An edited version of this letter has previously appeared in Fortean times issue 214 in answer to previous correspondence about the plausibility of claims that Jesse James had had a black lieutenant in his gang known as the Black Cobra.
In 1949 a John Trammell, claiming to be 110, swore an affidavit that as a newly-freed slave at the end of the Civil War, but on the run from the law, he had strayed into the James gang camp. Jesse James had forced him into his gang as a cook and unpaid servant and that he had stayed with the gang for an unspecified time. The affidavit is light on details, being only a few sentences long and mainly concerned with Trammell’s statement that he had seen Jesse James alive after his supposed murder. Carl Breihan also quotes an equally brief letter from Trammell in his Saga of Jesse James (1955).
Redman’s Conspiracy Nation website features a web version of Del Schrader’s Jesse James was one of his names (Santa Anita Press 1975) in which Trammell has morphed into The Black Cobra, James’ right hand man. This does not appear to be supported by history. The James-Younger gang’s exploits have been thoroughly researched – researched to death in fact – with no mention of Trammell. James’ political sympathies make the story of a trusted black lieutenant as unlikely as Schrader’s thesis that James, William Quantrill, John Wilkes Booth and the Emperor Maximillian all survived their various ambushes, murders and executions to form a secret cabal ruling much of the US.
Jesse and his brother Frank came from a slave-owning family from the troubled Missouri-Kansas border. Kansas was a free state - the then capital Lawrence was settled by abolitionists - but Missouri was a slave state. Both states were mostly settled by small farmers to whom slavery was the major economic issue, not just a moral question. The brothers had spent their adolescent years in a country where both abolitionists and slave owners had formed militias and conducted raids and murders of their opponents. The burning of Lawrence by a slave-owners' militia force from Missouri and John Brown's Powatomie Massacre and his raid on the Harper's Ferry arsenal are the best known incidents from this pre-war period usually called the Border Wars or the Bleeding Kansas crisis.
During the Civil War both Jesse and Frank had served on the Confederate side under the command of the most fanatical and ruthless guerilla leaders. Frank had joined William Quantrill’s force and had participated in the infamous massacre of 200 unarmed opponents of slavery in Lawrence in 1863. Both Jesse and Frank were participants in the Centralia Massacre of 1864. Following Quantrill's death in an ambush, Jesse rode with Archie Clement who routinely robbed banks and executed prisoners and civilians, black and white, particularly black soldiers and white abolitionists. Jesse also served with Bloody Bill Anderson whose men not only followed Clement’s example but who also mutilated the dead and collected scalps. When he was killed in ambush Anderson was found with evidence of fifty-three scalps as his personal tally.
In the same period, the problem of the Missouri slave-owners who gave such strong support to these guerillas was solved by Lincoln's Secretary for War ordering a campaign of ethnic cleansing so ruthless that the region along the Missouri-Kansas border was known until recently as the Burned-Over Country and was uninhabited for many years. This did not win hearts and minds for the Union cause.
Following the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction (1868-1877), guerilla warfare continued throughout the Mid-West, much as it had preceded the war in the Bleeding Kansas crisis (1854-1860). Men like Frank Farris, the Younger brothers and the James brothers are the best-known leaders of bands usually described as “outlaws” but who should be seen as “social bandits” with a political agenda. Examples of social bandits would include Australia's Ned Kelly and Sicily's Salvatore Guilliermo.
During Reconstruction ex-Confederate soldiers, particularly officers ruined by the war, had spread into the Mid-Western and Western states, often homesteading or joining the restless populations of railroad and mining towns. Many pursued their political beliefs organising to dissuade African-Americans from voting or registering to vote, or from owing land or working in certain occupations. This usually involved violence or threats with over 1,000 lynchings taking place as well as 68 assassinations of congressmen and US government officials. The guerilla bands had supporters and occasional recruits from this population.
During Reconstruction in Missouri, black men were given the vote and white Confederate sympathizers were disenfranchised by the state government which was in the hands of radical Republicans (Lincoln's party). The James gang robbed banks and businesses owned by their political opponents and seem to have given support to the terrorizing of black voters. Jesse often left press releases at the scene of his robberies and sent letters to newspapers in which his strongly pro-Confederate views were articulated (although some of these manifestos may have been the work of sympathetic editors). The James gang also robbed the railroads that were being established by Northern business interests. The gang usually went after the strong box, although if one was not carried they were happy to rob the passengers.
