Thomas Ewing

Thomas Ewing was the Union commander at Kansas City who issued General Order No. 11, a sweeping 1863 measure to depopulate parts of western Missouri and cut off support for guerrillas. The order made him a central figure in a policy that uprooted about 20,000 people and became a lasting emblem of wartime suffering in the region.

Command and Rationale

The book presents Ewing’s decision as a response to the extent of local support for guerrilla forces. He estimated that two thirds of the outlying population were either related to guerrillas or actively helping sustain them. To deny the guerrillas this base of supply, he chose to remove civilians from the affected area.

General Order No. 11

Issued on August 25, 1863, the order gave civilians in Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties fifteen days to leave their homes, except for those living within a mile of Union posts at Kansas City, Independence, Hickman’s Mills, Pleasant Hill, and Harrisonville. People who could satisfy a post commander that they were loyal to the Union could remain in those towns or cross into Kansas; those who could not had to leave Missouri. Grain and hay remaining in the district after the deadline were to be destroyed.

The policy was enforced across the countryside within weeks. About 20,000 people were driven from their homes, while Union cavalry took property left behind and set fire to buildings and crops. Ewing’s order thus turned the effort to deny guerrillas supplies into a broad civilian displacement, reaching families whose circumstances varied: the account notes, for example, that the Young family was removed despite Solomon Young having signed a Union loyalty oath.

Legacy and Representation

The removal left a deep legacy of bitterness in western Missouri. Ewing’s place in that memory was later given a striking visual form by George Caleb Bingham, a Union officer appalled by the suffering he had witnessed. After the war, Bingham settled in Independence and painted Order No. 11, depicting Ewing himself driving a family from its home. The image fixed Ewing not only as the commander who authorized the policy but also as its enduring public representative.