Frontier Partisans recently took a foray into guerrilla country in the borderlands of the 1860s, a hellscape of raid and ruin. The Missouri guerrilla war imbedded in the wider American Civil War was the cradle of the Old West gunslinger. Bob Boze Bell and True West Magazine are riding into this territory with the cover story of the forthcoming edition:
Good news: The cover story includes a 10-page excerpt from Bell’s forthcoming book from his “Illustrated Life & Times” series.
Hot damn.
I really like Bob Boze Bell’s style — both the art and the approach to history. Bell and I agree that Jesse James was no hero, simultaneously recognizing that his legend is indelible. The traumatic violence of his youth explains but does not excuse his future path — but that’s all part of an American story that continues to fascoinate:
The truth is other boys had similar circumstances, lived through the same era and did not rob banks and kill innocent people. That is the hard reality of the Jesse James story. Can his memory be redeemed? Not really. And, for the record, that is part of his legendary charm. The bad boy who defies gravity. Don’t we all wish on some level to have that impunity(?) That is the charm of the story. That is why we still make the pilgrimage to his farm and his grave.
The legacy of the Civil War echoed like an impulse down a telegraph wire through Western history. Here, Bell and historian Stuart Rosebrook explore the Civil War and its connections to Cowboys, Outlaws, Bushwhackers all the way out in the great American Southwest.
Ever wonder what the connection is between the Civil War and the outlaws of the Wild West? Take a ride back to the Missouri-Kansas Border War and learn from Bob Boze Bell the connections between the James Boys and the Missouri Bushwhackers, the Cowboys vs. the Earps in Tombstone and Cochise County, the Cowboy gangs of the bootheel of New Mexico and the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and Pat Garret.
*
Looking forward to a doco on an unambiguous American legend: Mississippi John Hurt.
It’s hard to overstate the impact of Mississippi John Hurt had on a generation or two of guitar players during the folk boom of the 1960s. While the dark drive of Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf laid foundations for rock and roll, the jaunty, melodic, Ragtime-inflected style of Mississippi John Hurt formed a related but different branch of the musical stream.
lane batot says
What perzackly makes some individuals do the non-typical things that most of the surrounding “normal” folks will not do? That’s probably an unanswerable question, in most cases. Why was I myself compelled in my college years to wage a guerrilla war against the campus security which maintained a campus dog impoundment where they held people’s pets for ransom(NEVER actual stray dogs–only pets with I. D. on them), and killed the dogs without compunction when people didn’t pay their “fine”(or didn’t pay it fast enough….), even though everyone knew this brutal scam was going on, and hated the campus cops for it? I actually eventually WON that war after 5 1/2 years, while remaining totally anonymous(or else!)–although my activities were well known throughout the campus, where I was referred to as “The Midnight Marauder of the Dog Pound”, and also, that firs year the first Indiana Jones movie came out, “Raider of the Lost Bark”! What compelled me to perpetrate Bigfoot sightings and tracks as a bored, mischievous teen-ager, when no one else I knew would even think too? Individuality is a major deal in all critters, and always has been……
James Higbie says
The classic work on the continuance of the outlaw progression is Paul I. Wellman’s A Dynasty of the Western Outlaws. It documents the “bloody chain” From Quantrill to Pretty Boy Floyd. 1861-1933.
JimC says
Continuity & Persistence. I’ forgotten about that book. I have a copy in a box here somewhere…
Quixotic Mainer says
Have you ever read Dynasty of Western Outlaws? It starts with Quantrill and goes to Pretty Boy Floyd, there was always 1 degree of separation, always one common member of a gang who was there for the “torch passing” between generations. Very similar premise!
Great guitar there! I was greatly disappointed to find I had no aptitude with strings, but I still appreciate the talent.
Ugly Hombre says
One of my grandma’s was a scandalous divorce who ran off with a man kin to the James boys he sure did like his Falstaff beer, he taught me to ride horses the kind on springs at the grocery store where we trudged to get his brews. A prince of a fellow- he tried to tell me stories about old times but I did not know what the hell he was talking about. Only thing I remember is that the James gang were the good guys to old grandpa Rex. lol
JimC says
Great stuff, Hombre.
Ugly Hombre says
Thanks Jim-He was a great man- kind to kids and critters, we had good fun. Grandma was different cloth told my girl the other Grandpa was a chicken thief and a hijacker first time I took her there- saw ghosts and haunts on top of the barn..
Granpa had the patients of a saint. lol