i think what is so impressive about what tj styles has done is that he has taken this man and he has enabled us to see a man who we should note has left very few written records but a man who was during the civil war, who was deeply political. so it is my pleasure to bring back to the stage tj styles. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. my grandfather did public speaking. once before he was going to talk, some came up to him in the lobby and said, i really want to go to the ball game. is this guy any good? he said, i've heard him a few times. sometimes he's pretty good. sometimes find him rather disappointing. so anyway, if you are disappointed, i apologize. i hope i don't. jesse james was my first subject as a biographer.

i wrote about him -- i came to him because i wanted to write about the civil war and reconstruction as one story. and i didn't want to write a boring story. what i found in looking at jesse james is that there's personally no best or popular culture. in fact, had a significant role in american history. that rather than debunking him the way that scholars often do with popular figures, i found that he probably played a much more important role than people had previously realized. and that role is very closely tied to the civil war. i will talk later about how that whole robin hood image emerged. but in fact, the proper way to understand his, the reason why we even know his name is because of the civil war. now, i'm going to be talking about that civil war a little bit before i really even get into jesse james. and the reason is that because

during much of this history, he is quite young. let's start with basic facts about the gorilla warfare that racked missouri during the civil war. a couple of facts i have up on the screen tell you why this was such a traumatic event and how it could give rise to jesse james. for one thing, in 1864, the state conducted a census and it found that it was missing about one-third of the 1860 population. it was a state of about a million people in 1860. about 300,000 were gone. now they weren't all dead. but a lot of them had fled or had been driven out or simply were just unavailable. they were displaced for counting. another fact is that in one study done of trials of civilians by military commissions, by the u.s. army, 42% were in the state of missouri. that is more than in the occupied areas of all 11

confederate states combined. that gives you an idea of how savage this war was. so let's try to understand that. missouri was the northwest frontier of slavery. of course, it came into the union as a part of the missouri compromise in 1820. as you look at this map, missouri is this area -- if you notice where the missouri river is, you see st. louis there. missouri river flows west. this shows population density. slavery followed the rivers. the mississippi and missouri river counties were not only where the population of white people was densest but also of enslaved african-americans as well. so those counties, even though missouri itself was not one of the states in which slavery was most pronounced, it was i think 12% of the population were enslaved in 1850.

a little less than 10% in 1860. still, it played a very important part in the state's economy. again, the economy and the population are concentrated in the slave holding counties. also, the state's leaders -- its political leaders were slave holders from especially the missouri river county. a third fact that we have to remember is that slaves were the second most availabvaluable for property. it was central to the state's economy. i will get to some of the details in jesse james' family in a minute. what happened is in 1854, missouri's civility and its public political life was disrupted by the kansas-nebraska act. remember, at this point, by 1850s, missouri is not a frontier state. it's on frontier of settlement, but especially in the missouri

river counties, it is very much a settled, prosperous, established area with commercial agriculture. they're connected to national markets. jesse james' own father, who is a baptist preacher, baptists didn't pay their preachers, at least not then, he was a slave owner and also a commercial hemp farmer during the war, u.s. hemp found a market. he was selling it in the south. this is not some self-sustaining frontier person. this is someone who is a part of the nation's commercial agricultural economy. in 1854, the state gets thrown up in disarray by opening up kansas to the idea of popular soverei sovereignty. settles will vote on whether there will be slavery there or not. as the strongly pro-slavery

senator david achison said in 1854, we, meaning the pro-slavery forces are playing for a mighty state. if we win, we carry slavery to the pacific ocean. we are organizing to meet their, the anti-slavery forces based in new england, their organization. we will be compelled to shoot, burn and hang. but the thing will soon be over. in other words, at the very outset of the race to settle kansas, between free soilers from the northeast and missourians, there is already a willingness, at least in rhetoric, to use force. there are many reasons for this. we can spend all day talking about it. basically, there is a real sense of threat that if presoilers establish kansas as a free state, then missouri will have free territory on three sides. they're worried about the on

listi abolitionists that they will steal slaves as they would call freeing slaves. there was a great ideological struggle over the idea of whether southern states should be able to export their labor system, slavery, into the west or whether it could be closed off to slavery. so even people who were anti -- who did not want to live around african-americans were fighting for banning slavery, even people who were not slave owners themselves wanted to spread slavery. it was wrapped up with several different political issues and cultural issues. what happened is that in the state of missouri, the state mobilized to spread slavery into kansas. i mentioned a few things. 1854 in june, mass meetings across the western part of the state. the died in the gold rush, his mother remarried to a man named samuels. the james-samuels family was on

the missouri river in a denser slave owning part of the state but very close to the western frontier. this is happening in their territory. in their home county. there were men who joined -- 1,000 men joined the self-defense association. they're beginning to form private militia organizations to go into kansas. by november of 1855, fighting broke out in kansas. the border ruffians inside missouri are raising money and they're organizing. so we have in clay county the pro-slavery aid association is formed. in december 5, 1855, a group of border ruffians captures the federal arsenal in liberty, the county seat of clay county. that gives you an idea of how the fighting in kansas, which becomes known as bleeding kansas, is making people militant. they're seizing a federal arsenal inside missouri.

