tv coverage now on c-spann. at 4:00 p.m. eastern we want to hear from you about the solar eclipse. join us live an c-span. you are watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter @c-span history for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. next a look at famed bank robber jesse james and his civil war experiences fighting for confederate causes in missouri. this was part of the annual civil war institute conference at gettysburg college. it's a little over an hour. >> good afternoon. i am peter carmichael. member of the history department here at gettysburg college. i am the director of the civil war institute.

it's my pleasure to welcome back tj stiles to cwi. he spoke yesterday as you know. he spoke on george armstrong custer, based upon a book that he received the pulitzer for. he is, as you all know, the winner of two pulitzers. this afternoon he is going to speak on another let's say misunderstood character in jesse james. jesse james, the study of him by tj stiles is really at the point of a new wave of civil war scholarship that's focusing on guerilla warfare. you heard bart meyers yesterday. you met kim noe. they have all been doing work on what many have considered to be the periphery of the civil war. thanks to these scholars and thanks to tj stiles, we now have a more expansive view of civil

war military history. jesse james, unfortunately, is sometimes perceived as a robin hood figure of the old west. we often see jesse james as being apolitical. that he is part of those bandits like bloody bill anderson. 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 stiles. [ applause ] >> thank you very much. my grandfather did some public speaking. once before he was going to talk somebody 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 -- is that this person we know best through 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 him, 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 guerilla 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 valuable form of property. those human beings who were held in bondage. it was very much central to the state's economy. i will get to some of the details in jesse james' family in a minute. what happened, though, 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 crimean war u.s. hemp found a market. he was selling it for cotton baling primarily 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 sovereignty. that the settlers of kansas 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 stake. 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 free soilers establish kansas as a free state, then missouri will have free territory on three sides. they're worried about the app ligsists who are moving in to settle the state, that they would be actively stealing 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.

so i have mentioned a few things. 1854 in june, there are mass meetings across the western part of the state. the james family, his father 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 plat county 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 actually 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 in platte county is put on trial in his own church. the man who organizes this is a strident pro-slavery ideologue

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. he says we have to have slavery so that 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 simply 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 in platte county 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 secession six years before the outbreak of the civil war.

now, of course, the war arrives. in 1861. by that time missouri is now divided firmly into camps. pro union and pro secession. there's few abolitionists in missouri. most are found in the german population, which is very strong especially in st. louises. st. louis. but there are many people who are moderately pro slavery but who don't believe in disunion. 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 fugitive slave act. we'll have an international boundary on three sides and then we'll really lose our slaves. it's not a simple thing. the state is very polarized because of the intolerance for dissent in what becomes the

secessionist movement. i won't go through all the details how the war erupts. there's a convention on secession. it votes against secession strongly. the governor is very much in favor of secession. he organizes a state guard. there's a clash with general na thannial lion. 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 guerilla 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 jayhawkers who are fighting alongside john brown in kansas against the pro-slavery 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 in fact were raids by troops from kansas into western missouri, this absolutely did take place. however, 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 guerilla 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. that the secessionists 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 prosecessionists of the missouri river valley, who were the leading figures in their communities, they owned all the banks. they carried out a check kiting

scheme to fund secessionist state guard regiments. 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 guerilla warfare? i will get to jesse james in a minute. but 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. again, that had been leaders in their counties initially. these are the people who lead the organization of these secessionist groups. these were small groups without central direction. we're not talking about mosby who has actually got a direct tie to the confederate chain 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. you kill one guerilla leader, another one shows 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 running sore for the union, and yet they're never in actual 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. there's a heavy use of

close-range weapons, particularly the .36-caliber colt naefy vy 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 operations which were designed to trick union forces. after a clash they would then disperse. very familiar to students of guerilla warfare.

