Lot of five (5) COMPLETE ORIGINAL newspapers, the Kansas City Daily Journal (MO) dated 1880-1890 and picked at random from my large inventory. Great ads and local Kansas City (MO)  news from 125 years ago. These are the "home town" newspapers of the Jesse and Frank James gang just after their heyday of robbery , murder, and general mayhem in the Missouri region. Frank James probably read this VERY newspaper as the Kansas City Journal was Frank and Jesse James' FAVORITE newspaper. These are unsearched and may (or may not) have Jesse or Frank James mentioned by name; BUT all are guaranteed to give you hours of great reading about the goings on in the immediate post Jesse James era in Kansas City , Missouri. Lot price is less than $5 per paper.

Jesse Woodson James (1847-1882) was an American outlaw, the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang.

In 1865, the end of the Civil War left Missouri in shambles, its people bitter and divided. A militant minority, the Radicals, took control of the state government, barring former Confederates from voting or holding public office. Jesse himself was shot by Union cavalrymen a month after the war ended, leaving him badly wounded. During Jesse's recovery, his first cousin Zee Mimms nursed him back to health, and he started a nine-year courtship with her. Meanwhile, some of his old guerrilla comrades, led by Archie Clement, refused to return to peaceful life.

In 1866, this group staged the first armed robbery of a bank in peacetime, holding up the Clay County Savings Association in the town of Liberty, Missouri. The guerrillas staged several more robberies over the next few years By 1868, Frank and Jesse James had definitely joined their old friends in outlawry, when they joined Cole Younger in robbing a bank in Kentucky. But Jesse did not become famous until December 1869, when he and Frank (most likely) robbed the Daviess County Savings Association in Gallatin, Missouri. The robbery netted little, but Jesse (it appears) shot the cashier, believing him to be Samuel Cox, the militia officer who defeated and killed Bloody Bill Anderson during the Civil War. Jesse's self-proclaimed attempt at revenge for the Civil War, and the daring escape he and Frank made through the middle of a posse shortly afterward, put his name in the newspapers for the first time

The robbery marked Jesse's emergence as the most famous of the former guerrillas-turned-outlaws, and it started an alliance with John Newman Edwards, a Kansas City Times editor who was campaigning to return the old Confederates to power in Missouri. Edwards published Jesse's letters, and made him into a symbol of rebel defiance of Reconstruction through his elaborate editorials and praiseful reporting. Jesse James's own role in creating his rising public profile is debated by historians and biographers, though politics certainly surrounded his outlaw career, and enhanced his notoriety.

Meanwhile, the James brothers, along with Cole Yonger and his brothers, Clell Miller, and other former Confederates—now considered the James-Younger Gang - continued a remarkable string of robberies from Iowa to Texas, from Kansas to West Virginia. They robbed banks, stagecoaches, and a fair in Kansas City, often in front of large crowds, even hamming it up for the audience. In 1873, they turned to train robbery, derailing the Rock Island train in Adair, Iowa. Their later train robberies had a lighter touch; in fact, only twice in all of Jesse James's train hold-ups did he rob passengers, as he limited himself to the express safe in the baggage car. Such techniques fostered the Robin Hood image that Edwards was creating in his newspapers.

The express companies turned to the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in 1874 to stop the James-Younger Gang. One of their agents was dispatched to infiltrate Zerelda Samuel's (Jesse James's mother) farm and turned up dead shortly afterward. Two others were sent after the Youngers but failed. Alan Pinkerton, the Agency's founder and leader, took on the case now as a personal vendetta. Working with old Unionists around Jesse James's family's farm, he staged a raid on the homestead on the night of Jan 25, 1875. An incendiary device thrown inside by the detectives exploded, killing Jesse's half-brother Archie and wounding his mother Zerelda, forcing the amputation of her lower arm.

The bloody fiasco did more than all of Edwards's columns to turn Jesse James into a sympathetic figure for much of the public. A bill that lavishly praised the James and Younger brothers and offered them amnesty was only narrowly defeated in the state legislature. Former Confederates, now allowed to vote and hold office again, voted a limit on reward offers the governor could make for fugitives (when the only reward offers higher than the new limit previously made had been for the James brothers). But Frank and Jesse, both now married), moved to the Nashville area, probably to save their mother from further assaults.

