Frank and Jesse James

Born to a staunchly slave-owning family in and living in one of the most heavily pro-slavery counties in Missouri, there was no question on which side the James brothers, Frank and Jesse, would enlist.

In 1861, an 18-year-old Frank James served in the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard until his capture by the Union, when he was paroled and sent home under an oath to no longer take up arms against the federal government. But by 1863, Frank had joined up with notorious Confederate guerilla William Quantrill, even taking part in the brutal Lawrence, Kansas raid of that August. His younger brother, Jesse, incensed by atrocities visited upon his own family and like-minded neighbors by jayhawkers (pro-Union guerillas), joined up in 1864.

Both James brothers had joined up with William Anderson's gang by late summer of that year, and some accounts place both brothers at the failed charge of the blockhouse garrison in Fayette. They are not listed in Watts's recollection, but more than one biographer of Jesse James places both James brothers at the skirmish in Fayette.

After the war, the James brothers struggled to rejoin the working world, returning instead to a life of crime and theft. Over the next 12 years, the James brothers, with a revolving cast of gang members, would carry out nearly 20 robberies and as many murders. Only the 1882 murder of Jesse by his own gang members, hungry for reward money, would end their spree.

Campaigns by pro-Confederate dime novel publishers and newspaper writers, such as John Newman Edwards, had already spun the James brothers into Robin-Hood-like folk heroes, though there was no actual evidence that their heists ever benefited anyone but themselves.