AMERICAN BRIGANDS.

Waikato Times, Volume XIX, Issue 1598, 30 September 1882, Page 1

AMERICAN BRIGANDS.

The James brothers were the product of frontier civilisation heated to white heat by the civil war. They were the sons of a godly clergyman ; but their mother, a large handsome woman, six feet high, and of massive frame, would seem to have been of a Lady Macbeth type, with no other ambition, however, than to nurture in her sons a reckless, brave, murderous, lawless disposition. They detested school and the ordinary restraints of social education, loved the woods, and hunting, were fond of horses and feats of horsemanship. What little good influence their . father might have exerted" was ended by his abandoning his wife, whose life, conduct and treatment of himself were more than he could endure. When the war broke out in Missouri — chiefly a guerrilla war — the eldest son, Frank, was barely 20 years of age ; the youngest only 14. The first joined QuantrelTs guerrillas ; the youngest was kept at home by his youthfulness. The conflict in Missouri between Confederates and Union men was truly savage in character, all laws, including those of war, being abandoned. The summary hanging of his step-father, one Dr. Samuels, for being a secessionist, and his own punishment by whipping for the same offence ended in Jesses joining Qnantrell. In this service both acquired that bloodthirstiness which distinguishes them, much to their disadvantage, from the popular heroes, Turpin and Claude Duval, with whom they are frequently compared. They were with the gang who sacked the Town of Lawrence, Kansas, and murdered nearly all of the male inhabitants. In September, 1864, they with Bill Anderson, a comrade, killed thirty -two invalid soldiers in cold blood at Centralia, Missouri, robbing the train passengers of their money ; and a few hours after killed forty lowa soldiers, with their own hands emptying pjstol after pistol as they shot them down. At the close of the war they went to Texas, and nothing was heard of them for three years. In 1868, with two Shepherd boys and one of the Younger brothers, they robbed a bank at Bussellville, Kentucky, of $14,000, intimidating the inhabitants with a fusilade of firearms. In Gallatin, Missouri, they robbed the bank and then, in cold blood, shot down the cashier. At Cory don, lowa, they robbed a bank of $40,000 in broad daylight, and one of the Younger brothers, riding up to a political meeting, cooly informed the citizens of the fact and then rode away, laughing at the astonished inhabitants. Two years after they robbed a bank in Columbia, Kentucky," but obtaining only §200, wantonly killed the treasurer and wounded one of the clerks who was escaping. The fall of the same year they rode up to the gateway of an agricultural fair at Kansas City and compelled the cashier to hand them over $10,000— the receipts for the day — and, in spite of the large crowd, succeeded in getting away. A few days afterward they rode into Sedalia, Missouri, called the editor of one of the newspapers there on to the street and presented him with a gold watch for the fairness of his treatment of them. The police knew of their presence five minutes afterward, but they escaped. A few days subsequently they robbed a banjt of $4,000, but this time killed no one. At the head of six men they robbed the express messenger of $6,000 on the Chicago and Kock Island Eailroad, in June, 1873, and shortly aftef a train on the Iron Mountain Bailroad, at a place by a curious coincidence known as Gadshill, was robbed by them of $15,000. After this they led for two or three years a life of adventure and escape, while under pursuit of men belonging to Pinkerton's Detective Agency of Chicago. At one time they were actually surrounded, but with their usual good luck they escaped, a shelj which was thrown into the house and kicked by Mrs. James into the fire exploding and killing her youngest son Arthur, aged 14 years. Their railroad robberies are as notorious aa themselves. In addition to those already mentioned were those of trains on the Kansas and Pacific Eailroad near Muncie, Missouri/in December, 1874, which were robbed of $24,000; one on July, 1876, near Otterville, on the same road, of $15,000 ; and one at Glendale, on the Chicago and Alton, in the fall of 1879, of $30,000. In September, 1875, they robbed a bank in West Virginia of $6,000 and shortly after made an attempt on a bank at Northfield Minnesota, which was frustrated byla " time lock." The citizens were aroused and drove them away, while fifty men followed in pursuit, the James brothers, however, escaping. A bullet made Frank James a cripple for life, and 'lie retired to his i'r'other-in-law's farm in Texas.' ,'. , r" '" Jesse' James, recency, shot, was a cruel, brutaf'^iellbw? andr^tkatedv-for escapemore *? tpHhia/ audacity \ l and quickness >' th'ftn *\ fSsY cb^pe.'>PoS^r(rfafflngrt(?' J open> 'tno bank'hvrftilt^— \w!iwh?S ! J3efiig^cl6ied^ ftvitK.V ,