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Admiring Words
Some newspapers blatantly celebrated Jesse James' criminal activities. These papers opposed Northern control of the South during Reconstruction, and aimed to restore the Democrats to power. They even published chatty pieces about Jesse James' personal life.
The Kansas City Times, September 29, 1872
The Chivalry of Crime
There is a dash of tiger blood in the veins of all men; a latent disposition even in the bosom that is a stranger to nerve and daring, to admire those qualities in other men. And this penchant is always keener if there be a dash of sin in the deed to spice the enjoyment of its contemplation...
The Lexington Caucasian, September 5, 1874
Missouri's Gay Bandits
The Genuine James Boys and One of the Youngers
In all the history of medieval knight-errantry and modern brigandage, there is nothing that equals the wild romance of the past few years' career of Arthur McCoy, Frank and Jesse James and the Younger boys. Their desperate deeds during the war were sufficient to have stocked a score of ordinary novels, with facts that outstrip the strung-out flights of fantasy. Their fierce hand-to-hand encounters... their long and reckless scouts and forays, and their riotous jollity... all combined to form a chapter without a parallel in the annals of America...
The Lexington Caucasian, October 17, 1874
The Truth At Last.
All the annals of romantic crime furnish no parallel to the exploits of Missouri's bold rovers. Since Ishmael hung out his shingle, thirty-seven centuries ago, in the deserts of Edom, as a dashing, untamable boss brigand, they have been unsurpassed. They've laid Aladdin in the shade, and snuffed out all his marvel-hatching lamps. They've eclipsed the wildest wonders of the Arabian Nights, and rendered commonplace the most incredible achievements of the Cid. They've made the tales of the Crusaders and the Buccaneers stale nursery croonings. Achilles and Hector, Barabbas, Rob Roy, Dick Tarpin and Sixteen-String Jack dwindle to ordinary marauders beside them...
The St. Louis Dispatch, June 9, 1874
The Very Latest
4:30 P.M.
Captured.
The Celebrated Jesse W. James Taken at Last.
His Captor a Woman, Young, Accomplished, and Beautiful
Not many days ago I saw the celebrated Jesse W. James in the city of Galveston [Texas], talked with him, was introduced to his wife, and recognized in her an old acquaintance of Jackson county -- a lady whom I had known both before and since the war, and one who had been of immense service to the Southern guerrillas when they were operating upon the border in 1862 and 1863.
I had a long talk with Jesse. He was waiting for a vessel bound for Mexico, when it was his intention to go with his wife to Vera Cruz, and from there into the interior and take him a farm. Frank was with him and they appeared to have many friends and acquaintances in Galveston.
Jesse gave me some interesting items concerning his marriage, and told me that it was his intention to keep the matter a secret as long as he could, but that before he left home the event had been talked of much, both in Kansas City and Clay county, and so now that as he was going to leave the country in a few days, he would give all the particulars concerning it...
"On the 23d of April, 1874, I was married to Miss Zee Mimme, of Kansas City, and at the house of a mutual friend there... We had been engaged for nine years..."
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