T. J. Stiles

by Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War

  5. Ames Ames, 255.

  6. Current, 112; Ames Ames, 265.

  7. Current, 115–17, 172–5; John R. Lynch, Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970), 33, 54–7; T. J. Stiles, ed., Robber Barons and Radicals: Reconstruction and the Origins of Civil Rights (New York: Berkley, 1997), 195–200; for details on widespread black political organization, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 281–91.

  8. The Miscellaneous Documents of the Senate of the United States for the Second Session of the Forty-Fourth Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877), 6: 17.

  9. Current, 172–6, 306–12; Lynch, 166; Stiles, 327.

  10. Stiles, 365–81; Current, 314–27; James B. Murphy, L. Q. C. Lamar: Pragmatic Patriot (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 1973), 148–61; George C. Rable, But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1984), 148–62. See also Miscellaneous Documents of the Senate of the United States for the Second Session of the Forty-Fourth Congress, vol. 6 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877), and Mississippi in 1875.

  11. In one town, the rumor of troops caused armed Democrats to flee; Stiles, 376.

  12. Stiles, 380; Blanche Butler Ames, 257, 259; Current, 325.

  13. Blanch Butler Ames, 368–9.

  14. Ibid., 370–3.

  15. St. Louis Republican, August 13, 1876. On black celebrations of Independence Day, see Eric Foner, “Rights and the Constitution in Black Life During the Civil War and Reconstruction,” Journal of American History 74, no. 3 (December 1987): 863–83.

  16. This would often be misreported as a plan to rob the Granby bank; see Kansas City Journal of Commerce, August 30, 1876.

  17. St. Louis Republican, August 13, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 26, 1876.

  18. St. Louis Republican, August 13, 1876.

  19. Ibid., July 9 and 10 and August 13, 1876; Sedalia Daily Democrat, July 8, 1876; Expressman’s Monthly, August 1876; Sedalia Daily Democrat, July 8, 1876; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, July 9, 1876.

  20. Boonville Daily Advertiser, July 11, 1876; Kansas City Times, July 9, 1876; Expressman’s Monthly, August 1876; Robertus Love, The Rise and Fall of Jesse James (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 179–85, quote on 182. Conkling’s version, given to Love years later, matches well with contemporary press accounts (except for the spelling of his name, which Love gives as “Conklin”).

  21. Boonville Daily Advertiser, July 8 and 11, 1876; Expressman’s Monthly, August 1876; Sedalia Daily Democrat, July 9, 1876; Love, 179–85; St. Louis Republican, July 9, 1876.

  22. St. Louis Republican, August 13, 1876; Kansas City Times, July 11, 1876; Sedalia Daily Democrat, July 9, 1876. The United States Express safe yielded $15,000, and the Adams held the rest.

  23. Sedalia Daily Democrat, July 8 and 11, 1876; Kansas City Times, July 11, 1876; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, July 9 and 11, 1876; St. Louis Republican, July 10 and 18, 1876; Shoemaker, 5: 510–11. Hazen’s employment by the Adams Company was confirmed by the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, September 25, 1876.

  24. Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency: December 4, 1876 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876), 51–2, 69. The U.S. population has been extrapolated from census data for 1870 and 1880. These figures may understate the scarcity of money in the country, given the regional concentration of banks in the Northeast and tightened lending and reserve practices after the Panic of 1873; see Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 268–74. There is a problematic tendency in historical writing to simply translate figures into contemporary amounts. The money supply and markets were lumpy in the nineteenth century; far more than in the modern economy, purchasing power varied dramatically from urban to rural areas.

  25. Boonville Daily Advertiser, July 8 and 11, 1876; Expressman’s Monthly, August 1876; Sedalia Daily Democrat, July 9, 1876; St. Louis Republican, July 9, 1876.

