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  40. Lexington Caucasian, November 30, 1867, May 2 and 16, 1868; John Starrett Hughes, “Lafayette County and the Aftermath of Slavery, 18610–1870,” MHR 70, no. 1 (October 1980): 51–63; Lewis O. Saum, “Donan and the Caucasian,” MHR 63, no. 4 (July 1969): 419–50; see also Parrish, Radical Rule, 106–38.

  41. Lexington Caucasian, August 1, 1868; Hughes, “Lafayette,” 51–63.

  42. St. Joseph Gazette, December 17, 1869.

  43. William E. Parrish, Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 248–60, quote, 254; Foner, Reconstruction, 340.

  44. Parrish, Blair, 252; Cousin Will to Cousin Kate, October 25, 1868, Watkins Mill.

  45. Richmond Conservator, December 18, 1869; Yeatman, 95. The horse’s name was given in the Liberty Tribune, July 22, 1870, and its reputed price in the St. Joseph Gazette, December 17, 1869. Yeatman accepts at face value a story that Jesse James went to California for most of 1868, to his uncle Drury Woodson James’s mineral springs at Paso Robles—a possibility, but more likely a fiction.

  46. Kansas City Daily Journal of Commerce, December 9, 1869; St. Joseph Gazette, December 9, 10, and 15, 1869; see also Gallatin Bank Postcard, coll. 801, WHMC. (A warrant was a promise to pay, often issued by local governments. They would circulate at a discount, much like antebellum banknotes.) The killer was identified by witnesses as Jesse James, based on his relative youth and the bay mare, an animal of some note around Kearney; see St. Joseph Gazette, December 17, 1869, and Richmond Conservator, December 18, 1869. When the family offered alibis for Jesse (see chap. 12) in the Liberty Tribune, July 22, 1870, they could not deny the existence of the horse (whose name was given as Kate), though they claimed that it was owned by Susan James. See also Yeatman, 96, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 17, 1942, which offers the recollections of Edward Clingan seventy-three years after the fact. Settle, 38, misidentifies McDowell as a clerk, and Wybrow, “Ravenous Monsters,” 18, mistakenly states that $700 was taken, based on an early press report that was later corrected. It is impossible to know for certain who robbed the Gallatin bank, of course, but the evidence clearly points to the two brothers, with Jesse as the shooter. Settle, 40, notes a press report that bandits claimed to have killed “Sheets and Cox,” suggesting the bandits recognized the cashier; the version given here is based on my firm belief that the “Sheets and Cox” reference garbled the accounts of witnesses, and the shooter did not actually say “Sheets.” For example, the St. Joseph Gazette, December 10, 1869, states, “They said they had killed Maj. S. P. Cox, if they had not made a mistake in the man.” Years later, Dick Liddil claimed that Jesse James told him that he and Jim White carried out the crime; St. Louis Republican, September 9, 1883. Though a possibility, it is secondhand information, and questionable; other lists of robbers Liddil provided proved wrong.

  47. Jesse James himself later made the mistaken-identity explanation, though he did not admit to pulling the trigger; see John N. Edwards, “A Terrible Quintet,” special supplement to the St. Louis Dispatch, November 23, 1873, vol. 34, coll. 1424, Walter B. Stevens Scrapbook, WHMC.

  48. St. Joseph Gazette, December 10 and 15, 1869; Militia Report, 55–9; 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. See also list of Clay County sheriffs, Woodson, 333; and Yeatman, 97.

  49. St. Joseph Gazette, December 9, 1869.

  50. Militia Report, 383, 387–9, 394, quote on 389. Moss had been thirty-three at the outbreak of the Mexican War, in 1846; Joseph G. Dawson, III, Doniphan’s Epic March: The 1st Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999), 28–30.

  51. This account is based on that of Liberty mayor F. R. Long, Richmond Conservator, December 18, 1869.

  52. St. Joseph Gazette, December 17, 1869; Liberty Tribune, December 17, 1869.

  53. Kansas City Times in Richmond Conservator, December 18, 1869; Liberty Tribune, December 17, 1869; Platte City Reveille in Liberty Tribune, January 14, 1870; Paxton, 485; J. W. McClurg to Sheriff, December 24, 1869, coll. 1746, WHMC. This assessment represents a flat disagreement with Settle, 40, who uses the same evidence to argue that the brothers were somehow not considered criminals.

