Jesse James, Jo Shelby, and the War After the War

Presented  by Aaron Barnhart, journalist and author, Kansas City, Missouri Humanities Council Speakers Bureau.

“Long after the final shots were fired, Missouri continued to suffer the violence and chaos of civil war.  Jesse James was once seen as a romantic rebel without a cause, but recent studies have revealed a more human and tragic figure who refused to accept the war’s outcome and targeted pro-Union Missourians for death.  In contrast, Joseph Orville Shelby, one of the Confederacy’s most storied commanders, became a US marshal and embraced reconciliation.  Though proud of his Confederate service, Shelby came to disavow the Lost Cause and his own slave-owning past.  This lively and surprising presentation shows how two native sons responded to changing times in volatile postwar Missouri.