As
a young boy, Jesse James had a difficult life. Growing up in Civil War times
in Missouri, Jesse’s family was caught up in the fight between whether
or not Missouri would be a slave state. Missouri decided to join the Union,
but the James family agreed with the Confederates. Jesse’s older brother
Frank joined Quantrill’s Raiders, a group of renegades who conducted
surprise raids on cities in Union territory.
One day, some Union soldiers came to the farm where Jesse and his family
lived, looking for Quantrill’s Raiders. Since Reuben Samuel (Jesse’s
step-father) refused to talk, they hanged him from a tree. He was saved
when his wife cut him loose. The soldiers also attacked Jesse who was
plowing a field. He was beaten with a rope. Jesse’s rage soon drove
him to join Quantrill’s Raiders too. Jesse’s first killing
was when he killed a Union Commander during one of the raids. When the
war was over, Jesse tried to surrender to Union troops, but he was shot.
His cousin, Zee Mimms, helped him until he was healthy again. Later, he
married her.
Jesse’s first bank robbery was probably one he committed with his
brother Frank in Liberty, Missouri in 1866. An innocent college student
was killed, and the robbers got away with $60,000 in cash and bonds.
Many more bank robberies and train robberies followed. Jesse even robbed
the box office at the Kansas City Fair. Jesse liked the publicity he got.
Once, after a train robbery, he gave a paper to the trainman. It had a
newspaper article Jesse had written himself about the robbery. The headline
said, “THE MOST DARING ROBBERY ON RECORD.” Jesse wanted the
newspapers to get the facts straight. Besides, he liked to read about
his crimes.
Jesse was a merciless killer. If someone innocent was killed, he would
say, “The fool shouldn’t have gotten in my way.” In
1876, the James-Younger Gang decided to hold up a bank in Northfield,
Minnesota. The robbery went badly, and Frank and Jesse were the only outlaws
who escaped unharmed. Jesse returned home to Tennessee where he started
using the name J. D Howard. He joined the church choir. He raced his horse
in the County Fair, and worked as little as possible. He lived off of
money from his holdups.
Now and then he would rob a stagecoach or two to get extra cash. Eventually,
he had to start planning a bank robbery again. One of his helpers, named
Bob Ford, went to Jesse’s home and shot him from behind while Jesse
was dusting a picture. Ford wanted to collect the reward money that was
offered for Jesse’s capture. Ford was known after that as the “dirty
little coward that shot Mr. Howard.”
