"2. Order No. 11 and the Aftermath"

Adapted from: Wellman, Paul I. A Dynasty of Western Outlaws. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1961.

Pages 45 - 49.

"Quantrill may have believed that his adroit leadership in the sacking of Lawrence [Kansas] would be recognized and rewarded by the Confederate government, but is so he was bitterly disappointed.

"Far from gaining him favor, that butchery was viewed with horror by the South and repudiated by it.

"Whatever chance he had for recognition as a legitimate officer of the Confederacy was destroyed.

"More than ever he was on his own, despised by blue and gray alike.

"Two days after the massacre came a thunderclap.

"General Thomas Ewing, commanidng Union forces on the Missouri border, issued the now famous -- or infamous -- Order No. 11.

"By it the Missouri counties of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and part of Vernon were depopulated, save for small areas in the immediate environs of garrisoned towns.

"Families, without regard to right or justice, or even loyalty to the Union cause, were forced by the military to leave their homes with what little they could carry, and go to seek shelter of some sort in whatever direction they might flee, while their belongings left behind were looted and their houses and grain fields burned.

"Yet the order was not Ewing's idea, and he issued it with relectance.

"It had been discussed before, but he expressed himself as greatly opposed to the measure, which he considered too cruel and drastic."

ENTER JIM LANE, A VIOLENT MAN ...

"The impetus that caused the order to be issued came from Kansas, and from Jim Lane, the archenemy of the Missourians, in particular.

"Lane was not only a partisan leader but a United States senator, elected in 1861, with the admission of Kansas as a state.

"He was a violent man.

"He murdered Gaius Jenkins in 1857 in a quarrel over some land, uisng his powerful position to get himself exonerated.

"Since the beginning of the Civil War he had divided his time between making raids across the [Kansas - Missouri] border and visits to Washington in his capacity as [a U.S.] senator, where he seems to have had a strange influence in high places."

BALEFUL EFFECTS OF ORDER NO. 11...

"Order No. 11 reduced the population of Cass County from 10,000 to 600; and there were even fewer left in Bates County.

"Order No. 11 was Lane's means of revenging himself on the Missouri people.

"As a military measure it was expected to drive out the guerrillas because they could no longer subsist on the country.

"In this respect it was only partly successful.

"What Order No. 11 was completely successful in doing was to create bitterness that for a generation was not entirely healed.

"Even families with Union sympathies were in many cases alienated."

ORDER NO. 11 AND THE JAMES GANG, ETC....

"And this should be underlined: The amazing ability of Jesse James and his band of outlaws to operate for fifteen years after the [Civil] war out of this very area which had been so terribly stricken was due to the resentments still burning.

"People who had suffered from Order No. 11 were slow to inform against former guerrillas who had become bandits, out of sheer antagonism toward the authority that had ruined them."

My, oh my!

Hey, fellas, where have we seen this same sort of thing in more recent U.S. military history?? (heh, heh!)