now, what happens is that this mobilization divides people within missouri. this is an underreported, under discussed aspect of the bleeding kansas fight where there's 200 people killed in the civil war in kansas in the 1850s. within missouri, there is a real polarization that is created. for example, as i mentioned on the screen, on july 29, 1854, a preacher who is perceived as anti-slavery is put on trial in his own church. the man who organizes this is a strident pro-slavery e rry i ha who argues slavery is necessary for white people to be free. he says every man who works for a living is slave and every poor while working woman is a whore. we have to have slavery so we can be free and not engage in menial work.

there are boycotts called of those who are opposed -- not opposed to slavery but those who don't think there should be warfare over it. in kansas. that preacher was driven out of the county in 1855. also in 1855, a mob destroyed a newspaper that was critical of this warfare going on in kansas or this -- at least the militant mobilization for it. warfare hadn't yet taken place. in clay county, a mass meeting denounced traitors in our midst. in july 12 of 1855, a pro-slavery convention in lexington, missouri river town close to the western border, actually endorses cessation six years before the outbreak of the civil war. now, of course, the war arrives. but missouri is divided into camps, pro union and proce

cessation. there's few abolitionists in missouri. most are in the german population, which is strong in st. louis. but there are many people who are moderately pro slavery but who don't believe that in this union, that border state unionism is very strong in missouri. there are slave owners who say, if we secede, we're going to lose the benefit of the slave act. we're going to have an international boundary or three slides. it's not a simple thing. the state is very pore llarized because of the intolerance for dissent. i won't go through all the details how the war erupts. there's a convention on cessation. it votes against. the governor is in favor of cessation. he organizes a state guard. there's a clash with general

lyon. the state guard retreats to the southwest. lyon attacks them at wilson's creek. he is killed. price leads the state guard to capture lexington. finally, general fremont leads a new force which forces price out of the state. by the end of 1861, you have for the next three years basically an end to conventional warfare in missouri. at this point, traditionally historians have lost interest in missouri. everything is fine now. instead, a massive gorilla campaign breaks out. we have to ask the question of why. now, there's a traditional answer which is very important in the jesse james myth, especially since he is from western missouri. that is that the anti-slavery j jayhawkers fighting alongside brown in kansas against the

border ruffians, that they want revenge now. they march in and they terrorize and loot and pillage western missouri. those peaceful missourians rise up to defend themselves. there's an element of truth to this. there were raid bs by troops fr missouri into western missouri. this did take place. the problem is you -- i have illustrated very loosely where the raids took place. the problem is that fighting breaks out across the state, especially all along the missouri and mississippi river valley. i'm going to add to -- because i'm focusing on jesse james, unfortunately, i will add to the misimpression that this is a border war. because jesse james is in the western border. in fact, the gorilla warfare takes place across the state. in fact, we see as in this illustration, there were refugees -- union refugees being driven into the major towns held

by conventional union forces in 1861. that the kind of missourian against missourian warfare that begins to mark missouri's experience in the civil war begins very early on. the cessationists did not need the impetus of the union forces marching in and terrorizing them. in fact, a study that was published after my book came out shows that the pro-secessionists of the missouri river rally who were the leading figures in their communities, they owned all the banks. they carried out a check scheme to fund cessationist state guard regimens. that what happened is, the cessation movement failed. they did not get reimbursed by the confederate government. so what happened? unionists took over the banks. that will come back, believe me, a little bit later on.

what happened in this emerging gorilla warfare? it's important to think about what exactly we're talking about. first of all, as i mentioned, it's concentrated in the slave holding areas. the leaders of the groups that form spontaneously tend to be from the wealthier more established families. especially from -- not only but especially from the slave holding families. that had been leaders in their counties initially. these are the people who lead the organization of these secession groups. these were small groups without central direction. we're not talking about mosby who has got a direct tie to the confederate change of command. these groups strongly associate with the confederacy. yet, they are not responding to orders or any centralized strategy. so that means two things. one, they're almost impossible to crush out.

if you crush out one squad, there's another one that's not affected by that. they're going to keep operating. you kill one leader, another one is going to show up. there's no sense in which you can simply crush it out. the second thing is that it never represents a real threat on its own to seizing control geographically of missouri. it's a constant sore more the union. they're never in danger of losing missouri. that has important affects. which i will get to in a second. another thing about this warfare is that the tactics that were used. these are very close range clashes. there are a lot of ambushes. of there's a heavy use of close range weapons, particularly the .36 colt navy revolver. this is a cap and ball revolver. the confederates as they accumulated more firearms were known to carry as many as half a dozen revolvers.

in a clash, they would pull the revolver, fire it until it was empty or it jammed, drop it down and pull out another one. so there was very intense close range fighting. they developed over time some very sophisticated tactics. not only ambushes, they began to use decoy ambushes where they would send out someone to lure the union forces into a trap. they carried out various other operation operations which were designed to trick union forces. they would then disburse. and another thing that's very familiar is that increasingly as the war went on -- they're not going to seize formal control of missouri. but they are trying to carry out a kind of political cleansing.

