General Order No. 11 (1863)

General Order No. 11 is the title of a

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 It was repealed in January 1864, after a new general took command of Union forces in the region.^[1]

Origin and provisions of the order

Order No. 11 was issued four days after the August 21

President

Order No. 11 was not only intended to retard pro-Southern depredations, but also limit pro-Union vigilante activity, which threatened to spiral out of control, given the immense anger sweeping Kansas following

Order No. 11 was partially intended to punish Missourians with pro-rebel sympathies, however many residents of the four counties named in Ewing's orders were pro-Union or neutralist in sentiment. In reality, the Union troops acted with little deliberation; farm animals were killed, and house property was destroyed or stolen; houses, barns and outbuildings were burned to the ground.[4] Some civilians were summarily executed—a few as old as seventy years of age.^[5][6][7]

Ewing's four counties, Jackson, Cass, Bates and northern part of Vernon, became a devastated "no man's land," with only charred chimneys (soon nicknamed "Jennison's tombstones", after "Doc" Jennison)^[8] and burnt stubble showing where homes and thriving communities had once stood, earning the sobriquet, "The Burnt District." Historian Christopher Philips writes, "The resulting population displacement and destruction of property (lest it fall into rebel hands) prompted the nickname "Burnt District," as an apt description of the region."^[9] There are very few remaining antebellum homes in this area due to the Order No. 11.

Ewing wanted to demonstrate that the Union forces intended to act forcefully against Quantrill and other bushwhackers, thus rendering vigilante actions (such as the one contemplated by Lane) unnecessary—and thereby preventing their occurrence, which Ewing was determined at all costs to do. He ordered his troops not to engage in looting or other depredations, but he was ultimately unable to control them. Most of the troops were Kansas volunteers, who regarded all of the inhabitants of the affected counties as rebels with property subject to military confiscation.

Although Federal troops ultimately burned most of the outlying farms and houses, they were unable to prevent Confederates from initially acquiring vast amounts of food and other useful material from abandoned dwellings. Ewing's order had the opposite military effect from what he intended: instead of eliminating the guerrillas, it gave them immediate and practically unlimited access to supplies. For instance, the bushwhackers were able to help themselves to abandoned chickens, hogs and cattle, all of which had been left behind when their owners were forced to flee. Smokehouses were sometimes found to contain hams and bacon, while barns often held feed for horses.^[1]

Repeal and legacy of the order

Ewing eased his order in November, issuing General Order No. 20, which permitted the return of those who could prove their loyalty to the Union. In January 1864, command over the border counties passed to General

Ewing's controversial order greatly disrupted the lives of thousands of civilians, most of whom were innocent of any guerrilla collaboration. The evidence is not conclusive whether Order No. 11 seriously hindered Confederate military operations. No raids into Kansas took place after its issuance, but historian Albert Castel credits this not to Order No. 11, but rather to strengthened border defenses and a better organized

Author Caroline Abbot Stanley's 1904 Order No. 11 is based on the events surrounding the order.

George Bingham and Order No. 11

American artist George Caleb Bingham, who was a Conservative Unionist and bitter enemy of Ewing,^[1] called Order No. 11 an "act of imbecility" and wrote letters protesting it. Bingham wrote to Gen. Ewing, "If you execute this order, I shall make you infamous with pen and brush," and in 1868 created his famous painting reflecting the consequences of Ewing's harsh edict (see above). Former guerrilla Frank James, a participant in the Lawrence, Kansas raid, is said to have commented: "This is a picture that talks."^[10] Historian Albert Castel described it as "mediocre art but excellent propaganda."^[1]

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.^[11]

Bingham insisted that the real culprits behind most of the depredations committed in western Missouri and eastern Kansas were not the pro-Confederate bushwhackers, but rather pro-Union Jayhawkers and "Red Legs," whom he accused of operating under the protection of General Ewing himself. The Red Legs were a paramilitary group wearing red gaiters and numbered around 100 that served as scouts during the punitive expedition of the Union troops in Missouri; they were accused by contemporaries in spreading atrocities and destruction.^[12][13][14]

According to Bingham, Union troops might easily have defeated the

Further scholarship indicates that although Bingham's son used the painting in 1880 to attack Ewing when he ran for Governor of Ohio, it did not prove to be the deciding influence in Ewing's narrow loss. President Rutherford Hayes, a Ewing family friend but political opponent of Ewing's campaign, urged Ohio Republicans not to use the painting as it would show Ewing's strong war record against the South, which was contrary to his effort to show Ewing as a weak business leader, and a repudiationist on hard money/soft money issues.[15] This more recent scholarship reviews Ohio newspaper accounts of the 1880 campaign, and indicates Ewing, running as a Democrat, faced significant third-party challenges, and was trying to oust the Republicans during a time of economic prosperity—always a difficult political task, at best.^[15]

See also

• Scorched earth
• Total war

References