The James legend grew with the help of newspaper editor John Newman Edwards, a Confederate sympathizer who perpetuated James's Robin Hood mythology. 'He was audacious, planning and robbing banks in the middle of the day and stopping the most powerful machines of the time-railroad engines-to rob their trains and successfully get away,” wrote Bill Markley in Billy the Kid and Jesse James: Outlaws of the Legendary West. WATCH: The James Gang: Outlaw Brothers on HISTORY Vault.Īs newspapers began to mention James, his love for the attention grew. While they usually focused more on robbing train safes than individual passengers, they did ruthlessly murder countless people who got in their way. Overall, between 18, they are believed to have committed more than 20 bank and train robberies, with a combined haul estimated at around $200,000. At times, he saw himself as a modern Robin Hood, robbing from the politically progressive Reconstruction supporters and giving to the poor.Īccording to the State Historical Society of Missouri, the James-Younger gang operated widely, from Iowa to Texas to West Virginia. As a teen in 1864, James and his brother Frank joined a guerrilla unit responsible for murdering dozens of Union soldiers.įor some historians, James never stopped fighting the Civil War, translating his fury over the defeat of the secessionist cause into a career sticking up banks, trains and stagecoaches. 16-year-old Jesse James posing with three pistols, Platte City, Missouri, July 10, 1864.īorn in Clay County, Missouri in 1847, Jesse James grew up as part of a Confederacy-supporting, slave-owning family.

James gang woman