General Order No . 11 ( 1863 ) General Order No . 11 is the title of a Union Army directive issued during the American Civil War on August 25 , 1863 , forcing the evacuation of rural areas in four counties in western Missouri . The order , issued by Union General Thomas Ewing , Jr . , affected all rural residents regardless of their allegiance . Those who could prove their loyalty to the Union were permitted to stay in the affected area , but had to leave their farms and move to communities near military outposts ( see villagization ) . Those who could not do so had to vacate the area altogether . 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 the Rebel forces actually found themselves with even greater access to supplies than before . It was repealed in January 1864 , as a new general took command of Union forces in the region . Origin and provisions of the order . Order No . 11 was issued four days after the August 21 Lawrence Massacre , a retalitory effort led by bushwhacker leader William Quantrill . The Union Army believed Quantrill ' s guerrillas drew their support from the rural population of four Missouri counties on the Kansas border , south of the Missouri River . These were : Bates , Cass , Jackson , and part of Vernon . Following the slaughter in Lawrence , Federal forces were determined to end this by any means necessary — no matter what the cost might be to innocent civilians . Hence , General Thomas Ewing , who had lost several lifelong friends in the raid , issued Order No . 11 . Ewing ' s decree ordered the expulsion of all residents from these counties except for those living within one mile of the town limits of Independence , Hickman Mills , Pleasant Hill , and Harrisonville . The area of Kansas City , Missouri north of Brush Creek and west of the Blue River , referred to as " Big Blue " in the order , was also spared . President Abraham Lincoln approved Ewing ' s order , but he cautioned that the military must take care not to permit vigilante enforcement . This warning was almost invariably ignored . Ewing had issued his order a day before he received a nearly identical directive from his superior , Major General John Schofield . Whereas Ewing ' s decree at least tried to distinguish between pro - Union and pro - Confederate civilians , Schofield ' s allowed no exceptions and was significantly harsher . Ewing ' s order was allowed to stand , and Schofield would later describe it as " wise and just ; in fact , a necessity . " Implementation of the order . Order No . 11 was not only intended to retard pro - Southern depredations , but renegade pro - Union activity , as well . Ewing not only had his hands full with Confederate raiders ; he equally had troubles with Unionist Jayhawker s , led by radical Kansas Senator James Lane . There was immense anger sweeping Kansas following Quantrill ' s raid . Convinced that Ewing was not retaliating sufficiently against Missourians , Lane threatened to lead a Kansas force into Missouri , laying waste to the four counties named in Ewing ' s decree , and more . On September 9 , 1863 , Lane gathered nearly a thousand Kansans at Paola , Kansas , and marched towards Westport , Missouri , with an eye towards destruction of that pro - slavery town . Ewing sent several companies of his old Eleventh Kansas Infantry ( now mounted as cavalry ) to stop Lane ' s advance — by force , if necessary . Faced with this superior Federal force , Lane ultimately backed down . Order No . 11 was partially intended 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 . Ewing ordered his troops not to engage in looting or other depredations , but he was ultimately unable to control them . Most were Kansas volunteers , who regarded all Missourians as " rebels " to be punished , even though many residents of the four counties named in Ewing ' s orders were pro - Union or neutralist in sentiment . Animals and farm property were stolen or destroyed ; houses , barns and outbuildings were burned to the ground . Some civilians were even summarily executed — a few as old as seventy years of age . Ewing ' s four counties became a devastated " no man ' s land , " with only charred chimneys and burnt stubble showing where homes and thriving communities had once stood , earning the sobriquet " The Burnt District . " There are very few remaining antebellum homes in this area due to the Order . Ironically , 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 , 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 . 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 . 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 Egbert Brown , who disapproved of Order No . 11 . He almost immediately replaced it with a new directive , one that allowed anyone who would take an oath of allegiance to the Union to return and rebuild their homes . Ewing ' s controversial order had greatly disrupted the lives of thousands of civilians , most of whom were entirely innocent of any guerrilla collaboration . Furthermore , there is no evidence that Order No . 11 ever 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 Home Guard , plus a guerrilla focus on operations in northern and central Missouri in preparation for General Sterling Price ' s 1864 invasion . The infamous destruction and hatred inspired by Ewing ' s Order No . 11 would persist throughout western Missouri for many decades as the affected counties slowly tried to recover . George Bingham and Order No . 11 . American artist George Caleb Bingham , who was staunchly pro - Union , 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 . " 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 . 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 Jayhawker s and " Red Legs , " whom he accused of operating under the protection of General Ewing himself . According to Bingham , Union troops might easily have defeated the Bushwhackers if they had tried hard enough , and exercised a requisite amount of personal courage . Albert Castel refutes Bingham ' s assertions , however , demonstrating that Ewing made conspicuous efforts to rein in the Jayhawkers , and to stop the violence on both sides . He furthermore argues that Ewing issued Order No . 11 at least partly in a desperate attempt to stop a planned Unionist raid on Missouri intended to exact revenge for the Lawrence massacre , to be led by Kansas Senator Jim Lane himself ( see above ) . 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 . 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 .