Biographer T.J. Stiles

Commentary by T.J. Stiles

It is usually a mistake for a writer to respond to reviews—especially when he has been fortunate enough to have met an almost universally generous reception. But in the case of scholarly reviews, it is sometimes illuminating when the author responds. The most recent scholarly review of my book appears in the March 2005 issue of the Journal of American History and it is written by Michael Fellman, a well-known authority on the guerrilla conflict in Missouri during the Civil War. Fellman is fair-minded, offers much praise for the book, and makes points that are thoughtful and defensible, even when I disagree with him. A discussion of his criticism, I hope, will illuminate some of the issues raised by my book.

First, here’s the review, in its entirety.

Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. By T. J. Stiles. (New York: Vintage, 2002. xiv, 510 pp. Cloth, $27.50, ISBN 0-375-40583-6. Paper, $16.00, ISBN 0-375-70558-9.)

In this detailed and lively recounting of the life of Jesse James, T. J. Stiles has repackaged and extended familiar tales in provocative ways. The engaging results should be read alongside William A. Settle Jr.'s classic 1966 study, Jesse James Was His Name, which also took the wind out of the folkloric hero in an effort to achieve hard-headed realism.

Stiles paints a broad canvas, placing James in the wider political settings of the Civil War and Reconstruction. James had been a Confederate guerrilla during the war, and Stiles discusses at considerable length and with insight the best-known guerrilla bands of the war, William C. Quantrill, Bloody Bill Anderson, and all, with whom the still-teenage Jesse rode. All of this is familiar territory, but Stiles often adds interesting new detail, at the same time limiting his picture by emphasizing one locale and one loose band of guerrillas while ignoring the statewide and nationwide phenomenon.

But Stiles's most original emphasis, the thesis that drives the book, is that Jesse James was an intensely political postwar neo-Confederate terrorist rather than a social bandit or just a plain thug. This argument is both stimulating and overstated.

While Jesse James was sticking up banks and railroad express companies, John Newman Edwards, an alcohol-fueled newspaperman, served as his publicity agent. Edwards was a great defender of the wartime guerrillas, and he aided former Confederates generally in their attacks on the Radical government in Reconstruction Missouri. Much of Edwards’s writing about Jesse James, from which Stiles quotes in a rather selective fashion, dealt with the ultimately successful ex-Confederate political struggles to regain political power. But a great deal of it also placed James in the context of Robin Hood, Rob Roy, and other mythic defenders of the little people in their perpetual battle against the state and the dominant forces of society. Stiles is eager to debunk the social bandit interpretation of James, but Edwards himself had been glad to add that traditional romance to his Confederate apologetics, the better to build a sympathetic case for his story-loving readers. Thus it is inaccurate and unnecessarily reductionist to make an either/or argument where a both/and framework would have even more explanatory power.

Fanned by his own exploits and Edwards’s florid writing, James became a legendary figure even during his lifetime, and he was celebrated not for his Confederate politics, but his imitation reincarnation of the always imaginary Robin Hood. Legends have lives of their own, often far greater than the figures that provoke them, and are worthy of study, even if they are factually false. Stiles has no interest in dealing with this legend, though Edwards and James certainly did, the better to serve their political ends.

Besides, when the publicity-craving James himself set pen to paper without Edwards’s ghostwriting or other editorial help, he tended to garble his lines, though he quite liked what Edwards had trained him to believe about himself. The semiliterate and incoherent James mentioned those dastardly Radicals, but he spilled far more ink bragging about crimes he also denied and demonstrating his proclivity for self-pity. He liked the easy money, had a hair-trigger temper, and sometimes shot men down in cold blood. If he was not Robin Hood, neither was he a fierce political operative, although he had something of an ex-Confederate political identity to set alongside his sociopathic greed.

Michael Fellman, Simon Fraser University

My Response:
First, I must acknowledge the praise that Michael Fellman offers my book. His tone is in no way dismissive. Even where he strongly objects, his approach strikes me as respectful, if forceful. I mean for my response to share that tone.

Second, there are some apparent criticisms that strike me as trivial. For example, he notes that I emphasize one locale during the Civil War, and ignore guerrilla warfare across the state and nation. Of course I focus on Jesse James’s specific location and group. I even regret in an endnote that I reinforce the excess attention traditionally given to Quantrill and Anderson, but it is a biography, after all.

