Civil war guerrilla fighters who later became outlaws in the old west, including jesse james, his brother frank, and their gang. This event was recorded by the American Civil War museum in june of 2016. Now, i will start off with a word of warning. When i compiled all the information i wanted to share with you all this evening, the first time i went through it and timed it, i spoke for an hour and a half. So i hope you all are comfortable. We might be here a while. Im just kidding josie, dont get mad at me. Last year when josie was compiling the topics for this year, she called me into her Office One Day and pitched me this idea as she mentioned. Then she ended up, when i told her that and i agreed that i probably did know somebody who might be interested in doing this topic, she said, well, you know, when i think of outlaws, renegades or scoundrels, theres only one person that comes immediately to mind. I said, im so touched. Thats exactly the type of characters every girl longs to be associated with, so but before you can really start looking at the outlaws that the civil war the youtlaw gangs that the civil war spun off, you kind of have to take a flip back and see kind of understand the guerrilla warfare that was going on during the civil war to kind of understand how that same mindset continued on after the war and kind of manifested itself in the wild west. So regular warfare in the civil war, you have those who are somewhat associated with the organized military, and calvary raiders kind of in the borderland area, kentucky and everything, were probably the most closely associated. Then you had partisan rangers who were free and independent enough to act on their own, but they still kind of answered to the organized military. They kind of had the blessing of the government. And john mosby would fall under those. Those were kind of the more civilized version of irregular warfare. Underneath that, you had guerrilla warfare, and really that was all across the south. And when i say guerrilla warfare, i mean that its more people taking up arms for themselves and just kind of fighting. Now, some of them may have done it because they were in a kill or be killed situation. Others just kind of used the chaos of the war as an opportunity to do whatever the heck they wanted to. Just kind of like, you know what . Cool. Nobodys here to stop me, so im going to go, and im going to take this from you, or maybe ive never liked you. Im just going to shoot you and be done with you. So theres a lot of that going on. Then there were some who did kind of fight with a political cause in mind. They just were they didnt want to join the organized army because that would mean leaving home. They wanted to stay home and protect their family. So in their minds they were fighting for a political cause. They were just kind of doing it on their own. So all of those fell into that category of guerrilla warfare. While you did see that all across the south, it was mostly concentrated in a couple of years. You see it in the Mountain Area here, appalachia in western virginia on down into georgia. Then you also saw it in the ozark mountains here in this area, missouri to arkansas. And then it was really prevalent and concentrated here on the front tier, missouri, kansas, where it had existed even before the war obviously. And, again, that was just if you research the topic, its just an absolute mess, and it really was a free for all. And some of those ways that they fought continued on until after the war. But before you can understand what it morphed into after the war, you have to understand that this mindset existed even before the war. When the british army in the revolutionary war landed in South Carolina and started marching north to virginia, they encountered guerrilla warfare and guerrilla fighter after guerrilla fighter. The most well known would be the swamp fox, francis marion, but he was not the only one they encountered. They basically dealt with guerrillas the entire way up into virginia. And then on the frontier, you had bleeding kansas. Youve got the whole fight over the settlements, making the states between kansas and missouri and then the fight over should they be a slave state or not. Then you have people like john brown who just killed people who disagreed with him because he can. And so a lot of this you could see even before the war. Now, appalachia had been settled by those with scotch irish roots, so that created a culture filled with endemic violence where individuals were the guardians of their own interest and selfsovereignty kept the order. So because of that, thats the mindset, the culture theyre coming from. And the war really presented an opportunity for that concept to multiply unrestrained. Law and order started breaking down, and so now suddenly whats already there is really bubbling up to the surface. Additionally you now have a bunch of weapons in circulation that were manufactured for the war, and so its a lot easier to really get your hand on a weapon or multiple weapons. And so all of that went into it as well. Now, a historian named casey turfitiller wrote a book about something a little bit later than what were discussing tonight. But he noted that shock value always has a longer shelf life than tedious detail. That is really true about the guerrilla warfare dur ting the r and the outlaw stories after the war because these stories were so violent and just kind of shocking to people that they were passed down from generation to generation. And many of them grew legendary, and eventually local amateur historians would be the one to capture these accounts. But they just captured them. They did very little to actually verify their accuracy or curb the mythology that had been interwoven into them. So its tricky to kind of sort fact from fiction in both the guerrilla warfare during the war and then what it morphed into the war with the outlaw stories. So thats something to kind of keep in mind as you hear information about some of these things. Its kind of like, okay, how much of it is actually true, and how much of it is just speculation or grew out of that truth . Many of these outlaw stories have become legends, and these outlaws have taken on a larger