and another thing that's very familiar to students of guerilla warfare 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 in guerilla warfare, the target becomes civilians. in the case of the confederate guerillas, 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 allegiances. they'll wear captured union uniforms, go to a farmhouse, ask for food. if they give them food willingly, they'll burn out the house and often kill the men on their doorsteps. in fact, savagery begins to creep in. by 1863, 1864, you are seeing

sumry 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 guerillas have a winter refuge in texas. in winter the snow falls, the leaves fall off the trees. 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 re are supplemented by a range of local, county-based militia organizations. the enrolled and provisional enrolled. some of the enrolled missouri militia were basically confederates who were at home and turned out to be quite disloyal. so they create a hardened corps which amps up the cycle of violence where you've 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 garrison towns, of course. they carry out patrols. when there is a confederate guerilla 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 where there is heavy brush and timber. they also begin to carry out more sophisticated tactics like 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 hide in those, again, with a lot of cover in the creek bottoms, they tried to drive them toward the anvil waiting at the other end. in one case, i will get to, the confederates anticipated this and the guerillas lured the attacking force into an ambush. now, again, this is increasingly directed against the civilian population on the union side as well. in one case, for example, this goes to both the rising level of atrocity on both sides.

a missouri state commissioner -- militia commander colonel penick in clay county went out and was searching for confederate rebels in august 1862. and he finds the camp of guerillas and attacks them. then 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. after the skirmish was over, i 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 has them shot. and he reports it in an official report. this is 1862. it gets worse from there. now, martial law was carried out by a network of assistant provost marshals usually based in county seats often with local ties and they're gathering information. remember, the countryside is

rife with both secessionists and unionists and they're reporting on each other. there are other measures carried out. all men are required to enroll in the enrolled missouri militia. if they refuse are 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 finally mass depopulation. now, there is an aspect, again, of the guerilla legend and of jesse james' ledge that has an aspect of truth.

there was a guerilla aspect to the war in missouri. cantrell who is the most famous of the leaders who is not himself from missouri but knew a -- actually was quite good at guerilla warfare. in 1863, he carried out one of the most infamous incidents in the civil war if not american history. he let a force of guerrillas into kansas and attacked lawrence, kansas, which was the capital of the abolitionist movement in kansas, and killed approximately 200 men and boys and burned down the town. now, again, missouri has its own cycle of violence. yet they also saw themselves as confederates. in august 1862 is a low point for the confederacy. this is after vicksburg, 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 guerillas and they were concentrated 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, again, so the national landscape and the local personal aspect are both -- they're not mutually exclusive. they're both true. jim lane, pictured there, 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 t. sherman, general thomas ewing

jr., commanding in western missouri. and they carried out an action, general order number 11. they ordered all civilians 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 bingham. order number 11. this shows a strong element of truth but this is also the a kind of propaganda as well. it shows all the fires being lit, areas in which crops and farms are being burned in an attempt to drain the sea of civilians who are supporting the guerilla 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 had more black faces on that farm than white ones. that put them at more than the double the level of slave holding in clay county. previously, they were raising hemp, they switched to tobacco and were very much a part of the commercial economy. this is not a story of deprivation or self-sustaining farmers who 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. again, in a state that was hi l highly polarized when the war began, they were strongly secessionist, 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 anvil operation in clay county. after they disrupted this operation by luhring some of the militia men into an ambush, frank and the men he was hiding out with 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. and as the newspaper reported shortly afterward, lieutenant james rogers said the militia judged him to be speaking falsely when dr. samuel said he didn't know of any guerillas.

he procured a rope, placed it around his neck and gave is one good swing. his memory brightened up and he revealed the hiding place of the rebels. he led them in into the woods and there squatted upon the ground in a dense thicket 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. as you can imagine. he later asked permission from the provost marshal to leave the state, and i assume 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. shortly after wards zorelda samuels who was pregnant was also arrested but paroled.

they get part of the network trying to control the guerilla warfare. the next year frank 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, fletch 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 grirla shirt often heavily embroidered by the women in the family. you see the multiple revolvers he is carrying. he posed for the photo in platte city after the guerillas 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 do?