  CHAPTER TWELVE: The Chivalry of Crime

  1. Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), 3–19; Edwards quoted in Dan Saults, “Let Us Discuss a Man: A Study of John Newman Edwards,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 19, no. 2 (January 1963): 150–60; see also F. Y. Hedley, “John Newman Edwards,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, ed. Howard L. Conard (St. Louis: Southern History Company, 1901), 2: 354–6.

  2. Rolle, 21–64.

  3. Rolle, 65–77, 96–9, 159–71; Daniel O’Flaherty, General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954), 282–326; John N. Edwards to Darling Sisters, April 6, 1866, coll. 1973, John N. Edwards Letters, 1865–1866, WHMC.

  4. Quoted in Rolle, 99.

  5. J. N. Edwards to Darling Sister Fanny, September 18, 1866, coll. 1973, John N. Edwards Letters, 1865–1866, WHMC.

  6. Rolle, 96–9, 151–3, 180–2.

  7. John N. Edwards, Shelby and His Men, or, The War in the West (Cincinnati: Miami Printing and Publishing, 1867), 448; Saults, 150–60; Hedley, 354–6.

  8. History III, 142–50, 236–59.

  9. See, for example, Edwards, 398. O’Flaherty, 133, claimed that the James brothers had served with Shelby in the fall and winter of 1862, which is demonstrably untrue.

  10. William Hyde, “Newspapers and Newspaper Men of Three Decades,” Collections of the Missouri Historical Society 12 (1896): 5–24, notes that Edwards’s direct connection to the James brothers was widely rumored among newspapermen; John N. Edwards, “A Terrible Quintet,” special supplement to the St. Louis Dispatch, November 23, 1873, vol. 34, coll. 1424, Walter B. Stevens Scrapbook, WHMC. On the James brothers’ connection to Shelby, see, for example, O’Flaherty, 332.

  11. Kansas City Times in the Liberty Tribune, June 24, 1870.

  12. Robert J. Wybrow argues the case for Edwards’s authorship (with no actual evidence) in “From the Pen of a Noble Robber: The Letters of Jesse Woodson James, 1847–1882,” Brand Book 24, no. 2 (summer 1987), published by the English Westerners’ Society, 1–22; see also Yeatman, 97.

  13. U.S. Census, Washington Township, Clay County, Missouri, 1860, 1870. For testimony on Frank James’s literary tastes, see Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897. Jesse James was described by acquaintances as an eager newspaper reader; see, for example, Clarence Hite’s testimony in George Miller, Jr., The Trial of Frank James for Murder (St. Louis: n.p., 1898), 309, 313.

  14. See Edwards, Shelby, 448. The expression seems to have been unknown during the war.

  15. Kansas City Times in the Liberty Tribune, July 15, 1870.

  16. Ibid., July 22, 1870.

  17. Liberty Tribune, August 5, 1870, September 24 and October 1, 1869; Settle, 42; W. H. Woodson, History of Clay County, Missouri (Topeka: Historical Publishing Company, 1920), 328–35.

  18. St. Louis Republican, April 7, 1882; Edwards, “Quintet”; Settle, 61; Marley Brant, The Outlaw Youngers: A Confederate Brotherhood (Lanham, Md.: Madison Books, 1993), 97–103; Kansas City Star, August 2, 1925; Yeatman, 99. Younger claimed that he and his brothers spent most of 1868 to 1871 in Texas; Thomas Coleman Younger, The Story of Cole Younger by Himself (Lee’s Summit, Mo.: n.p., 1903), 62–3. The story was later confirmed by a former district attorney and judge in Texas, E. G. Bower to George M. Bennett, April 25, 1898, “Northfield (Minnesota) Bank Robbery of 1876: Selected Manuscripts Collection and Government Records” (microfilm publication), MnHS; Hedley, 354–6; Saults, 150–60; Yeatman, 119–20.

  19. Coll. 3507, Harry C. Hoffman Papers, WHMC; Kansas City Times, September 11, 1881, and August 16, 1876; Yeatman, 120–
1; Settle, 31, 69–70, 91–2. On the James brothers’ love of racing, see the Nashville Daily American, October 9 and 12, 1882.

  20. Hamilton News in Richmond Conservator, June 17, 1871; Cameron Observer in Liberty Tribune, June 16, 1871; Settle, 43; Yeatman, 99–100. Dick Liddil later claimed that Jesse James told him that he, Frank, Clell Miller, Cole Younger, and John Younger went to Corydon; though this particular list sounds plausible, the reliability of this secondhand account is questionable, as other lists of robbers he provided in the same statement proved wrong; St. Louis Republican, September 9, 1883.

