JESSE JAMES, LAST REBEL OF THE CIVIL WAR takes its subject seriously. There are sixty-nine pages of footnotes, sixteen pages of bibliography.
This is not your conventional biography. Stiles theorizes that James was not the Robin Hood kind of brigand, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, he's been made out to be by innumerable Hollywood movies and TV shows. Rather he was a product of the bushwacker guerrillas who ravaged Missouri during the Civil War and he kept at it right up until his death in 1882. Stiles also maintains that James was a political outlaw in that part of his purpose was to unseat the Radical Republicans who governed Missouri after the Civil War. Stiles equates James to the modern terrorist.
Quite a bit of the book is devoted to Jesse's relationship with John Newman Edwards, a newspaper editor and "voice of the Confederate wing of the Democratic Party in Missouri." Edwards extolled the James gang as rebel heroes, compares them to "men who might have sat with Arthur at the Round Table, ridden at tourney with Sir Launcelot or worn the colors of Guinevere." He also edited and published Jesse's letters ridiculing the Radical Republicans and President Grant.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that this is a dull history book. The gang's tangles with the Pinkertons and their Northfield make entertaining reading. The book also fills in some gaps. For instance, there's no doubt Jesse was a murderer. He was involved in a mass execution of union troops during the days he spent riding with Bloody Bill Anderson. These guerrillas defiled the bodies of their victims and took scalps. There's little doubt that Jesse murdered John W. Sheets during a bank robbery as well as the cashier during the Northfield raid and the conductor and two passengers during a train holdup; he even murdered one of the gang members, Ed Miller, Clell Miller's brother. Stiles relates a theory about how Jesse got that way called "violentization." According to sociologist Lonnie Athens, there are four stages: brutalization; belligerency; violent performances "during which the subject pushes through a psychological barrier, and actually inflicts pain on another person"; and virulency, where others fear and applaud the violence. All of these steps fit Jesse like a glove.
The ending of the book is rather disappointing and anti-climactic. Stiles's description of Bob and Charlie Ford's murder
adds nothing new. The final chapter,"Apotheosis," examines various scholarly takes on the James gang. This gives Stiles another chance to belittle any romantic notions about the outlaws that remain. Stiles spends half of a page telling us what happened to the surviving principals. Frank never spent a day in jail and he and Cole Younger died in bed.