Jesse James
Last Rebel of the Civil War
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4.1 • 22 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
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.
"Carries the reader scrupulously through James’s violent, violent life.... When [Stiles]… calls Jesse James the ‘last rebel of the Civil War; he correctly defines the theme that ruled Jesse’s life." —Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove via The New Republic
Raised in a fiercely pro-slavery household in bitterly divided Missouri, 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.
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 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.
Customer Reviews
The Real Jesse James
Stiles' well researched and scholarly approach to the story of Jesse James does not detract from pleasure of reading his exploits firmly set in the context of reconstruction after the Civil War. His writing appeals on the level of the wild west aura cross referenced to the complex political and economic workings of the American experiment at it's most tortured time. I was frequently amazed at the historic facts I was learning as I was enjoying the book.