do they ambush union troops? are they fighting against jayhawkers? no. no, they go door to door and murder eight farmers who were not engaged in combat who were killed eight farmers who were at home and found in the field in case they found the unionist farm in the field and they told the widow that they killed him. in short order, jesse james takes part in killing eight men. he was part of the desk squad of clay county. as a result of this action, again, there was a pursuit by the local marshall who was at the time, the militia commander, fletch taylor and jesse james in the group ambushed them and managed to wound the captain kemper, leader of that group and

it was a combination of actual combat between troops and also warfare on the population. after this, jesse james, fletch taylor takeses a shotgun to the arm and he loses one of his arms and jesse james and fletch taylor ride to join a man named bloody bill anderson. bloody bill earned his name. he lost a sister in that kansas city prison collapse. he was one of the most ruthless killers in missouri and he engages in some of the most savage warfare on the confederate side. archie clement became known as bill anderson's chief scalper, and the anderson group was famous or rather infamous for their mutilation of the dead. they decorated their bridles and saddles with scalps taken. they often -- they made a regular practice of murdering any prisoners that fell into their hands -- oops, i'm getting a little ahead of myself. in fact, he takes part in the

james brothers take part in an operation that's in missouri, where they pulled 22 unarmed soldiers returning home on leave from sherman's army in georgia, and they murder them by the side of the railroad tracks and then they ambush a pursuing union force and managed to wipe it out, and they murder every one of the men who tried to surrender over 100 men were executed. jesse james himself got credit for killing the commander of the pursuing force and there was massive, again, dismemberment and scalping taking place. this is jesse james introduction to warfare. the prices rein in the autumn of 1864 brought conventional warfare to missouri and price had big dreams of being able to conquer missouri for the confederacy. he himself was a former governor. he was a leading missourian and

confederate general. he had three divisions, one of which had no guns that proved to be a handicap. he got bogged down in besieging a fort at pilot knob which i believe ewing was commanding and so as a result, the union had time to rush conventional troops in. so rather than capture st. louis, he went west and he found jefferson city, the capital was well established and so eventually he marches over to westport and kansas city where there's a major battle. now, interestingly, what happens is instead of no central direction, they could have committing chaos all over the state giving him an opportunity to advance and seize important points while the union forces are split up dealing with all these guerillas, but again, since these groups do not have central direction they respond to his invasion by going to his army, and so what happens is that he actually concentrates most of the confederate

guerillas, at least a lot of the leading groups with his conventional army and a lot of the guerilla leadership is wind out in conventional battles. it's the opposite of what they should have done. again, there's no mosby here and no one part of the confederate chain of command so the arrival of conventional forces instead of taking the guerilla war to another level it ends up knocking it down a notch and at westport, he's badly defeated and he has to retreat and it really knocks the wind out of the confederate guerilla movement. one interesting side effect is that bill anderson is just too ruthless, even though these ruthless guerillas, he's too much for price. he says, what i'd like you to do is go across the missouri river and go the opposite direction from where i'm going and what happens is he doesn't do that. he doesn't cross the missouri river and he gets lured into the

ambush by a wiley union militia commander. he likes to use the decoy ambush and he gets killed and this is something jesse james carries with him. so what happened in the james family is they are targeted for banishment and there is a very interesting report that's written up in which the provis marshall who has been collecting intelligence. he notes that james boies was with bill anderson and assisted in the 22 unarmed federal soldiers and is in the national archives and his report justifies the banishment of the family. i speak not merely from hearsay, but from my own personal knowledge. >> he personally heard a neighbor of seralda samuel, being challenged, aren't you ashamed of what your boys are doing? she rejoined that she was not. she was proud of them, that she

prayed to god to protect them in their work. they concluded by saying i regard her as one of the worst women in this state. and so the james samuel family was banished and they would have been sent across the union lines of the confederacy and the confederacy is getting farther and farther away so they get sent to a much worse place to nebraska. moving along then, you know, again, i jumped ahead a little bit. bill anderson was killed and you can see his death photo on the right wearing the embroidered guerilla shirt. jesse james retreats with archie clement, his hero to texas. they come back in the spring of 1865 to find that the formal civil war is over and that there is a domestic reconstruction beginning in missouri. now, missouri goes ahead of the union. it's the republican government and the republican government is created by the war that's almost non-existent in the state in

