Eluding law enforcement for nearly fifteen years, Jesse James could well be considered one of America’s most successful bank robbers. His first publicly recognized bank robbery wasn’t until December of 1869. Shortly after noon on the 7th, Jesse and his brother Frank walked into the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. There were only two men inside the bank at the time: the cashier and a lawyer, one William McDowell. One of the brothers, possibly Jesse, asked the cashier to change a $100 banknote. As the cashier wrote a receipt, the robber drew his revolver and fired into the cashier’s chest, then his forehead, killing him almost instantly. McDowell bolted for the door and was hit in the arm by further gunfire.
Jesse snatched up a portfolio of bank paper, and he and Frank rode out of town. They eluded the posse that attempted to follow, and this robbery set the pattern for others to come. Their robberies were daring, they demanded attention—and they often had motives beyond simple robbery. In this case, Jesse believed he was killing a man who had hunted down Jesse’s fellow bushwhacker, “Bloody Bill” Anderson during the Civil War. Unfortunately, Jesse’s plan didn’t work out quite the way he’d intended. The bank paper was worthless, and the cashier wasn’t the right man.
However, these failures didn’t stop Jesse. Many of his future robberies bore some of the same hallmarks as the one in Gallatin: daring to the point of foolhardiness and often deadly to the bank employees. When the brothers added railroads to the banks they robbed, they even started leaving press releases bragging about their crimes.
In 1871, Jesse and his gang showed up in Croydon, Iowa, during a speech by noted orator Henry Clay Dean. Most of the town had collected in the local church to hear Dean’s speech, and when the robbers escaped with $6,000, they stopped at the church and “shook the stolen money at the crowd.” Another part of their pattern showed up in April of 1872, when the gang robbed a bank in Kentucky. The lead bandit walked into the bank, said “good evening” to the unarmed cashier, and then shot him down. The mortally wounded man refused to open the vault, so Jesse left with little money, but each robbery seemed to give the robber a taste for more.
In 1876, Jesse and his gang selected another bank for more than just monetary reasons. Northfield, Minnesota was the new home of Mississippi’s former Republican governor—and former Union general!—Adelbert Ames, and he was a major depositor at the First National Bank. After two weeks of planning and reconnaissance, eight gang members rode into Northfield on the afternoon of September 7. They split up, with three men waiting at a nearby bridge, two guarding the town square, and Jesse, with two more men, walked into the bank.
Once inside, the robbers climbed over the counter, ordering the three employees to their knees. They pistol-whipped the bookkeeper, who insisted the vault was on a time lock and could not be opened. But the town’s citizens had begun to notice the gang, and armed men began arriving at the bank. As the shooting began, Jesse and his men had to retreat. Several gang members were cut down and others were captured. In the end, only Jesse and Frank would make it back to Missouri alive. But before they left the bank, one of the two “did the one thing that more than any other defined their life of crime”—he shot the unarmed bookkeeper dead.
One biography of Jesse James stated that he never really stopped fighting the Civil war, seeing himself as a modern-day Robin Hood, robbing from Radical Republicans and giving to the poor. But the reality was, he was a repeat murderer with a need for attention. The killer was himself killed on April 3, 1882, by one of his own gang members turned traitor for the reward. In later years, Jesse’s myth overpowered the truth, portraying him as the noble character he believed himself to be
Your characters would have known of Jesse and Frank James and their gangs, and would have read and heard of their daring robberies and murders. Perhaps one of your characters might even have known Jesse, or ridden with him during the war.
J.E.S. Hays
www.jeshays.com
www.facebook.com/JESHaysBooks
