Druggist George Bates watched them cross the iron bridge, the sound of their horses’ hooves briefly drowned out by the rush of water into the mill dam below, and worried at their ‘reckless, bold swagger.’ He judged them ‘dangerous men to handle. ‘ He was right.
It was 10am, 7 September 1876. Northfield was about to experience ‘the hottest day it ever saw.’ And the James-Younger gang were about to embark on the disastrous bank job that today stands in history as the raid that both sparked their downfall and cemented the legend of their most infamous member, Jesse James.
Sixteen years old and already a cold-blooded
killer, Jesse James, above, fought for the Union as a guerrilla in the
Civil War - after that, his brother said, they could only ever be
outlaws
In ‘Shot All To Hell: Jesse James, The Northfield Raid, And the Wild West’s Greatest Escape’ award-winning author and historian Mark Lee Gardner reveals the workings of the gang, using previously unseen documents and eye-witness accounts.
He reveals the catastrophic miscalculation that led to the chaos that left two robbers and two townsfolk dead.
He charts the extraordinary escape across 14 days and some of the country’s most forbidding terrain that drew admiration from the lawmen hunting the criminald down and citizens following their story.
And
he names the man who shot Jesse James as Robert Ford. A member of the
gang James himself formed after the James-Younger crew fell apart.
Ford cut James down as he
stood to adjust a picture in the parlour of his home. James was parnoid
after a life on the run and had invited Ford and his brother Charles to
live with him and his wife Zee and protect them.
''Meet me in Kansas City tonight or tomorrow. I have my man,' Jesse James assassin Robert Ford's telegram to Governor Crittenden
Instead the man who had survived shooting battles and daring raids, died as he had lived; by the bullet and for bounty.
While his wife wept by her dying husband’s side Bob and Charley Ford, Mr Gardner writes: ‘Quickly grabbed their hats and also Jesse’s revolvers and gun belt and hurried off for the town’s only telegraph office.
‘Once there, Charley paced nervously…as Bob tried several times to write out a telegram.’
When he finally handed a piece of paper to the operator it read as follows: ‘Meet me in Kansas City tonight or tomorrow. I have my man.'
The telegram was addressed to Thomas
Crittenden, Governor of Missouri who had placed a $10,000 reward on
Jesse, dead - $40,000 if he was taken alive but no-one really believed Jesse James would be taken alive.
‘If you hear they’ve captured me alive,’ he once said to a cousin. ‘Say it’s a lie; they may kill me, but they will never get me otherwise.’
That
they captured him at all was an event that, according to Mr Gardner,
had its beginnings in the chaos of Northfield, Minnesota and the raid on
the town’s First National Bank.
Brothers Jesse and Frank, four years his senior, had been riding and raiding with Cole and Bob Younger since the end of the Civil War. Along with Clell Miller, Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts they made up the Younger-James gang.
If the James brothers had been brutal to begin with a botched attempt to arrest them at their home only hardened their resolve.
Officers were one day too late to catch the gangsters but their 8 year old brother was killed and their mother maimed in the attempt.
They were feared and rightly so. James, with his bright blue eyes and horsemanship was a dazzling sort of figure by all accounts but the glint in those eyes was steel. He murdered without missing a beat – all of them did.
The gang had chosen Northfield, Minnesota because it was small and thought to be peaceable. But most importantly there was only one bank and recent newspaper stories had reported that a new safe and time lock and two heavy doors for the vault had just been added to First National’s building.
This didn’t put the gang off. They reasoned the threat of a gun would be enough to persuade most men to unlock a vault. It just meant that all the money in town was in one place and if there was enough of it to make it worth investing in a such security there was enough to make it worth robbing.
atal consequences is clearly visible
The day they rode into
Northfield they were ‘at the top of their game.’ Mr Gardner writes:
‘They excelled at deception..As outlaws they took on aliases, stopped
trains or emptied bank vaults while moving freely in public telling people they were livestock dealers, businessmen or land speculators.’
Yet something was amiss from the start at Northfield. They did attract attention. Jesse James once stated, ‘It is true we are robbers, but we always rob in the glare of the day and in the teeth of the multitude.’
But Northfield was the town that bit back.
The bank staff resisted. Frustrated, Frank James fired shots above bookkeeper Joseph Heywood’s head.
In the smoke and confusion a colleague though he had been shot and made a run for it,bringing more shots from the robber.
Everything began to unravel.
The town was alerted to the raid taking place. All their money was held in that building – all uninsured. They decided to fight.
The gun battle lasted less than ten minutes – panicked the gang members who had been keeping watched dashed to and fro amid bullets and rocks that arced through the air as locals fought with anything to hand.
