General Order Number 11
There were many atrocities that occurred during the American Civil War that were perpetrated by the Federal government and its soldiers. One edict, General Order Number 11, would become notorious for its treatment of rural Missouri residents. The order would become known for its harsh treatment of civilians and property, regardless of their loyalties. It would be a result of the lack of discipline and effectiveness by Union soldiers in suppressing the guerrilla actions. And it had the opposite effect it actually was intended to have on the Southern guerillas.
Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr. was the commander of the Border District, which encompassed the counties along the edge of the Missouri-Kansas border. Southern-sympathizing guerillas had, for quite some time, used this area as a base for raids into Kansas to carry out their guerrilla tactics on Union soldiers and Union-sympathizing citizens. The citizens of these counties were primarily pro-Southern and provided support, supplies, and refuge for these guerillas.
By 1863, the fighting between the guerillas and the Union army had reached a crescendo. With the attacks on Missourians by pro-abolitionist Kansans, the collapse of a makeshift prison housing women relatives of the guerillas, and the brutal and vicious attack on Lawrence, Kansas, by the pro-slavery guerillas, something had to be done by the Union command in the district.
According to records kept by the commander of the District of Missouri, Major General John Schoefield, the number of available Union soldiers was 106 officers, 3,073 troops, six pieces of heavy artillery, and fourteen pieces of field artillery. This small force had the monumental task of handling all military action, police, and detective work in the district.
With pressure from the notorious Kansas Senator James Lane, who threatened that Ewing was, “a dead dog if you fail to issue that order as agreed between us,” and a dire need to bring order to the region, Ewing issued Order Number 11 on August 25, 1863. General Order Number 10 was issued earlier in the month and was plans implemented by Ewing and his superior Schoefield to address the issues in a forceful manner.
General Order Number 11
General Order Number 11 raised the level of brutality to a much greater extent. The order required that all residents of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon counties, regardless of their loyalties, vacate their homes in 15 days. Any residents who by that date had proven their loyalties to the Union would be allowed to move to any military station within the district. Those who did not or would not establish appropriate loyalties were to move from the district altogether or be subject to military punishment.
The guerillas would normally lay low during the winter months due to the climate of Missouri during the winter. Winters were cold and wet, and there was little to live off of for men who were always on the run and lived off the land. They became very skilled at avoiding capture and hiding out during these winter months.
Federal troops would time and time again be outsmarted and outmaneuvered by the skilled bushwhackers. The biggest disadvantage that the Federal troops had, and was most certainly the deciding factor in the success of the guerillas, was the aid provided them by the local civilian population.
One Union officer stated:
“If anyone can do better against bushwhackers than we have done, let him try this country, where the people and bushwhackers are allied against the United States and its soldiers.”
But this loyalty was the very thing that the Union leaders realized had to be dealt with, and on a much larger scale. Moving the civilians, as the order called for, out of the affected counties was only part of the order. All grain and hay in the affected areas was to be removed or destroyed. Barns and livestock were either stolen or destroyed. Homes were ransacked, plundered, and burned by a mix of Union soldiers and Kansas “Red Legs.”
Civilian Suffering
But moreover, the order was swift and harsh on the civilian population. Most left with only what they could carry, some with less than that. Even hardened pro-Unionists were appalled at the conditions and execution of General Order No. 11.
Colonel Bazel Lazear, Federal commander at Lexington, Missouri, wrote his wife:
“It is heartsickening to see what I have seen. . . . A desolated country and men & women and children, some of them all most [sic] naked. Some on foot and some in old wagons. Oh God.”
George Caleb Bingham of Kansas City made it a crusade to confront General Ewing and have the order recalled. He wrote that he had witnessed instances of civilians:
“shot down in the very act of obeying the order; and one in which their wagons and effects were seized by their murderers.”
Long wagon trains full of seized property and effects made their way back toward the Kansas border. Bingham would go on to further immortalize the order by painting Martial Law, or Order No. 11, which fictitiously placed Ewing right in the midst of the carnage in the Border Districts.
General Henry Halleck believed that:
“all Missouri and Kansas troops should have been removed from the border and troops from other states put in their place.”
Had this happened, it is highly likely that the atrocities that occurred from the order could have been prevented.
The Burnt District
Vigilante justice ran rampant. Many of the Union soldiers were Kansans who now had carte blanche to enact retribution on the Missourians. Union soldiers were ordered by General Ewing not to take part in any marauding or vigilante actions, but these were, for the most part, empty orders. By the end of September, the district was a desolate, forsaken land of crumbled chimneys next to charred ruins.