He also states that I quote John Newman Edwards’s writings "rather selectively." I find this to be a rather curious comment, since I quote them at greater length than previous writers about Jesse James; more than that, I put his writings about James in the context of his other editorials. I assume, then, that the word "selectively" is meant to suggest that I have chosen unrepresentative quotations. If so, I find no evidence for Professor Fellman's judgment, and must differ with it.

Third, we arrive at Fellman’s objections to my thesis, that Jesse James consciously played a role in the political resurrection of former Confederates, and that his contemporary popularity was rooted in that Confederate identity. He does not completely disagree—indeed, he seems to acknowledge its worth—but he is reluctant to accept it in its entirety. Unfortunately for readers who wish to judge my approach, he proceeds to muddle his criticism.

For one thing, he leaves the impression that I fail to mention Edwards’s emphasis on the mythic qualities of Jesse James. This is untrue. On page 224 of my book, for example, I analyze his use of the myth of King Arthur in his writings. The King Arthur symbolism, I find, spoke to the chivalric ideals that Southern society conjured up for itself in the wake of the Civil War. I also discuss Edwards's references to classic bandits—on page 225, for example.

Fellman's objection is a bit bewildering, since I do not engage in an either/or opposition of reality and legend-making (indeed, the building of the legend occupies a great deal of space in my text.) Was I wrong to write a biography, rather than a study of the folklore? I don't believe he would say so. So what exactly is his criticism?

The first problem with his review is his failure to note that there were two myths of Jesse James: One cultivated by James and Edwards, and another that arose after his death, far from his birthplace. I devote a great deal of attention to the first, but not to the second, and this seems to be what Fellman finds objectionable. However, he does not articulate the precise myth that he has in mind, so his critique is not as crisp, or as valuable, as it might otherwise be.

The second problem with Fellman's review is that he resists, more out of intellectual habit that any real evidence, my conclusion that politics played a large role in Jesse James's public image, and image of himself. He seems to think that myth for its own sake is all that matters. For example, he offers this undeveloped thought, apparently as a criticism of my approach: Edwards’s writings, he says, "placed James in the context of Robin Hood, Rob Roy, and other mythic defenders of the little people in their perpetual battle against the state and the dominant forces of society." I agree completely. But I also try to identify what state, and what "dominant forces of society."

I note in my analysis of the famous "Jack Shepherd" letter (written either by Jesse James or by Edwards) that the Robin Hood image was invoked explicitly against the Radical Republicans. The famous "we rob the rich and give to the poor" line in that letter was included specifically to contrast the bandits with President Ulysses S. Grant. The attacks on Grant and the Radicals, however, are usually "selectively" left out of discussions of the letter. This explicitly political purpose behind Edwards's legend-making (indeed, James's own legend-making) doesn't seem to fit the generalized, undefined myth that Fellman has in mind.

I am a rather traditional historian in my method. I demand evidence before drawing a conclusion. Jesse James, however, has been interpreted without evidence far too often. Fellman’s treatment of my book is not harsh or unfair, but his apparent yearning for something other than Confederate politics in the legend of James reflects a lingering reluctance by historians to let go of the image of him as a hero of apolitical small farmers who resented corporations and distant big-shots. Fellman even makes this unsubstantiated claim in his review: "James became a legendary figure even during his lifetime, and he was celebrated not for his Confederate politics, but for his imitation reincarnation of the always legendary Robin Hood."

Really? Not for his Confederate politics? I would like to see some evidence for that declaration. Any evidence. I found virtually none in all my research, and I expected to when I started my work. Every conceivable mouthpiece of small farmers in rural Missouri during Jesse James's lifetime, from Granger meetings to agrarian political platforms to small-town newspaper editorials, denounced the James gang.

Certainly James (with Edwards's help) definitely built an image of himself as a kind of Robin Hood. But that brings us back to the earlier question: A Robin Hood in opposition to what? Even the archer of Sherwood Forest had specific enemies. Edwards and James both told us whom they opposed: Unionists and Radical Republicans. I analyzed their impact, and believe they should be taken at their word.