On Sept 7, 1876, the James-Younger gang attempted their most daring raid to date, on the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Cole and Bob Younger later stated that they selected the bank because of its connection to two Union generals and radical Republican politicians. The Northfield robbery was thwarted when Joseph lee Heywood refused to open the safe. One of the gang members shot and killed Heywood. The bandits who had entered the bank exited empty-handed, only to find the men standing guard outside, including Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger, all dead or wounded amid a hail of gunfire. Suspicious townsmen had confronted the bandits, ran to get their arms, and opened up from under the cover of windows and the corners of buildings. The gang barely escaped, leaving two of their number and two unarmed townspeople (including Heywood) dead in Northfield. A massive manhunt ensued. The James brothers eventually split from the others, and escaped to Missouri after a long and daring ride. The Youngers and one other bandit, Charlie Pitts, were soon discovered; a brisk gunfight left Pitts dead and the Youngers all prisoners. Except for Frank and Jesse James, the James-Younger Gang was destroyed.

Jesse and Frank returned to the Nashville area, where they went under the names of Thomas Howard and B.J. Woodson, respectively. They tried to live peacefully, as Jesse had married Zee Mimms and had four children with her. Frank James seemed to settle down, but Jesse remained restless. He recruited a new gang in 1879 and returned to crime, holding up a train at Glendale, MO, on Oct 8, 1879. The robbery began a spree of crimes, including the hold-up of the federal paymaster of a canal project in Muscle Shoals, AL and two more train robberies. But the new gang did not consist of the old, battle-hardened guerrillas; they soon turned against each other or were captured, while Jesse grew paranoid, killing one gang member and frightening away another. The authorities grew suspicious, and by 1881 the brothers were forced to return to Missouri. In December, Jesse rented a house in St Joseph, MISSOURI, not far from where he had been born and raised. Frank, however, decided to move to safer territory, heading east to Virginia.

With his gang depleted by arrests, deaths, and defections, Jesse thought he had only two men left whom he could trust: brothers Bob and Charley Ford. Charley had been out on raids with Jesse before, but Bob was an eager new recruit. To better protect himself, Jesse asked the Ford brothers to move in with him and his family. Little did he know that Bob Ford had been conducting secret negotiations with Thomas Crittenden, the Missouri governor, to bring in Jesse James. Crittenden had made the capture of the James brothers his top priority; in his inaugural address, he had spoken directly to the support they received from his fellow Democrats, declaring that no political motives could be allowed to keep them from justice. Barred by law from offering a sufficiently large reward, he had turned to the railroad and express corporations to put up a $10,000 bounty for each of them.

On April 3, 1882, as Jesse prepared for yet another robbery, he climbed a chair to dust a picture. It was a rare moment: He had his guns off, having removed them earlier when the unusual heat forced him to remove his coat; as he moved in and out of the house, he feared the pistols would attract attention from passersby. Seizing the opportunity, the Fords drew their revolvers. Bob was the fastest, firing a shot behind Jesse's ear that killed him instantly.

The assassination proved a national sensation. The Fords made no attempt to hide their role; as crowds pressed into the little house in St. Joseph to see the dead bandit, they surrendered to the authorities, pleaded guilty, were sentenced to hang, and were promptly pardoned by the governor. Indeed, the governor's quick pardon suggested that he was well aware that the brothers intended to kill, rather than capture, Jesse James. (The Ford brothers, like many who knew James, never believed it was practical to try to capture such a dangerous man.) The implication that the chief executive of Missouri conspired to kill a private citizen startled the public, and helped create a new legend that would surround him in death.

The Fords received a portion of the reward (some of it also went to law enforcement officials active in the plan) and fled Missouri, which now fully embraced the outlaw who had long divided public opinion in the state. Zerelda, Jesse’s mother, appeared at the coroner's inquest, deeply anguished, and loudly denounced Dick Liddil, a former gang member who was cooperating with state authorities. Charley Ford committed suicide in May 1884. Bob Ford was killed, by shotgun blast, in his saloon in Creede, Colorado on June 8, 1892. His killer,  Edward O'Kelley, was sentenced to only two years in prison for avenging the man whom even President Teddy Roosevelt called America's Robin Hood.

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