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JESSE WOODSON JAMES: THE MOST NOTORIOS AMERICAN OUTLAW
Willow Jennings-King
Robert Jordan
History 171
April 4, 2014
When one thinks of the United States of America, they probably consider our history, our culture, our media, our impressive cities and the extremely wide variety of beautiful wildernesses that we are lucky enough to still enjoy. We are lucky enough to have a melting pot of cultures in this country, and many different kinds of people. However, when thinking of an original, all-American figure, cowboys come to mind for many people. Our history and the settlement of the U.S. was unlike any other country, and the development of the country in the more western states came with the unique and fascinating time period referred to now as “The Old West”. The Old West was a crucial time in American history, and though it was a simpler time it also came with its share of excitement. Some of the most memorable details about the Old West were the characters that came with it, and some extremely interesting ones were the least conforming- the outlaws. Jesse Woodson James was one of the most notorious outlaws in American history. His name would go down in history as one belonging to a tough as nails and fearless bank robber who led a group of outlaws across the mid-west robbing banks and trains, and even murdering people. When we look at the big picture of what the U.S. has become today, The Old West certainly has had a large impact on our culture, and Jesse James certainly had a large impact on the Old West. Though most would argue that he was not a decent or moral person, one cannot argue that he was still a very interesting and unique icon of the west. So how did Jesse Woodson James change and leave his mark on the United St...
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... a fugitive, a bank robber, and a murderer, but he was also an iconic outlaw and one of the toughest to be put to justice. In an interview of Mark Lee Gardner, author of “Shot All to Hell”, the true story of the robbery that lead to Jesse’s death, Gardner gives his insight on the outlaw. “One of the reasons I was fascinated with the real Jesse James was because the things he did were so nearly superhuman and larger than life, and they still remain incredible deeds--even in the 21st century. But I certainly don't want to preserve the idea that someone who's a murderer is someone who should be looked up to.” This is a great way to sum up the life and impact that Jesse James had on our society. Most people wouldn’t argue that he did some very immoral things, but to many people, he seemed like such a force to be reckoned with that all you can do is respect him for it.
The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.
The setting of the essay is Los Angeles in the 1800’s during the Wild West era, and the protagonist of the story is the brave Don Antonio. One example of LA’s Wild West portrayal is that LA has “soft, rolling, treeless hills and valleys, between which the Los Angeles River now takes its shilly-shallying course seaward, were forest slopes and meadows, with lakes great and small. This abundance of trees, with shining waters playing among them, added to the limitless bloom of the plains and the splendor of the snow-topped mountains, must have made the whole region indeed a paradise” (Jackson 2). In the 1800’s, LA is not the same developed city as today. LA is an undeveloped land with impressive scenery that provides Wild West imagery. One characteristic of the Wild West is the sheer commotion and imagery of this is provided on “the first breaking out of hostilities between California and the United States, Don Antonio took command of a company of Los Angeles volunteers to repel the intruders” (15). This sheer commotion is one of methods of Wild West imagery Jackson
In week three, our professor a question in regards to Turner’s thesis asked a question of me. The question that was posed to me was this, “which groups did he (Turner) exclude and why should they be included if we are to provide a balanced accounting”? After going back and reading the thesis again to make sure I had not miss anything, I still felt that Turner was very biased in his thinking. I gave my honest feedback on who I felt was left out of the thesis and was going to leave it at that, however I thought, before I submit let me see what other historians are saying about this thesis and Turner in the field of history. Well, was a I surprised when I was informed this was a leading paper in on the American West. However, I still could
Somewhere out in the Old West wind kicks up dust off a lone road through a lawless town, a road once dominated by men with gun belts attached at the hip, boots upon their feet and spurs that clanged as they traversed the dusty road. The gunslinger hero, a man with a violent past and present, a man who eventually would succumb to the progress of the frontier, he is the embodiment of the values of freedom and the land the he defends with his gun. Inseparable is the iconography of the West in the imagination of Americans, the figure of the gunslinger is part of this iconography, his law was through the gun and his boots with spurs signaled his arrival, commanding order by way of violent intentions. The Western also had other iconic figures that populated the Old West, the lawman, in contrast to the gunslinger, had a different weapon to yield, the law. In the frontier, his belief in law and order as well as knowledge and education, brought civility to the untamed frontier. The Western was and still is the “essential American film genre, the cornerstone of American identity.” (Holtz p. 111) There is a strong link between America’s past and the Western film genre, documenting and reflecting the nations changes through conflict in the construction of an expanding nation. Taking the genres classical conventions, such as the gunslinger, and interpret them into the ideology of America. Thus The Western’s classical gunslinger, the personification of America’s violent past to protect the freedoms of a nation, the Modernist takes the familiar convention and buries him to signify that societies attitude has change towards the use of diplomacy, by way of outmoding the gunslinger in favor of the lawman, taming the frontier with civility.