Inside all was confusion and violence.
Mr Gardner states,‘While the townspeople were shooting to kill, the outlaws’ shots were really meant to frighten, to scare away, to buy time – at least in the beginning.’
Keeping watch outside, panic growing Cole Younger signalled the retreat: ‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘Come out. They are shooting us all to pieces.’
When it was over robbers Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell lay dead in the street. Bookkeeper Joseph Heywood had a bullet in his head and another local had been killed in the frenzy outside. The gang’s haul totalled just $26.60 ‘in coin and crip.’
Bob Coles had been hit. They left, six men on five horses and for the next 14 days evaded captuer in what became the largest manhunt in US history.
More than 1000 men chased them
across marsh and woodland. Cole Younger later recalled: ‘We suffered in
those fourteen days a hundred deaths.’
The public followed the tale with horror and excitement as reporters wrote of the robbers’ escape with undisguised awe.
Mr Gardner quotes one report in the local news: ‘Here were six men hunted by a thousand…Every device was resorted to. Every rod of a vast extent of country was searched. The best detective talent employed. The best woodsmen were engaged in the hunt.
‘Yet in the face and eyes of eager pursuers they have passed through the most carefully arranged traps.
‘Such determination, daring and perseverance..cannot but evoke the admiration even of those who most desire their extermination.’
Ultimately his brother’s wound slowed them down. Cole wouldn’t leave him so the James brothers split from the rest and the gang as it had been known and feared ceased to exist.
The straggling gang members were arrested and convicted. The James brothers notoriety grew as they continued to evade capture.
Had they been able to live the new lives they ultimately both established as farmers in Tennessee that might have been that.
But for Jesse, Mr Gardner writes: ‘The rush of that wind-in-your-face, gun-in-your-hand lifestyle was like a drug.’
He craved attention. He craved notoriety. He started a new gang. But it had none of the ‘honour’ of his old brothers in arms.
Jesse James was shot on 3 April 1882. He as 34 years old. Terrified of suffering a similar fate older brother Frank gave himself up.
Nobody knows the details of the deal he struck, but the man who rode as part of the most notorious gang in the Wild West was never charged with a single crime. Instead he returned to the Missouri farm where he and Jesse were raised, giving tours for 75 cents. He died age 72.
As for Jesse, the last sound he heard was the click of the metallic hammer as Robert Ford cocked his revolver and took aim. But his fate had been sealed years earlier, on 3 September 1876, at the First National Bank in Northfield.
It was the day James’s legend was cemented and it was the day his luck truly ran out.
'Shot All To Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, And the Wild West's Greatest Escape,' by Mark Lee Gardner is published by William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollins on August 1 Price $27.00
To order a copy log onto www.amazon.com
He charts the extraordinary escape across 14 days and some of the country’s most forbidding terrain that drew admiration from the lawmen hunting the criminald down and citizens following their story.
The iron bridge over which the James-Younger
Gang rode into Northfield on that fateful day in 1876 - the 'hottest day
Northfield ever saw.'
Brothers in crime: Jesse, front left, and Frank,
front right, James pose with Cole and Bob Younger (rear left and
right)At their peak they were the most feared gang of robbers in the
Wild West
''Meet me in Kansas City tonight or tomorrow. I have my man,' Jesse James assassin Robert Ford's telegram to Governor Crittenden
While his wife wept by her dying husband’s side Bob and Charley Ford, Mr Gardner writes: ‘Quickly grabbed their hats and also Jesse’s revolvers and gun belt and hurried off for the town’s only telegraph office.
‘Once there, Charley paced nervously…as Bob tried several times to write out a telegram.’
When he finally handed a piece of paper to the operator it read as follows: ‘Meet me in Kansas City tonight or tomorrow. I have my man.'
Clell Miller, left, and Bill Chadwell, right, in death: shot down by the people of Northfield and left in the dust
Bob Younger, left, wounded in the Northfield raid later died of his wounds and brother Jim, above, captured
‘If you hear they’ve captured me alive,’ he once said to a cousin. ‘Say it’s a lie; they may kill me, but they will never get me otherwise.’
One year before the Northfield Raid, Jesse James, then 28, cut a romantic figure with his bright blue eyes and fearless manner
Brothers Jesse and Frank, four years his senior, had been riding and raiding with Cole and Bob Younger since the end of the Civil War. Along with Clell Miller, Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts they made up the Younger-James gang.
If the James brothers had been brutal to begin with a botched attempt to arrest them at their home only hardened their resolve.
Officers were one day too late to catch the gangsters but their 8 year old brother was killed and their mother maimed in the attempt.
