General Order № 11 (1863)

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George Caleb Bingham painting of General Order No. 11. General Thomas Ewing is the "red pants" general in the center

General Order № 11 is the title of the 25 August 1863 Union Army order in the American Civil War that forced the evacuation of the rural areas of four counties in Missouri.

The order affected all rural residents regardless of their loyalty. Those who could prove their Union sympathies could stay in the region but had to leave their farms and move to communities near military outposts. Those who could not prove their sympathies had to leave the area altogether.

The order followed the August 21 Lawrence Massacre by Confederate bushwhacker William Quantrill. The Union Army felt that Confederate bushwhackers were coming from or getting support from rural portions of the four Missouri counties on the Kansas border south of the Missouri River (Bates, Cass, Jackson, and Vernon counties).

General Thomas Ewing issued the order to expel residents from those counties and burn their land. Exceptions to the order were made for those living within one mile of the limits of Independence, Hickman Mills, Pleasant Hill, and Harrisonville. The area of Kansas City, Missouri north of Brush Creek and west of Blue River (Missouri) (although called Big Blue in the order) was also spared.

The order was approved by Abraham Lincoln who cautioned that the military be careful to avoid permitting vigilante enforcement. Painter George Caleb Bingham, who was staunchly pro-Union, called it an act of imbecility and wrote letters protesting it and one of his most famous works depicts it. Bingham who was in Kansas City at the time described the events:

It is well-known that men were shot down in the very act of obeying the order, and their wagons and effects seized by their murderers. Large trains of wagons, extending over the prairies for miles in length, and moving Kansasward, were freighted with every description of household furniture and wearing apparel belonging to the exiled inhabitants. Dense columns of smoke arising in every direction marked the conflagrations of dwellings, many of the evidences of which are yet to be seen in the remains of seared and blackened chimneys, standing as melancholy monuments of a ruthless military despotism which spared neither age, sex, character, nor condition. There was neither aid nor protection afforded to the banished inhabitants by the heartless authority which expelled them from their rightful possessions. They crowded by hundreds upon the banks of the Missouri River, and were indebted to the charity of benevolent steamboat conductors for transportation to places of safety where friendly aid could be extended to them without danger to those who ventured to contribute it.

Ewing was to relax his order in November in General Order No. 20 to permit the return of those who could prove their loyalty to the union.

[edit] Text of the Missouri order

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 № 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 № 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.