Interpreting George Caleb Bingham's Order 11 can be confusing without knowing the unusual and complicated story of the Missouri-Kansas border war, both before and during the Civil War. The vocabulary used to describe the waring factions is unusual and not very familiar to people who are not acquainted with western Missouri. Bingham intended the painting to be about the abuse of military power. Many, however, thought the painting was pro-Confederacy and proslavery. Bingham was a unionist and during the war he was the State Treasurer of Missouri. After the War many thought the painting undermined reconciliation.
Bingham is more well known for his genre paintings that are in large tourist destination museums.
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The Jolly Flatboatmen, George Caleb
Bingham.1846, National Gallery
of Art, