Legends of the Old West - JESSE JAMES D.C. Ep. 5 | "Midnight Rider"

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Pinkerton detectives attack the James family farm and the results are deadly. The James-Younger gang robs a train in Missouri, but suffers a setback. The actions of a traitor push the gang to make the fateful decision to go north. Two weeks later, the gang settles on a target for its next robbery: the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by Lego Fortnite. Lego Fortnite is the ultimate survival crafting game found within Fortnite. It's not just Fortnite Battle Royale with minifigures. It's an entirely new experience that combines the best of Lego play and

Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. Rock Island is a 946-acre island in the middle of the Mississippi River between Davenport,

Iowa and Moline, Illinois. In 1862, during the Civil War, the Union Army built an arsenal on the island. They called it, creatively, the Rock Island Arsenal, and it's still in use today. In fact, it's the largest government-owned arsenal in the United States. And if you're traveling from Chicago to Kansas City, it's right on your way. As it happened, Robert Linden, Pinkerton agent, was traveling from Chicago to the area around Kansas City. He knew this route. He'd already traveled it once. He was the agent who had been sent to Missouri to bring back the body of fellow detective Louis Lull, after Louis had been killed by John and Jim Younger in a shootout.

Robert Linden was the agent who gave angry interviews to the press, claiming the sheriff of Clay County betrayed an undercover detective, and that detective had been murdered by Jesse James. Now it was January 1875, and the Pinkerton agency had just completed a clandestine investigation of the James boys that had lasted nearly a year. Alan Pinkerton, founder of the agency, had ordered a strike on the James family farm, and he had hand-picked Robert Linden to lead the assault. Linden, to lead the assault. On the surface, the mission was to arrest the James boys, but Alan Pinkerton had also vowed revenge, blood for blood, after the James Younger gang had murdered two of his agents. So he contacted his friend, General Phil Sheridan, whose office was

two blocks away in Chicago. General Sheridan arranged for agent Robert Linden to make a stop on his way from Chicago to Clay County, Missouri. He gave Linden access to the Rock Island Arsenal. Linden's purpose at the Arsenal was to fulfill this instruction from Alan Pinkerton about the assault on the James family farm. Above everything, destroy the house. Blot it from the face of the earth. From Black Barrel Media, this is Season 7 of the Legends of the Old West podcast. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're revisiting the life and legacy of Jesse James. This is Episode 5, Midnight Rider. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you.

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The James Family Farmhouse was busy on the evening of January 25, 1875. Frank and Jesse were home for dinner, and they brought their friend, Clell Miller, with them. Miller was a sometime member of the gang. He'd been with them for the Iowa train robbery, but had not been on every raid with the brothers. The house was packed that night. Frank, Jesse, and Clell were three. Jesse's mother and stepfather, Zerelda and Ruben, made five. Their three small children made eight.

And the family's longtime servant and her two sons made a total of 11. They were completely unaware that the Pinkertons were about to descend on the farm. Agent Robert Linden and a squad of six men were on the ground in Kearney, just a few miles from the James family farm. Their boss, Alan Pinkerton, had coordinated with the railroads to get them safe passage into western Missouri. And more importantly, he made sure their mission was secret. The squad had one night to complete its mission. They had to strike the farm and get back to the train station by 6 a.m. A special train would be held for them, but only until six. After that, they were on their own.

While Frank and Jesse ate dinner at the farmhouse, the Pinkertons met the neighbor of the James family in Kearney. The man had volunteered to help capture his outlaw neighbors, and he'd offered his farm to the Pinkertons as a staging ground for the attack. He met the squad at the train station and they began the trip to his farm. For the next couple hours, they traveled quietly through the woods of Clay County. At the James farm, dinner was done and the family split up. It was dark outside and it was now safe

for Frank, Jesse, and Clell Miller to leave. A loyal friend brought their horses into a pasture behind the house, and they saddled up and disappeared into the woods. Around the same time, Zerelda and Ruben's two oldest children returned to the house from a party at a nearby farm. They had been allowed to attend, but their little brother, Archie, was too young to go. He was sorely disappointed to be left out of the fun. With all the children back home, that made eight people in the house.

Zerelda and Ruben, their three children, and the servant and her two sons. The busy evening was finished, and they all went to bed for the night. finished, and they all went to bed for the night. Around 12.30 a.m., a squad of eight or nine men approached the farm on horseback. Most of the men stayed on the perimeter, acting as guards or lookouts. Two or three men dismounted and moved quietly to the house. They pulled the weather boarding off the outside of the house to reveal the log walls underneath. They jammed tubes filled with flammable liquid between the siding and the logs. Inside the house, the 18-year-old son of the family servant slept in the kitchen. His name was Ambrose, and he was the young man who had helped Frank and Jesse escape the small posse from Gallatin five years earlier.

Frank and Jesse had been hiding in the barn when four men arrived at the farm to arrest them for the murder of John Sheets, the owner of a bank in Gallatin. Ambrose had run outside and thrown open the barn door to allow Frank and Jesse to flee the scene. Now, he slept in the kitchen, and a noise jolted him out of bed. He saw flickering lights behind the panels of the door. He strained to listen, and now he heard voices outside. He jumped up and hurried to the window. He saw two men outside, and one of them had some kind of ball in his hand, and he looked like he was about to throw it through the window.

Outside the kitchen window, a Pinkerton agent held an iron ball that was about the size of a modern baseball. It was the incendiary device that Agent Robert Linden had secured from the Rock Island Arsenal. We don't know all the details of the device, but supposedly there was a hole in the top. Flammable liquid drained through the hole and soaked the cotton inside. Then the device was lit on fire and thrown towards something you wanted to burn.

And that's what happened when Ambrose looked out the window. The Pinkerton agent lit the ball on fire and hurled it toward the window. It shattered the glass and knocked Ambrose to the ground. The noise woke up everyone in the house. Ruben jumped out of bed and rushed into the main room of the house. The outside walls of the kitchen were on fire. He ran outside and started stripping away the flaming boards. Luckily, the flames only scorched the outside of the heavy logs beneath the weather boards. They didn't actually light the logs on fire, which could have been devastating.

They didn't actually light the logs on fire, which could have been devastating. Inside the house, Zerelda ran into the kitchen and saw a quilt on fire. She threw it outside and then discovered a burning object on the floor. She thought it looked like a flaming bowl. She tried to kick it over to stop the fire, but that didn't work. Ruben hurried back into the house and grabbed a shovel. He pushed the strange device toward the fireplace and shoved it into the flames. It was the wrong thing to do. The new fire supercharged the device. It exploded and sent shrapnel flying through the air. Zerelda James screamed in pain. A fragment smashed her right arm above the wrist.

Little Archie cried out as well. A piece tore through his midsection. Ruben might have been hit also, but it wasn't a serious wound. He was stunned momentarily, but probably came back to reality because of the screams of his family. He and Ambrose helped Zerelda to her feet and moved her to a bed. Reuben ran back outside and shouted for help. When he did, he heard horses galloping away from the farm and gunshots somewhere in the distance. They were the sounds of the Pinkertons riding away from the scene of the attack. As Reuben hollered for help, his closest neighbor, Daniel Askew,

rushed to the farmhouse. Daniel began to send messages to every doctor in the area. Reuben hurried back inside and picked up his son. Despite Daniel Askew's efforts, it was clear that no doctor would arrive in time to save Archie. Reuben picked up his son and laid him next to his mother. Archie, named for Jesse's closest friend and mentor, died before sunrise.