They were feared and rightly so. James, with his bright blue eyes and horsemanship was a dazzling sort of figure by all accounts but the glint in those eyes was steel. He murdered without missing a beat – all of them did.
The gang had chosen Northfield, Minnesota because it was small and thought to be peaceable. But most importantly there was only one bank and recent newspaper stories had reported that a new safe and time lock and two heavy doors for the vault had just been added to First National’s building.
This didn’t put the gang off. They reasoned the threat of a gun would be enough to persuade most men to unlock a vault. It just meant that all the money in town was in one place and if there was enough of it to make it worth investing in a such security there was enough to make it worth robbing.
Scene of the crime: Inside Nortfield's First
National Bank, the vault door that Joseph Heywoods attempted to shut
with fatal consequences is clearly visible
atal consequences is clearly visible
Blueprint of a disaster: The floorplan for First
National at the time of the raid, Heywood's desk at the door to the
vault is to the top right the positions of tellers Wilcox and Bunker
(wounded in the raid) are shown at the bottom of the plan
Yet something was amiss from the start at Northfield. They did attract attention. Jesse James once stated, ‘It is true we are robbers, but we always rob in the glare of the day and in the teeth of the multitude.’
But Northfield was the town that bit back.
Cuckoo in the next: Robert Ford lived with Jesse
James who had asked him to protect him. Instead he shot him dead for
$10,000 in cash
In the smoke and confusion a colleague though he had been shot and made a run for it,bringing more shots from the robber.
Everything began to unravel.
The town was alerted to the raid taking place. All their money was held in that building – all uninsured. They decided to fight.
The gun battle lasted less than ten minutes – panicked the gang members who had been keeping watched dashed to and fro amid bullets and rocks that arced through the air as locals fought with anything to hand.
Inside all was confusion and violence.
Mr Gardner states,‘While the townspeople were shooting to kill, the outlaws’ shots were really meant to frighten, to scare away, to buy time – at least in the beginning.’
Keeping watch outside, panic growing Cole Younger signalled the retreat: ‘For God’s sake,’ he shouted. ‘Come out. They are shooting us all to pieces.’
When it was over robbers Clell Miller and Bill Chadwell lay dead in the street. Bookkeeper Joseph Heywood had a bullet in his head and another local had been killed in the frenzy outside. The gang’s haul totalled just $26.60 ‘in coin and crip.’
Bob Coles had been hit. They left, six men on five horses and for the next 14 days evaded captuer in what became the largest manhunt in US history.
A family out for revenge: Frank, left, and
Jesse, right, James with their mother Zerelda. She was horribly wounded
and her youngest child killed in a botched attempt to arrest the James
boys
The public followed the tale with horror and excitement as reporters wrote of the robbers’ escape with undisguised awe.
Mr Gardner quotes one report in the local news: ‘Here were six men hunted by a thousand…Every device was resorted to. Every rod of a vast extent of country was searched. The best detective talent employed. The best woodsmen were engaged in the hunt.
Mark Lee Gardner's account of the Northfield raid and the chain of events it set off is the most detailed yet
‘Such determination, daring and perseverance..cannot but evoke the admiration even of those who most desire their extermination.’
Ultimately his brother’s wound slowed them down. Cole wouldn’t leave him so the James brothers split from the rest and the gang as it had been known and feared ceased to exist.
The straggling gang members were arrested and convicted. The James brothers notoriety grew as they continued to evade capture.
Had they been able to live the new lives they ultimately both established as farmers in Tennessee that might have been that.
But for Jesse, Mr Gardner writes: ‘The rush of that wind-in-your-face, gun-in-your-hand lifestyle was like a drug.’
He craved attention. He craved notoriety. He started a new gang. But it had none of the ‘honour’ of his old brothers in arms.
Jesse James was shot on 3 April 1882. He as 34 years old. Terrified of suffering a similar fate older brother Frank gave himself up.
Nobody knows the details of the deal he struck, but the man who rode as part of the most notorious gang in the Wild West was never charged with a single crime. Instead he returned to the Missouri farm where he and Jesse were raised, giving tours for 75 cents. He died age 72.
As for Jesse, the last sound he heard was the click of the metallic hammer as Robert Ford cocked his revolver and took aim. But his fate had been sealed years earlier, on 3 September 1876, at the First National Bank in Northfield.
It was the day James’s legend was cemented and it was the day his luck truly ran out.
'Shot All To Hell: Jesse James, the Northfield Raid, And the Wild West's Greatest Escape,' by Mark Lee Gardner is published by William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollins on August 1 Price $27.00
To order a copy log onto www.amazon.com
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