Frank James: The Bookish Outlaw Who Outlived His Own Crimes

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Frank James was born in 1843 in Kearney, Missouri, the son of a Baptist minister with a large library. He loved Shakespeare and hoped to become a schoolteacher. Then the Civil War broke out in 1861, when he was 18. He joined the secessionist Missouri State Guard, fell ill at the siege of Lexington, was left behind, and went home on parole, only to be forced by a pro-Union militia of his own neighbors to sign an oath of allegiance. He ignored both pledges and became a bushwhacker under William Quantrill, riding in the Lawrence Massacre of August 1863, where roughly 200 mostly unarmed civilians were killed.

This episode follows the older, quieter brother of Jesse James from guerrilla war to the James Younger gang, through at least four deadly robberies between 1868 and 1876 and the disastrous Northfield, Minnesota raid. It then turns to the stranger second act. Five months after Jesse was assassinated in 1882, Frank took a train to Jefferson City, handed his gun to Governor Thomas Crittenden, and walked out of two trials a free man. He spent the rest of his life selling his own notoriety, and died peacefully on the family farm in 1915 at age 72.

• Union militiamen raided the family farm and partially hanged his stepfather, Dr. Reuben Samuel, from a tree to make him reveal where the guerrillas were hiding.
• The Northfield raid of September 7, 1876 failed because the gang left its network of Southern sympathizers in Missouri. Townspeople in Minnesota simply picked up rifles and fired back.
• At his surrender, Frank told the governor he had been hunted for over 20 years and had not let another man touch his weapon since 1861.
• Juries acquitted him of a Missouri train robbery and an Alabama payroll heist, helped by character witnesses such as former Confederate General Joe Shelby.
• His later jobs included shoe salesman, telegraph operator, racetrack betting commissioner, and ticket taker at a St. Louis burlesque theater. He ended up charging tourists 25 cents for tours of the James farm.