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by Charles River (Author), Sean McLachlan (Author)
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the gang's most famous robberies written by Cole Younger *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents Space may be the final frontier, but no frontier has ever captured the American imagination like the "Wild West", which still evokes images of dusty cowboys, outlaws, gunfights, gamblers, and barroom brawls over 100 years after the West was settled. A constant fixture in American pop culture, the 19th century American West continues to be vividly and colorful portrayed not just as a place but as a state of mind. In Charles River Editors' Legends of the West series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most famous frontier figures in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. The Wild West has made legends out of many men after their deaths, but like Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James was a celebrity during his life. However, while Hickok was (mostly) a lawman, Jesse James was and remains the most famous outlaw of the Wild West, with both his life of crime and his death remaining pop culture fixtures. James and his notorious older brother Frank were Confederate bushwhackers in the lawless region of Missouri during the Civil War. Despite being a teenager, James was severely wounded twice during the war, including being shot in the chest, but that would hardly slow him down after the war ended. Eventually James, his brother and their infamous gang became the most hunted outlaws in the country, but Jesse would famously be done in by the brother of his most trusted gang members. After Jesse moved in with the Ford brothers, Bob Ford began secretly negotiating turning in the famous outlaw to Missouri Governor Thomas Crittenden. On April 3, 1882, as the gang prepared for another robber, Jesse was famously shot in the back of the head by Bob Ford as he stood on a chair fixing a painting. While conspiracy theories have continued to linger that somehow James was not killed on that day, the Ford brothers would celebrate their participation in his murder, Bob himself would be murdered a few years later, and Jesse James's legacy had been ensured. Meanwhile, Jesse's most famous associates, the Younger brothers - Cole, Jim, John, and Bob - were also some of the most feared bandits in the country. Rivaled only by Frank and Jesse James, with whom they often rode, they captured the imaginations of a not entirely unsympathetic public. Newspapers gave breathless accounts of their exploits and dime novels made up adventures they never had. In Cole Younger's self-serving and often unreliable autobiography, written shortly after being released from prison, Cole complained, "On the eve of sixty, I come out into the world to find a hundred or more of books, of greater or less pretensions, purporting to be a history of 'The Lives of the Younger Brothers, ' but which are all nothing more nor less than a lot of sensational recitals, with which the Younger brothers never had the least association. One publishing house alone is selling sixty varieties of these books, and I venture to say that in the whole lot there could not be found six pages of truth. The stage, too, has its lurid dramas in which we are painted in devilish blackness." Of course, the very nature of their business makes the Younger brothers hard to trace. Historians disagree on what robberies they participated in. One good estimate is that one or more of the Younger brothers, principally the eldest brother Cole, participated in a total of 12 bank robberies, seven train robberies, and four stagecoach robberies. Most of these robberies were done in league with the James brothers and many led to bloodshed, with at least 11 civilians being killed. Legends of the West: The History of the James-Younger Gang traces the history of the outlaws.