1860. the strongest unionist and those who are most active become republicans and so they carry out state emancipation. they again, have -- they're not covered by -- they're not a part of the union occupation and the confederacy and later on when the reconstruction passes, it doesn't cover missouri. so they enact what's called the iron clad 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 and be an officer to serve on juries, et cetera. they are -- there is a sort of soft, conservative unionist movement. they are unionist, but they're not so harsh. you have the stronger unionists who become the republicans and they're locally called radicals, but we shouldn't confuse them with the radical republicans in washington. so the radicals are a minority and they can only maintain power and carry through their vision

for a new missouri and they do have a positive vision for it, and positive meaning they have a program. by keeps 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 mississippi and other states in doing reconstruction. they have to keep the confederates out, and so by doing that, they create, a, there's no political outlet from the confederates and b, they begin to alienate the moderate unionists who become the democratic party in missouri after the civil war. archie clement leads a group back. i'm running out of time because i want to leave time for questions. archie clement does not surrender. a lot of confederate guerillas say, you know what? there's no point in carrying on, they surrender. >> archie clement demands the surrender of lexington at the end of may, 1865. okay? this is someone who is not

willing to stop sacrificing and fighting. he never gives up. jesse james himself is badly wounded in a gun fight with the wisconsin cavalry men. the first time that i can confirm that he exchanged fire with non-missouri troops is when he has a gun fight with 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 south in which the radicals now come up with the 14th amendment and they come up with the civil rights act. they have increasingly a new vision that's including black people in the union and this is a violent election year in missouri that you have

pro-republican gangs. you have groups like archie clement who are resisting from the confederate side, and so this year in missouri starts off with a robbery, the first daylight peacetime bank robbery in american history of the clay county savings association in liberty, the county seat of clay county where jesse james is from. there are two banks in town. which one do they pick? >> they pick the one that is owned by the former union militia officers a week after they had the first republican party rally in clay county history. so this is a target. they're getting easy money. they're definitely outlaws and yet they also pick a political target. all through 1866 archie clement's gang inthem dates registration officials and the sheriff of clay county is writing to the u.s. army saying the men are terrified and the union troops are sent in to investigate, reports of an armed

pistol company and they say everyone's wearing a gun. i can tell. everyone has a pistol strapped to their hip, even boys plowing in the field. at the end of 1866 on election day, archie clement leaves his old group of guerillas. this is fall of 1866 on election day. he occupies the town of lexington and the most important western missouri town and swings the election to the democrats because the republicans wisely stay at home. what happens is the state governor declares a statement of emergency, he sends in a militia and archie clement gets killed and zeralda names a son archie after archie clement. that shows you how strongly they identified with it even though jesse james was still wounded by his wounds in 1866. >> by 1869, i'll go quickly through his post-war history and you can certainly ask questions. jesse james has a choice.

