One of our most active members recently posted this excellent article that tells about the collapse of the building in Kansas City in 1863 that was holding Bloody Bill Anderson's sisters and other Southern women and girls.
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http://www.thetracyfamilyhistory.net/C%208%20%20Order%20No%2011.htmAs the war progressed, there would unfold a chain of events that would eventually end in the burning. General Thomas Ewing was in command of the Department of the Boarder. Ewing ordered that hundreds of families of the worst known Guerrillas, that would be mostly women and children, were to be arrested, with some being imprisoned and others banished to Confederate States.
Some women who were close relatives of the most notorious Guerrilla leaders were imprisoned in a building in Lawrence.
George Caleb Bingham, was a famous frontier painter of his time. It was within his three storied building in Lawrence, Kansas, that the women were imprisoned, on the top floor, which was the artist's studio. Bingham was away on government business at the time and apparently was not aware that his home was being used as a prison.
Everyone knew that the building was unsafe. The weight of the women on the top floor was too much, and the building collapsed killing five women and crippling several others for life. Remember, these were the relatives of the top Guerrilla leaders.
The Guerrilla leaders were enraged, and in retaliation planned a raid on Lawrence itself. On 21 August 1863 Quantrill with 400 Guerrillas attacked Lawrence, sacking the town, burning 185 buildings and massacring 142 civilians. This was one of the few times the Guerrillas would fight in mass.
In punishment for the Lawrence raid, four days later, General Thomas Ewing issued his infamous Order Number 11. Simply put, every person living in the four counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and Vernon, were to remove themselves from the State of Missouri within 15 days…and everything was to be burned to the ground. This order meant every person: that included those pro-Union as well as the pro-Confederates, the loyal along with the disloyal, friends as well as foes, including neutrals, the innocent with the guilty, the rich as well as the poor, men, women, and children, the healthy with the invalid, the old with the young… and then the four counties were to be burned to the ground from the magnificent mansions to the humble slave cabins.
There was nothing to protect the people; no laws, no constitution, no rights. Theirs would be but a desperate struggle to get out of Missouri by a date certain.
President Lincoln approved Order Number 11.
Our painter, George Caleb Bingham, was not only a state government official, but at the age of 50 he had enlisted in the Union army as a private and quickly rose to the rank of brigadier general. He was enraged when learning of Order Number 11, believing it to be unjust. Demanding a meeting with General Ewing, Bingham screamed to have it revoked. Ewing refused. Leaving, Bingham shot back his famous words, "…I will make you infamous with pen and brush…"
The women in the four counties were panicky. It was the custom for all important decisions to be made by the husbands who were now all away at war. The families had no means to escape, having had all the good horses, mules, and wagons previously taken.
To make matter worse, the order was to be enforced by Kansas troops.
"The news of the order quickly reached the remotest corners of the district affected. In a few days the highways of the land were rife with fugitives, courageous women and little children, decrepit old men and young boys. They drove small herds of cattle, or a few flocks of sheep, belonging to two or three families which for mutual assistance usually went together. The household goods went in rickety wagons drawn by oxen or by superannuated horses, exempted from army service because too feeble to carry a soldier."
There were no horses or mules and oxen were scarce so the women would use milk cows and hitch them to the rickety wagons, and if milk cows were not available they would use calves. One man was able to keep a good horse because he trained it too limp whenever anyone (Union troops) road up on.
One Union officer chronicled their escape, "It is heartsickening to see what I have seen since I have been back here. A desolate country and men and women and children, some of them almost naked. Some on foot and some in old wagons. Oh God!"
"Bare-footed and bare-headed women and children, stripped of every article of clothing except a scant covering for their bodies, were exposed to the heat of an August sun." "...and compelled to struggle through the dust on foot. All their means of transportation had been seized by the spoilers…"
"The road from Independence to Lexington was crowded with women and children, women walking with their babies in their arms, packs on their backs, and four or five children following after them--some crying for bread…O, how sad!"
Children begged to go home. Little girls clutched their dolls.
Union General Richard C. Vaughan, witnessed the implementation or Order Number 11 and wrote. "The torch was freely used, and dense columns of smoke from burning dwellings were seen far and wide over the scourged district and men were ruthlessly shot down in the very act of obeying the order."
Just one small squad of Kansas men burned 110 houses. A Kansas soldier wrote, "…Chimneys mark the spot where once stood costly farm houses…"
In total, 3600 square miles were wiped off the face of the earth. So complete was the burning that even the fence post were pulled from the ground and the stumps burned. As many as 20,000 to 100,000 people were put on the roads, their homes burned and made refugees. No one knows the number for sure because all of the records were destroyed in the burning.
To make the suffering even worse, most of the refugees had no where to go. Some huddled on the riverbanks where passing riverboat captains took pity on them and took them aboard. Others would find only caves to live in.
None who suffered through Order Number 11 would ever forget, including our three year old Lousannie, Grandma Elam as mom knew her.
So bitter were her memories, that 40 years later Louisa Young refused to allow her grandson, Harry S. Truman, to appear in front of her wearing his blue military uniform. (At age 11 the future president's mother and her family were also burned out of their home.)
Ever since, this land has been known as the "Burnt District." Two years later, a minister who traveled through the "Burnt District" described it simply and truthfully, "Man no longer existed there."
There were those in Jackson County who remembered that some 30 years earlier that the Mormons, as were their habit, were driven out of Jackson County by the mobs. The Mormons embittered prophet, Joseph Smith told his persecutors:
"God's wrath hangs over Jackson County. God's people have been ruthlessly driven from it, and you will see the day when it will be visited by fire and the sword. The Lord of Hosts will sweep it with a besom of destruction. The fields and farms and houses will be destroyed, and only the chimneys will be left to mark the desolation."
Frank James, brother to Jesse, tells the story of a man he knew who made a fortune by going into the "Burnt District" and rounded up abandoned cattle. "A high toned cattle thief!" Frank James comes back into our story later.
And what happened to the man who caused it all, General Thomas Ewing? This is an interesting story and brings back into the story our painter, George Caleb Bingham. After the war, Ewing ran for governor of Ohio, which was his positioning for his true ambition which was to be president of the United States. Perhaps he would have gone down in history as president if it were not for our artists.
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~Jay~
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bloodybillandersonmystery 
