ARM OF THE BANDIT: The Trial of Frank James by Johnny D. Boggs

Frank and Jesse James were not admirable historical figures, but they were important ones.  If nothing else, they were responsible for the preservation of more artifacts, buildings, caves, and other sites than any other Americans with the possible exception of George Washington – and maybe even him, too.

Jesse

Of the two brothers, Jesse is the most legendary.  Carl Sandburg wrote, “Jesse James is the only American bandit who is classical, who is to this country what Robin Hood or Dick Turpin is to England, whose exploits are so close to the mythical and apocryphal.”  Ah, but there’s the rub: the mythical and apocryphal.

The legends that have grown up around Jesse reflect two opposite characters: Robin Hood on the one hand; cold, cruel, callous thief and killer on the other.

Was Jesse a Robin Hood, who robbed the rich and gave to the poor?  Was he driven against his will into a life of crime by greedy bankers, railroad officials, and crooked and corrupt politicians?  Or was he simply an adventurous youth who developed a taste for excitement and plunder because of his experiences as a teenaged guerrilla fighter during the Civil War and thus was unable to adjust to the peacetime pursuits of a simple farmer?

In a 1949 speech by another famous Missourian, Harry Truman remarked, “Jesse James was a modern-day Robin Hood.  He stole from the rich and gave to the poor, which, in general, is not a bad policy.”  That may have been good politics at the time, but it is questionable history. 

It is true that most of the time Jesse did rob the rich, for to go around robbing the poor would have been incredibly stupid, and he wasn’t stupid.  But the truth is he really made no distinction regarding the financial status of his victims when he decided to commit a robbery.  It is also true that on several occasions he shot and killed innocent and/or defenseless victims in cold blood.  No self-respecting Robin Hood would ever engage in such acts.

But this we do know, no other outlaws in our history match the record of the two brothers from Missouri when it comes to the evasion of the law.  The law never caught them.  For more than a decade and after more than a score of holdups in ten different states that resulted in fourteen deaths, including that of three outlaws, Frank and Jesse were never apprehended by federal or state authorities.  Moreover, the Pinkerton Detective firm hired by the railroad interests also failed in its quest to track down the brothers.

Why is Jesse the more legendary brother?  Part of the reason could be the alliteration of his name.  Personality is also part of the explanation.  Jesse was much more outgoing than his more introverted older sibling who would have been content to settle down and live the life of a country gentleman farmer.  However, each time Frank made the effort to do so, Jesse would entice him back into a life of crime.

But the greatest factor that explains Jesse’s exalted position among American criminals is the fact that he died young, shot down in his own living room by one of his own gang members, in the presence of his wife and two children.

When Jesse was assassinated on April 3, 1882, there was much speculation and many rumors that Frank would take to the revenge trail.  Instead, five months after his brother’s death, he surrendered and was charged with murder and train robbery.  His case went to trial in September 1883.

Frank James about 15 years after his trial

William H. Wallace was a highly successful prosecuting attorney in Jackson County, the county in which Kansas City and Independence are located.  And even though Frank was tried for crimes committed in Daviess County and therefore stood trial in Gallatin, Wallace nevertheless served as the lead prosecutor.  Why?  Because he had successfully prosecuted Bill Ryan, the only accused member of the James gang to have been tried and convicted in Missouri. 

The trial was good for business in the small village of Gallatin.  The courtroom in the Daviess County courthouse would not accommodate all the spectators who wanted to attend the trial so it was moved to the Gallatin Opera House.  A team of eight attorneys represented the defendant and Wallace was assisted by five other prosecutors. The trial lasted sixteen days, including four days of closing arguments.  The jury reached a verdict after less than four hours of deliberation. 

 

Opera House, Gallatin, Missouri

 

I suppose most people know what the verdict was.  But just in case there is someone who wants to read the book and isn’t aware of the trial’s outcome, I won’t disclose it here.

Two of the more interesting historical personages associated with the trial are  General Joseph Orville (Jo) Shelby and Major John Newman Edwards.  It was General Shelby who refused to surrender at the end of the Civil War and marched his Confederate brigade to Mexico City to offer their services to Emperor Maximilian, who had been placed on the Mexican throne by the French.  The French had moved into Mexico at a time when the disunited United States was in no position to prevent them from doing so.

