Bloody Bill Anderson

by Albert Castel

  His bluff called, Clements bypassed Lexington and, several days later, crossed to the north side of the Missouri, as did Jim Anderson. At about the same time Davis received a note from Dave Poole, stating that he was collecting his men for the purpose of surrendering and that he wished to meet with Davis and arrange terms. Davis promptly agreed, and on May 17, accompanied by five soldiers, he met Poole and five other bushwhackers south of Lexington on the Warrensburg Road. In accordance with instructions from Colonel Harding, he told Poole that he had been authorized by Dodge to assure all partisans that if they surrendered, gave up their weapons, and obeyed the laws, the military would take no action against them, but they would remain answerable to the civil authorities. Poole agreed to these terms and stated that he and his men would come to Lexington on May 21 and surrender.

  In the Holden-Kingsville raid the bushwhackers had demonstrated that they still were formidable and ferocious. Why, then, did they decide to call it quits so soon afterward? The answer is twofold. First, once back in their stomping grounds, they realized that to continue with bushwhacking would accomplish nothing other than to prolong an agony that had lasted long enough. Most of West Missouri had been desolated and devastated. Weeds and scrub filled the untilled fields of hundreds of farms where only stark chimneys marked the site of what once had been a house. Furthermore, during the winter, Dodge, resorting to a more selective version of Order No. 11, had ordered that the families of all known bushwhackers and Confederate soldiers be sent out of the state while at the same time threatening to “punish” any civilian who “harbored” guerrillas. Obviously western Missouri required peace to prevent it from becoming what it was already close to being—a desert.13

  Second, the bushwhackers also recognized that unless they surrendered now, it soon would be impossible for them to surrender at all. They would become both in law and fact nothing but bandits, to be hunted down and killed or, if captured alive, put in prison or hanged from a gallows. Should they desire to remain in Missouri, rejoin their families, and lead normal, peaceful lives again—and the vast majority of them so desired—their sole hope was in complying with the terms that the Federals offered them. It would be unrealistic to expect better, and it could have been worse.

  Hence, early on the afternoon of May 21, Dave Poole and forty of his men rode into Lexington, dismounted, piled their revolvers and carbines into what rapidly became a huge heap, took the oath, received parole certificates, and then headed off for their homes—if they still had one. Colonel Harding, who was present for the surrender, telegraphed to Dodge: BUSHWHACKING IS STOPPED.14

  Not quite, though. Archie Clements and Jim Anderson remained on the loose, the former in Ray County, where he clashed with militia on May 25, the latter in Carroll County.15 But their gangs were dwindling, friends were less friendly and foes more aggressive, and for the most part they had to run and hide rather than raid and kill. Finally they, too, realized that Quantrill had been right back in December when he pronounced that bushwhacking was played out. So on June 2 they conveyed a message to the Federal commander in Glasgow, the essence of which was: On what terms may we surrender?

  None, was the answer. They must surrender unconditionally. They were not ordinary guerrillas. Little Archie was Bloody Bill’s “scalper,” and the governor of Missouri had posted a $300 reward for his capture, dead or alive. And the Federals wanted Jim to be what his brother now was: dead and buried. For them to surrender would literally be to stick their necks into a hangman’s noose.16

  So they did not surrender. Instead, both went to Texas. Although Union troops now occupied that state, they were not fellow Missourians with blood scores to settle, and there the two men had a much better chance of avoiding the fate that had befallen Quantrill in Kentucky: A mortal wound and capture by “Federal guerrillas” specially assigned to track him down.17 They did not intend to stay in Texas any longer than necessary, however. Once it was safe to do so, they would return to Missouri. That was where they had done most of their killing and where, given certain skills they had acquired—the only skills that they in fact possessed—they could make an easy yet exciting living.

  During June most of the bushwhackers still at large either “came in,” left the state, or simply returned to their homes without formally surrendering. By July bushwhacking truly had stopped in Missouri. Yet the total end of the war did not bring total peace. Far from it. The bitterness engendered by four years of bloody strife persisted and with it the vicious circle of retaliation and counterretaliation between triumphant Unionists and unrepentant secessionists. It also provided a reason, or at least an excuse, for some of the bushwhackers to turn bandit.

