[KC Burke]

I think it important to stress for those less familiar with the history that this covered only the farms and crossroads in three and a half counties south of the Blue River in Kansas City and exempted those in and surrounding a number of settled towns such as Harrisonville etc.

It was one of the many notible incidents of the Bleeding Kansas legacy.

I was born in Jackson County, Mo, grew up in Johnson and Douglas County, Kansas and spent much of my adult years in Platte County, Mo.

I lived in a house in Lawrence for a while that still had a mini ball in the front porch beam. My great grand father road with the and was made a Postmaster by Lincoln.

[KC Burke]

Great grand dad “rode” with the defensive forces defending Lawrence in the 1850s.

Not “road”

[WrightWings]

My great-great-grandparents had their land stolen from them by the US Government because of General Order # 11.

NEVER trust the government to do right by its citizens is how I was raised - and how I raise my kids/grandkids.

[x_plus_one]

Sounds like you have a first person awareness of the mayhem perpetrated by union patrols on local citizens on or after August 23, 1863. Have you seen the state monument south of Harrisonville called the Burnt District? All that was left of the four counties after the war was stone chimneys. Bates County collected back taxes for the civil war period even though they had no courthouse or citizens in the county for several years after the war. The Bates County Museum has the details.

Western Missouri family histories from the era of General Order Eleven are on file at the Blue Valley Library room at UMKC. This scorched earth campaign against everyone alive in western Missouri from 1863 to 1865 can not be minimized by time, only by dismissal of the facts.