Maximilian declined Shelby’s offer but did grant the general and his men land with which to establish a colony.  Shelby and some of the men accepted the offer and remained in Mexico for two years, returning home after the French departed and Maximilian was overthrown and then executed.

The general was an outspoken supporter of ex-guerrillas such as Frank James.  When called upon to testify in the case regarding a sewing machine (too complicated to discuss here), he became defensive and blatantly belligerent and had to be cautioned by the judge several times.  In the middle of his testimony, he also asked the court if it would be okay if he went over to the defense table to shake hands with his good friend, Frank James.  The judge denied his request.  At the end of his testimony, he again made the request and again it was denied.  If this sounds as though the general was a shade on the tipsy side, that was not the case.  No, he was past that stage.  He was drunk.

 

Major Edwards

General Shelby

At General Shelby’s side throughout the war was his faithful adjutant, Major John Newman Edwards, who also accompanied him to Mexico, remaining there for two years.  After the war, Edwards pursued a career in journalism, working for newspapers in Kansas City, Sedalia, and St. Louis, as well as founding one newspaper in Kansas City.

He wrote two books, very unreliable but interesting reading, about Shelby and his command’s exploits during and after the Civil War.  He also wrote one, equally unreliable, praising the exploits of the Confederate guerrillas who terrorized the countryside during the war.  As a journalist, he became an apologist for the ex-guerrillas who had taken to the outlaw trail.  More than any other individual it was Edwards who created the Robin Hood myth associated with Jesse James.  Jesse was so appreciative of the Major's efforts that he named his son Jesse Edwards James. 

Edwards did not testify in the trial, but he played an important role.  He served as the intermediary between Frank and the governor in the negotiations that led to Frank’s surrender.  It’s just as well that he did not testify since he had an even bigger drinking problem than the general did.

That brings us to Arm of the Bandit: the Trial of Frank James, a novel by Johnny D. Boggs. 

In an interview, Boggs was quoted as saying, “I try to make my novels fairly truthful.  But I always say, ’Don’t quote me in your term paper.’”  This is how it should be when novelists write about actual historical individuals and events.  If readers want only facts then they should read a serious historical study of the subject.  Novelists are less constrained by the historical record and are free to elaborate, speculate, and fill in the blank spaces.  And that is what Boggs does with this novel.

As far as the trial itself is concerned, he adheres faithfully to the historical record.  It is outside the courtroom that he exercises the novelist’s prerogative of using his imagination to create a narrative that would not withstand cross-examination in the court of historical inquiry, but nevertheless meets the standard of plausibility.

If there is a hero in Boggs' story, it is the prosecuting attorney, William Wallace.  The heroine is Frank’s wife, Annie Ralston James, who stood by her husband through thick and thin (mostly thin) down through the years.  It is in developing these two characters that Boggs takes the most liberties.

William H. Wallace

 

Annie Ralston James

Boggs has done his research and his novel is an enjoyable and interesting read even for someone who has spent many years (yours truly, for example) studying Missouri’s tragic civil war within America's Civil War and its reputation as the “outlaw state” after the war.  It should be even more enjoyable – and informative – for readers who possess less knowledge about that history but would like to know more.

But even if the historical events recounted in the novel are of no great interest to the reader, it should still have appeal to those who enjoy a well-written courtroom drama, one that occurred very much the way Boggs presents it.

It is apparent that Boggs has an abiding interest in the subject.  One of his earlier novels was Northfield, which is an account of the James-Younger gang’s botched bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota.  His research on that book and Arm of the Bandit led him to write Jesse James and the Movies, a non-fiction work that analyzes Hollywood’s depiction of the outlaw and how it conflicts with history.

Johnny D. Boggs

Among the many awards Boggs has received for his work are a Wrangler award from the Western Heritage Museum and six Spur awards from the Western Writers of America.  These are highly coveted awards in the Western writers community.



  

ANGEL WITH SPURS by Paul I. Wellman

 

General Shelby

THE BOOK.