as is so often the case, the target becomes civilians. in the case of the confederate gorillas, they're beginning to tax people. they are burning out unionists. they are terrorizing people who -- especially who are leaders of the unionist leaders of the civilian population. increasingly, they carry out tactics designed to trick people into revealing their true allegian allegiances. they will wear union uniforms ask for food and if they give them food, boom, they will burn out the house and kill the men on their doorsteps. in fact, savagery begins to creep in. by 1863, 1864, you are seeing executions. you are seeing the killing of prisoners after a clash. you are beginning to see in 1864 especially mutilation. scalping, severing heads, other parts of the human body which we

won't discuss today. this is a real war that becomes increasingly about terror and controlling the civilian population. the last thing is that the confederate gorillas have a winter refuge in texas. in winter the snow falls, they're easier to track. so they have a refuge. they withdraw. another thing that makes them hard to stamp out. in texas, the conventional confederate authorities are not too happy about these wild men from missouri. of course, the union has to invent counter insurgency. it's important to note for the future of jesse james' career that this is a war which is actually mostly fought on the union side by missourians. the provisional state government which replaces governor jackson, it creates the missouri state militia organized like the cavalry of the u.s. volunteers.

then local county based militia organizations. the enrolled and row visiprovis enrolled. some were basically confederates at home and turned out to be disloyal. they create a hardened core which amps up the cycle of violence where you have got now under arms men who are the most strongly union fighting against their neighbors. makes that local neighbor against neighbor fighting more intense. they too develop a range of tactics. they carry out patrols. when there's a confederate raid, they pursue. they also target enemy camps. they're trying to get intelligence. they try to attack them when they're in camp in those river bottoms so there's heavy brush and timber. they also begin to carry out more sew fophisticated tactics

the decoy ambush or the hammer and anvil. as early as 1863, i found evidence of a local union officer putting two companies, one on either side of a creek bottom and then sending two companies up one on either side of the creek to drive the confederates out of the brush. they used to highs wide. they would try to drive them toward the anvil waiting at the other end. in one case, i will get to, the confederates anticipated this and they lured the attacking force into an ambush. this is increasingly directed against the civilian population on the union side as well. in one case, for example, it goes to the rising level of atrocity on both sides. a missouri state militia commander in clay county went out and was searching for confederate rebels in august 1862. he finds a camp and attacks

them. he wrote a report. previous to attacking their camp, i had found three men at a nearby house. who denied having any knowledge of any camp or gathering of armed men. at a nearby house. who denied having any knowledge of any camp or gathering of armed men. after the skirmish was over, up sent two of these men out and had them shot. so this shows you the level, again, of intensity. they didn't -- all they did was not report on what he thought they knew. and he had them shot. and he reports it in an official report. this is 1862. it gets worse from there. now, marshall law was carried out by marshalls with county ties gathering information. it is both secessionists and unionists reporting on each other. there are others being rolled

out, all men are required to enroll in the missouri malitia. and if they refused or were known to be secessionists, they were enrolled as disloyal. so they create a list, who are the suspects on the other side? they had to pay a fine. so again, like the confederates were doing, they were taxing the other side. so again, this warfare is falling upon the civilians. and as the war goes on, i'll talk about it in a minute, not only are they searching homes, not only are they interrogating and registering the disloyal, but also they begin to carry out torture and then final ly demassing the population. now, there's a legend of the guerilla and jesse james tribute. there was a guerilla aspect to the war of cantrell.

he was not from missouri, but he was quite good at guerrilla warfare. in 1863, he carried out one of the most infamous civil incidents from the civil war if not history. he let a force of guerrillas into kansas and attacked lawrence, kansas, which was the capital of the abolitionist movement in kansas, and it killed approximately 200 men and boys and burned down the town. missouri has its own -- and august of 1962 is the low point for the confederacy. this is after gettysburg. and i also found records locally is after a wave of mass escapes from slaves still being held in slavery in western missouri. and then on top of that, there are a number of women who are taken prisoner who were sisters

and female relatives of guerrillas and concentrate in a building in kansas city. there was a building collapse. and some of them were killed. so a lot of the guerrillas wanted personal revenge. so the national landscape and the local personal aspect are both, they are not mutually exclusive, they are both true. jim lane is pictured there who was a strong jayhawker who had, was a u.s. senator and also led jayhawker raids into kansas. so he was a particular target. he had to escape in his underwear through a cornfield from lawrence. the union responded with an action they were considering beforehand. and again, we have the brother-in-law of william sherman, general thomas ewing jr., commanding western missouri. and they carried out an action, general order number 11. so they ordered all those not living within one mile of the

county seats of three-and-a-half counties to evacuate their farms and leave. and this created an area called the burnt district. as union troops marched through the lawrence massacre burning down farms that led to a famous painting owned by the state historical society of missouri, i believe. by george caleb irving ordering number 11. this shows a strong element of truth but this is also the strong kind of pop begropaganda. and it shows all areas in which the farms are being burned and an attempt to drain the sea of civilian who is are supporting the guerrilla warfare. so now we come finally to the james samuel family. again, the mother having remarried. this is a family that was not poor. they own seven slaves in 1860, which means they have more black

slaves than white ones. that put them at more than the double of slaves in clay county. previously, they were raising hemp, they switched to tobacco and were part of the commercial economy. this is not a story of deprivation or self-sustaining farmer who is are not paying attention to the world. they are sophisticated, well educated people. zorell samuel was outspoken and confederate and secessionist in her views. frank james, older than jesse, 18 when the war started, enlisted in the guard. he fought at wilson's creek. they did not need to be pushed to the confederate side. it was highly pole orized when the war began and strongly secessionists and strongly pro-confederate. the idea that they had no opinions until they were terrorized is not true. frank took part in a number of actions, including this disruption i mentioned of the

