At 4:00 pm on February 13^th, 1866 approximately 12 men wearing long, blue, Union soldier coats rode into Liberty, Missouri on horseback. They entered the square and stationed themselves on the south and west sides of the Clay County Savings Association, on the corner of Franklin and Water Streets. Two of the men dismounted and entered the bank. Minutes later they exited with the contents of the safe.

The two men were mounting their horses as a voice from inside the bank alerted passersby to the robbery. All 12 men then rode east at a full gallop, shooting their pistols wildly in the air as they fled. This was the first daylight, peacetime robbery in American history, allegedly committed buy the James-Younger gang.

Visitors to the Jesse James Bank Museum are often stunned by the fact that these outlaws got away with something so bold as a bank robbery in broad daylight. Many wonder how 12 men on horseback, surrounding a bank in the center of town wouldn’t insight suspicion.

The key to their deceit was their garb. Though the Civil War ended in 1865, combat continued through the Reconstruction period and Union soldiers were stationed in strategic locations to enforce Emancipation laws and keep the peace. Though Missouri was a Union state, slavery was allowed and there were some areas where Confederate sympathies were quite strong. Liberty is the seat of Clay County, Missouri whose citizens had family ties to the South. Many residents at the time were first generation Missourians, their parents having been born in Kentucky and Tennessee predominately. It was not only tradition to use slave labor on their farms, but economical as well. Though the crops that thrived in the Midwest were not as labor intensive as the crops grown in the South, the small populace and great availability of land, made slave labor a favorable choice, one many farmers were not willing to give up without a fight. Thus in 1866, bands of roaming Union soldiers were not an uncommon sight in Clay County. As far as we know, no one was suspicious about the sudden appearance of 12 men in long blue coats on the Liberty square.