Angel with Spurs was originally published in 1942.  It is a fictional account of the real life epic march of Confederate General Jo Shelby and his men from Texas to Mexico City after the South’s surrender.  

They marched there to offer their services to Maximilian, the Austrian figurehead who had been placed on the Mexican throne by the French emperor, and who remained there because of the presence of French troops and the support of conservative political elements among the Mexicans.  

The elected president of the country, Benito Juarez, a reformer whose followers were primarily peasants who were called Juaristas, opposed Maximilian and the French.

Benito Juarez

Maximilian I

 At first glance, it would appear that Shelby and his men had more in common with the Juaristas than the aristocratic Maximilian and the French military.  After all, the Confederacy had rebelled against what they saw as a too powerful central government.  

But Juarez was an Indian and his followers were primarily Indian and mestizo.  As far as Shelby's men were concerned, the Juaristas were not white men. They believed that supporting the revolution of peasants against the aristocratic government would have been akin to supporting black slaves in the American Civil War.  

Even though Shelby was a member of the aristocratic class back home in Missouri, he personally favored the Juaristas.  However, since he had earlier indicated that majority rule would dictate the decision, he had no choice but to follow the lead of his men.
    

Joseph Orville (Jo) Shelby was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1830.  He was born into a family of wealth and after the death of his father was raised by his stepfather, a wealthy landowner and hemp rope manufacturer.  When Shelby was twenty-one, and the recipient of a rather lucrative inheritance, he migrated to Waverly, Missouri where he purchased farm land and also went into the hemp rope business.  Slaves supplied the labor in both enterprises.

Just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Shelby suffered a number of financial setbacks that forced him to sell his business, plantation, and slaves.  The war became his new business and despite a lack of prior military training, it was readily apparent that he was a natural.  He fought in almost every major battle that occurred west of the Mississippi and was usually victorious, and when he wasn’t, it was never due to any failure on his part.

Wellman wrote in the foreword to his novel, “Shelby himself was a figure out of the Middle Ages, almost, with plumed hat and cloak, and flamboyant manner; but he also was the hardest riding and hardest fighting of all the Confederate cavalry chiefs, campaigning during the war over a sweep of country which dwarfed the arena of the Virginia struggle.”

Shelby is not as well known as Jeb Stuart, for example, because he spent nearly all the war in the backwater theater west of the Mississippi.  Nevertheless, an historian or two have claimed that he was the greatest cavalry officer – North or South -- on either side of the river.  That may be an exaggeration, but nobody disputes the fact that he was the greatest cavalry officer in the Trans-Mississippi theater.

When the war ended, he and his command were in northern Texas.  He refused to surrender and asked volunteers to march with him to Mexico City.  According to Wellman, a thousand volunteers made the trek, while others have placed the numbers at 300 or 600 or some number in between.  Wellman can’t be faulted on the numbers, for at the time he wrote his novel little had been written about the expedition.  More information is now available as the result of several histories and biographies that have since been published.  What is known for sure is that most of the volunteers were Missourians who had been members of Shelby’s Missouri Brigade. 

Wellman’s account of the march, though fictional, is an interesting read, particularly for any individual who is not already familiar with the history.  However, the melodramatic subplot involving one of Shelby’s young lieutenants and a young woman attempting to attach herself to the expedition in order to travel to Mexico has no factual basis and weakens the novel with too many contrived coincidences and hairbreadth escapes.

The subplot brings me to the cover of the paperback copy of the book that I own, which was published in 1952.   It features a beautiful young blonde woman dressed in a Confederate army uniform.  The blouse is unbuttoned to her waist exposing a fair amount of cleavage, the better to attract readers desiring more spice in their reading.

The lipstick is probably why the disguise wasn't successful.

It is a case of false advertising.  Paperbacks during the ‘50’s were nearly always misleading, promising much more on the covers, especially sex, than what they delivered between the covers.  It is true that the heroine did wear a confederate uniform in the story, but only for the first fifty pages of a 400+ pages novel. 

Here is the tagline that is written above the title on the front cover: “She tried to live – as a man – with a renegade band of mutinous soldiers.”  Well, yes, for fifty pages she did, but not during the remaining 400 pages.  Moreover, nowhere in the book is there a scene remotely similar to the one depicted on the cover.

