Jesse James: Print the Legend

Our Civil War produced enough bandits, but only Jesse James has seized the imagination in endless movies, books, and radio and television programs, almost all filled with myths and falsehoods far outweighing any truth.  Although in letters to the Kansas City Times, with the help of admiring editorials by John  Newman Edwards, who had been a Major in the Confederate Army and served under General Jo Shelby in his Iron Brigade, James liked to pose as an avenging Southern partisan, the simple truth about James was that he was a cold blooded killer, perhaps with the blood of as many as seventeen men on his hands, and a thief.  Like most men who followed the hoot owl trail, he died young, murdered by a man no better than himself,  However as said by the fictional editor of the fictional Shinbone Gazette in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance:  This is the West, Sir.  When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.