  26. Kansas City Times, August 9, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 26, 1876; Joseph Have Hanson, The Northfield Tragedy: A History of the Northfield Bank Raid and Murders (St. Paul: n.p., 1876), 13; A. E. Bunker, “Recollections of the Northfield Raid,” August 24, 1894, in “Northfield (Minnesota) Bank Robbery of 1876: Selected Manuscripts Collection and Government Records” (microfilm publication), MnHS (to be cited as “Northfield Robbery”). In June 1876, Frank James made a point of telling Samuel Ralston that Anna was well, suggesting an imminent extended departure; Kansas City Times, August 16, 1876. Marley Brant, Jesse James: The Man and the Myth (New York: Berkley, 1998), 161–72, claims to have seen letters written by Bob Younger, testifying to Jesse James having planned early on to carry out a bank robbery in Minnesota, with the Missouri Pacific raid as a prelude. The authenticity of these letters, however, has not been confirmed by any authorities. St. Louis police chief James McDonough thought that all the bandits fled to Texas, which proved untrue; James McDonough to C. H. Hardin, September 22, 1876, Charles H. Hardin Papers, MSA.

  27. Keith Ian Polakoff, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 4, 95. References may be made almost at random to newspapers in May through November 1876 for evidence of the political frenzy. See, for example, St. Louis Republican, July 9, 1876, and “Democratic Picnic Summary, Buckner, Missouri, September 16, 1876,” coll. 1825, WHMC.

  28. Foner, Reconstruction, 568.

  29. Lawrence O. Christensen and Gary R. Kremer, A History of Missouri, vol. 4, 1875–1919 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 9–11; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, August 13, 1876.

  30. Foner, Reconstruction, 568. In the first half of the twentieth century, historians began to place great stress on the economic influences behind the reaction against Reconstruction; see especially C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), and Woodward’s introduction to Robert P. Sharkey, Money, Class, and Party: An Economic Study of Civil War and Reconstruction (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959), vii–ix. More recently, scholars have stressed racism as a primary motivation. Richard Franklin Bensel’s massive economic and political study, for example, leads him to conclude that “southern separatism, not the economic and social dislocations of northern industrial expansion,” was the primary issue of the age (Bensel, 415). The statements here about the preoccupations of Jesse James are based on his published writings, but fit tightly with this interpretation.

  31. St. Louis Republican, August 13, 1876.

  32. Ibid., August 6, 8, 10, 11, and 13, 1876; Kansas City Times, August 9, 12, 13, and 15, 1876; Sedalia Daily Democrat, August 16, 1876. The basis for the idea that the Adams Company hired the men is threefold: first, Thatcher helped interrogate Kerry; second, the party was heard to address a “Captain Thatcher”; third, Governor Hardin’s papers in the Missouri State Archives make no mention of the raid.

  33. Kansas City Times, August 18, 1876.

  34. Kansas City Times, August 23, 1876.

  35. 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; George Plattenburg, “Biographical Sketch,” in John N. Edwards: Biography, Memoirs, Reminiscences, and Recollections, ed. Jennie Edwards (Kansas City: n.p., 1889), 9–36; Dan Saults, “Now Let us Discuss a Man,” Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society 19, no. 2 (January 1963): 150–60; John N. Edwards, Noted Guerrillas, or the Warfare of the Border (St. Louis: H. W. Brand & Co., 1879), 365–6.

  36. Blanche Butler Ames, 389–90, 412.

  37. Foner, Reconstruction, 564; Dee Brown, The Year of the Century: 1876 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons
, 1966), 129–32; Blanche Butler Ames, 389.

  38. Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, ed., History of Rice and Steele Counties, Minnesota (Chicago: H. C. Cooper, Jr., 1910), 1: 463; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency: December 6, 1875 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1875), 698; Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency: December 4, 1876 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876), 726–35; North-field News, August 9, 1929; D. L. Leonard, Funeral Discourse of Joseph Lee Heywood (Minneapolis: Steam Book Printers, 1876), 6–7; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876.

  39. Blanche Butler Ames, 412; Leonard, 4.

  40. Blanche Butler Ames, 382–3, 392.

  41. Foner, Reconstruction, 566–7, Polakoff, 12–40, Blanche Butler Ames, 389, 393–5; Stiles, 381–4.

  42. James E. Sefton, The United States Army and Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), 261–3, shows that troop levels in the South had dropped to 7,701 by October 1874—4, 271 in Texas, with its Indian hostilities; Louisiana was the only other state with more than 1,000 troops, at 1, 164. See also T. J. Stiles, ed., Warriors and Pioneers (New York: Berkley, 1996), 190.

