American Experience

Jesse James

Jesse James, so the legend goes, was a Western outlaw, though, in fact, he never went west; America's own Robin Hood, though he robbed from the poor as well as the rich; and a gunfighter whose victims, in reality, were almost always unarmed. Less heroic than brutal, James was a product of the American Civil War -- a Confederate partisan of expansive ambition, unbending politics and surprising cunning, who gladly helped invent his own valiant legend.