He was eight years old. As the James family's neighbor, Daniel Askew, surveyed the carnage in the farmhouse, he probably felt sick. No one in the house knew that he was the neighbor who had helped the Pinkertons for almost a year. They had staged the attack from his farm. But Daniel Askew's secret would not remain a secret for very long, and soon enough, a midnight rider would come calling. In the early morning hours after the attack, doctors amputated Zerelda's arm below the elbow,

without anesthetic. She was tough as hell. She remained alert during the process. And that evening, she and her family participated in a coroner's inquest about the death of Archie. They explained the tragic events of the previous night to a justice of the peace and a jury of five men. One of the jurors was her neighbor, Daniel Askew. Word of the attack raced across Clay County. Rumors swirled about the assault, and as always, the early rumors were wildly inaccurate. One report said the James boys had been captured and Zerelda had been killed.

Newspapers printed all the speculation, and the stories spread like wildfire. In hours, news of the attack and rumors about the outcome were all over Missouri. By the next day, they were all over the country. The Pinkertons were blamed and vilified. The evidence that implicated them was probably faulty, but the irony was that they were actually to blame for the attack. John Newman Edwards launched fiery editorials in support of the James family. His boss at the St. Louis Dispatch was also a member of the Missouri State Congress.

Together, they seized the moment to push a radical idea. They crafted a bill that would grant amnesty to the James Younger gang, and it almost passed, but not quite. The James boys would not be pardoned for their crimes, but they would get sympathy. Public favor now leaned more heavily in their direction. Their supporters in the political arena launched an investigation. The lawyer who was Alan Pinkerton's point man for coordination in Clay County was terrified.

His name had already been leaked to the press, and he was now publicly associated with the attack. He wrote frantic letters to Alan Pinkerton. In their correspondence, Pinkerton revealed that his lead agent in the assault, Robert Linden, was also very scared, and he had apparently gone into hiding. The lawyer chose to do the same thing. He fled Clay County before Jesse's wrath caught up with him. But the James family's neighbor was not as skittish. During the investigation into the attack, Daniel Askew was forced to testify before a grand jury. He had to reveal that his farm was used as the staging ground

for the Pinkerton's advance man and for the attack. But Askew had no intention of fleeing. He stayed right there on his farm next to the James family until the night of April 12th, 1875. That night, Daniel Askew walked out of his house to draw a bucket of water from his well. On his way back, a man stepped out from behind a woodpile. On his way back, a man stepped out from behind a woodpile. The two men talked for five or ten minutes,

and then the mystery man shot Daniel Askew in the head three times. After the devastating attack on the James farm, and the murder of Daniel Askew, and the flight of the lawyer, Alan Pinkerton admitted defeat. Jesse James had beaten him, and now Jesse moved on to the next phase of his life. For the rest of Jesse's years, he would be something of a nomad. He moved from city to city and state to state and used a series of fake names.

Six months after the attack on his mother's farm, Jesse and his wife Z moved to a small town outside Nashville, Tennessee. Jesse had an uncle about 40 miles away in southern Kentucky, so he felt safe in the area. And it was at this time he began using his favorite alias. He went by the last name of Howard, and now he called himself John David Howard. Z was Josie Howard. The Howards lived well. Jesse had two fine horses, and Zee had nice jewelry. Jesse said he was a wheat speculator, but he disappeared for weeks at a time, and when he returned, he had wads of cash. Their lifestyle appeared to be too lavish for a wheat speculator, but they didn't raise suspicions. And then, on August 31, 1875, they welcomed their first child to the family.

They named the boy Jesse Edwards James. Jesse after his father, and Edwards after John Newman Edwards. Six days after his son was born, Jesse turned 28 years old. The next day, the Bank of Huntington was robbed. Four men rode into Huntington, West Virginia, and stole $15,000 from the bank. They thought there would be $100,000 on hand, but that money had been shipped out the day before. The robbery was a scary job. One of the four men was fatally wounded during the escape, and he died a few days later. Another man was caught. The other two escaped, and they were believed to be Frank James and Cole Younger. Jesse likely skipped this raid because of the birth of

his son, and after the close call in Huntington, the gang laid low for almost a year. During that time, Jesse and Zee moved again, this time to Baltimore. Frank and his wife Anna joined them, but very little is known about their time on the East Coast. Within a few months, they all moved again, this time back home to Missouri. By the spring of 1876, Jesse was itching to rob another train. In July 1876, eight men robbed the Missouri Pacific Railroad at a spot called Rocky Cut. Five of the eight were longtime members at a spot called Rocky Cut. Five of the eight were longtime members of the James Younger gang, Frank and Jesse, Cole and Bob Younger, and their friend, Clell Miller.