  21. S. A. Moore, “Hostile Raid into Davis County, Iowa,” Annals of Iowa 13, no. 5 (July 1922): 362–74; Edgar White, “Henry Clay Dean, ‘The Orator of Rebel Cove,’ ” MHR 22, no. 4 (July 1928): 450–5; Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (New York: Penguin, 1984), 393–4.

  22. Hamilton News in Richmond Conservator, June 17, 1871.

  23. William Pinkerton in Kansas City Evening Star, July 21, 1881.

  24. Hamilton News in Richmond Conservator, June 17, 1871; Cameron Observer in Liberty Tribune, June 16, 1871.

  25. William A. Pinkerton, Train Robberies, Train Robbers, and the “Holdup” Men (New York: Arno Press, 1974, orig. pub. 1907), 22; William Pinkerton quoted in Kansas City Evening Star, July 21, 1881. The Cameron Observer (in Liberty Tribune, June 16, 1871) reported only twenty shots were expended in the Civil Bend fight, which tends to confirm Pinkerton’s claim that only two men pursued into Missouri.

  26. Quotes from Hamilton News in Richmond Conservator, June 17, 1871.

  27. William Young, Young’s History of Lafayette County, Missouri (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen, 1910), 295; Kansas City Times in Richmond Conservator, July 8, 1871.

  28. Kansas City Times in Richmond Conservator, July 8, 1871; compare with his letter in Kansas City Times, August 23, 1876, attacking Bacon Montgomery, a personal friend at that time of John Edwards.

  29. History III, 253–67; Thomas S. Barclay, The Liberal Republican Movement in Missouri, 1865–1871 (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1926), 208–9, 249–82; Norma L. Peterson, Freedom and Franchise: The Political Career of B. Gratz Brown (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1965), 168–90.

  30. Christopher Phillips, Missouri’s Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of Southern Identity in the Border West (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 288–9; for a discussion of the factionalization of the Democratic Party, see Homer Clevenger, “Railroads in Missouri Politics, 1875–1887,” MHR 43, no. 2 (January 1949): 220–36.

  31. For an example of Edwards’s ongoing glorification, see the poem in the Kansas City Times, February 9, 1872, and his serialization of “Shelby’s Expedition to Mexico” (e.g., September 22, 1872). 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), 105–45. For the Unionist reaction in Missouri, see the St. Louis Republican, March 13, 1874.

  32. Kansas City Times in Liberty Tribune, June 24, 1870.

  33. See, for example, John Hatfield to Governor, January 11, 1870, John Hatfield to His Excellency B. Gratz Brown, February 7, 1871, John Hamlin to His Excellency B. Gratz Brown, May 21, 1871, B. Gratz Brown Papers, MSA.

  34. Foner, 454–9; Richmond Conservator, July 8, 1871. These trials gained great publicity, but unfortunately they proved ineffective in the long run; see Lou Falkner Williams, “The South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials and Enforcement of Federal Rights, 1871–1872,” CWH 39, no. 1 (March 1993): 47–66.

  35. Testifying in 1882, under the influence of alcohol, Shelby placed the incident in 1872; Miller, 109.

  36. Brother to Darling Sister, March 8, 1872, Watkins Mill.

  37. Liberty Tribune, March 8, 1872; Settle, 44; Yeatman, 100–1, suggests Miller was actually innocent.

  38. Louisville Courier-Journal, May 2 and 5, 1872. In St. Louis Republican, October 12, 1882, and Settle, 44, the Pilgrim’s Progress detail later became an elaborate story of how Frank—not Jesse—befriended an old woman in order to borrow her copy, and nearly finished it before he left for Columbia.

  39. Louisville Courier-Journal, May 1–5, 1872, Columbia Spectator, May 2, 1872 in the Louisville Courier-Journal, May 4, 1872. Also of interest is the tribute to Martin in the Banker’s Magazine and Statistical Register, October 1876.

  40. Foner, 488–500; Adams quote on 497.

  41. Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 165; Mark Wahlgren Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 89–96; Foner, 467–8.

  42. The best account of the gold speculation of 1869 is in Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 99–115. See also T. J. Stiles, “As Good as Gold?,” Smithsonian 31, no. 6 (September 2000): 106–17; William S. McFeely, Grant: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1982), 319–31; Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999), 182–3; and T. J. Stiles, Robber Barons and Radicals: Reconstruction and the Origin of Civil Rights (New York: Berkley, 1997), 217–29.

