53 YEARS AGO TODAY — AUGUST 25, 1863 — ORDER NO. 11 IS ISSUED IN MISSOURI
General Order No. 11 is the title of a Union Army directive issued during the American Civil War forcing the evacuation of rural areas in four counties in western Missouri. The order, issued by Union General Thomas Ewing, Jr., affected all rural residents regardless of their allegiance. Those who could prove their loyalty to the Union were permitted to stay in the affected area, but had to leave their farms and move to communities near military outposts. Those who could not do so had to vacate the area altogether.
While intended to deprive pro-Confederate guerrillas of material support from the rural countryside, the severity of the Order’s provisions and the nature of its enforcement alienated vast numbers of civilians, and ultimately led to conditions in which guerrillas were given greater support and access to supplies than before. It was repealed in January 1864, as a new general took command of Union forces in the region.
Order No. 11 was issued four days after the August 21 Lawrence Massacre, a retaliatory killing of men and boys led by Confederate bushwhacker leader William Quantrill. The Union Army believed Quantrill’s guerrillas drew their support from the rural population of four Missouri counties on the Kansas border, south of the Missouri River.
The following is the text of Order No. 11
General Order № 11.
Headquarters District of the Border,
Kansas City, August 25, 1863.
1. All persons living in Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties, Missouri, and in that part of Vernon included in this district, except those living within one mile of the limits of Independence, Hickman’s Mills, Pleasant Hill, and Harrisonville, and except those in that part of Kaw Township, Jackson County, north of Brush Creek and west of Big Blue, are hereby ordered to remove from their present places of residence within fifteen days from the date hereof.
Those who within that time establish their loyalty to the satisfaction of the commanding officer of the military station near their present place of residence will receive from him a certificate stating the fact of their loyalty, and the names of the witnesses by whom it can be shown. All who receive such certificates will be permitted to remove to any military station in this district, or to any part of the State of Kansas, except the counties of the eastern border of the State. All others shall remove out of the district. Officers commanding companies and detachments serving in the counties named will see that this paragraph is promptly obeyed.
2. All grain and hay in the field or under shelter, in the district from which inhabitants are required to remove, within reach of military stations after the 9th day of September next, will be taken to such stations and turned over to the proper officers there and report of the amount so turned over made to district headquarters, specifying the names of all loyal owners and amount of such product taken from them. All grain and hay found in such district after the 9th day of September next, not convenient to such stations, will be destroyed.
3. The provisions of General Order No. 10 from these headquarters will be at once vigorously executed by officers commanding in the parts of the district and at the station not subject to the operations of paragraph 1 of this order, and especially the towns of Independence, Westport and Kansas City.
4. Paragraph 3, General Order No. 10 is revoked as to all who have borne arms against the Government in the district since the 20th day of August, 1863.
By order of Brigadier General Ewing.
H. Hannahs, Adjt.-Gen’l.
Ewing ordered his troops not to engage in looting or other depredations, but he was ultimately unable to control them. Most were Kansas volunteers, who regarded all Missourians as “rebels” to be punished, even though many residents of the four counties named in Ewing’s orders were pro-Union or neutralist in sentiment. Animals and farm property were stolen or destroyed; houses, barns and outbuildings were burned to the ground.
Some civilians were even summarily executed—a few as old as seventy years of age. Ewing’s four counties became a devastated “no man’s land,” with only charred chimneys and burnt stubble showing where homes and thriving communities had once stood, earning the sobriquet “The Burnt District.” There are very few remaining antebellum homes in this area due to the Order.
The painting Order No. 11, by artist George Caleb Bingham, showed the destruction of the Missouri border counties by Kansas Jayhawkers.
Col. Charles Jennison is shown holstering his weapon after shooting down a Missouri civilian in cold blood. Numerous farms are burning in the background. Atop the horse to Jennison’s rear-left is General Thomas Ewing, commander of Union troops, the instigator of this destruction. After the war, Ewing ran for governor of Ohio and Bingham visited Ohio, took his painting with him, which is quite large, and campaigned against him. Ewing was defeated. I saw an original of this painting (two copies exist) at the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri.
It was painted on a table cloth, and you could see the design of the tablecloth through the paint. This painting gives you only an inkling of the devastation done to Missourians during the Civil War. This sort of carnage had been going on in some areas since 1858, nearly ignored by Yankee historians who still operate virulently in the history books.
Former guerrilla Frank James, a participant in the Lawrence, Kansas raid, is said to have commented: “This is a picture that talks.”
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