all of the guerillas who followed archie clement, they were all killed, captured or given up, but in 1869 jesse james and his brother frank go to rob the davis county savings association because they believe that the cashier is the militia leader who killed bloody bill anderson. they end up grabbing basically nothing of value and jesse james makes a point of shooting down the man across the counter and as they escaped from the scene, they boast about how -- they boast about how they killed bloody bill anderson and we know it's jesse james because his horse when the townspeople fired back, his horse was through 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 nerves to sell. so this makes jesse james

famous. he'd 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 confederatage tant to the confederate missouri cavalry commander, joe shelby. this is john newman edwards. and he 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 if they were a southern state, he's starting to create that myth of the unionist coming back from kansas in terrorizing missouri and turning it into -- missouriance are manly men who stood up for their rights even though he's strongly, ideologically a confederate. he wants a confederate victory in peacetime and he sees jesse james as an ally. in fact, jesse james begins to write letters to his newspaper,

and the kansas city times in which he says i'm innocent and it's the damn radicals who are targeting me because i stood up for southern rights because i'm a confederate and i'll be damned if they keep me alive, i'm innocent, but they'll fight to the end and that's the mixed message he sends. so he becomes a symbol of the martyrdom that the confederates feel they're suffering after the civil war. they ally, he and his brother ally with james and the other brothers and the former confederates and they carry out robberies and they're absolutely criminals. they're violent men who -- especially jesse james, at 16, immersed in immense violence. he likes to see people cower when he pointses a gun in their face. he is definitely in it for the money, but i don't want to exaggerate the politics of the career, but politics is what distinguishes the disbanded career, and if being a confederate was such a great excuse why is he the only one

essentially who is 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 is only be seen as a direct act to keep the james brothers from capture. the climax of this is in 1872 when jesse james carried out a robbery on one of the youngers, and top left i have one of those quote, i mentioned, i don't care what the radical party thinks about me, i would just assume i would think i was a robber and is not, and a wink at the audience. in 1872, john newman edwards writes an editorial, talking about how the men are bold robbers and they're great men and then jesse kams writes a

letter to the press. i believe jesse james did write these letters because later when he moves to tennessee he writes similar letters not connected to john newman edwards. >> just let a body of man commit ron rshryes and grant them, and are that is all right. it to furts me very much to call me a thief. 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 and it's entirely in the political context and i would close by hoping that horse will defeat grant and then i can make an honest living and then i will

wa not have to rob as taxes will be so heavy. >> it certainly may have been edited by edwards and he's writing very political and very similar articles and letters to other newspapers, and it's very much in a political context. >> so again, a robber wants the money. yes. there are other events that take place in 1975. the pinkertons who have had men killed by james and other brothers. they launch a raid in the farm house and they throw an incendiary device that ends up blowing up and taking the arm off of zeralda samuel and killing archie, his half brother. this becomes a major event. the people who supported the pinkertons were old unionists including the militiamen who live next door and the james brothers end up killing him outside his house. it's like a re-enactment of the civil war ten years later. now, 1876, there's the

northfield robbery and this is the climax of his life and in my book they go to northfield. i believe that 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'd learned that former governor delbert aames union general went off to be the reconstruction governor and senator and governor of mississippi. one of the foremost voices for civil rights during the reconstruction. he'd been driven out of mississippi by the insurrection of 1875 and where did he go? northfield, minnesota. >> locally, he was not famous. they had a mill in town, but the younger james and the younger brothers knew he was there and they went to get him, what? in 1876 the presidential election year the year reconstruction is up for grabs. >> do they intend to have any impact on the election? >> i think maybe, but certainly it was an attractive target because he was there. they're getting split up in the

united and northfield so i think it wasn't just a target of opportunity. jame ames, stood behind the town gunmen and firing back and very interesting man and one of the most fascinating people. william -- bill styles, you can see one of the new gang members was killed on the streets and he kind of looks a little bit like my father who claimed relation. there's no relation. after 1876, the gang is wiped out except for the james brothers, and they tried to live peacefully. frank can do it, jesse can't, but when he returns to a life of crime a few years later, the confederates dominate politics in missouri. they strongly unionist state and jesse james has no political excuse. he has political views, but there's no more fight. he's now just a violent man who is in it for the money and so