Not only were the inhabitants of the soon-to-be-called “Burnt District” forced from their land and homes, many, even those loyal to the Union, would have encounters with Union commanders who enacted punishment as they saw fit.
Martin Rice was a loyal Unionist, but was forced from his home and land. He had obtained the required papers showing his loyalty to the Union, but on his five-mile journey to his new home in Johnson County, along with a number of his neighbors, he was met by the Ninth Kansas Regiment and arrested.
After being questioned by the arresting officer, Captain Charles F. Coleman, Rice was instructed to:
“Travel!”
He then set back out on his journey. He heard shots fired and turned around to find that his neighbors and traveling companions had been accused of assisting a group of guerillas the night before. They had all been shot and killed.
Guerrillas Return
With the Border District now a desolate wasteland, and no civilian population there to aid the guerillas, the Union army believed they had finally brought an end to the bushwhackers and their harassment of Union soldiers and civilians.
Those in charge of the Union army, specifically the Kansans, believed they now had free rein to enact revenge on any remaining citizen, as they surely were bushwhackers.
However, this was not the case.
Even by September 3, William Quantrill would arrive back in Jackson County with over 200 men.
The desolated country and the quickness of the forced evacuation left the land ripe for guerillas to forage and to actually live better than they did when the counties were populated.
Albert Castel relates the story of an actual bushwhacker who stated:
“Quantrill was in no hurry to leave the country for the South. The farmhouses were nearly all vacated as required by Order No. 11, but in every smokehouse there hung from the rafters hams and bacon, and the country was full of stray hogs, cattle, and chickens which the owners had been forced to leave behind. There was plenty of feed for horses, and the men gathered the food at night.”
George Caleb Bingham is also noted by Castel to reiterate this point when he stated:
“Bushwhackers, who, until the close of the war, continued to stop the stages and rob the mails and passengers, and no one wearing the Federal uniform dared to risk his life within the desolated district.”
The Order’s Limited Effect
The issuance of General Order No. 11 did stifle guerrilla activity, but it did not stop it. Mostly what it did was move the action from the western border to the central and northern parts of the state.
Some of these moves were in preparation for General Sterling Price’s one last attempt to storm into Missouri and take the state for the Confederacy. William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson caused a reign of terror that put every single Union soldier or sympathizer on edge.
With the central and northern portions of the state paralyzed with terror, Price would have a better chance to move his men across the state with Union troops in hot pursuit of Anderson.
However, the move into Missouri by Price was futile at best. Most of the guerillas by this point had broken the binding ties with each other that had made them strong, and were now engaging in nothing short of murder.
By November of 1863, the Border was calm enough that General Ewing issued Order No. 20, which partially rescinded General Order No. 11. He would be replaced the following year by General Egbert Brown, who issued yet another General Order No. 11, which completely nullified Ewing’s General Order No. 11.
Not surprisingly, the bushwhackers returned in large numbers and mostly started where they had left off in August of 1863. The Southern cause was lost by the spring of 1865, and even with their bloody deeds, the guerillas were given the opportunity to lay down their arms and were granted generous terms by Union officials.
Legacy of General Order No. 11
General Thomas Ewing’s issuance of General Order No. 11 would have many different outcomes. Obviously, those directly affected by the order grew to feel animosity toward the military leadership in the West. This included many staunch pro-Union citizens, like George Caleb Bingham, who felt the order too drastic.
However, there are many reasons why, when one looks from the outside in, General Order No. 11 can be seen as necessary. It served a military need by depriving the guerillas of their support system. It was needed to help Kansas feel safe after the Lawrence Massacre. There also needed to be a way for Ewing to suppress the mob violence that was rising in Kansas by men such as James Lane and Daniel Anthony.
In the end, what the order did was save the lives of civilians and soldiers alike. The years leading up to the Civil War and during it were bloody, harrowing times in Missouri.
Ewing’s General Order No. 11, while harsh, was in the same mindset as that of his brother-in-law, William T. Sherman. Sherman would take the same approach in the South by destroying resources, not people.
However, the distrust and animosity that remain today in the South toward William T. Sherman are exactly the same distrust, animosity, and rivalry that exist today between Missourians and Kansans.
General Order No. 11 would be the coup de grâce of violent hostilities along the Western Border.