hammer and angle operation in clay county. after they disrupted this operation by dismantling them in an ambush, frank and he were hiding out in the timber, that you can see in the background, of the james samuel farm. and the local provisional enrolled militia, the hard core of the local unionists made a raid to try to find that group. led by a man you have never heard of named fernando scott, a local artisan. what they did is they went on the farm and they asked the stepfather, reuben samuel, if he knew where the guerrillas were. after the newspaper reported shortly afterward, james said the malitia judged him to be speaking falsely when dr. samuel said he didn't know of guerrillas. then he placed a rope around his neck and gave him a swing. his memory brightened up and he

revealed the hiding place of the rebels. he led them in into the woods and there squatted aupon the ground was discovered the whole band, including his stepson, frank james. as a result of this, it placed ruben and samuel in a rather awkward position. he later asked him to leave the state, i mean to leave his outspoken wife behind as well. frank james managed to escape. jesse james' legend has it was whipped as he was working in the fields at the age of about 15. and reuben samuel was arrested. then shortly afterwards, hireld samuel was also arrested but pregnant. they get part of the network under control in the guerrilla warfare. the next year he took part in the lawrence massacre and went

off to texas and came back. and he came back with a group led by the man at far left, fetch taylor. that photograph shows frank james in the middle. and then his younger brother jesse. the middle photo shows jesse james in a typical confederate guerrilla outfit, that's a guerrilla shirt heavily embroidered by the women in the family. he posted that photo after the guerrillas briefly captured it. and also another young man who was a part of fetch taylor's group. his name was archie clemmon, though he was a teenager himself, frankly became jesse's mentor and close friend. jesse james in 1864 at the age of 16 joins the guerrillas, and what does he joy are thdo? does he join the jayhawkers?

no, they go door to door and murder eight farmers who were not engaged in combat who were at homeworking and were called out on the front step or found in the field. in one case, they found a unionist farming in the field and went to the house to tell the widow they had killed him. so in short order, jesse james and this group, takes part in killing eight men he had grown up next to. so basically he was part of a death squad, what we now call a death squad. part of the political cleansing of clay county. as a result of this action, she was pursued by the marshall who at the time was a malitia commander. frech th flec fetch taylor and jesse james were in that group. so it was a combination of actual combat between troops and also warfare on the population. after this, jesse james, fetch

taylor takes a shotgun to the arm and loses one of his arms. and jesse james and fetch taylor ride to join a man named bloody bill anderson. bloody bill earned miss name. he lost a sister in the kansas city prison collapse and was one of the most ruthless killers in missouri. he engaged in some of the most savage warfare on the confederate side. archie clemmon became known as the chief scalper. and the anderson group was infamous for their mutilation of the dead. they decorated their bridles with scalps taken. they made a regular practice of murdering any prisoners that fell into their hands. i'm getting all little ahead here. in fact, he takes part in the james brothers taking part in the operation in missouri where they pull 22 unarmed soldiers returning home on leave from

sherman's army in georgia. and they murder them by the side of the railroad tracks. then they ambush a pursuing union force and manage to wipe it out. and they murder every one of the men who tried to surrender. over 100 men were executed. jesse james himself actually got credit for killing the commander of that pursuant force. and there is massive dismemberment and scalping takes place. this is jesse james introduction to warfare. the reaid in 1864 brought jesse james back now a con federal general. he had three division, one of which had no guns, that was a handicap.

he got bogged down in besieging the fort, as a result, the union had time to rush conventional troops in. so rather than capturing st. louis, he went west and found jefferson city, the capital, was well established. and eventually he marched over to westport in kansas city where there's a major battle. now, interestingly what happens is, instead of, because there's no central direction of those confederate guerrillas, they were creating chaos over the state giving him an opportunity to advance and seize important points while the union forces are split up dealing with all the guerrillas. since the groups do not have central direction, they respond to the invasion by going to his army. so what happens is he actually concentrates most of the confederate guerrilla, at least a lot of the leading groups, with his conventional army and a lot of the guerrilla leadership

is wiped out in the conventional battles. it's the opposite of what he's done. there's no mosby here. no one is part of a confederate chain of command in the guerrilla movement. instead of taking the guerrilla war to another level, it ends up knocking it down a launch. in fact, at westport, he's badly defeated and has to retreat and it really knocks the wind out of the confederate guerrilla movement. one interesting side effect is that bill anderson is too ruthless, even with all the ruthless guerrillas, he's too much for price. he says, i would like you to go across the missouri river and go the opposite way from the direction i'm going. and what happens is, he doesn't do that, he does cross the missouri river, and he gets lured into an ambush by a wiley union malitia commander. he liked to use the decoy ambush. he gets decoyed himself into an ambush and gets killed. this is something jesse james

carries with him. so what happened in the james family is they are targeted for banishment. and there's an interesting report written up in which the marshal collecting intelligence, he knows that the james boys were with anderson and assisted in the murder of soldiers at centralia. his report justifying the banishment of the civilian james samuel family. he says, i speak from the mom hearsay but from my own personal knowledge. he had personally heard a neighbor of zarell samuel being challenged by a neighbor. aren't you ashame of what your boys are doing? she rejoined that she was not. that she prayed to god to protect them in their work. nick concluded by saying, i regard her as one of the worst women in this state.

