1866

February 13: In an armed robbery, $58,000 is taken from the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty. This is the first American bank robbery to take place in broad daylight during peacetime, and the bushwhackers are suspected. In response, Missouri's governor calls out the state militia. But the bank robberies intensify over the next few years, as does the political warfare between Unionist "Radicals" who advocate civil rights for blacks and "Conservatives" who resist changes to the old social order.

December 13: Jesse's bushwhacker mentor Archie Clement is gunned down by the state militia in Lexington; Jesse's fury over this will only grow in the coming years.

1868

March: Jesse and Frank gather with other bushwhackers, including Cole Younger, to plan a robbery in Russellville, Kentucky. The robbery results in the shooting of a local, the capture of one bandit by Louisville detectives, and the death of a second at the hands of a posse in Missouri.

As the year wears on, the Ku Klux Klan begins spreading terror against freed slaves and Unionist civilians in nearby Lafayette County.

November: Republican Ulysses Grant is elected president. Frank Blair, leader of Missouri's Conservatives, is the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket.

1870

June: The Kansas City Times prints a letter from Jesse protesting his innocence and claiming that ex-Confederates like himself are the real victims in Missouri. The paper's editor, John Newman Edwards, is a former Confederate soldier trying to boost the fortunes of those who had supported the Southern cause.

August: Jesse and Frank head to Texas. They return in February 1871.

November: The Radical Republican candidate is defeated in the Missouri governor's race, marking the beginning of a shift in the balance of political power. The voters also pass a referendum re-enfranchising former Confederates.

1872

April 29: Jesse, Frank, and their associates rob a bank in Columbia, Kentucky, once again murdering an unarmed cashier.

September 26: Three masked gunmen rob the crowded Kansas City Industrial Exposition and are subsequently lauded by Edwards for their "feat of stupendous nerve and fearlessness."

October 15: An anonymous letter thought to have been written by Jesse appears in the Times; the author claims that "we are not thieves -- we are bold robbers ... [we] rob the rich and give to the poor."

November: Grant wins re-election, while Democrats dominate Missouri's races.

1874

January 31: Jesse and his gang rob a train in Gads Hill, Missouri, leaving behind a composed press release to be sent to the Dispatch.

March: The Pinkerton agency, which has been hired to stop the train robberies, sends a detective named Joseph Whicher to Clay County to track down Frank and Jesse. He goes to their farm and is later found dead. Other Pinkerton detectives engage in a gun battle with the Younger brothers, members of the James gang. John Younger is killed. One of the detectives and a local ally of the Pinkertons are also killed. Agency head Alan Pinkerton vows vengeance on the James brothers. Meanwhile, their banditry has become a political issue, with Unionists denouncing Democrats for failing to capture the brothers.

April 24: Jesse marries his first cousin, Zerelda "Zee" Mimms, who is named for Jesse's mother.

December: The gang robs a train in Muncie, Kansas, and makes off with almost $30,000.

1876

September 7: Jesse, who has continued both to rob and protest his innocence in letters to newspapers, leads his brother and a gang of ex-bushwhackers including Cole Younger on a robbery of the First National Bank in Northfield, Minnesota. Northfield has drawn their attention as the home of Mississippi's former Republican governor, Adelbert Ames. But the raid is a fiasco; armed citizens shoot two of the robbers dead and hunt down the others. Younger and his brothers are captured, another member of the gang is killed, and only Frank and Jesse make it back the 500 miles to Missouri, eluding a manhunt conducted by thousands of Minnesotans. The James brothers return to the Nashville area, where they and their wives will live quietly for a few years under assumed names.

November: A disputed election marred by violence against African American voters pits Republican Rutherford Hayes against Democrat Samuel Tilden. The Compromise of 1877 puts Hayes in office, but Reconstruction is ended, along with federal protection for Southern blacks.

1879

October 8: Having gathered a new gang together, Jesse takes them to Glendale, Missouri, and robs a train there. He leaves another press release, but it seems pointless, empty of any political content. Even John Edwards stops answering Jesse's letters. The election of 1876 has begun a period of political ascendancy for Democrats, and ex-Confederates have little reason to complain.

1881

Thomas Crittenden, the new Democratic governor of Missouri, declares war on the James brothers and offers $10,000 each for their capture. Jesse, whose hunger for attention is now mixed with an increasing paranoia, flees the Nashville area in the aftermath of a robbery and returns to Missouri, where his train robberies continue. At his last robbery, in September, Jesse denounces the railroads for funding the reward for his capture and says, "If we are going to be wicked, we might as well make a good job of it." In November, he moves his family to St. Joseph.