his second bandit career just lasts a couple of years and it's typical of western outlaws and the governor of missouri, thomas t.crittendon famously shoots jesse james in the back of the head and it's a very lucky thing for jesse james because that secured his image and his myth as the american robinhood because he came back and he couldn't stay out of the outlaw life. if he had just laid quietly, he would have -- he would have been probably been forgotten and he certainly wouldn't be remembered as the american robinhood, 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, jesse 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 and if not, i can go on for a few more minutes. i put much more emphasis on the civil war background, and i know i talk very quickly because there's so much to talk about, but that -- first of all, this is the 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 jesse james in terms of the man because, in a way, at least for me he reminds me of john dillinger, i mean, that he -- 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 -- he was a psychopath, basically, like bloody bill anderson, and do you have an opinion one way or the other whether he was just -- i mean, 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's absolutely true, and i talk about for example, one fruitful way thinking about him which is a sociologist talked about violence, the experiences that particularly violent criminals have in common, and i think that absolutely applies to jesse james, and as i said, he couldn't live quietly even when there is 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 if it was a good excuse that there would have been all kinds of outlaws claiming political motives. the fact is or that the other -- why weren't the other outlaws also, you know, outputting their names out there, writing letters to the press. the fact that it's jesse james in particular who comes to the attention of edwards and works with edwards and is carrying on the same. so the fact is i think both are true. he had a violent personality and he might have led a life of crime under any circumstances, but this is what distinguishes him, and that when you look at, and i look at the politics at the time and how people were deeply partisan and how deeply divided missouri was and it just it makes a lot of sense that he was very political, and he actually had to argue against

evidence to say he was not really political and had no real views and when you're in a position of doing that because you think it just makes sense, then you're on shaky ground, and so i think you make a valid point. it's just that this other side is also true. >> i'll take a question next. >> i guess in the broader context, i would imagine that individuals perhaps not so overtly political as jesse james, but in the american west that followed, you know, the gun play, the sort of the people wearing guns on their hips like sort of you see in these pictures, that there were other civil war veterans that contributed to that culture of violence. can you speak to that? >> wild bill hickock, he'd been a know onscout in missouri and in fact, his first, and the typical main street walkdown as

they walked down main street while everyone runs for cover, that happened in springfield, missouri in 1865 between a guerilla named dave tut. my mentor, even though i don't fully agree with him and the applications of his theory, one of the great scholars of violence in american history, richard maxwell brown sees a whole pattern of violence in which wartime loyalties in the frontier west in which -- he calls it the western civil war of incorporation, that all of these, you know, individually separate actions are all a part of people who were trying to incorporate the west into american society and the economy in the political system and those people tended to be republicans and they tended to be associated with the union, if not veterans themselves and like wya wya wya wyatt earp and people who had less market centered and

corporation centered livelihoods on the other side. this is a big theory that breaks down a lot of details, but has some very interesting insights. so missouri, specifically and also the civil war influences the violence in the west in a big way. >> yes, sir, in the back? >> in your research, did you come across the information about harry truman's and that his mother's home was burned and when they were banished, did that -- i ran across this another time when the first time harry truman in the 20th century makes a trip into kansas. his grandmother says, well, look for the damn spoons that the jayhawker stole. that his family legend and he himself idolized jesse james. it shows how longstanding that, you know, that idea of jesse james as a confederate is not something that people in missouri forgot. >> i'd heard that they were part of that banished group.

