Jesse James

A friend lent me "Jesse James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War" by T.J. Stiles. The book was very researched and I thought even-handed, so I suppose that most of academia would find it to be conservatively biased. I found the level of detail to be too high for this topic; but I'm just not that interested in being an expert on border state Civil War and Reconstruction politics, economics and law enforcement. I didn't need all the detail, but I found the broad outlines to be extremely interesting, and the author DID do a good job.

In the big picture we all know that the agrarian South relied on the institution of slavery as a cornerstone of the economy, while the forces of abolition gained ground in the North. In the border states like Missouri where Jesse and Frank James grew up with their mother Zerelda Samuel (she later re-married), and specifically in Clay county, those tensions were very personal and direct as the slave owners and those trying to abolish it lived side by side. For a widow farmer like Zerelda, slaves were by far her greatest asset, and the loss of them moved her from being middle class to bordering on poor.

Jesse and Frank James sided with the South and were part of para-military gangs know as "Bushwhackers". The group of "Bloody Bill Anderson" was the most notorius, and the group that they ran with. The author puts forth a framework for violence from a sociologist Lonnie Athens called "violentization" with 4 steps:

1. Brutalization - the subject is either coerced or encouraged to observe to take part in violent acts done to others, and encouraged to approve or take part.
   
2. Belligerency - Subject resolves to respond to provocations with force.
3. Violent Performances - subject pushes through barriers and inflicts pain on another person.
   
4. Virulency - subject feels his social status change due to violence. They now decide to respond with overwhelming force to the slightest provocation.
   

Nice theory, but it seems a bit too pat. Even "Bloody Bill" would release some folks that one would have thought he would kill, and Jesse very much did the same. They lived in a very violent time, and while both ended up being killed, they distingueshed themselves in their ability to survive and cause problems. Then and now, intelligence and UNpredictability tend to be the most successful, and while Jesse and other of the Bushwhacker leaders certainly displayed tactical and even strategic mistakes, they also displayed a cunnign and an understanding of the environment they operated in.

The key to that environment was Democrats that continued to resist the north and work to subjugate blacks after the war. While Lincoln and the Republicans won the war, the Democrats and groups like Jesse and the KKK defeated the North and the Republicans in reconstruction. Interestingly, at that time, media was explicitly political and made no attempt at being "unbiased". The Democrat papers, and especially one Journalist, John Edwards, worked to build up the "Robin Hood Image" of Jesse and his group as being "falsely accused" of anything really evil, and in general just making life difficult for Republicans, the Railroads, and "the wealthy". "Fake but true" was a a Democrat and MSM staple then as now, with the important thing being to spin a yarn that fit what the Southern people wanted to hear.

The raid on Northfield MN was really interesting to read about due to the familiarity with the territory. The reason the target was picked was a political attack against Adelbert Ames, a failed Republican reconstruction Governor of Mississippi that had settled in Northfield. Jesse and the Youngers were defeated by the townspeople of Northfield going to their homes, getting their guns, and firing away a the bandits. Jesse and Frank escaped, but only with wounds and a daring trek across 100's of miles of Minnesota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa.

It is easy to see how a lot of Clint Eastwood and other movies revolve around the Bushwhackers and the subsequent outlaws like the James. They had their time, but essentially they were too successful. Once the South had gotten what it wanted--it's own Democrat rule, and the Blacks under Jim Crow really no better off than slaves, they were willing to turn in guys like Jesse because they didn't want that violence, so the gunfighters lost the support they needed.