so the james-samuel family was banished. and they would have been sent across the union lines of the confederacy, the confederacy is getting farther and farther away, so they get sent to them and place in a casket. moving along then, i jumped ahead a little bit, bill anderson was killed. you can see his death photo on the right wearing the embroidered guerrilla shirt. archie clemmon is here in texas. they come back in the spring of 1865 defining that formal civil war is over and that there is a domestic reconstruction beginning in missouri. now, missouri goes ahead of the union and is a republican government, the republican party is created by the war, almost non-existent in 1860. but the strongest unionists, the ones in the malitia movement, those in the most active become republican. so they met and carry out state

emancipation. they, again, are not covered by part of the union confederacy. and later on when the reconstruction acts are not passed, it does not cover missouri. so they enact what is called the ironclad oath where you have to swear that you did not do one of 86 different acts of disloyalty in order to vote, preach the gospel, be a corporation officer, to serve on juries, et cetera. there is a sort of soft conservative unionist movement. they are reunionists but not so strong of unionunionists. they are called radicals, but we shouldn't refuse them with the radical republicans of missouri. they only maintain power and carry with them a new vision for missouri. and they have a positive vision for it, positive meaning they have a program, by keeping the confederates out of politics.

so they, by doing this, there's no large black population to rely on as a voting bloc as you do in missouri and other states during the construction. they've got to keep the confederates out. so by doing that they create, a, there's no political outlet for the discontent of the former confederates. and b, that i begin to alienate the moderate unionists who become the democratic party in missouri after the civil war. now archie clement does not surrender. a lot of confederate guerrillas say there's no point in carrying on and surrender. archie clement centers in lexington at the end of may 1865. this is someone who is not willing to stop sacrificing and fighting. he never gives up. jesse james himself is badly wounded in a gunfight with the

wisconsin cavalrymen. the first time i can confirm that he exchanged fire with confederate or with non-missouri troops is when he has a gunfight with the wisconsin troops in may of 1865. so jesse james is badly wounded. however, in 1866, archie clement comes back. and this is very important because this is the election that decides the fate of reconstruction. this is the one that i talked about yesterday that andrew johnson goes on the stump campaigning for a union which there's no slavery but white men rule the souchlt in which the radicals now come up with the 14th amendment. they come up with the civil rights act. they have increasingly a new vision that includes black people in the union. and this is a violent election year in missouri. but you have pro-republican gangs. you have groups like archie clement resisting from the confederate side. so this year in missouri starts

off with a robbery, the first daylight robbery in history in the county seat of clay county where jessie james is from. there are two banks in town. which bank do they pick? the one owned by the former malitia officers the week after they had the first republican rally in clay county history. this is a target, they are getting easy money, they are definitely outlaws and also picked a political target. all through 1866 archie clements gang intimidated registration officials. the sheriff of clay county is writing to the u.s. army saying union men are terrified and leaving the county. that union troops are sent to investigate reports of an armed pistol company. one of them says, everybody is wearing a gun, i can't tell. everyone has a pistol strapped to their hip. even boys plowing in the fields. there's violence and turmoil.

at the end of 1866 on election day, archie clement leads the old group of guerrillas and he occupies the town of lexington. the most important missouri town and occupies and swings the election to the democrats. because the republicans wisely stay at home. what happens is the state governor declares a state of emergency and sends in malitia. archie clement ends up being killed. and what happens? darell samuels is still having kids and names the son archie after archie clement. so by 1869, i'm going quickly through the history, and you can certainly ask questions, jesse james has a choice. all the old guerrilla leaders who followed archie clements have been found or given up by the missouri governor be. uh in 1869, jesse james and his

brother frank go to rob in the davis county sentencing association because they believe that the cashier is the militia leader who would ambush and kill bloody bill anderson. in that robbery, they grab basically nothing of value, but jesse james makes a point of shooting down the man across the counter. as they escape from the scene, they boast about how, he boasts about how he's killed the man who killed bloody bill anderson. we know it is jesse james because his horse when the townspeople fight back, they overthrew him and he had to steal a farmer's horse. and back then, people knew their horses. and it was a famous horse locally because it was so fast and so fine. and, in fact, the farmer whose horse he stole actually had the nerve to sue the james brothers. so this makes jesse james famous. he had been a teenager in the civil war and now his name now becomes famous. what happens is, he comes to the attention of a newspaper editor who had been a confederate

agitant to the missouri commander joe shelby. this is john newman edwards, who comes back from exile in mexico with a plan to bring the confederates back into politics and to take over the democratic party. because if they can sort of convince missourians they were really a southern state, he's starting to create the myth of the unionists coming in from kansas and terrorizing missouri and turning it into -- the missourians are mainly those who stood up for rights, even though he's strongly a confederate. so he wants to basically have a confederate victory in peacetime and sees jesse james as an ally. in fact, jesse james begins to write letters to his newspaper, "the kansas city times" where he says, i'm innocent, the damn radicals are targeting me because i stood up for southern