Alan Pinkerton's detectives, good men for breaking a strike or guarding a payroll, were never quick enough to catch the James boys because the gang had extensive popular support. But as time went on this support waned as the Confederate cause seemed less relevant. The governor offered the brothers a deal if they would turn themselves in. Frank accepted and after acquittal in a trial where the fix was clearly in, was given a pardon for his crimes. But Jesse wasn't just whistlin' Dixie, he was a rebel, so the governor placed ten thousand dollars on his head and one day at a social gathering his friend Robert Ford said "Jesse, y'all like to reach up and straighten that there picture?" and with Jesse's hands away from his guns, shot him in the back of the head, to widespread rejoicing.
It is only in later years that Jesse James has been reinvented as a defender of the poor and a gallant outlaw. In his lifetime he was viewed as a partisan for a racist and reactionary cause, albeit a popular one. I cannot see him having a black gang member, let alone risking his life to rescue him. If Trammell served James it was probably in the role of, essentially, a post-Emancipation slave – a role that James would have derived some amusement from.
Showing posts with label Myths. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Myths. Show all posts
Wednesday, 15 November 2006
Rasputin - the man they couldn't kill
An version of this, edited for space, appeared in Fortean times issue 196.
Legend has it that Rasputin had to be poisoned, then shot, then stabbed and later drowned before he could be killed - proof to many that he was under demonic influence. The myth of the indestructible holy man has a certain basis. He was poisoned, but without effect. The autopsy found no poison in the blood stream, three bullet wounds and a small amount of water in the lungs(1).
The “poisoned, shot, stabbed and drowned” version of Rasputin’s murder comes from Prince Felix Felixovitch Yusupov (or Yousoupoff) who, as an exile in America, dined out for the rest of his life as Rasputin’s murderer (2). A more objective account was written by Rene Fulop-Miller (3)who was granted access to files of the Tsar's secret police by the Bolshevik government immediately after the Revolution. Access to these files was later withdrawn by successive governments.
The recent re-release of these secret files has confused the matter since each murderer gave a different story to the police who themselves carefully avoided any detailed investigation since one of the conspirators was the Grand Duke Dimiti. As a member of the royal family his presence guaranteed that the murderers would not be prosecuted. The other conspirators were members of the right-wing Pan-Slavists, a loose grouping that had the support of Buchanan, the British Ambassador(4). They were alarmed by Rasputin’s desire for a separate peace with Germany. Rasputin had long been an opponent of war and believed that Russia's involvement in a European war would lead to a defeat followed by a revolution, similar to the unsuccessful 1905 revolution, but this time resulting in the overthrow of the royal family. That prediction did not require psychic skills - it was the opinion of the political left and most liberals, only the conservatives were in denial.
Members of the Pan-Slavists faction had made other attempts on Rasputin’s life including two made by Khvostov when he was Minister of the Interior. So when Purishkevitch, the director of a hospital train and spokesman for the extreme Right, made a particularly impassioned speech against Rasputin in the Duma, he was not surprised to be approached by Yusupov. The Prince had frequently expressed his contempt for Rasputin, and alarm at his relations with the Tsar and Tsarina. Despite this, Yusupov had recently begun to cultivate a friendship which may have had a sexual element. Some writers have identified Yusupov in drag as the mysterious "Sister Masha" who had become an occasional visitor to Rasputin and who last visited him on the evening of his murder then left thirty minutes or so before Yusupov appeared to drive Rasputin to his fatal appointment.
Yusupov was gay and a cross-dresser who used to cruise the nightclubs of St Petersburg(2) . His wife was a fashionable beauty who regularly entertained her own set of friends, often in her private rooms. Yusupov believed that an invitation to a discrete meeting with his wife was a plausible bait for Rasputin. Once at the Yusupov palace the prince enticed him to consume some slices of chocolate cake (some versions call them pastries) and wine which had been laced with potassium cyanide, but with no effect. The poison had been provided by Colonel de Lazovert, one of Purishkevitch’s doctors. All testimonies describe him donning rubber gloves to crush the cyanide crystals, but some add an interesting detail: the cyanide had to be crushed because it came in glass phials – the cyanide capsules used by secret services(4).