than life persona. A lot of the stories have really been romanticized as well. As kind of an example of this, you can see its kind of hard to find fact from fiction. In arkansas, in stone county, theres a legend about the hess brothers who they say robbed a u. S. Mint and made their way to stone county where a posse caught up with them. And a shootout occurred. The hess brothers were killed. When their bodies were examined there was no gold on them. So theres a legend that somewhere all this gold that was robbed is hidden. Is it there or not . Who knows . But legend says it is. So it can be kind of hard sometimes to know what exactly is true and what isnt. So in appalachia after the road, Champ Ferguson was probably the most well known guerrilla during the war. He fought some with the organized troops but he was really, really cruel and really murdered more than simply fighting in war. And after the war, he became only one of two former confederates who were executed for war crimes. But he, however, was definitely not the only person fighting the guerrilla warfare in that area. I actually wrote a 150page masters thesis on the guerrilla warfare in western virginia during the civil war. So if you need some reading material, feel free to google my name and guerrilla warfare, and you need to fall asleep at night, start reading it. Guaranteed to put you right to sleep or your money back. Now, whats interesting to me is if you start reading about appalachia and the 19th century, early 20th century, especially kind of the moonshining that went on then, its interesting that some of those stories that you read about moonshiners fighting the Law Enforcement officers sound eerily like the stories of guerrillas fighting the soldiers during the war. So it seems to me that this mindset that took place with the guerrilla warfare during the war started manifesting itself or showed again at least once the moonshiners really got going and were being trying to be clamped down. Another thing that happened in appalachia after the war were many family feuds got started during the war. So many bushwhackers in that area had operated around the town where they were from, and so they were known. Everybody knew who they were. So their descendants were feared and hated in the family lore of their opponents because they never left the area. Richard curry and gerald hamm were two historians who studied appalachia and the guerrilla warfare there, and they concluded that there is no doubt that guerrilla warfare intensified the spirit of lawlessness, intolerance and partisan vindictiveness that characterized the reconstruction era in that region. Now, across the south, you also have vigilante groups springing up after the war, and that same mindset that had given rise to do what you need to do in the war that manifested itself in guerrilla warfare now suddenly became manifested in vigilante groups like the red shirts or the klan. And those vigilante groups became the paramilitary wing of the democratic party. Democrats would use them for widespread, systematic violence if they felt an immediate threat to their grasp of power. Once they regained the power following when reconstruction kind of fizzled out and the republicans lost the political power there in the south. In arkansas especially, the guerrilla warfare had been pretty brutal, it kind of spilled over into postwar politics and very clearly into race relations. It kind of culminated in the 1888 election, which was one of the most corrupt in arkansas history. John clayton was the republican candidate for the second congressional district, and he ended up losing the election by 846 votes out of over 34,000 cast. Now, you can say, oh, thats just terrible luck, but it was more than luck. In plumerville in conway county, as the votes were being gathered in the ballot box, four masked and armed white men broke into the voting precinct and stole the ballot box at gunpoint. Now, that area of town was the predominantly africanamerican area, and therefore most of those votes would have been for clayton and probably would have been enough to push him over and win the general election. Well, clayton hired the Pinkerton Detective agency from chicago to investigate this. In that town, there was a Deputy Sheriff named oliver bentley, and he had a brother who threatened to talk to the pinkertons. This would have been very awkward for Deputy Bentley considering it was probably him who stole the ballot box and his brother would have known that. So bentley killed his brother, and he invented a story saying, oh, theres a accidental discharge of the gun. Well, its pretty bad accident when somebody is shot five times, and so the death, however, was officially ruled an accident. So clayton decided to go to plumerville himself to investigate even though he was warns, hey, look, its probably 200 dangerous for you there. He went anyway. He was seated at a table in a boarding house getting ready to write a letter to his children when somebody shot him through a window with a shotgun. And it was described as it hit him so squarely that his brains were burst about the room and blew his head off is what was said. It was more than likely either Deputy Bentley or bob pate, who was a local saloon owner, who did the killing. Now, fortunately enough for them, bentley was the one who headed the investigation of the murder, and bob pate was on the coroners jury. So unsurprisingly, they concluded that clayton had been murdered, quote, at the hands of unknown persons. They claimed, okay, there was a man who lived out in california who had been bitter enemies with clayton for the last 20 years. We think he might have traveled and killed him. That sounds good, right . Unfortunately he was so old by this point, he was kind of crippled and confined to his bed, so he couldnt make the trip. They also stated they received a letter from somebody in london who had kind of hinted towards the fact that jack the ripper was the one who traveled from london and made this murder. To add really insult to injury, the lady who ran the boarding house where clayton was murdered actually presented claytons family with a bill for the damages her boarding house sustained because she said that