  At first they confined their banditry to such mundane crimes as horse stealing and stagecoach holdups. Then on the afternoon of February 13, 1866, a dozen former guerrillas robbed Clay County Savings Bank in Liberty of nearly $60,000, in the process murdering a William Jewell College student. It was the first daylight bank robbery in American history, not counting the plundering of two banks in St. Albans, Vermont, in 1864 by Confederate raiders operating out of Canada.

  Among the robbers was Jim Anderson. On April 12, 1866, he and Ike Flannery, another ex-guerrilla, showed up in Rocheport, now rebuilt, and attempted to sell some bonds taken from the Liberty bank to local merchants. Finding no buyers, they left. Two miles out of the village, five men bushwhacked the two bushwhackers, killing Flannery and removing $2,000 in greenbacks and bonds from his body. Or at least so claimed Jim, who escaped unscathed. Reporting his tale, the Kansas City Journal hinted that it might not necessarily be the whole truth.18

  Although the authorities did not identify him as such, some believed that another of the Liberty bank robbers was Archie Clements—indeed, that he had been their leader. In any event, during the summer of 1866, Little Archie showed up in Lafayette County, where his mother had a house, and made frequent visits to Lexington, during which he spent most of his time with Dave Poole, who now resided there. No one attempted to collect the reward on him, and he, for his part, seemed to have ample funds despite not engaging in any discernible economic activity.

  Then on October 30, 1866, four revolver-wielding men entered the Alexander Mitchell and Company Bank in Lexington and extracted slightly over $2,000 from the cash drawer but failed to obtain the $100,000 they believed to be in the vault because they could not locate the key to it on the cashier’s person. Thus foiled, they remounted their horses and rode from town. A posse gave pursuit but was unable to overtake the bandits, who were joined by a fifth man. Their horses, explained the leaders of the posse, were too fast. The leaders were Dave Poole and his brother John.19

  By late 1866 crime and violence had become so rampant in the border and river counties of Missouri that the governor ordered all men of military age to enroll in the militia, at the same time declaring that anyone failing to comply would be subject to arrest. This penalty should not have made any practical difference to Clements. Nevertheless, on the morning of December 13 he, Poole, and twenty-five other former bushwhackers, all heavily armed and arrayed in military formation, rode into Lexington and signed up for militia duty. For them to do this was a joke, and no doubt they saw it that way themselves.

  The Lexington garrison commander, however, was not amused. He ordered them to leave town at once. They did, but soon afterward Clements and a companion returned and went to a saloon. The commander promptly sent a squad of militiamen to arrest them. When the soldiers entered the saloon, Clements ran out the back door, mounted his horse, and galloped down the main street. Riflemen stationed in the courthouse for that purpose opened fire on him. His horse slowed to a walk, he slumped in the saddle, and then tumbled onto the dirt street, where he lay face downward, his tiny body riddled with bullets. He who had killed so many had in effect killed himself.20

  The bank robberies continued, with former bushwhackers involved in all of them. The most sensational one occurred in Richmond, where Bill Anderson’s body lay moldering in its “
decent coffin.” There, on May 20, 1867, twelve to fourteen men took $4,000 from the Hughes and Wasson Bank. This was a measly haul for so many robbers, and had that been all there was to it, the affair would have attracted little attention. But what it lacked in money it more than made up for in blood. Before leaving Richmond, the bandits gunned down the mayor, the town jailer, and the jailer’s fifteen-year-old son, who had fired at them with a rifle from behind a tree.21

  Neither the civil authorities nor the militia succeeded in bringing the Richmond raiders to justice, despite the fact that at least six of them, all followers of Quantrill, had been recognized. Most of them could not be found, and the few who were apprehended speedily produced affidavits from people who swore that they had been nowhere near Richmond on May 22, 1867, and so secured their release. But what the regular legal process failed to accomplish was achieved, at least in part, by other means. Frustrated and disgusted by seeing men known to be guilty of robbery and murder go free, vigilantes lynched two of them, Dick Burns and Tom Little, the latter the brother of Quantrill’s closest friend, Jim Little, who had been killed in Kentucky early in 1865. Another of the Richmond robbers was found lying in a field, clubbed to death, and vigilantes shot to death yet another, Ol’ Shepherd, at his father’s house near Lee’s Summit on April 4, 1868.22

  Following a bloodless robbery of a bank at Independence on November 27, 1868, Missouri banks remained unmolested for more than two years, causing some to conclude that the vigilantes had put, if not the fear of the Lord, a salutary dread of the mob into the bandits.

