On the afternoon of September 7, 1876, Jesse and Frank James, along with Cole, Jim and Robert Younger and three other associates, tried to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. The gang targeted the bank after learning that Adelbert Ames, a former Union general and Republican governor of Reconstruction-era Mississippi, had recently moved to Northfield. Ames, along with his father-in-law Benjamin Butler, also a former Union general and Radical Republican politician, was rumored to have deposited $75,000 in the bank.
During the attempted robbery, three members of the gang went inside and demanded the cashier open the safe, but he refused. Meanwhile, after townspeople outside got wind that a holdup was taking place, they engaged in a shootout with the gang members who’d been stationed on the street. In the end, the gang killed the bank cashier and a passerby, while two bandits were shot to death by townsfolk before the rest of the outlaws fled.
Two weeks later, following a gunfight near Madelia, Minnesota, the Younger brothers were captured and another gang member killed. (The Youngers were sentenced to life in prison; Robert Younger died behind bars in 1889, while his siblings were paroled in 1901.) The James brothers, who had split off from the Youngers before Madelia and were the only gang members not caught or killed following the failed robbery, laid low for the next few years, living in Tennessee under assumed names. However, in 1879, Jesse recruited a new set of criminal associates and embarked on a fresh crime spree.