did you -- >> well, they were in jackson county, i believe. that's certainly where he was from personally, so they might actually have been uprooted. they were allowed back in. again, the depopulation didn't last long because it was such a radical policy that the union decided, okay, we have to let him go back. >> it might have tamped down the guerilla warfare, but they came back after a few months. i'll take the next question behind because he'd been waiting longer. yes, sir? >> hello. when you were describing the massacre on lawrence, it struck me as being almost genocidal in intent. do you think that's an accurate way of describing guerilla warfare, at least semi-genocidal? >> genocide is tough because that generally means targeting a specific group for extermination, and we have the term ethnic cleansing and i use the term political cleansing. they're not necessarily trying

to murder every single person and for example, white women, at least they're rarely targeted for murder. like i said, when jesse james is on that, what's essentially a death squad in 1864, they're murdering the men and making sure the widows know. so it's incredibly bloody and it's not wiping out a whole population. so it sounds like an apology to draw fine distinctions between mass murder, but they're not actually trying to literally murder every single person, even in lawrence, they killed men and boys, but they didn't kill the women. so there was rape much more often than historians realize. there was absolutely violence against women, but you often see resistance to that, and so you can't call it genocide, but certainly there's mass murder with a purpose of changing the civilian landscape. yes, ma'am? >> jesse james was more a

product of his environment. do you feel that way because he was so young when he saw the events that took place? he was very selective for who he killed and who he went after and they were all unionists and they were all, you know, he had seen violence from unionist as a young man, and you know, certainly that continued through his life with his mom losing his arm, losing a brother and losing family members and 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 you know, 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 and -- >> or exuberantly murderous.

>> yeah. >> this is an interesting point. i -- you know, frank james was, in fact, someone who loved shakespeare. it may have been frank's influence when they robbed a train at gadshill which is where staff robbed the pilgrims and as they robbed the train very unusually robbing passengers he quoted shakespeare as they went through the -- they knew theater. also in the first train robbery in 1873, they wore masks that the kansas city time described as full ku klux klan regalia, and it was run by attorney general akreman was reaching a climax in kentucky where they often operated. there was a big federal offense against the klan in kentucky and there were clan trials going on and when they carried out the train robbery there were these

masks that were perceived as being klan masks 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 and he had a different personality. jesse was younger and he had a different personality, and i think the earlier impact of all that violence and also, we have to remember again, something a part of the violent idea was coaching and his mother was strongly political. again, these aren't innocents in the woods. she criticized the newspaper editor by name because she didn't like his editorials. strongly political, well-informed and fiercelies y secessionist, and this is someone who was trained and encouraged and taught to be utterly militant and ruthless, and you know, he was -- he was -- he could be charming and he could be funny. he, at the end of his life, he

moved back to western missouri, and he settled in st. joseph as people know who visited the house when 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, he was -- he was funny, and i loved brad pitt's performance because he could go from charismatic to suddenly, he could kill me in a second and that captured something very true about jesse james. so, yeah, i think jesse james' personality, like i said, he would have been a violent man in the civil war no matter what. . so you have this violent personality and the violent training that he could never shake. by the way, don't look for big deposits for his loot. armed robbers are not big savers. whenever you need money you can put a gun in someone's face, it kind of is a disincentive for saving for a rainy day.

he loved gambling and when he ran out of money and went back to robbing, but again, for that long arc of ten years after the civil war, he survives for so long because he's got support and because he makes a point sincerely of saying i'm a political figure and if nothing else a political symbol and he's got an ally in the press and very influential in the democratic party who he allies with that makes him a significant figure as missouri realigns into the voting booth, but 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? >> i mean, you know, people are -- most of the north as well as the south is agricultural.

people are slaughtering pigs all of the time. i don't think -- they're not really frontier. that's agricultural, but joe shelby is the confederate general and border roughian, he owned a rope factory and he made rope and sold it. these are not frontier in the sense of, like, unsettled, unincorporated into the american economy. they've got well-established civil institutions and market institutions. so i think it's due to the nature of knerr iguerilla warfae you have neighbors fighting against neighbors and you've got to control the civilian population on both sides, and so, you know, when people are raiding and before they start killing they're raiding people's houses. they're arresting people and enacting fines. they are robbing, the confederates are robbing people and the union forces are, you know, bringing people out.

