In February 1862, the Missouri provisional government’s new state treasurer, George Caleb Bingham, saw a troublesome development in his war-torn state. Garrisoning federal troops, especially in the western portion of Missouri, were subjecting civilians "to a kind of winnowing process by which the 'tares' were to be separated from the wheat — the loyal from the disloyal portion of the inhabitants."
Bursheba Fristoe Younger knew better than perhaps anyone the thorough devastation wrought by nearly a decade of guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border. The Youngers, like many households, traced their hardships back to the partisan violence of the 1850s. A slaveholding family of southern descent, they owned a dry goods store in Cass County, Missouri, which was repeatedly robbed by antislavery bands of Kansas “jayhawkers.” At the outbreak of the national Civil War, Bursheba’s husband, Henry, remained an avowed Union man, but in July 1862, Unionist militia ambushed, robbed, and murdered the family patriarch as he traveled home from Westport.
George Caleb Bingham was a recognized son of Missouri throughout his life: a reputation that was solidified by his paintings portraying life in the state and on its rivers. While Bingham’s reputation as an artist is widely known, his role in Missouri politics and specifically in the border conflicts of the 1860s is less familiar. The brutality visited on the noncombatants along the Missouri-Kansas border before and during the Civil War appalled Bingham, but despite his strong feelings, he used his paintings to support his political philosophy that the Union must be maintained.
By Chris Rein, Combat Studies Institute, Army University
John M. Schofield served as the senior Union Army officer in Missouri during part of the war, as both commander of the Army of the Frontier and the Department of Missouri. His service was checkered but generally effective; he was accused of being too lenient with Confederate bushwhackers even though he had effectively opposed them in battle and supported General Order No. 11, which ordered the depopulation of a portion of the border. He went on to a very successful postwar career, culminating in service as the commanding general of the Army from 1888 to 1895.
Why do Little Dixie battle flags still flap in some Missouri cemeteries? What on earth is a jayhawker? Or a bushwhacker? Why does the name “Quantrill,” for some Missourians, evoke a legacy almost equal to that of the raging abolitionist John Brown on the Kansas side? The history behind all of this speaks to divisions that persist in the Kansas City area.
Thomas Ewing Jr. is perhaps most remembered for issuing and enforcing General Order No. 11 during the Civil War. But Ewing’s legacy far exceeds this one event. Ewing was a vital player in engineering the entry of Kansas into the Union as a free state, served as the first Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court, defended Dr. Samuel Mudd against conspiracy charges in the Lincoln assassination, and was a member of Congress from Ohio as well as a self-trained military leader during the Civil War.
In a controversial attempt to quell guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border, Union General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11, exiling several thousand people from their homes in western Missouri. The August 25, 1863, orders required that “all persons” living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and northern Vernon counties “remove from their present places of residence.”
By Tony O’ Bryan, University of Missouri—Kansas City
Beginning in April 1863, Union officers began rounding up females suspected of providing aid and support to Confederate guerillas in the Western border region and placing them in makeshift jails in Kansas City. When one of these overcrowded prisons collapsed on August 13, 1863, it killed and maimed several female relatives of the guerrillas. Although the direct cause of the collapse remains unclear, it is certain that the disaster helped seal the fate of many men in Lawrence, Kansas, eight days later.
A makeshift Union prison in Kansas City, Missouri collapsed on August 13, 1863, killing four of its female prisoners and enraging proslavery Missouri bushwhackers who would attack Lawrence eight days later.
Pleasant Hill met a fate common to towns near the Missouri-Kansas border: occupation by armies on both sides of the war and the gradual destruction of many of the town's buildings.
