governor T. C. Fletcher, November 8, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA. The James brothers’ connection to Lexington and Dave Pool continued for many years; see Lexington Caucasian, August 30, 1873, and October 17, 1874.
56. W. S. Hancock, Maj. Genl., to Genl. Simpson, November 10, 1866, and W. P. Wilson to Major General Hancock, December 3,
1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA. Hancock, a future Democratic presidential candidate, had received his Missouri command at the urging of the state’s Conservatives.
57. Enlistment in the three regiments was voluntary, under the terms of General Order No. 7, issued October 10, 1866; Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, December 14, 1866; clipping from St. Louis Dispatch, December 11, 1866, and W. P. Wilson to Major General Hancock, December 3, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA.
58. O.R. 1: XVII, part 1: 725–7; 1: XXIV, part 1: 349–52, 490–4; 1: XXIV, part 2: 578–9; 1: XXIV, part 3: 21; 1: XXVI, part 1: 369–70, 376, 710, 828; 1: XXXIV, part 1: 175; 1: XLI, part 1: 277–8, 882; 1: XLI, part 4: 362; 1: XLVIII, part 1: 1020. Montgomery was also a supervisor of registration in Saline County. Fellman, 241, offers a partial account of these events in Lexington.
59. Austin A. King to General Hancock, December 4, 1866, Richard C. Vaughanto Maj. Genl. Hancock, December 5, 13, and 23, 1866, Robert Nugent to General, December 20, 1866, and First Lieutenant James R. Kelly to Bvt. Brig. General C. McKeever, December 12, 1866, Department of the Missouri, Letters Received 1861–1867, entry 2395, RG 393, part 1, NA. The investigating officer’s report was tainted by the prevailing racism and conservatism of the postwar officer corps; see, for example, Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction at the First Session, Thirty-Ninth Congress, part 2 (Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1969, orig. pub. 1866), 60, 234, and Edward M. Coffman, The Old Army: A Portrait of the American Army in Peacetime, 1784–1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 234–46. See also George N. Moses to William Connelley, box 1, fold. 37, William Connelly Collection, Denver Public Library; Lexington Caucasian, January 9 and February 23, 1867. For Montgomery’s own reflections, see St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 24, 1876.