  It was a premature conclusion. On December 7, 1869, a tall, lanky young man walked into the Daviess County Bank in Gallatin, where Samuel Cox, who had been awarded the regular rank of lieutenant colonel for killing Bill Anderson, still resided. The man asked the bank’s cashier, Capt. John W. Sheets, to change a hundred-dollar bill. As Sheets, who owed his military title to having served in the militia during the war, started to comply with the request, another tall and slender young man came into the bank and said, “If you will write out a receipt, I will pay you that bill.” Sheets sat down at his desk to prepare the receipt, but before he could pen a single word, the newcomer suddenly snarled a curse at him, declared that he and Colonel Cox had caused the death of his brother, Bill Anderson, and that he had come to avenge it. He then whipped out a pistol and shot Sheets through the head and heart, killing him instantly.

  Next, both men fired at bank clerk William McDowell as he ran out the door. Although a bullet tore into one of his arms, McDowell made it to the street, where he shouted that bandits were robbing the bank and had killed Sheets. Several townsmen opened fire on the men when they came out of the bank and mounted their horses. The one who shot Sheets was unable to mount his excited steed, which dragged him close to forty feet before he freed his left foot from the stirrup and climbed up behind his companion. They then galloped away unscathed and, for some reason, unpursued.23

  Figure E.1 Fletch Taylor, Frank James, and Jesse James in a postwar photo.

  COURTESY OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI.

  Almost surely the slayer of Sheets was Jesse James. Several men in Gallatin recognized the horse that the bandits left behind as “belonging to a young man named James.” Furthermore, when a posse from Gallatin finally did go after Sheets’s killers, it followed their trail to the James farm near Kearney in Clay County, and as it approached the place, two horsemen suddenly dashed from out of a barn into the night, making good their escape.24

  As for Sheets’s murderer declaring himself to be the brother of Bill Anderson, which presumably would mean that he was Jim Anderson, this could only have been a ruse by Jesse to conceal his true identity and confuse the authorities. For, as he and Frank probably knew, by 1869 Jim Anderson was in no condition to avenge anybody, having been killed in Texas by either William Poole, another of Dave’s brothers, in 1867, or George Shepherd, a brother of Ol’ Shepherd, in 1868.25

  Possibly, too, Jim had spent some time in prison prior to his death. The sole known photograph purporting to be of him (see p. 14) shows a handsome young man sitting beside a table with a ball and chain attached to him. But his clothes are exceptionally dapper and the expression on his face curiously jovial for a prisoner, causing one to wonder if the photo was intended to be a joke. Also, though the young man bears a strong resemblance to Bill Anderson, a lifelong student of bushwhacker lore flatly denies that he is in fact Jim Anderson.26

  Whether Frank and Jesse James participated in bank robberies previous to the one in Gallatin cannot be documented, but circumstance and logic suggest that they did. With few exceptions all of the Missouri robberies occurred within easy riding range of their home; they were close friends of Jim Anderson, Archie Clements, and others who carried out these robberies; and although the Gallatin holdup was a bungled affair that netted them a paltry $700 and nearly cost Jesse his life, their conduct of the operation indicates that they had been in banks before and not simply as customers. Finally, and conclusively, their careers and characters— first as bushwhackers, then as bandits—reveal them to have been, romantic legends to the contrary notwithstanding, rapacious thieves and ruthless killers. This was especially true of Jesse, as demonstrated by his brutal murder of Sheets.27

  Between 1870 and 1876 the James brothers, along with ex-Quantrill rider Cole Younger and his brothers Bob and Jim, formed the nucleus of a gang that ranged from Kansas to Kentucky and from Iowa to Texas, robbing banks, holding up stages, and, most spectacular of all, stopping and sticking up trains, something that Frank had discovered at Centralia could be done with ease and considerable profit. Soon the “James boys” and the “Younger brothers” became household names throughout America. Newspapers headlined their exploits, the Police Gazette and similar magazines published vivid accounts, accompanied by garish drawings, of their alleged doings, and hack writers made them the heroes of highly imaginative stories appearing in countless dime novels. Only John Dillinger ever came close to matching their bandit fame.

