Today in History

February 13, 1866

The first peacetime US bank robbery

The end of the Civil War left much of the southern United States in physical and economic ruin and the state of Missouri was no exception. Despite the high ideals of Reconstruction, the state's new constitution excluded former Confederates from voting, becoming corporate officers or serving on juries. Groups of former southern soldiers began to take matters into their own hands.

On February 13, 1866 a group of men led by former military commander Archie Clement held up the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri, the first armed bank robbery during peacetime in the United States. An innocent bystander was killed. With Clement, two of his former military comrades: Frank and Jesse James. Clement was later shot by state militia, but Jesse and Frank had discovered a way to continue to harass the radical Unionists while making a living at bank robbing. Along with Cole Younger and his brothers the James-Younger gang robbed banks from Iowa to West Virginia. Jesse James would later die at the hands of a traitor-partner, killed for reward money, in 1882.

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