Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War [Paperback]

T.J. Stiles (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2003

In this brilliant biography T. J. Stiles offers a new understanding of the legendary outlaw Jesse James. Although he has often been portrayed as a Robin Hood of the old west, in this ground-breaking work Stiles places James within the context of the bloody conflicts of the Civil War to reveal a much more complicated and significant figure.

Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery household in bitterly divided Misssouri, at age sixteen James became a bushwhacker, one of the savage Confederate guerrillas that terrorized the border states. After the end of the war, James continued his campaign of robbery and murder into the brutal era of reconstruction, when his reckless daring, his partisan pronouncements, and his alliance with the sympathetic editor John Newman Edwards placed him squarely at the forefront of the former Confederates’ bid to recapture political power. With meticulous research and vivid accounts of the dramatic adventures of the famous gunman, T. J. Stiles shows how he resembles not the apolitical hero of legend, but rather a figure ready to use violence to command attention for a political cause—in many ways, a forerunner of the modern terrorist.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Probably no American outlaw has attracted more attention--much of it flattering--than Jesse James. This revisionist biography by T.J. Stiles delves into the exciting life James led--"a tale of ambushes, gun battles, and daring raids, of narrow escapes, betrayals, and revenge." Yet it also places James within a specific political context, showing why it was possible for this murderous bandit to emerge as a folk hero among Southern sympathizers following the Civil War (in which he fought as a teenager). James is often grouped with famous frontier criminals like Billy the Kidd and Butch Cassidy, but he's best understood as a Southerner who forged partisan alliances in postwar Missouri and promoted himself as a latter-day Robin Hood. Stiles describes James as "a foul-mouthed killer who hated as fiercely as anyone on the planet" and places his life in the context of "the struggle for--or rather, against--black freedom." Stiles's fundamental point about James is as startling as it is convincing: "In his political consciousness and close alliance with a propagandist and power broker, in his efforts to win media attention with his crimes ... Jesse James was a forerunner of the modern terrorist." Tough words, but also deserved. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In a lucid reexamination of one of the nation's most notorious outlaws, independent historian Stiles argues that Jesse James (1847-1882), like his fellow "bushwhackers," had a political agenda and that this made him more terrorist than bandit, and more significant than we credit. "He was," Stiles says, "a political partisan [wh0] eagerly offered himself up as a polarizing symbol of the Confederate project for postwar Missouri." By the age of 16, James was engaged in guerilla warfare against Union forces; when the war was over he remained a staunch and outspoken ex-Confederate. His letters to friend and newspaper editor John Newman Edwards, in which he described himself as "the target of unjustified, vindictive persecution," and exonerative articles published about him after the war, show that James used and was used by the newspapers to further Missouri's opposition to Reconstruction. White-supremacist bushwhackers targeted Unionists as well as institutions that benefited the Union. Political posturing aside, though, James and his ilk used the booty to line their own pockets and if James mirrored the bigger picture of a society that pushed him into a life of crime, he also embraced that life without remorse. That said, Stiles's painstaking research has produced a compelling book that recreates, sometimes graphically, the ruthlessness that prevailed in Missouri, where neighbor fought neighbor and nobody was safe. He also offers a critical understanding of how deep-seated hatred breeds self-righteous fanatics, who can justify violence against anyone deemed an enemy. 16 pages of illus. and six maps.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (October 28, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375705589
• ISBN-13: 978-0375705588
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,155 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #17 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > United States > Civil War > Military Leaders
  • #51 in Books > History > Americas > United States > Civil War
  • #71 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Criminals

More About the Author

T. J. Stiles has held the Gilder Lehrman Fellowship in American History at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, taught at Columbia University, and served as adviser for the PBS series The American Experience. His first book, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, won the Ambassador Book Award and the Peter Seaborg Award for Civil War Scholarship, and was a New York Times Notable Book. His book The First Tycoon won 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. He has written for The New York Times Book Review, Salon.com, Smithsonian, and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in San Francisco.

Photo credit: Joanne Chan

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it for yourself..., October 19, 2002

By 

M. Vitale "panthergirl" (NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (Hardcover)

I have just finished a careful reading of this book, and it is one of the most remarkable books on American history I have ever read. Instead of being simply a compilation of facts and speculations about someone who lived underground for his entire life, this beautifully written book is a sweeping story of how the United States went through the Civil War and the years that followed. The author knits together the lives of one remarkable person after another, including Jesse and Frank James, their larger-than-life mother, Zerelda, the outlaws' friends and enemies (such as John Edwards and Allan Pinkerton), together with the story of the community the James family belonged to, as it was torn apart during the war. The most astonishing thing this book reveals is how important Jesse James was in the politics of his times, and how he understood that and tried to use his fame to promote the Confederate cause.