his blood stained her carpet, and she took a loss on that. So republicans really were not given any sympathy whatsoever in arkansas. Interesting interestingly enough, clayton was later declared the winner of the election so they had to do another election. His assassin was never found. Deputy bentley later became the justice of the peace, and he presided over a trial in which they put a man on trial for the murder in minnesota. By that point, the man had been dead for two years, and bentley found him guilty and said case closed. They didnt look into it any further. So thats kind of one story of how this idea of we can just take matters into our own hands manifested itself in arkansas. But in arkansas where its really tied to organized politics, out west, it was more of the men who made their own law or they disregarded the laws that were in place. And Michael Fellman is a historian who wrote inside war, which is really the definitive work on guerrilla warfare during the civil war. He concluded that most rural White Missourians lost a great deal during the war. They had to lie and cheat and bear false witness just to survive. So how do you pack up from that and move on once the war is over . Its just its not easy. There are some people who tried. There were others who had lost everything, and they ended up moving away. A great many missourians moved down to texas immediately after the civil war ended. Then there were those who didnt even try. They just decided to take the law into their own hands, keep doing what they had been doing. And many of those who went that route had fought under one of two men during the war. William quantrill was one of the most notorious guerrillas of the civil war. He was known for the massacre at lawrence, kansas, where he and his men slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians simply because it was a union town, a unionbacked town, and the Union Senator liked to go there a lot. He and his men killed Union Soldiers and unionists without distinction. They did not distinguish between civilian or combat. They just kind of killed anybody who they wanted to. Quantrill himself was killed before the war ended but his band did not disband. The other one was bloody bill anderson. He was one of the most brutal guerrillas of the war. He actually started as a lieutenant under quantrill, but he concluded that quantrill was not vicious enough. So he broke off and had his own group. He was also killed before the war ended, and following the war, many of andersons men kind much banded together with quantri quantrills men, and they kept their own groups. One of those men was archie clement, who was known as andersons head devil or andersons head demon. He was a small man. He was only 5 feet tall. He weighed 130 pounds, so he was known as little archie, but he was a consummate killer who was ferocious, and he liked to scalp his victims. He was only 17 years old when he became a lieutenant in andersons company. After andersons death, he was the one who took command at the band. He didnt even try to surrender at the end of the war. He had no interest in doing so. He began robbing banks. In fact, he joined the james gang, which well get to later, and he helped them on their first robbery. And as well as frank and jesse james are still kind of known, authorities really just suspected clements and didnt even turn their attention to the James Brothers until a while later. At the election of 1866, clement took a gang of 100 members of quantrills former and andersons former gangs, and they attacked the town of lexington, missouri, on election day. And they managed to intimidate the town enough that the Republican Party was defeated in the general election. When the Missouri State militia came to counter them, clements just faded into the hills, which is exactly the same type of strategy that was used in guerrilla warfare all the time during the war. On september 13th of that year, for some reason, clements decided it would be funny to enlist his own men in this Missouri State militia. So he goes back into lexington, and the head of the militia allowed him to come in because they didnt want to start this fight in the city streets. So he signed up his men, and he peacefully leaves. But then he circles back and went to the city hotel, where hes having a drink, and the militia heard he was there. So they sent men to arrest him for bank robbery, and he starts a gun fight. He gets on his horse, tries to make it out of town, but he was shot off his horse and mortally wounded. A soldier approached him and said, arch, youre dying. What do you want me to do with you . And he said ive done what ive always said i would do, die before surrender. You have quantrills group as well who didnt disperse. Since the men were guerrillas rather than legitimate soldiers, they were denied the amnesty given after the war ended. So many of the games stayed together for means of force and protection and some like frank and jesse james took this as an excuse to become criminals and bank robbers. You have the James Brothers up there on the left. Frank is on the left, and jesses to the right of him. The james younger gang became probably the most notorious in American History. Members of that gang came and went, but the james and younger brothers remained the Central Power structure of that gang. Frank and jesse had a normal childhood. Their parents met at a revival in kentucky. Their father became a baptist minister in missouri. Frank was their oldest child. Their next child died as an infant. Then jesse was born. Their father was invited to go to california with a baggwagon n to go to california to look for gold. They invited their father to go along as the chaplain. He accepted, but he never made it home. He contracted a fever and died of cholera. Their mother remarried to a dr. , dr. Samuel. As a child, frank was said to be withdrawn and a biblereading boy who had a great interest in his late fathers sizeable lie breyer, particularly shakespeare. And jesse was noted to be generous, noble hearted and assertive. So they really had a normal family life. There was nothing that would make you guess what they would later become. Frank desired higher education. He was l