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TJ Stiles’ Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War is yet another testament to Stiles’ superlative skill and pedigree as an historian. My reading of this book followed his biography of George Armstrong Custer. That book had won the Pulitzer Prize. Stiles grew as an author between writing the biography of Jesse James and George Custer. But the book on James showed the same basic strengths as the Custer book: strong sense of narrative, judicious ability to step back and draw timeless themes of relevance to today and to olden times from the complicated history. As was the case with Custer, he draws the curtain back from what is a very simplified, monochromatic view of James as a Robin Hood outlaw fighting for the poor, taking from the rich.Stiles’ history makes a convincing case that the seeds planted by Jesse James’ commitment to the Confederate cause, the death and damage done by the Unionists, the political maelstrom that existed between multiple groups in the State of Missouri during the fight for the Union and which persisted decades after, all this was a fulcrum for what drove and motivated Jesse James. I do believe that Stiles underestimates the sheer rapacious terrorist persona of Jesse James, the fuel that he gained from many people’s admiration of what he did, but he certainly doesn’t dismiss the importance of these elements. I just think he probably overemphasizes the role of his being the “last rebel of the Civil War.”It’s impossible to read this book, or perhaps any book today on a political figure of the past, without thinking of its relevance to today. Stiles develops parallels between the James brothers and other bushwhacks like them to terrorists today. And he is absolutely right in doing so. At the same time, there are parallels with the persona and movement supporting Donald Trump.Stiles goes to extensive and studious ends in exploring how other historians have treated Jesse James. They include Eric Hobshawn, and he goes back to Karl Marx. He brings in Richard White. White accepts the fact that James was a popular figure, best described as a social bandit, and he struggles to explain it. Perhaps, White muses, Jesse can be explained “as an exotic appendage of the agrarian revolt of post-Civil War America.” There is some parallel to be drawn here between the MAGA movements being "an exotic appendage” of the revolt against an elite or a woke America. Hobshawn makes his point again and again, calling the archetypical noble robber, including Jesse James, “an extremely primitive form of social protest, perhaps the most primitive there is. He is an individual who refuses to bend his back, that is all.” The kind of individual Hobshawn is referring to, Stiles writes, “can only picture the injustices of the world, and their resistance to it, in extremely personal terms.” In its own way, this limits the lasting political impact of the movement.Another historian who Stiles cites, David Phelen, debunks the belief that these bandits sought to reunite the community and reassert tradition. In fact, Phelen argues, “The outlaws were popular because they divided the community, asserting the pride and power of a group created by the Civil War itself.” Here again, I have the feeling that Stiles is overestimating the role of the Civil War memory in the motivation of Jesse James.There is an irresistible parallel in what Stiles writes toward the end of the book.Quite apart from this acute analysis of what motivated Jesse James, there are other pearls of wisdom in Stiles’ book: “History reveals the Civil War not as a clash between sections, a collision of armies and sovereign governments, but as savage neighbor-against-neighbor struggle, waged between people of the same race, religion, ethnicity and regional background. Here was the Civil War as truly a civil war, with lasting repercussions.” It would be hard to find a description more accurately capturing the essence of the tragedy of the war between Russia and Ukraine.Stiles also asserts, I think properly, that Jesse James’ story and everything around it challenges the great myth of American progress, the idea that we have made a steady march toward ever-greater freedom and equality, peacefully resolving our differences and quickly reconciling after Appomattox. It demonstrates the intense bitterness of our past political disputes, and a startling willingness to resort to bloodshed that led to the Civil War and was fed by it.Stiles also points out how the change in technology led us to even more of a bloody battle. The Civil War had put firearms into the hands of countless citizens; little would people imagine how much broader their availability is today. This history also shows how quickly the power of virtuehood can fade. So was the development that led to the fading of Reconstruction and the fading of the ardor fueling the Civil Rights movement, the energy that flowed from Obama’s election and the horror surrounding the murder of George Floyd and other Black men.We must not allow this unending human tendency to discourage us from pushing on persistently all we can to achieve what is right.