Even the title is misleading.  The picture on the cover strongly indicates that the young woman is the “angel with spurs.”  She isn’t.  In fact, it is her father who applies that description to another character.  

It should also be noted that Wellman was guilty of the kind of insensitivity toward women and minorities that was often found in the fiction of that era: all blacks are “lazy,” all Mexicans are “greasy,” all Indians are “savage”; and all women are one-dimensional and totally dependent upon men for their protection.

THE WRITER.

Paul Wellman (1895-1966) was born in Enid, Oklahoma.  When he was six months old, his parents went to Angola to become medical missionaries.  In 1903, he and his brother were sent to stay with their maternal grandparents in Kansas.  Their parents did not return for six years and then almost immediately divorced.  He and his brother moved with their mother to Cimarron, Kansas.

At age fourteen, he began working as a ranch hand during the summers in order to help support his family.  In 1911, he moved to Wichita to live with his grandparents so that he could finish high school.  He later attended what eventually became Wichita State University.  He served in Europe in 1918-1919 and after his discharge, he pursued a career in journalism.  His first two books, published in 1934 and 1935, were histories of the Indian wars that grew out of newspaper columns that he had written.  It is only fitting then that his first novel, Broncho Apache (1936), covered some of the same territory. 

For several years, he continued to work as a journalist while writing in his spare time.  From 1934-1966, he published thirty-one books, both fiction and nonfiction.  The Walls of Jericho (1947), a best-seller set in Kansas was his most successful novel; he was able to sell the movie rights for a reported $100,000.

THE FILMS.
The following films were based on Wellman’s stories or novels:

  

CHEYENNE (WB, 1947)

Director: Raoul Walsh;  Producer: Robert Buckner;  Cinematographer: Sidney Hickox;  Writers: screenplay by Allan Le May and Thames Wiliamson based on a story by Paul Wellman

Starring:  Dennis Morgan and Jane Wyman

THE WALLS OF JERICHO (Fox, 1948)

Director: John M. Stahl;  Producer: Lamar Trotti;  Cinematographer: Arthur Miller;  Writers: screenplay by Lamar Trotti based on Paul Wellman novel of the same name (published in 1947)

Starring: Cornel Wilde, Linda Darnell, Anne Baxter, Kirk Douglas

THE IRON MISTRESS (WB, 1952)

Director: Gordon Douglas;  Producer: Henry Blanke;  Cinematographer: John Seitz;  Writers: screenplay by James R. Webb based on Paul Wellman novel of same name (published in 1951)

Starring: Alan Ladd and Virginia Mayo

APACHE (Hecht-Lancaster/UA, 1954)

Director: Robert Aldrich;  Producer: Harold Hecht;  Cinematographer: Ernest Laszlo;  Writers: screenplay by James R. Webb based on Paul Wellman novel, Broncho Apache (published in 1936)

Starring: Burt Lancaster and Jean Peters

JUBAL (Columbia, 1956)

Director: Delmer Daves;  Producer: William Fadiman;  Cinematographer: Charles Lawton, Jr.;  Writers: screenplay by Russell S. Hughes and Delmer Daves based on Paul Wellman novel, Jubal Troop (published in 1939)

Starring: Glen Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Valerie French

 

 It takes Wellman more than 500 pages to tell Jubal Troop’s story as a hired sheepherder, a hired cowhand, an itinerant rawhider, a rancher, a miner, a rancher again, and, finally, an oil tycoon.  The movie is based on his days as a hired cowhand, which accounts for only about a hundred pages in the novel.

It is almost a very good movie, but it is spoiled almost single-handedly by Rod Steiger’s over-the-top histrionics.  In the right role, Steiger could give a powerful performance, but he was never good in Westerns and should never have been cast in one.  Lee Marvin would have been perfect in the role.

 

THE COMANCHEROS (Fox, 1961)  

Director: Michael Curtiz;  Producer: George Sherman;  Cinematographer: William H. Clothier; Writers: screenplay by James Edward Grant and Clair Huffaker based on Paul Wellman novel of same name (published in 1952)