rights and i'm a confederate. i'll be dammed if they take me alive. i'm innocent but will fight to the end. that's the mixed message he sends. so if he comes in the symbol of the martyrdom many confederates feel like they are suffering from after the civil war. he and his younger brothers and other former confederates, they carry out robberies. and they are absolutely criminals. they are violent men who, especially jesse james, 16, immersed in immense violence, he likes to see people cower when he points a gun in their face. he likes not working for a living. he's definitely in it for the money. but i don't want to exaggerate the politics of his career, but politics is what distinguishes his career. and if being a confederate is often a big excuse, why is he the only one doing it? he becomes very important in missouri politics. in fact, he and his brother are

the only ones who are singled out for rewards by the governor of missouri above $300. and when the confederates later come back into power, they put a limit on rewards of $300. which can only be seen as a direct act to protect the james brothers from capture. now, the climax of this is in 1872 when jesse james carried out a robbery with one of the youngers, and top left i have one of his quotes i mentioned, i don't care what the radical party thinks about me. i would just assume they think that i was a robber as not. again, kind of a wink at the audience. and then in 1872, john newman edwards writes editorials talking about how the men carried out the robbery of the kansas city fair. they are both great men. then jesse james writes a letter to the press. i believe, i can't prove, but i believe jesse james wrote the letters because later when he moves to tennessee, he writes

very similar letters to the press completely unconnected to john newman edwards. so he writes, just let a party of men commit a bold robbery and the cries hang them. but grant in his party can steal millions and that is all right. it hurts me very much to be called a thief. it makes me feel like they were trying to put me on par with grant and his party. again, this is not the re-election campaign for grant winning a second term in the presidency. he said, grant's party has no respect for anyone. they robbed the poor and rich and we rob the rich and give to the poor. so he does make that claim, but it's entirely in a political context. he said, i will close by hoping that horse would defeat grant and i can make an honest living and then i don't have to rob and taxes won't be so heavy. so again, it's very funny. but it certainly may have been edited by edwards, but like i said, he's writing very political and very similar articles to letters to other

newspapers. and it's very much in the political context. so again, a robber wants the money, yes. there's other events taking place, january 25th, 1875, the pinkertons who have had some men killed by the james and younger brothers, they launched an aid on the farmhouse and throw a device that ends up blowing up and taking the arm off samuel and kills archie's brother. this becomes a major event. the people supporting the pinkertons were malitia men living next door and he provides a base for the pinkertons. and the james brothers kill him outside his house. it's a reenactment of the civil war ten years. now 1876, there's an earthville robbery, the climax of his life. and then in northfield, i believe the evidence strongly suggests that when one of the

youngers was captured the day after the disastrous minnesota robbery, that he spoke the truth when he said they learned that former governor delward james, a union general that fought at cemetery hill, went off to be the reconstruction governor and senator and governor of missouri. one of the foremost voices for civil rights during reconstruction. he had been driven out of mississippi by the insurrection of 1865. and where did he go? northfield, missouri. locally, he was not famous. he had money invested in the bank. they had a mill in town, but james and the younger brothers knew he was there. and they went to get him in 1867, the presidential election year, the year reconstruction is up for grabs. now, did they intend to have an impact on the election? i think maybe. but certainly this was an attractive target because he was there. the gang split up and the united and forth field. so it wasn't just a target of opportunity. ames, by the way, actually stood behind one of the town gunmen

firing back and encouraged him. a very interesting man, one of the most fascinating people. william scott, ben styles, he was killed on the streets and was looking a little bit like my father who claimed relation, there's flolno relation. after the 1866 gang, the gang is wiped out except for the brothers. when he returns to a life of crime a few years late e by now the reconstruction has ended and the confederates dominate politics in missouri. a strong unionist state. and jesse james has no excuse. he has political views, but there's no more fight. now he's just a violent man in it for the money. and so his second career lasted a couple years typical of western outlaws. the governor of missouri, thomas

d.cr d.crienden, manages to shoot jesse james in the back of the head. it's a lucky thing for jesse james because that secured his image, his myth as the american robin hood. because he came back, he couldn't stay out of the outlaw life. if he had just lay quietly, he would have probably been forgotten. and he certainly wouldn't be remembered as the american robin hood. but because he came back and there was no more political context that both doomed him and also changed his image in american memory, taking out the whole political context that kept him alive for so long. and so, you know, jess southeast james' widow wasn't so happy. but certainly jesse james' myth was a great deal to the fact that bob ford shot him in the back of the head and left him as the man you see in the casket there. thank you very much. [ applause ]

again, let's take some questions. if not, i will go on for a few more minutes. i put much more emphasis on the civil war background. and i talk very quickly because there's so much to talk about. but that, first of all, this is a civil war conference i heard, and second of all, second of all, that really is the key to understanding jesse james. no civil war, no jesse james. it's really that simple. yes, sir. >> i'm just curious about jees -- jesse james in terms of the man. for me, in a way, he reminds me of john dillinger. that he was using the cover of the civil war, the cover of reconstruction to extend the skills of killing that he had

acquired during the civil war. that he was, man, he was a psychopath, basically, like bloody bill anderson. do you have an opinion one way or the other whether he was just -- the way i look at him is, he was brutalized and also trained to kill as a confederate soldier. and that he enjoyed that experience and carried that into the peacetime world. >> yeah, i think that is absolutely true. and i talk about, for example, one very fruitful way of thinking about it is a socialist talked about violence nation. what criminals have in common. that absolutely applies to jesse james. he couldn't live quietly, even when there was no politics. however, i don't believe that his partisanship and his politics are mutually exclusive with having a violent personality and an inability to make an honest living.