I frankly don't understand the angry reviews that some have posted on Amazon. This is a very careful, thoughtful book, with almost 100 pages of endnotes (and bibliography) that explain the author's reasoning as well as sources. Clearly he's telling us what he thinks, but he never goes overboard. So who gets to decide what an "error" is? Were they videotaping robberies, so we know exactly what happened? Some of the critics seem to think they have special, secret knowledge. One thing that is especially silly is that the people who are attacking Stiles's book go on and on about the fact that the endnotes mention Michael Bellesiles, a historian who is now the subject of an academic investigation. I was curious, and I checked: I found only a couple of mentions of Bellesiles in the notes, and they say things like, "Bellesiles's work has come under harsh criticism." One of the Amazon reviewers says things about Stiles's book that just aren't true (claiming that Stiles says there were few guns in Missouri before the Civil War, and only one man in three had a gun--none of that's in here). Then again, one man said he was basing his comments on a pre-publication proof, which is not the same thing as the actual book, and so the critics may have been too lazy to read the real thing.

This is a book worth reading. It is wonderful. I have never read a biography like it.

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly brilliant biography, November 12, 2002

By 

Alexander Halstad (St. Paul, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (Hardcover)

I loved this book. I have had a fascination with the Civil War in Missouri, and Jesse James, for many years, and I have to say that this is far and away the best thing ever written on either topic.

The book is brilliantly written, but it is also packed with new insights and new reseach. For example, the author uses probate records and newly discovered letters from Watkins Mill State Park to put new light on Jesse and Frank's father, Robert James, and on the hardships faced by Zerelda, his widow, after he died in the Gold Rush. Stiles does something that no one else has done before when he looks at the family's slaves, trying to understand their lives and how slaveowning made the James and Samuel family what it was. And the portrait of the Civil War in Missouri is genius. Stiles shows us that there was a lot more going on that simply Missourians fighting invading Kansans. He uses new sources, including a report by the Missouri state legislature and reports by the provost marshals (including some reports missed by everyone else who has written about Jesse James) to show how much the war there was a real neighbor-against-neighbor struggle that the James boys plunged into wholeheartedly. I could go on and on about the new insights Stiles has, such as the way he explains the differences between the various state militia forces as no one else has. When he gets to Jesse's bandit years, he uses governors' papers in the Missouri State Archives to show that the first bank the bandits robbed, in Liberty, was owned by the Radical Republican officials of Clay County where Jesse lived. Stiles explains something that I never realized: The bandits were really robbing express companies when they robbed trains, so the notion that they were Robin Hoods punching the big bad railroad companies in the nose is nonsense. He explains Jesse's letters to the press like no one else ever has, showing just how political a fellow he was. I could go on for much longer. Best of all, this book is beautifully written. The author doesn't force us to slog through every possibility when it comes to each robbery. He paints a portrait, then uses his footnotes to explain his reasoning. His reasoning is consistently sound--he's vivid, but he's not just making stuff up.

Don't be fooled by any bad customer reviews. If you didn't know, there are a lot of Jesse James buffs who are glued to one version of his life, and don't like a really fresh, well-written account of his life by someone outside their club. The leading historians of Missouri and Western outlaws (including William Parrish, Christopher Phillips, and Richard Maxwell Brown) looked over the book before it was published, and they gave it a big thumbs up, as have such historians as James McPherson. This book is reseached like a doctoral dissertation, but it is written like a novel--not because the author is making it up, but because it is simply well-written.

51 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's About Time!, November 13, 2002

By 

stanley goldstein (olivette, mo United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War (Hardcover)

After a century of glorification and hero-worship idolatry, fuelled by hollywood's total lack of interest in true history in favor of romantic swashbuckle and garbage, the Jesse James myth has finally been exposed for what it is: nonsense, masking the ruthless, murderous career of a racist and terrorist.
T. J. Stiles has come into Missouri and painstakingly researched the real motives and events in the life of Jesse James. With a great, readable style and the dedication to facts of a professional historian, without bias, Mr. Stiles unmasks our modern 'robin hood' and exposes Jesse as the politically motivated arch-villain that he was.
I loved his previous 'In Their Own Words' series, but Mr. Stiles has taken a great leap with this book to the foremost ranks of
American historians. We need more Stiles!