	There are two sides to everything. Coins have both heads and tales, the moon has a dark side and a face that we are so familiar with, and yes, the Lochness Monster has both a head and a tail. To every opinion, or story, there will always be one that contradicts it. This is the case with conceptions regarding Jesse James. Jesse Woodson James was born on the cold and early morning of September 6, 1847 in Kearney, Missouri. At the age of fourteen, Jesse joined the Confederate effort during the Civil War and fought until a Union bullet injured him in 1865. Instead of becoming a farmer like most of the rest of the beaten Confederacy, Jesse turned to crime. From 1866 to 1882, Jesse, his brother Frank, and other ex-Confederates robbed over fifteen different banks and trains. The James Gang operated in the Mid-west until a fellow gang member shot Jesse in the back of the head. There are two different schools of thought regarding James. Most people consider Jesse James a murdering outlaw who was driven by a greed for money, while others sympathize with Jesse and view him as an American hero who had no choice but to turn to crime.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
There is great debate on Frederick Jackson Turners thesis on whether or not the great west is where American character was formed. The West was more a form of society than an actual area. The term is applied to the region in which the social conditions resulted from the application of older set colonies. By this application a new environment was entered. A new environment of freedom and of opportunity was opened and a new line of activities, ideas, customs, and growth were brought into existence in the Great west. Their opportunistic, individualistic, and willingness to accept innovations are of reasons I agree with Turners analysis that true American character was formed in the great west.
Sanitary conditions in the West were practically non-existent. In the cities, horse manure covered the streets. Housewives emptied garbage, dishwater, and chamber pots into the middle of the city streets where free-roaming pigs devoured the waste. The pigs left their urine and feces on the streets. It was not easy to wash clothes. Many people had clothes splattered with manure, mud, sweat, and tobacco juice. Privies, or necessary houses were often to close to the homes with a very noticeable odor on hot and/or windy days. If a family had a kitchen, all the members washed at the sink each day, without soap, rubbing the dirt off with a coarse towel. Eventually, many cold bedrooms had a basin, ewer (pitcher), cup, and cupboard chamber pot. Bed bugs and fleas covered many of the travelers’ beds. “Isaac Weld saw filthy beds swarming with bugs.” These insects followed the travelers, crawling on their clothes and skin.
The cowboys of the frontier have long captured the imagination of the American public. Americans, faced with the reality of an increasingly industrialized society, love the image of a man living out in the wilderness fending for himself against the dangers of the unknown. By the end of the 19th century there were few renegade Indians left in the country and the vast expanse of open land to the west of the Mississippi was rapidly filling with settlers.
The Westward Expansion was an important and essential part of the United States growth during the nineteen centuries. The main contributor to this phenomenon was the settlers, agriculture and the construction of the railroad networks. Using this perspective, and through research the author of this paper will analyze the expansion during different decades in the 1800’s.
In history many things had happened that we are educated on till this day and each of those events are very important to our lives today and it is what makes us who we are as a country today. One of the events that is quite interesting is the Westward Expansion (1787- 1869) which happened before 1877. The Westward Expansion had its ups and downs throughout the years.
In this book, Robert M. Utley depicts the life of Sitting Bull a Hunkpapa Indian, from when he was born to his death in 1890. Utley shows both the personal life and political life that Sitting Bull endured throughout the years. Utley looks at Sitting Bull's life from both “...the white as well as the Indian perspective. From both, he emerges as an enduring legend and a historical icon, but above all as a truly great human being.” (xvi). To his tribe Sitting Bull was an extraordinary man who was brave and respected, but to many in the US government believed him to be a troublemaker and a coward. Utley works to prove how Sitting Bull was a man who became an American patriot.
Although cowboys played a large role in the western United States most of the stories surrounding them are heavily steeped in myth and lure which only added to the overall grandeur of their image. This and the code that John Grady tries to live by seems to indicate that John Grady was idolizing a single cowboy or a particular cowboy but the idea of a cowboy, “The cowboy in various guises is popularly accepted by Americans as a symbol, indicative of this stature as myth” (Savage 3). All of this together may have contributed to John Grady's decision so pursue a cowboy
Because of the outlaw hero’s definitive elements, society more so identifies with this myth. Ray said, “…the scarcity of mature heroes in American...
While the western frontier was still new and untamed, the western hero often took on the role of a vigilante. The vigilante’s role in the frontier was that of extralegal verve which was used to restrain criminal threats to the civil peace and opulence of a local community. Vigilantism was typical to the settler-state societies of the western frontier where the structures and powers of government were at first very feeble and weak. The typical cowboy hero had a willingness to use this extralegal verve. The Virginian demonstrated this throughout with his interactions with Trampas, most notably in the interactions leading up to the shoot out and during the shoot-out itself. “Others struggled with Trampas, and his bullet smashed the ceiling before they could drag the pistol from him… Yet the Virginian stood quiet by the...