  43. Foner, Reconstruction, 571–2; see especially Richard Zuczek, “The Last Campaign of the Civil War: South Carolina and the Revolution of 1876,” CWH 42, no. 1 (March 1996): 18–31. The Democrats later elected Butler to the U.S. Senate.

  44. Foner, Reconstruction, 572–5; Stiles, Robber Barons, 403.

  45. Polakoff, 105, notes that Hayes (influenced by Carl Schurz) “was expressing the intense Northern desire to be rid of the troublous issues left over from the Civil War.”

  46. Polakoff, 135–46.

  47. Minneapolis Tribune, September 9, 1876. The most influential secondary source for the events that fill the rest of this chapter has been George Huntington, Robber and Hero: The Story of the Northfield Bank Raid (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1986). Originally published in 1895, this book was in large part a work of oral history, drawing on interviews with participants eighteen or nineteen years after 1876. The narrative given here is based on primary sources, with a strong preference for contemporary accounts, and thus leaves out some details Huntington provided, and contradicts some claims he made. The most recent book-length treatment, Robert Barr Smith, The Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), makes limited use of the available primary sources, relying primarily on popular Western writers.

  48. Kansas City Times, September 24, 1876. The James brothers had been reported in brothels before; see, for example, Lexington Caucasian, August 30, 1873.

  49. Hanson, 51–2.

  50. Chicago Times, September 10, 1876; Hanson, 51; Joel Best, Controlling Vice: Regulating Brothel Prostitution in St. Paul, 1865–1883 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), 3–5, 20–4. Contemporary reports in Hanson and the Chicago Times (the saloonkeeper identified Miller from a photograph) generally support Cole Younger’s account, The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself (Springfield, Mo.: Oak Hills, 1996, orig. pub. 1903), 86, in which he said he went to St. Paul, then to Minneapolis, then back to St. Paul, where the bandits gambled.

  51. Minneapolis Tribune, September 25, 1876. This quote has been missed by virtually all writers on the subject, who usually refer to Cole Younger’s later statements.

  52. The statement, written in 1897 at the request of the Stillwater prison warden, was given to the penitentiary surgeon, D. A. E. Hedback, and was published in the Northfield News, November 26, 1915; both this published version and an identical typescript of the original appear in “Northfield Robbery.” Cole Younger’s two other accounts appear in Story of Cole Younger and “Real Facts About the Northfield, Minnesota, Bank Robbery,” in Convict Life at the Minnesota State Prison, ed. W. C. Heilbron (Stillwater, Minn.: n.p, 1911), 125–47. Settle, 95, was unaware of either Bob Younger’s early statement or Cole’s account for the prison warden, so he (incorrectly) dismissed the Ames connection as a “rationalization” made for Southern readers. I have used the 1897 version (from the Northfield News) for most quotes from Younger, as it was his earliest account and not written for publication.

  53. St. Louis Republican, August 13, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 26, 1876; Hanson, 13.

  54. It is worth noting that, just a few years later, one man who knew both brothers declared that Jesse “at all times seemed to have control” of Frank; Nashville American, October 9, 1882. There is a possibility that the bandits went to St. Paul with the intention of assassinating Samuel Hardwicke. But no evidence exists of any attempt to find and kill Hardwicke; and the gang soon set out for Northfield with apparent forethought, suggesting that it had been their target all along.

  55. Lexington Caucasian, December 14, 1874; St. Louis Republican, December 18, 1875; see also Liberty Tribune, November 12, 1875, Kansas City Times, October 7 and 8, 1875, and St. Louis Republican, September 17, 1875.

  56. New York Times, May 2, 1876. Adelbert Ames’s name appeared only once in the contemporary press reports of the gang’s activities in Minnesota, when Bob Younger declared that he was their target.

  57. Minneapolis Tribune, September 9, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; Chicago Times, September 10, 1876; see also Story of Cole Younger, 86–8, and Northfield News, November 26, 1915.

  58. Faribault Democrat, September 15, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; Chicago Times, September 10, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 9, and 11, 1876. Cole Younger later confirmed that four men had purchased their horses in one place, two in another, two in another, spending a total of $1,250 for the eight; Liberty Tribune, October 20, 1876.

