"Order No. 11" by George Caleb Bingham

Displacement of western Missouri residents during Civil War commemorated
By BRIAN BURNES
The Kansas City Star

Independence [Missouri] will observe the 140th anniversary of Order No. 11 on Sunday, but it will hold no symposiums or seminars.

Those who report to the 1859 Jail, Marshal's Home and Museum can expect to be interrogated instead of entertained.

"We'll be asking you where you live and who you know," said Susan Church, the jail's director. "Then you'll be told to declare your loyalty, and you might be put in jail anyway."

Order No. 11 remains one of the most unseemly skeletons in Kansas City's closet. Though bitterness provoked by it endured for generations, many current Kansas City area residents are unaware of the episode, even while cheering for the universities of either Kansas or Missouri in annual "border war" basketball and football games.

"A lot of people don't know what Order No. 11 was and why Kansas and Missouri residents feel about the other as they do," Church said.

Aside from the forced assembly of Japanese-Americans into camps during World War II, writes historian Albert Castel, Order No. 11 "stands as the harshest treatment ever imposed on United States citizens under the plea of military necessity in our nation's history."

The Civil War spawned the decree.

From his Kansas City headquarters on Aug. 25, 1863, Union Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing Jr. ordered that all persons in the Missouri border counties of Jackson, Cass and Bates not living within one mile of specified military posts had to leave their homes by Sept. 9.

Those who established their loyalty to the Union would be allowed to move to any area military post or to Kansas.

Those who didn't had to leave.

Some 20,000 residents fled, carrying what they could. Behind them rose smoke from homes that had been torched after being plundered.

While the order has been commemorated before, organizers of Sunday's observance have put a premium on verisimilitude. Period trunks, saddles and carpetbags are expected to fill the parlor of the Marshal's Home, as examples of the plunder looted from area homes.

Assorted farm animals, representing surviving family assets, will be tied up outside.

"This is something that a lot of people don't realize happened in their own back yards," said Gregg Higginbotham of Independence, one of 40 living-history re-enactors scheduled to participate. "We all think we know about the Civil War and all of its big battles.

"But this place was torn apart by neighbors."

During the Civil War, bands of marauders crossed the Missouri-Kansas border to burn, plunder and murder. These alternating acts, committed by Missouri "bushwhackers" and Kansas "jayhawkers," contributed to an escalating cycle of violence and retribution.

Ewing resolved to cripple the Missouri guerrillas by removing their civilian support. On Aug. 18 he issued Order No. 10, which sought to evict pro-Confederate families.

Then, events intervened.

On Aug. 21, Missouri guerrilla William Quantrill led a band of irregulars into Lawrence, Kan. A massacre left perhaps 150 men and boys dead. Ewing issued Order No. 11 four days later.

A rich archive of surviving letters and journals testifies to what followed.

"In the morning burned another house then went ... & took breakfast," Kansas cavalryman Sherman Bodwell wrote on Aug. 24. Though it was one day before Ewing issued his order, retribution for Quantrill's raid already had begun.

"Allowed them to carry out clothing before burning," Bodwell wrote, describing his unit's visit to another family. "Marched North again burning a few more houses, & rested for the night...."

Many residents fled east to Lafayette County. Frances Twyman, one such exile, traveled the road from Independence to Lexington, upon which she witnessed the death of a small child.

"O, the anguish of that broken-hearted mother as she sat there, with tears streaming down her pale cheeks, knowing she was powerless to save her child...," she wrote. "The crowd surged on, women and children dragging their weary limbs through the dust and heat."

By the end of September, Castel wrote, "the depopulated district was a silent, forlorn land of stark chimneys standing over charred ruins."

At 10 a.m. this Sunday the order will be read aloud.

Re-enactors portraying artist George Caleb Bingham and Independence authorities will debate the order at noon. Bingham was so outraged that he later rendered the painting titled "Martial Law," or "Order No. 11." The image depicted murder and looting taking place under the gaze of an officer who bears a strong resemblance to Ewing.

Many who survived nursed long memories.

Among those Jackson County residents who suffered from the excesses of Union troops during the Civil War was Harriet Louisa Young, a grandmother of Harry Truman. In 1906 Young received $3,800 from the federal government in a settlement for property stolen or destroyed by Union soldiers.

At about the same time, her grandson decided to join the Missouri National Guard. Pleased with his new uniform, the future president wore it into his grandmother's house.

Bad idea.

Truman later wrote: "She looked me over and I knew I was going to catch it. She said `Harry, this is the first time since 1863 that a blue uniform has been in this house. Don't bring it here again.'

"I didn't."

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To reach Brian Burnes, history reporter, e-mail to bburnes@kcstar.com.

Source: August 23, 2003 Kansas City Star [additional hyperlinks embedded by Fox]

Further reading:

-- "Order No. 11 and the Civil War on the Border" Copyright 1963 Albert Castel

-- The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders, by Edward E. Leslie