was threatened daily,”Jesse later told a journalist
about his return to the Clay County farm,“and
I was forced to go heavily armed.”Frank argued,
“We had as much chance of settling down, till-
ing our farms and being decent as a tallow dog
chasin’an asbestos cat through hell.”
Another answer Jesse and Frank might have
given, perhaps one more readily believed, was
that robbing banks and trains was easy money,
and they were good at it.Jesse’s First Robbery
There are many robberies in which Jesse was
named as a participant, but hard evidence of
his participation is often as elusive as the out-
law was himself. The first bank job in which
Jesse James can positively be identified came
three years after the Liberty affair, although the
“robbery”may have actually been a planned as-
sassination. On December 7, 1869, two men en-
tered the Daviess County Savings Association
in Gallatin, Missouri, killed the cashier for no
apparent reason, and then grabbed a small metal
box and fled. One of the robbers’ horses threwCRIME SCENE
The Missouri bank
of Jesse James’s first
confirmed crime was
a shoe store in 1904,
when Gallatin’s early
residents (above)
gathered there for a
photograph. Seated third
from the left is Samuel P.
Cox, whom James
mistakenly believed he
killed in the robbery.South. Because former guerrillas and their fam-
ilies could not legitimately make that pledge,
they were, for a time, left with no voice or place
in postwar Missouri.
Not unlike their old leaders Quantrill and
Bloody Bill, a few of the disenfranchised chose
to make their own rules. On February 13, 1866,
10 to 12 men rode into Liberty, Missouri, and
robbed the Clay County Savings Association
of $60,000 in gold, currency, and government
bonds (largely the savings of Unionists) and shot
dead a bystander. The local newspaper reported
that the robbers were believed to be “a gang of
old bushwhacking desperadoes.” Jesse wasn’t
involved in the holdup, but brother Frank likely
was, along with another former guerrilla by the
name of Cole Younger.
Why the Jameses and Youngers took up ban-
ditry following the Civil War when thousands of
their fellow soldiers returned to their homes and
pursued peaceful occupations has always been
a question. The answer endlessly put forth by
Jesse and Frank was that their enemies wouldn’t
allow them to resume their old lives. “[M]y life
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/GETTY IMAGESNATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 85