  59. Faribault Democrat, September 15, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; Chicago Times, September 10, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 9, and 11, 1876; Northfield News, November 26, 1915; see also Hanson, 4–5. Unfortunately, the Mankato story was perpetuated by Huntington, 1–6. Even Hanson, who relates the Robinson story, mentions only five men in Mankato.

  60. Northfield News, November 26, 1915; Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 9, 11, and (Extra Edition) 13, 1876; Faribault Democrat, September 15, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; St. Paul and Minneapolis Pioneer Press and Tribune, September 14, 1876; Chicago Times, September 10, 1876.

  61. Northfield News, November 26, 1915; Chicago Times, August 11, 1876.

  62. Statement of J. E. Hobbs, September 8, 1876, “Northfield Robbery”; Minneapolis Tribune, September 14, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876.

  63. Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 1876; Northfield News, September 26, 1915; Hanson, 6. The party seems to have included Jesse James, as the three men who first crossed the bridge to begin the raid were said by the Tribune to have eaten at Jeft’s.

  64. Northfield News, September 26, 1915; Chicago Times, September 11, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 11, 1876. According to one story, the bandits ran into Adelbert Ames as he crossed the bridge, and called him “Governor,” to Ames’s alarm; see, for example, Yeatman, 172. This is possible, as Ames later said he “met the James crowd” on the bridge (Northfield News, August 2, 1929). However, Ames made no mention of the incident in his letters.

  65. The following factors weigh in the distribution of the bandits described here. First, every bandit except the James brothers and Charlie Pitts was clearly identified outside the bank during this brief affair. Second, these three were also the only ones who seem to have been unwounded in Northfield, which strongly suggests they were inside. Third, no Northfield witnesses describe any robber exiting the bank before the others. Fourth, two witnesses identified Charlie Pitts inside the bank, leaving the identity of only the other two open to question. Fifth, a combination of eyewitness accounts and evidence of who was shot outside supports Younger’s story that he and Miller formed the second contingent. Huntington, 13–14, relied on an account written for him eighteen years later by A. E. Bunker, but Bunker never offered a description of the men ins
ide; instead, he simply named them as Pitts, Bob Younger, and one of the James brothers, and he may well have been mistaken. Cole Younger’s accounts, written twenty years later, agreed with this distribution. Bob Younger, however, was wounded outside the bank, and was not seen leaving it as Cole described. Cole may have been trying to protect Frank James, who was still alive and had not been tried for the events in Northfield. Therefore, the account here does not describe Bob entering, then leaving, the bank, as often claimed.

  66. Chicago Times, September 11, 1876; see also Blanche Butler Ames, 404.

  67. Statement of J. E. Hobbs, September 8, 1876, and Affidavit of D. J. Whiting, July 12, 1897, “Northfield Robbery.” The Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 1876, also describes the “making figures,” though it incorrectly described the men as sitting on a hay bale, not a box.

  68. The identity of the leader (if there was one) was unclear, just as the names of the three bandits in the bank cannot be confirmed. Wilcox and Bunker both identified Pitts as being in the bank. Bunker later identified the second man as Bob Younger, but he may have resembled Frank James at the time, and he was clearly outside the bank during these events; most important, Wilcox never said that Bob was in the bank. See Hanson, 17–20; Chicago Times, September 11, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 1876; A. E. Bunker, “Recollections of the Northfield Raid,” August 24, 1894, “Northfield Robbery”; Minneapolis Tribune, September 22, 1876. Apart from identifying Pitts, Wilcox’s later descriptions would vary. On Jesse’s leadership over Frank, see the Nashville American, October, 1882.

  69. Statement of F. J. Wilcox, September 8, 1876, “Northfield Robbery”; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; Chicago Times, September 11, 1876; Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 1876.

  70. Leonard, 6; Minneapolis Tribune, September 26, 1876.

  71. Wilcox gave at least three slightly contradictory accounts on the day of the robbery and the day that followed; this version of events in the bank is drawn from a combination of them: “Statement of F. J. Wilcox,” September 8, 1876, “Northfield Robbery”; Minneapolis Tribune, September 8, 1876; Rice County Journal, September 14, 1876; see also Chicago Times, September 11, 1876. Bunker, who has often been quoted in accounts of the robbery, did not give his first statement until weeks later; the emphasis in this narrative, therefore, is on Wilcox’s accounts immediately following the robbery.