Legends and Lies - Jesse James

[Wild Bill]

For what it is worth, and my apology if I have said this before, on Jesse read the excellent biography by T J Stiles, Jesse James: The Last Rebel of the Civil War (2002) and Mark Lee Gardner, Shot All to Hell: Jesse James, the Northfields Raid, and the Wild West's Greatest Escape (2013). An excellent historical novel, more history than fiction, is Will Henry, The Raiders (1954).

Stiles illustrates how Jesse and the newspaper propaganda on his behalf changed Missouri from being 3/4 pro-Union in 1861 to Radical Republican immediately after the war to being 3/4 in favor of the anti-Reconstruction forces by 1875. This, plus his familial connections from local to state-wide politicians, kept the gang invulnerable in Missouri and brother Frank out of jail later in life