James was steadily approaching middle age, and was residing in a bungalow on Woodland Avenue. Every day, like a ritual he installed himself in a rocking chair and smoked a cigar in the evenings as his wife; aware of his actions and lifestyle obediently looked after, their two children. His children knew the feel of his legs, the sting of his moustache against their soft cheeks. They didn't know how their father made his living, or why they so often moved. They didn't even know their father's name. He was listed in the city directory as Thomas Howard, and he went everywhere unrecognised and socialised and lunched with Kansas City business men and commoners, calling himself a shareholder of a successful business or a cattlemen, someone rich and leisured who had the common touch. He had two incomplete healed bullet holes in his torso and another in his calf. He was missing the top of his left middle finger and was wary, lest that mutilation be noticed or seen. He suffered from a syndrome that was referred to as, ‘granulated eyelids’ and it caused him to excessively blink as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept. Rooms seemed hotter when he was in them. Rains fell straighter. Sounds were amplified.Clocks slowed. He saw himself a Republican loyalist and guerilla in a Civil War that never ceased to an end. He regretted neither his robberies, nor the seventeen murders that he commited. He had survived another year in Kansas City, Missouri and on September 5th in the year 1881, he was thirty-four-years-old. This man was Jesse James. Hero to the people. Villain to the authorities.
Jesse James wanted poster.
US culture has always been dosed in a sense of divine justice and freedom. The act of liberation has been imprinted on their soul. For example, going into Korea and trying to eradicate the practice of Communism and introduce Capitalism. People travel the world to live in the US to live the glorious American Dream. If you work hard enough, you will be prosperous. But, is there really a dream, or is it just a system used to keep the King’s minions quiet? As the King shall forever be in control of his pawns, no matter how much money you make. You still don’t have true power. True authority.
Jesse James challenged the established order and rocked its foundations. This was unimaginable and groundbreaking at the time. One man alone was so successful at being a vigilante, taking the law into his own hands. Making decisions that only a King would dare to make. Playing God with human lives in a sense. The man who stood up to the uncompromising, corrupt government. One man faces a whole country in other words, attempting to change the ideology in the hearts and minds of his fellow countrymen. He was a needle in the haystack, summed up in one word, ‘underdog’. He didn’t comprehend or acknowledge any of the murders he committed, as he passed that sense of human emotion. He entered, some would say the next stage of evolution. Emotions such as grief, regret and guilt eluded him. His glory, fame and ambition engulfed him. One death is a tragedy, but one million is a statistic, as Joseph Stalin said. Jesse James, like Joseph Stalin felt nothing when they killed, as they knew it had been necessary for them to carry on living. To carry on the endless, raging fight to their bitter end. This philosophy inspired his fellow Americans and saw him as a hero for the people. A Robin Hood figure. Rich will feel the power of the poor. Consequently, in their opinion a hero who was taken by a coward and a traitor by the name of Robert Ford. He befriended Jesse James, and then shot him in the back of his head while he was disarmed and snuck up from behind. Robert Ford had stabbed a friend in the back for money off the government. On Jesse James tombstone it reads, ‘Killed by a coward and traitor whose name is not worthy to appear here’. This remark was how the rest of America treated Robert Ford after he killed Jesse James. He expected glory, the same treatment Jesse got when he was alive. He hoped to change his sense of emptiness, to being loved and admired. He always felt a sense of emptiness. Did the government take advantage of a nineteen year old boy, who just wanted to be in the limelight?
The open casket of Jesse James. The US authorities made his funeral, into a circus, benefiting economically from his death. Charging five cents to see his dead body.
The open casket of Jesse James. The US authorities made his funeral, into a circus, benefiting economically from his death. Charging five cents to see his dead body.
Robert Ford was ashamed of his boasting, his arrogance, his pretensions of courage and ruthlessness; he was sorry about his cold-bloodedness, his dispassion, his inability to express what he now believed was the case. He truly regretted killing Jesse, that he missed the man as much as anybody and wished his murder hadn't been necessary, for his ambition. Even as he circulated his saloon he knew that the smiles disappeared when he passed by. He received so many threatening letters that he could read them without any reaction except curiosity. He remained in his apartment all day, keeping human contact to a minimum.
Edward O'Kelly came to Missouri. He had no grand scheme. No strategy. No agreement with higher authorities. Nothing but a vague longing for glory, and a generalized wish for revenge against Robert Ford for killing his hero Jesse James. Edward O'Kelly would be ordered to serve a life sentence in the Colorado Penitentiary for second degree murder. Over seven thousand signatures would eventually be gathered in a petition asking for O'Kelly's release, and in 1902, Governor James B. Ullman would pardon him. There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortège, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in, unlike Jesse James. Robert Ford was seen as a villain. He had killed the hero of the people. Now the people who he wanted to love him, hated him.
Robert Ford, a victim of US culture? Or of his own insecurities?
Both Robert Ford and Jesse James wrote their names in history but, did both gain glory? Jesse James gained glory through sheer ruthlessness, dispassion and force. Robert Ford gained glory through killing Jesse James. So, can true glory only be obtained through murder? People are written in history and remembered more for the atrocities they commit, then those who have helped the progress of mankind. For example, Adolf Hitler and his, ‘Final Solution’ is universally known.While a man like Martin Luther King, famous Civil Rights Leader is not. Infamy brings more fame then justice. As infamy is more curious for the outsider to review, then somebody who has done the right thing. What inspired the person to do that? Why did they do that? Are they even human? Robert Ford killed a man who was a cold-blooded murderer, yet, he was branded the evil one by the US public? Truly, he was liberating the country of a man who didn’t promote the American Dream. However, Jesse James was a great endorsement of the underdog and this was the great downfall of Robert Ford.
What do you think? Have your say.
Joel Brown.
Joel Brown.
Bilbography.