Three years earlier, at the assassination at Sarajevo that had started the war, cyanide capsules provided to the two assassins of Arch-Duke Ferdinand of Austria had also proved ineffective. Both men were working for Ujedinjenje ili Smrt ("Union or Death" - union of Boznia-Herzogovina with Serbia) better known as the Black Hand, a terrorist organization controlled by the head of Serbian military intelligence, Colonel “Apis” Dimitrijevic(5). The capsules seem to have been provided by the assistant Russian military attaché to Belgrade, Captain Verkhovsy who was later Kerensky’s Minister for War in the short-lived government that followed the abdication of the Tsar and before the bolshevik revolution(6). The Russian government had brought a batch of cyanide capsules from a German chemist some years before . Potassium cyanide is highly reactive and would quickly break down if a phial had an unseen leak.
Was the poison for Rasputin provided by the Russian secret service? Did those who provided it know that it was ineffective? Was there a connection between the assassination of the Arch-Duke (the trigger for the war) on 28th of June, 1914 and the attempted murder of Rasputin (an opponent of the war) on 29th of June 1914 by Khionia Guseva?
When the poison failed, Yusupov obtained a military revolver from one of the conspirators and fired point blank at Rasputin who collapsed but later regained consciousness and made a run for it.
Even shot at close range a large man like Rasputin would not have immediately died. The Russian army issue revolver of the period, the Model 1895 Nagant 7.62mm, had a high muzzle velocity(7). At close range the bullet could pass straight through a human body giving a fatal wound but with the victim in shock and expressing no pain. Rasputin's bulk would also have buffered him against blood loss.
Now panicking, Purishkevitch with his Colt automatic (or was it the Grand Duke with his Savage revolver?) shot Rasputin twice. His body was mutilated, wrapped in chains and then dropped off the Great Petrovsky Bridge into the Neva. Typical of the murderers' incompetence was that they dropped the body off the upstream side, so that instead of being swept out to sea, it became lodged on a pier of the bridge. The corpse was found with the hands raised and some water in the lungs so it was concluded that although mortally wounded Rasputin was still breathing when he entered the water.
Rasputin’s murder was a bungled and panicky affair, but it suited Yusupov to dramatise it, changing a squalid political killing into an heroic struggle against the spawn of Satan. That was his attempt to build a legend. But the story has entered the oral tradition with Rasputin as the hero - “All those women he had, all that grog he drank, and then they couldn’t kill him!” Proving that you’ve got to be careful when you create a legend.
(1) Moynahan, Brian. Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned. New York: Aurum Press, 1998.
(2) Youssoupoff, Prince Felix Lost Splendour.New York Putnam 1954.
(3) Fulop-Miller , Rene Rasputin the Holy Devil New York Putnam 1928
(4) Horne, Charles F (ed) Source Records of the Great War, Vol. V, National Alumni 1923
(5) Cowles , Virginia The Russian Dagger London Crawley 1969
(6) The Orange Book of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Service – Vienna 1916
(7) Smith WHB et al.Small Arms of the World Galahad New York 1969
Legend has it that Rasputin had to be poisoned, then shot, then stabbed and later drowned before he could be killed - proof to many that he was under demonic influence. The myth of the indestructible holy man has a certain basis. He was poisoned, but without effect. The autopsy found no poison in the blood stream, three bullet wounds and a small amount of water in the lungs(1).
The “poisoned, shot, stabbed and drowned” version of Rasputin’s murder comes from Prince Felix Felixovitch Yusupov (or Yousoupoff) who, as an exile in America, dined out for the rest of his life as Rasputin’s murderer (2). A more objective account was written by Rene Fulop-Miller (3)who was granted access to files of the Tsar's secret police by the Bolshevik government immediately after the Revolution. Access to these files was later withdrawn by successive governments.
The recent re-release of these secret files has confused the matter since each murderer gave a different story to the police who themselves carefully avoided any detailed investigation since one of the conspirators was the Grand Duke Dimiti. As a member of the royal family his presence guaranteed that the murderers would not be prosecuted. The other conspirators were members of the right-wing Pan-Slavists, a loose grouping that had the support of Buchanan, the British Ambassador(4). They were alarmed by Rasputin’s desire for a separate peace with Germany. Rasputin had long been an opponent of war and believed that Russia's involvement in a European war would lead to a defeat followed by a revolution, similar to the unsuccessful 1905 revolution, but this time resulting in the overthrow of the royal family. That prediction did not require psychic skills - it was the opinion of the political left and most liberals, only the conservatives were in denial.