  43. Summers, 95–6.

  44. Foner, 488–507, quote on 499; see also McFeely, 380–1. For a Missouri-focused account that explicitly adopts the Liberal Republican critique of Reconstruction, see Peterson, 198–227.

  45. Lewis O. Saum, “Donan and the Caucasian,” MHR 63, no. 4 (July 1969): 419–50; Kansas City Times, September 24, 1872.

  46. History III, 193; Kansas City Times, September 24–26, 1872.

  47. Kansas City Times, September 27, 1872. Had the bandits struck one day later, they might have encountered Wild Bill Hickok, who performed at the fair on Friday; Joseph G. Rosa, They Called Him Wild Bill: The Life and Adventures of James Butler Hickok (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), 220.

  48. Kansas City Times, September 25 and 27, 1872.

  49. See, for example, St. Louis Republican, May 28, 1873.

  50. David R. Johnson, Policing the Underworld: The Impact of Crime on the Development of the American Police, 1800–1887 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979), 41–67; Larry K. Hartsfield, The American Response to Professional Crime, 1870–1914 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1985), 11–37, 51. Hartsfield’s notion that burglary was the primary problem for police detectives has been verified by this author’s findings in an extensive review of crime reports in newspapers and professional journals. For a typical news report on urban crime, see Chicago Tribune, April 2, 1875. As late as 1897, two senior Boston police officials depicted the armed robber as a marginal sort of criminal: in Our Rival the Rascal (Boston: Pemberton, 1897), Benjamin P. Eldridge and William B. Watts devoted most of their discussion to burglars, safecrackers, forgers, con men, pilferers, and other nonviolent types; they even argued that killing in the course of robbery was rare.

  51. Kansas City Times, September 29, 1872.

  52. See, for example, a circular of the Missouri Southern Relief Association, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 167, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC.

  53. Kansas City Times, October 16, 1872.

  54. Ibid., October 15, 1872.

  55. Kansas City Journal, April 5, 1882; see also Charley Ford’s comments in St. Louis Republican, April 6, 1882, and Bob Ford’s in St. Louis Republican, April 7, 1882. Settle, 41–2, discusses the link between Jesse’s letters and Edwards.

  56. Kansas City Times, October 20 and 25, 1872. Dick Liddil later claimed that Jesse James told him that he, Frank, Jim Cummins, Ol Shepherd, and Arthur McCoy carried out the robbery; St. Louis Republican, September 9, 1883. This secondhand account is more than questionable: not only is the number of men wrong, but Ol Shepherd was already dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Invisible Empires

  1. Bettie A. Scruggs to M. D. Scruggs, April 3, 1873, Watkins Mill.

&
nbsp; 2. Kansas City Times, September 19, 1872.

  3. Ibid., November 1, 1872.

  4. Ibid., November 5, 1872.

  5. Ibid., December 3 and 11, 1872.

  6. St. Louis Republican, August 24, 1872, and May 28, 1873; W. Lawson to B. Gratz Brown, March 14, 1872, Parson E. K. Cooper to Mr. Brown, April 3, 1872, B. Gratz Brown Papers, MSA; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, May 30, 1873; Settle, 47.

  7. Fellman, 205–6, 252–4; Shoemaker, 4: 261–2; Silas Woodson to T. C. Fletcher, September 27, 1873, Silas Woodson Papers, MSA; M. C. Eden, “Missouri’s First Train Robbery,” Brand Book 16, no. 2 (January 1974), published by the English Westerners’ Society, 13–24.

  8. Sioux City Journal, July 26, 1873.

  9. St. Louis Republican, May 28, 1873; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, Friday, May 30, 1873, and Settle, 47.

  10. Quoted by Robert Ford, St. Louis Republican, April 7, 1882.

  11. Esther Rogoff Taus, Central Banking Functions of the United States Treasury, 1789–1941 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 79, 85–6, 102, 112; Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1865–1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 262–74, 287–8; Richard Sylla, “Federal Policy, Banking Market Structure, and Capital Mobilization in the United States, 1863–1913,” Journal of Economic History 29, no. 4 (December 1969): 657–86; H. Peers Brewer, “Eastern Money and Western Mortgages in the 1870s,” Business History Review 50, no. 3 (autumn 1976): 356–80; T. J. Stiles, “As Good as Gold?,” Smithsonian 31, no. 6 (September 2000): 106–17.

 

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