i think that if they were mutually exclusive, or rather if it was a good excuse to be all kinds of outlaws claiming political motives. the fact is, why weren't the other outlaws also out putting their names out there, writing letters to the press, the fact that it is jesse james, in particular u who comes to the attention of edwards and works with ed wards. even when away from edwards he's carrying on the same plane. this is what distinguishes him. when you look at the politics of the time and how people were deeply partisan and how deeply divided missouri was. it just makes a lot of sense that he was very political. and he actually had to argue against saying he had any political views. when you are in a position of that because you just think it

makes sense, you are on shaky ground. so i think you make a valid point, but it is just that this other side is true. i'll take a question up here next. >> i guess in a broader context, i would imagine that any knowledges -- in the american west that follows, the dun play, the sort of people wearing guns on their hips, like sort of you see in these pictures, that there were other civil war veterans who contributed to that culture or violence. can you speak to that in? >> wild bill hickock, one of the most famous and real thing, one of the most famous gunmen in the u.s., he was a union scout in missouri. and, in fact, there aren't typical walk-downs who walk down main street. why everyone runs for cover, that happened in spring field,

missouri, in 1865 between child bill hinkock. one of the great scholars of violence in american history, richard maxwell brown, he sees a whole pattern of violence in which wartime loyalties in the frontier west n which the whole -- he goes to the western civil war of incorporation. that all top individual ly section is when people are incorporatinging this into the republican side. and those people tended to be socialized with the union. wyatt earn -- this is breaking down some interesting details. so missouri, specifically, and

also the civil war influences the violence in the big way. you in the back. >> in your research, you come across the information about harry truman's family, that his mother's home was burned. >> i ran across this another time. the first time harry truman, in the 20th century, makes a trip into kansas, his grandmother says, look for the damn spoons that the jayhawkers stole. his family legend, he himself idolized jesse james. so it shows how longstanding that idea of just as a confederate is not something people in missouri forgot. >> i heard they were part of the banished group from the farm. >> they were in jackson county, i believe. that's where he was from personally, so they may have

been uprooted. they were allowed back in. again, the unpopulation didn't last long that it could tap down those in guerrilla warfare but they cam back. i'm going to take the next person in line because he's been waiting longer. >> when you described the massacre, it actually struck me as being almost generocidal. is that somewhat an accurate way to portray that? >> well, that means targeting a group for extermination. i use the term political cleansing. they are not necessarily trying to murder every single person. for example, white women, at least, were rarely targeted for murder. when jesse james is on the

essential death squad in 1864, they are murdering the men and making sure the widows know. so it is incredibly bloody but not wiping to it a whole population. so, you know, it sounds like an apology to try to draw attention. but in lawrence, they killed men and boys but not the men. so there absolutely was rape more than realized. there absolutely was violence against women. but there is, you often see resistance to that. and so you can't call it genocide, but there is mass murder with purpose of changing the civilian landscape. yes, ma'am. >> jesse james was more of a product of his environment, do you feel that way? because he was so young when he saw the events that took place

and he was selective for who he killed and who he went after. they were all unionists and he had seen violence from unionists as a young man. and certainly that continued through his life with his mom losing his arm, losing a brother, losing family members, yet his older brother was kind of forgiven and pardoned. he wasn't and didn't have the same benefits because he was, i think, younger and he was more refined as far as his brother's influence on his education and the way he would spout off shakespeare as he was robbing people. his attitudes were very different, but i was wondering if you feel that his youthful exuberance kind of led him to be more violent. >> more exuberantly murderous. yeah. this is an interesting point. you know, frank james was, in fact, someone who loved

shakespeare. when he robbed a train at gats hill, when they whacked through the train, very rarely robbing passenger, but he quoted shakespeare as they went through -- they knew theater. also, in their first train robbery in 1873, they wore masks that the friendly "kansas city times" regarded as full ku klux klan brigalia. they had close ties in kentucky and often operated. as i know from my work, there was a big federal offense against the klan in kentucky and klan trials going on. so when they carried out the robbery, they wore the masks perceived as being klan. so the theater was a part of their robberies. now, that's a little diversion.

yes, frank was someone who was able to get over the violence that he endured. he was a little older, he had a different personality. jesse was younger. he had a different personality. and i think the earlier impact of all that violence but also we have to remember again so many have parts of coaching. and his mother was extremely political. she was strongly and criticized the newspaper editor by name because she didn't like the editorials. strongly political, well informed, fiercely secessionists and taking the southern side at the outset of the conflict. this is someone who was trained and encouraged and taught to be utterly militant and ruthless. he was -- he could be charming and funny. he, at tend of his life, he moved back to western missouri, and he settled in st. joseph, as people know who visited the house where he was killed, and he actually went to a railroad

station and applied for work saying he had a lot of experience in train work. so yeah, he was funny. i love brad pitt's character going from charismatic to, whoa, he could kill me. that captured jesse james. i think jesse james' personality, he would have been a violent man of the civil war, a lot of men were but some weren't. so you had the violent personality and violent training he could never shake. by the way, don't look for big deposits of his loot. armed robbers are not big savers. whenever you need money and put a gun in someone's face, it's kind of a disencentuincentive f robbing. but for the long arc of ten

