In Kansas City, Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing, Jr., commanding the District of the Border, issued General Orders No. 11 on Aug. 25, 1863, from his headquarters in the Pacific House Hotel at 401 Delaware Street. In retaliation for the Lawrence Massacre of Aug. 21, 1863, when William Quantrill and 450 followers rode into Lawrence, murdered over 150 mostly unarmed men, and burned the town, the order required inhabitants of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and the northern half of Vernon counties in western Missouri who did not live within one mile of specified military posts to leave their homes within 15 days. Residents who could prove loyalty to the Union could relocate to military stations in the district or to most parts of Kansas, while those who could not were forced to leave the district entirely or face military punishment. Historians regard the order as one of the harshest measures the United States government ever took against its own citizens, reflecting both the desperate intensity of guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border and federal failure to develop an effective anti-guerrilla strategy. With too few troops to suppress the guerrillas, Union authorities turned to retaliation against civilians believed to be supporting them, following an earlier policy in General Orders No. 10 after Ewing had written that many families in western Missouri were kin to guerrillas and were actively feeding, clothing, and sustaining them. Under strong pressure for revenge from Kansas, including threats by James H. Lane to devastate Missouri border counties, Ewing answered with a depopulation order that caused severe hardship as refugees, often poorly clothed and lacking food, money, shelter, or transport, left homes, crops, and farms behind in long wagon trains. Kansas soldiers used to enforce the order went beyond Ewing's intent that only hay and grain be destroyed, summarily shot some men suspected of aiding Quantrill, pillaged livestock and household goods, and burned so many homes and barns that charred chimneys called "Jennison's monuments" remained in some places, while Cass and Bates counties became known as the "Burnt District." Although exact numbers are unknown, about 20,000 people were forced from their homes; Bates County was left almost empty, and only 600 inhabitants remained in Cass County from a prewar population of 9,794. Hard-line Unionists defended the order as a military necessity, but moderate and conservative Missouri Unionists denounced it as inhuman, unmanly, and barbarous. George Caleb Bingham became its best-known critic, attacking Ewing for years and painting "Order No. 11" to portray the suffering inflicted on civilians by Kansas troops. Public protest led Ewing to ease the policy through General Orders No. 20 on Nov. 20, 1863, allowing limited resettlement for those meeting a strict loyalty test, and after the District of the Border was reorganized in January, 1864 under Gen. Egbert B. Brown, more lenient return policies followed. Even so, Quantrill's band resumed operations in Missouri in 1864, showing the failure of depopulation as a workable anti-guerrilla strategy, while the episode foreshadowed the broader total war practices later embraced in the Civil War.