Two more were longtime associates, Charlie Pitts and Bill Chadwell. The eighth man was the new guy, Hobbs Carey. Hobbs was young and eager and inexperienced, and that was a bad combination. He desperately wanted to be an outlaw, but for the wrong reasons, in a manner of speaking. He liked the idea of being an outlaw more than the risks and requirements. He liked the image of an outlaw, and when you added that to the previous combination, it spelled trouble for Hobbs, Carey, and the rest of the gang. After the Rocky Cut robbery,

Hobbs flashed his new money around instead of laying low, and he got caught. And now, for the first time in the ten years Frank and Jesse had been robbing banks and trains, one of their gang talked. Hobbs Carey told the police everything about the job. Every detail and every name. Five weeks later, all those details and all those names appeared in the newspaper. The confession of Hobbs Carey was front page news. Now the gang was on the newspaper. The confession of Hobbs Carey was front-page news.

Now the gang was on the run, and they were hunted by the same militia commander who had killed their old guerrilla captain, Archie Clement. Posse's scoured Missouri looking for the James Younger gang. The boys managed to stay one step ahead thanks to their knowledge of the land and help from their friends. But they couldn't stay in the same area forever and expect to remain free. Something had to change. Meanwhile, Hobbs Carey sat in jail without much company, except for letters from his former friends.

The gang sent letters to Hobbs that promised revenge. They said they'd kill him the minute he got out of jail. And to show they were serious, they marked the letters with crosses of blood. While Jesse and the guys were being chased through the hills of central Missouri, they made the most fateful decision of their lives. They needed to get out of Missouri for a while. That much was clear. So Jesse proposed a trip to Minnesota.

They could rob a northern bank and draw some heat away from Missouri, and they could also get revenge. The lawyer who had helped Alan Pinkerton coordinate the attack on the James family farm had fled to St. Paul, Minnesota. The trip could be a two-for-one deal. Bob Younger immediately said yes. He and Jesse were close friends, and he usually supported Jesse's plans. But Bob's older brother, Cole, was not as easy to convince. Over the last year or so, Cole had become frustrated and annoyed with Jesse's constant need for attention in the newspapers. Jesse couldn't let anything go. He got into a war

of words with Alan Pinkerton's son, William, in the Tennessee Press. The attention had probably been fun three years ago when John Newman Edwards first started writing articles, but now it was a problem. Edwards hadn't written anything about the gang in a long while. He was locked away in a cabin writing a book about the guerrilla raiders of Missouri. So Jesse had stepped in to fill the void, but it wasn't the same. so Jesse had stepped in to fill the void. But it wasn't the same. Cole argued against the trip, but at some point, it must have been clear that everyone else was on board,

because he relented and agreed to go. In August 1876, seven of the eight men who had been in the Rocky Cut robbery were back together. They replaced the traitor Hobbs Carey with Jim Younger. So now it was Frank and Jesse, Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger, and their friends, Clell Miller, Charlie Pitts, and Bill Chadwell. They began the journey to Minnesota. In Minnesota, they split up but stayed close. They used fake names and stayed at different hotels in neighboring cities. They didn't want all eight gang members to be seen together at the same time.

With their southern draws and their different styles of dress from the people up north, they would stand out way too much if they were all together. They bought new horses and saddles and slugs for their guns. For nearly two weeks, they scouted smaller towns in the area around Minneapolis. Towns like Red Wing, St. Peter, Medelia, and maybe Mankato. In early September, they settled on a town and a target. The First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. Northfield was a town of 2,000 people on the Cannon River.