  Efforts by local law officers and Pinkerton detectives to apprehend them proved futile, sometimes absurdly so and on one occasion tragically so. On the night of January 25, 1875, a group of Pinkertons, three of whose colleagues had been gunned down by the Jameses and Youngers in recent encounters, sneaked up to the house of Frank and Jesse’s mother outside of Kearney and heaved a flaming thirty-two pound iron ball filled with “Greek fire” through a window. It exploded, mangling her right arm so badly that it had to be amputated below the elbow and killing the outlaw’s nine-year-old half-brother, who significantly enough bore the first name of Archie. This affair aroused much indignation in Missouri and possibly would have led to the enactment of a law pardoning all ex-bushwhackers for their wartime deeds and guaranteeing them fair trials for alleged postwar crimes had not Frank and Jesse murdered a Clay County neighbor whom they accused of aiding the Pinkertons.

  The first serious setback for the James-Younger gang came in September 1876 when it attempted to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. This turned into a bloody fiasco, with three members of the gang being killed outright and all three of the Younger brothers being wounded and captured. Only Frank and Jesse, by abandoning the others to their fate, escaped back to Missouri.

  For the next three years they lay low. Then, presumably because they were running short of money, they went back to their idea of working on the railroad. From October 1879 to September 1881 their new gang carried out three more train robberies, one in which a conductor and passenger were murdered.

  Thomas T. Crittenden, the newly installed Democratic governor of Missouri, decided to put an end to the Jameses once and for all. They were bad for Missouri, which had become known as the “outlaw state”; they were bad for business, in particular the railroads; and they were bad for Democrats, whom the Republicans accused of not really trying to catch them. Accordingly, Crittenden posted a $10,000 reward (to be paid by the railroad companies) for information leading to the capture—de
ad or alive—of either Frank or Jesse James.

  On December 4, 1881, Bob Ford, a new member of the gang, and a veteran bandit named Dick Liddil killed Wood Hite, another outlaw and Frank and Jesse’s cousin, in a quarrel over a woman. Fearing that Jesse, who knew that he and Liddil were good friends, would slay him in revenge, Ford contacted Governor Crittenden and, along with his brother Charles, offered to tip off law-enforcement officers as to the time and place of the gang’s next robbery. Crittenden in turn promised the Fords immunity from punishment and a share of the reward.

  Late in March 1882, Bob and Charles Ford went to the house in St. Joseph where Jesse was living with his wife and two children (he never hid out in caves) under the alias of Thomas Howard. Together with Jesse the Fords planned to hold up the bank in Platte City on April 4. But finding no opportunity to notify the authorities of the pending robbery, Bob decided to kill Jesse at the first opportunity.

  That came on the morning of April 3. Jesse, complaining that he was warm, removed his coat and then his gun belt so as to avoid the chance of some passerby glancing through the window and seeing him wearing it. Noticing that a picture was hanging crookedly on the wall, he stood on a chair to straighten it. At once Bob pulled out his pistol—a revolver that Jesse had given him the previous day for use in the Platte City job—and fired. The bullet tore through the back of Jesse’s skull behind the right ear, and he fell to the floor, dead. He was thirty-four and had spent more than half of his life as a bushwhacker and a bandit, in the process becoming what he remains: The most famous outlaw in American history and legend—a legend enhanced by the manner of his death at the hands of “that dirty little coward who shot Mr. Howard.”

  Jesse’s murder caused Frank, now thirty-nine, to realize that if he wished to reach forty, he had better make his peace with the law. After obtaining assurances from Crittenden that he would be given a fair trial, he surrendered to the governor at Jefferson City on October 5, 1882. Twice he stood trial, first in Gallatin for various crimes but not the murder of Sheets, and then in Alabama for a robbery committed in that state. Both times he was acquitted for lack of convincing evidence—convincing, that is, to openly sympathetic jurors. He lived out the rest of his life by trading on his celebrity status, dying in 1915 at his old family home near Kearney, where he had charged fifty cents a person for a tour. In certain respects he was the most successful of all of Bill Anderson’s boys—or the luckiest.28