Northfield Raid

Final years

After his escape, Frank James made his way to Nashville, Tennessee, to rejoin Jesse, and for three years the brothers lived quietly there. Frank appeared genuinely content with his new existence, working a farm near Whites Creek. Peace suited Jesse far less well, and he soon began assembling recruits for a fresh gang, drawing him back into criminal pursuits. On October 8, 1879, he and his men struck the Chicago and Alton Railroad close to Glendale, in Jackson County, Missouri. Trouble followed when a posse captured gang member Tucker Basham, who told lawmen that Bill Ryan had brought him into the fold.

The following year brought more robberies. On September 3, 1880, Jesse James and Ryan held up a stagecoach near Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, and on October 5, they raided John Dovey's store in Mercer, Kentucky. Then, on March 11, 1881, Jesse, Ryan, and his cousin Wood Hite struck a federal paymaster at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, making off with $5,240. Not long after, Ryan's drunken bragging led to his arrest at Whites Creek near Nashville, prompting both James brothers to hurry back to Missouri.

The gang struck again on July 15, 1881, when Frank and Jesse James, along with Wood and Clarence Hite and Dick Liddil, took $900 from the Rock Island Railroad near Winston, Missouri. During that holdup, conductor William Westfall and passenger John McCullough lost their lives. Jesse's final train robbery came on September 7, 1881, targeting the Chicago and Alton line once more. Finding the express safe nearly empty, the outlaws turned instead to robbing the passengers themselves.

This renewed wave of train robberies pushed Missouri's newly installed governor, Thomas T. Crittenden, to persuade railroad and express company leaders to fund a substantial bounty for the James brothers' capture. Creed Chapman and John Bugler were taken into custody in connection with the September 7 heist, and although gang members who had been convicted confirmed their involvement, neither man was ever found guilty.

That December, an argument over Martha Bolton, sister to the Ford brothers, ended with Liddil killing Wood Hite. Bob Ford, who had not yet joined the gang, backed Liddil during the shootout. Afterward, Ford and Liddil, using Bolton to broker communications, struck bargains with Governor Crittenden. Lawman James Timberlake arrested Clarence Hite, Wood's brother, on February 11, 1882; Clarence confessed to his crimes but succumbed to tuberculosis while imprisoned. Ford, meanwhile, promised to deliver Jesse James in exchange for the bounty money.

That promise was fulfilled on April 3, 1882, when Ford shot Jesse James behind the ear inside his rented St. Joseph, Missouri, home. Bob and his brother Charley turned themselves in, entered guilty pleas, and received swift pardons from Crittenden. Frank James followed suit, surrendering to the governor on October 4, 1882, reportedly with assurances that he would avoid extradition to Northfield, Minnesota. Of all the potential charges, only two ever reached a courtroom: one held in Gallatin, Missouri, concerning the Winston train robbery of July 15, 1881, which had claimed the lives of a crewman and a passenger, and another in Huntsville, Alabama, regarding the theft of Army Corps of Engineers payroll funds at Muscle Shoals on March 11, 1881. Juries acquitted Frank James both times, first in Gallatin in July 1883 and again in Huntsville in April 1884. Missouri retained legal claim over him on other outstanding charges, though these never proceeded to trial, and this arrangement shielded him from being sent to Minnesota. Frank James lived until February 8, 1915, dying at age 72.

Throughout their imprisonment, the Younger brothers stayed loyal to the Jameses and never gave them up to authorities. Their conduct behind bars was exemplary; during a prison fire, they even helped prevent other inmates from escaping. While incarcerated at the Minnesota Territorial Prison in Stillwater, Cole Younger established what became the longest continuously published prison newspaper in the country. Bob

Legacy

Within the SDS emerged a faction led by Bill Ayers and Diana Oughton, a group that took on the name "Jesse James Gang" before transforming into the Weather Underground.