There is abundant evidence that James’s supporters were specifically ex-Confederates, specifically because he embodied their resentment at losing the war and having Reconstruction imposed upon them. I don't know what was in people's hearts, if they distinguished between the "legendary" Jesse James and the real one, but I do know which newspapers praised James and which denounced him, which legislators voted to extend him amnesty and which made him a campaign issue, which farmers gave him spare horses and which helped the Pinkertons. Facts are stubborn things, even when they pile up in a seemingly "overstated" way.

Certainly Jesse James was violent, self-pitying, and sometimes incoherent, but that doesn't mean he was insincere in his stated beliefs, or incapable of having political beliefs. Of all the criminals of post-Civil War American, he was the one writing letters to the press, mouthing slogans during robberies, and surviving with public help for a decade and a half. To argue that Jesse James was not celebrated for his Confederate identity, as Fellman does, is to argue against all evidence, with none to show in support of this position. It is to cling to myth for its own sake—specifically, the myth that arose after James's death.

Yes, it is true that very late in his life some dime novels started to circulate that used the James brothers as characters, with no link to the Civil War. But this appearance in popular entertainment (as Richard Slotkin notes) had its greatest impact far from his birthplace, and mostly after his death. But that was a separate myth from the one that surrounded James in life, that was cultivated by James himself. Fellman conflates the two legends.

Fellman does have a point, if I am deciphering his critique correctly: The later, dime-novel myth was significant, at least in wider American culture. But compared to the decisive shift in regional identity and political culture that Jesse James contributed to within Missouri, I believe that it had relatively little impact on history, except to have entertained some distant clerks, shopkeepers, factory workers, and schoolboys. It was not my task to write yet another book about it, to try to outdo Slotkin at what Slotkin did so well.

That later, more distant myth did indeed depict him as a social bandit, as a defender of poor farmers against railroads and banks. It arose, I believe, because of the second act of his bandit career—the brief flurry of robberies from 1879 to his death in early 1882, a rampage that had no political context and virtually no public support. He depoliticized himself with his return to crime, which allowed the authorities to crush him relatively swiftly, and also detached his public image from the Civil War and Reconstruction.

The legend of him as an anti-railroad hero, I think, then took root during the populist movement later in the nineteenth century, in a nation eager to forget the bitterness of the Civil War. But that myth has been explored often and well (by Richard Slotkin, among others). I saw a need for a new investigation of the circumstances of James’s actual life and times, and his very real impact on his world. Fellman's error of conflating the aura surrounding the living man with that surrounding the ghost suggests to me that I should have explored the difference between the two myths more thoroughly in the final chapter of my book.

Jesse James is a complicated phenomenon—more than one, in fact. I rather wish I had explored the later, social-bandit myth in greater depth, but I must emphasize that it was a separate phenomenon from the one I set out to examine. For too long, historians have focused purely on the dime novels and ballads. I think the real Jesse James, the one who was given shelter on the farms of former Confederates, won headlines in Confederate Democratic newspapers such as the Lexington Caucasian, and was universally castigated by Unionists of both political parties, tells us something we may not have realized before: Just how bitterly the Civil War divided this nation, and how long the scars took to heal.

One Final Note
One of my favorite historical quotations is from E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, in which he states his desire to rescue his subjects from "the enormous condescension of posterity." For historians, condescension is a highly appealing posture. One always looks more sophisticated when dismissing a subject's apparent pretensions, rather than taking them seriously. Yet condescension is not always historically sound. In writing this biography, I had no desire to pay homage to Jesse James, but I did set out to take him seriously. Fellman, unfortunately, finds it easier to retreat into the stance of condescension, as in his reference to "what Edwards had trained him to believe."

Edwards was critical to James's high public profile—but was it really necessary for Edwards to train James, a man who grew up under the shadow of warfare with abolitionists, who had begun to fight for the Confederacy at the age of sixteen, who had seen much of his family's wealth stripped away (in emancipation), who had seen his stepfather tortured, mother arrested, and family banished from the state, who had murdered unarmed men for their Unionism, whose mentor Archie Clement had been killed by state militia almost two years after the end of the Civil War? To assume that such an individual as James had a mind empty of political beliefs or a sense of his own righteousness, as Fellman does, is to willfully defy logic and evidence. Then again, it was just this sort of underestimation by the sophisticates of James's day that allowed James to outwit the authorities and survive as an outlaw for sixteen years.