It was about 40 miles south of St. Paul, and it only had one bank, the First National, which meant all the town's money would be in one place. But the First National had recently upgraded its security to stay current with the latest advancements. It installed two new heavy doors on the vault, and it added a new invention to the safe, a time lock. Bank managers could now lock the vault at the end of the day and walk away with the security of knowing it would be impossible to open until the appointed hour the following day. In early September, 1876, the senior bookkeeper of the First National sat in the office of the president of Carleton College,

a small university right there in Northfield. The bookkeeper, Joseph Haywood, was 39 years old. He was a shy man from New Hampshire with a heavy beard. In addition to his work at the First National, he was also the treasurer of the young college. And at that moment, he sat in the president's office discussing the young college and at that moment he sat in the president's office discussing the newest security measure at the bank the time lock the president had read about the new feature in the newspaper

and as the two men talked he related a story from the Civil War the president was also a New Englander from Vermont and he told Joseph Haywood about the time that 21 Confederate soldiers rode into his home state and robbed three banks in one day. They stole $200,000. As the two friends casually chatted about the event, the college president asked Haywood if he would open the safe if he found himself in the middle of a robbery. college president asked Haywood if he would open the safe if he found himself in the middle of a robbery. Haywood answered that he didn't think he would, and the president believed him. He didn't

think the bookkeeper would crack under pressure. But the discussion was purely hypothetical. Nothing like that would ever happen in Northfield. Around the same time Joseph Haywood discussed the time lock with the president of Carleton College, Jesse James and Clell Miller scouted the town of Northfield. They spent two days riding the area and talking to locals. They pretended like they wanted to buy land in the area. But before they did, they wanted to know things about this little town Was it a peaceful place? Were the people law-abiding citizens?

One man told them Yes, of course it is And yes, of course they are That sealed the deal for Jesse This would be an easy score And like their early robberies This one wasn't just about simplicity That sealed the deal for Jesse. This would be an easy score. And like their early robberies, this one wasn't just about simplicity. It was also about making a statement.

The gang heard that two of the major investors in the First National Bank were former Union generals. To steal their money and strike a blow for the old Confederacy at the same time was too good to pass up. And then another stroke of luck happened for the gang. They saw the same newspaper article that the president of the college had seen, the one that notified the public about the new doors on the bank vault and the time lock. The article was probably meant to reassure the people of Northfield that their bank was as secure as possible. But for the James Younger gang, it was an advertisement and a scouting report. It basically said, if you want to rob our bank, here's what you need to know.

By the end of the day on Wednesday, September 6th, the gang had made its decision. The Northfield raid was a go. They would rob the bank the following day. But even with the decision made, the plan nearly collapsed. The night before the raid, Jim Younger got cold feet. The gang had split up and they were staying in two nearby towns. And suddenly, Jim didn't want to go through with the robbery. He wanted to sell his horse and catch a train to California. Cole, Clell Miller, and Charlie Pitts had a long talk with him that night. Eventually, they convinced Jim to stay with the gang and go through with the plan. Needless to say, it was a restless night for half the gang.

But the next day, Thursday, September 7, 1876, they rode into Northfield, Minnesota to rob the First National Bank. Next time on Legends of the Old West, it's the infamous Northfield Raid. The bank robbery is a disaster from start to finish. A wild shootout engulfs the town, and the gang gets shot all to hell. That's next week on Jesse James, Director's Cut. Original music by Rob Valliere. Vocal editing by Molly Bach.

Music editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your writer and host, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Please visit our website, blackbarrelmedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram, and B Barrel Media on Twitter. If you want to contribute to the production of our shows and receive discounts on merchandise, please visit our Patreon page. That's patreon.com slash blackbarrelmedia. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cash back,

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