His gang was defeated trying to rob a Minnesota bank

On the afternoon of September 7, 1876, Jesse and Frank James attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, along with Cole, Jim, Robert Younger, and three other accomplices. After learning that Adelbert Ames, a former Union commander and the Republican governor of Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, had recently relocated to Northfield, the gang decided to attack the bank. It was said that Ames had put $75,000 in the bank with the help of his father-in-law Benjamin Butler, a Radical Republican politician, and former Union commander.

Three of the gang members entered the store during the attempted robbery and requested that the cashier unlock the safe, but the cashier refused. Townspeople outside, who had learned that a robbery was going on, got involved in a shootout with the gang members who had been posted on the street. In the end, the gang murdered the bank teller and a bystander, while two of the outlaws were slain by villagers' gunfire before the rest of the gang fled.

Following a shootout two weeks later, close to Madelia, Minnesota, the Younger brothers were apprehended, and another gang member was murdered. (The Youngers were given life sentences; Robert Younger passed away in custody in 1889, while his siblings were released from prison in 1901.) The James brothers, who had broken away from the Youngers before Madelia and were the only gang members who were not apprehended or executed after the botched robbery, hid out in Tennessee for a while using aliases. But in 1879, Jesse enlisted a fresh group of thugs and started committing crimes once more.