Members of the Pan-Slavists faction had made other attempts on Rasputin’s life including two made by Khvostov when he was Minister of the Interior. So when Purishkevitch, the director of a hospital train and spokesman for the extreme Right, made a particularly impassioned speech against Rasputin in the Duma, he was not surprised to be approached by Yusupov. The Prince had frequently expressed his contempt for Rasputin, and alarm at his relations with the Tsar and Tsarina. Despite this, Yusupov had recently begun to cultivate a friendship which may have had a sexual element. Some writers have identified Yusupov in drag as the mysterious "Sister Masha" who had become an occasional visitor to Rasputin and who last visited him on the evening of his murder then left thirty minutes or so before Yusupov appeared to drive Rasputin to his fatal appointment.
Yusupov was gay and a cross-dresser who used to cruise the nightclubs of St Petersburg(2) . His wife was a fashionable beauty who regularly entertained her own set of friends, often in her private rooms. Yusupov believed that an invitation to a discrete meeting with his wife was a plausible bait for Rasputin. Once at the Yusupov palace the prince enticed him to consume some slices of chocolate cake (some versions call them pastries) and wine which had been laced with potassium cyanide, but with no effect. The poison had been provided by Colonel de Lazovert, one of Purishkevitch’s doctors. All testimonies describe him donning rubber gloves to crush the cyanide crystals, but some add an interesting detail: the cyanide had to be crushed because it came in glass phials – the cyanide capsules used by secret services(4).
Three years earlier, at the assassination at Sarajevo that had started the war, cyanide capsules provided to the two assassins of Arch-Duke Ferdinand of Austria had also proved ineffective. Both men were working for Ujedinjenje ili Smrt ("Union or Death" - union of Boznia-Herzogovina with Serbia) better known as the Black Hand, a terrorist organization controlled by the head of Serbian military intelligence, Colonel “Apis” Dimitrijevic(5). The capsules seem to have been provided by the assistant Russian military attaché to Belgrade, Captain Verkhovsy who was later Kerensky’s Minister for War in the short-lived government that followed the abdication of the Tsar and before the bolshevik revolution(6). The Russian government had brought a batch of cyanide capsules from a German chemist some years before . Potassium cyanide is highly reactive and would quickly break down if a phial had an unseen leak.
Was the poison for Rasputin provided by the Russian secret service? Did those who provided it know that it was ineffective? Was there a connection between the assassination of the Arch-Duke (the trigger for the war) on 28th of June, 1914 and the attempted murder of Rasputin (an opponent of the war) on 29th of June 1914 by Khionia Guseva?
When the poison failed, Yusupov obtained a military revolver from one of the conspirators and fired point blank at Rasputin who collapsed but later regained consciousness and made a run for it.
Even shot at close range a large man like Rasputin would not have immediately died. The Russian army issue revolver of the period, the Model 1895 Nagant 7.62mm, had a high muzzle velocity(7). At close range the bullet could pass straight through a human body giving a fatal wound but with the victim in shock and expressing no pain. Rasputin's bulk would also have buffered him against blood loss.
Now panicking, Purishkevitch with his Colt automatic (or was it the Grand Duke with his Savage revolver?) shot Rasputin twice. His body was mutilated, wrapped in chains and then dropped off the Great Petrovsky Bridge into the Neva. Typical of the murderers' incompetence was that they dropped the body off the upstream side, so that instead of being swept out to sea, it became lodged on a pier of the bridge. The corpse was found with the hands raised and some water in the lungs so it was concluded that although mortally wounded Rasputin was still breathing when he entered the water.
Rasputin’s murder was a bungled and panicky affair, but it suited Yusupov to dramatise it, changing a squalid political killing into an heroic struggle against the spawn of Satan. That was his attempt to build a legend. But the story has entered the oral tradition with Rasputin as the hero - “All those women he had, all that grog he drank, and then they couldn’t kill him!” Proving that you’ve got to be careful when you create a legend.
(1) Moynahan, Brian. Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned. New York: Aurum Press, 1998.
(2) Youssoupoff, Prince Felix Lost Splendour.New York Putnam 1954.
(3) Fulop-Miller , Rene Rasputin the Holy Devil New York Putnam 1928
(4) Horne, Charles F (ed) Source Records of the Great War, Vol. V, National Alumni 1923
(5) Cowles , Virginia The Russian Dagger London Crawley 1969
(6) The Orange Book of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Service – Vienna 1916
(7) Smith WHB et al.Small Arms of the World Galahad New York 1969
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