Jesse James Was His Name (review)

186CIVIL WAR HISTORY have set off the self-made man and provide a contrast for Cawelti's very good chapters on Emerson and Alger. Observe how, in a very different context, Lawrence Stone's study of the aristocracy of England permits better understanding of England's mobile gentry. The latter part of the book tends toward easy sociologizing and takes concepts like David Riesman's other-directed character type, Whyte's organization man, Vance Packard's status seeker and Mills's new middle class a little too seriously. However, Dr. Cawelti has written a readable and informative volume.„ „. „ Edwaro N. Saveth Dartmouth College Jesse James Was His Name. By William A. Settle, Jr. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1966. Pp. 263. $6.00.) American folklore abounds with heroes—real and imaginary—who have captured imaginations at one time or another. Many passed rapidly across the scene to become all but forgotten within a generation or two. A few, however, so enshrined themselves within the popular fancy that their tales find regular repetition. With each retelling fact becomes more intricately entwined with fiction until the true picture all but fades from view. Of this latter group, Jesse James occupies a seemingly unique place in American folklore. A legend in his own time, he has found his way into every form of story telling from the dime novel to television. He is 'The American Bandit"—our national Robin Hood! Professor Settle has spent many years tracking down the real story of the James boys and their "cousins," the Youngers (in reality no relation, all had merely ridden together in Quantrill's band). In this well-written and thoroughly documented study, he deftìy separates fact from fiction while analyzing with perceptive insight those elements which created the legend both during the outlaws' lifetimes and since. Rising out of the maelstrom of the strife-tom Missouri-Kansas border, so the story goes, Jesse and his band epitomized that element of the "Lost Cause" which could find no forgiveness, no "Uve and let live" spirit in postwar Missouri. Driven to crime as the only means of livelihood they could find to sustain themselves in the hostile environment surrounding them, they made it a point to "never rob Southerners." Rather, the James boys turned their indignation on banks and railroads, which, in the decade of the 1870's, became the symbols of economic exploitation to the rural Americans from whom they sprang. Settle finds ample proof for depredations suffered by the James and Younger families during the war at the hands of Kansas Redlegs and other Union outfits—outrages which drove their sons into Quantrill's raiders. But he finds no such strong indications to account for their turning to banditry in the postwar era. Although their motives beyond quick financial gain are not clear, Settìe believes that had they not turned to crime BOOK REVIEWS187 voluntarily they could have lived out peaceful lives as respected citizens within their communities. He attributes to John Newman Edwards major responsibility for laying the basis for the James legend. A wartime adjutant to General Jo Shelby and a popular writer for a number of Missouri newspapers in the postwar years, Edwards served as apologist for Jesse and Frank in his book Noted Guerrillas (1877) and in numerous editorials. He created a vast amount of sympathy among Missourians who had known the suffering and bitterness which had supposedly driven these men to crime. Although the James gang by no means confined its operations to Missouri , activities in that state absorbed much of their energies. Here the band evaded the law for nearly fifteen years, sheltered by a host of relatives , friends, neighbors, and those who feared them—the same elements which had protected and nurtured them when they rode with Quantrill during the war. Here they had their beginnings, and here (with the exception of the Youngers who were captured in Minnesota) their careers ended. Shot in the back while unarmed and unsuspecting, Jesse achieved "martyrdom" at the hands of one of his own band. This act and a series of trials for Frank and other members of the gang became heavily tinged with pohtical overtones in a...