it cycles up and it cycles up very quickly and who are leaders who are emphasizing the ruthlessness and pushing it, but again, it's on both sides. a lot of the men are fighting anderson. they are decorating their bridles and saddles with anderson men's scalps, as well. so it appears on both sides. this is not a morality tale on the side of good as a side of darkness. as much as i believe that slavery is bad and within missouri, both sides are ruthless. i have to believe, it's ultimately because this is a war of the population against a population that's right next door and there's something about that that erases all of the formal restraints on warfare in missouri, but i can only -- that's my estimation. i will take one more question. >> okay. just a real quick comment. i've had to do some research in this area because of being involved with the battle of

westport, but somebody brought up truman and it turns out truman had two ancestors who were in the confederate army. one, his uncle was involved in these activities and he had another 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, who desegregated the u.s. military? it was truman. so missouri today, by the way, i should mention that that bank that they robbed that was owned by union militiamen, it had existed before the civil war. it was one of those banks that had been owned by men who were leading secessionists who had basically carried out a check cutting scheme and lost control of the bank, and so, you know, banks. that's where the money is and yet they also were political targets. i don't want to overemphasize that. they basically went where the money was, but these are very shrewd people.

when jesse james robbed trains, that's because he understood the national bank act, you know, where the creation of the greenback and the giving national charters, turning statements into national banks. they were required by law to keep reserve deposits in new york. so all year long they're 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, after the civil war, there is a seasonal flow of cash and it's going by express car. so they usually didn't rob passengers and it was only when they were unlucky and they robbed trains going in the right direction according to the seasonal flow of cash. when they robbed the north-south train at gats hill, it was flowing south at a time that there was south for the cotton harvest. these are not unsophisticated people who are using -- if we

understand it better we understand what they're up to. again, i can try to make an exaggerated thing to say jesse james was a terrorist. i use the word terrorism to say this is the kind of framework in which we need to be thinking about him. in some ways he's a forerunner. i don't want to go all of the way there. i was revising my manuscript in my apartment in brooklyn when the world trade center was hit, and i had already had this idea worked out and i was even more careful afterward not to push it too far, and yet, we actually have to argue against the evidence if we say that there was no politics involved in his desire to be a public figure and his impact and it was the lack of political context that turned him into a generic outlaw and people who were living in yarngy land are seen as a great folk hero and fighting the great

corporation. so after that book i thought wow! he wasn't a robinhood. so how am i going to write about the corporate economy and that's how i found vanderbilt. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> and we'll have more from the annual civil war institute conference at gettysburg college in just a moment. coming up 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 will be at 8:00 p.m. eastern this evening. american history tv is in prime time every night this month while congress is away for their summer recess. >> this week on c-span. tonight at 8:00 eastern, nasa's coverage of the first total solar eclipse visible across the

united states in 100 years. >> the eclipse is important because these bodies are coming into alignment in a cosmic moment that we're all being a part of. >> tuesday at 10:00 p.m. live coverage of president trump's rally in phoenix. wednesday at 8:00 p.m., former presidents george w. bush and bill clinton on leadership. >> i always thought i would have a better life if i could have a better life, too, and i liked it. i got lucky. i don't care what anybody says. all these people that said they were born in a log cabin they built themselves are full of bull. >> it's something for congress to handle and we'll look at pending proposals for the federal budget and friday, a profile interview with agriculture secretary sonny purdue. >> my political history was, i tell people when i was born in 1946 in perry, georgia, they stamp democrat on your birth certificate.

i made a political decision and i called it truth in advertising in 1998 to change parties and became a republican at that point in time. >> followed by a conversation with black hat and defconfounder jeff moss. >> there were no jobs in information security for us. the only people doing security were people in the military or banks. so this is really a hobby. well, as the internet grew and there were jobs and people are putting things online and there was money at risk, all you have a sudden hackers started getting jobs doing security. >> watch on c-span and c-span.org and listen using the free c-span radio app. >> you're watching american history tv, 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter @c-span history for information on our schedule, and to keep up with the latest history news.