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Review: Jesse James: The original bin Laden
By L.D. Meagher "Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War"
(CNN) -- His name is legendary, his exploits mythic, his life the stuff of romance. Jesse James is undoubtedly the most celebrated criminal in American history. He evokes images of Arthurian knights errant. He has been called a latter-day Robin Hood. Historian T.J. Stiles, however, offers a different kind of portrait. To him, Jesse James was the original Osama bin Laden. Stiles builds his case in "Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War," an exhaustive biography that roots the bandit firmly in time and place, a vortex of issues and emotions called Missouri. Jesse and his brother Frank were raised as slaveholders in Clay County, nestled along the Missouri River at the border with Kansas. Clay County was deeply enmeshed in the economic, political and social milieu of the Southern states. Jesse's formative years coincided with the "Bloody Kansas" era playing out literally next door. When war came, first Frank, then Jesse rode off with the bushwhackers, guerrillas who terrorized Unionists. Running wildThe war ended in 1865 -- everywhere except Missouri. Secessionist passions raged unabated and Jesse James was in the thick of it. He wrapped himself in the cloak of the Confederacy as he launched his life of crime, with media help from newspaper editor John Edwards. James used the connection as an outlet for propaganda. In letters to newspapers, he heralded his robberies and murders as justified political acts, all the while maintaining he hadn't committed them. For more than a decade, the James brothers and their gang ran wild, ranging as far east as West Virginia and as far north as Minnesota. They didn't get rich from robbing trains, banks and stagecoaches. They did become famous -- at least, Jesse did. But post-war Missouri was leaving him behind. His protestations of political motivation flew in the face of real-life politics. "Jesse and his comrades had symbolized secessionist resentments," Stiles writes, "but when the dust settled after the election of 1876, there was nothing left to resent. The nation had repudiated Reconstruction, along with all the egalitarian ideals of the Radical Republicans. ... A new Confederate consciousness had emerged within Missouri, reshaping the memory of the war from a struggle between neighbors -- the great majority of them Unionists -- into an uprising by the people against rampaging Kansans bent on destroying the state. ... In a very real sense, the Civil War had been refought in the years since Appomattox -- and the Confederates had won." Terrorist and criminalThese developments made Jesse James a rebel without a cause. After the disastrous raid on Northfield, Minnesota, in September 1876, Jesse generally laid low. But he was planning another robbery right up until the moment he was shot to death in April 1882. Why? Because, Stiles argues, Jesse wasn't a knight errant or a "social bandit" or a Robin Hood. He was a terrorist and a criminal to the end. "Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War" is a gripping account of an often-overlooked era in American history. The dynamics of Missouri from the 1840s to the 1880s is fascinating, and Stiles illuminates it with contemporary accounts chronicling everything from legislative logrolling to life on a frontier farm. He weaves the story of Jesse James into the fabric of his times and, in the process, shows us a man who is even more interesting than the legends that surround him.
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