years after the civil war, he survives for so long because he's got support and makes a point, sincerely of saying, listen, i'm a political figure. nothing else but a political symbol. and that he's got an ally in the press. he's very influential in the democratic party who he allies with that makes him a significant figure as missouri realigns after confederates come back in the voting booths, not booths but a ballot box. yes, sir. >> any idea why they began resulting to torture and mutilation? was it something to do with the fact that they were all sort of farmers out on the frontier and used to slaughtering and being among blood or what? >> you know, people are -- most of the north as well as the south is agricultural. people are slaughtering pigs all the time. now, they are not really frontier, that's agricultural, but joe shelby is that

confederate general and in border roping. these are not frontier in the sense of unincorporated into the american economy, we have well established institutions. so i think due to the nature of guerrilla warfare, when you literally have neighbors fighting against neighbors, and when you've got to control the civilian population, on both sides, so when people are raiding, even before they start killing, they are raiding people's houses, they are arresting people and enacting fines, they are robbing the confederates are robbing people and the union forces are, you know, burning people out. i mean, it cycles up and cycles up very quickly. and you have a few figured um like bloody bill anderson who are leaders emphasizing the

ruthlessness and pushing it. so again, it's on both sides. they are decorating their bridles with anderson's men's scalps as well. it appears on both sides. it's not a morality tale of good against darkness, as much as i believe slavery is bad, in missouri both sides are very ruthless. i think i have to believe it's ultimately because this is a war of the population against a population that is right next door. and there is something about that that erases all the formal restraints on warfare in missouri. but that's my estimation. i will take one more question. >> okay. just a real quick comment. i've had to do research in this area being from westport, and somebody brought up truman. truman had two ancestors in the confederate army. one, his uncle was involved

inment so in me some of these activities, one was on his wife's side. but apparently when his mother came to visit him in the white house, she refused to sleep in the lincoln bedroom. >> yeah, i believe it. and yet, you know, who desegregated the military? it was truman. so, missouri today, by the way, i should mention that bank that they robbed and that was owned by union malitiamen, it existed before the civil war and was one of the banks owned by men leading secessionists who would basically carry out a check-petting scheme and lost control of the bank. so banks, that's where the money is, yet they also were political targets. so i don't want to overemphasize that. the but these are slooutd people. when jesse james rock ed trains

giving national charters and turning them into national banks, they were required by law to keep the deposits in new york. so all year long the shipping cash to new york banks. and then when the harvest happens, they ship cash back. so that everybody has cash for the transactions of the harvest and shipping, et cetera. so there is a seasonal flow of cash after the civil war going by express car. so they usually didn't rob passengers. they upped trains going in the right direction of the seasonal flow of, it was flowing south at a time when cash was flowing south for the cotton harvest. so these are not unsophisticated men finding an easy excuse. they are people who know their world f. we know it better, we understand what they are up to.

i could say jesse james was a terrorist. this is the kind of framework we need to begin thinking about him. in some ways he's a forerunner, but i don't want to go there. i was revising my manuscript in brooklyn when the world trade center was hit. and i already had this idea worked out and was more careful afterward not to push it too far. and yet, we have to argue against the evidence. there was no politics in his desire for impact. but it's the lack of a political context that turned him into a generic outlaw, very dearing and flamboyant, but generic in his life. in terms of someone to write folk songs about knowing that people who are living in yankeeland are fighting the corporation. you were into robin mood, how am i going to write about the rise

of the world. thank you very much. [ applause ] we'll have more from the annual civil war institute conference at gettysburg college in just a moment. tonight on american history tv, we'll take a look at the congressional debate over slavery that took place in the 1790s as well as talk about the legacy of former house speaker newt gingrich and his influence on contemporary partisan politics. that's at 8:00 p.m. eastern this evening. american history is in primetime every night this month while congress is away for their summer recess. the first total solar eclipse will be visible from coast to coast in the u.s. for the first time in 99 years. at noon eastern, we'll have a live simulcast of nasa tv. join us on c-span and online at cspan.org.

you're watching american history tv. 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitte twitter @cspanhistory for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. now we return to the annual civil war institute at gettysburg college for conversation on shipwrecks during the civil war. this is just under an hour. good afternoon, everyone. i am pete carmichael, professor of history at gettysburg college, also the director of the support institute. it's my pleasure to welcome laura lauffer. laura is a graduate of penn state university. during her summer, she spent time as a seasonal historian at

gettysburg national park. she then went on to unc greensboro where laura and i spent some time together. i was her mentor for a year before i moved on to west virginia university. laura did complete her masters at uncg. and then she has had a very varied career in the field of public history. her first job was at stratford hall, the birthplace of robert e. lee. recently, she's the deputy education director at the hampton rhodes naval museum. been there since 2010 and works as an educator there and does special events. she's also worked, i should add, she's also worked at fort monroe casement museum. today she will be speaking to us about the civil warship wrecks, which is very unusual.

in my seven years here, i don't think we have done anything that hasn't been on land, we have not done any naval operations at all. she'll be talking about the shipwrecks of the "uss cumberland" and "ussa florida." a note that laura and her husband have just recently published a book. you can see a copy of it just in front of the podium. the title of that book is "never call me a hero: a legendary american dive bomber pilot remembers the battle of midway." let me introduce laura lauffer. good afternoon. how is everybody? good? stay awake after lunch, okay? no, i have to actually start out with a matter of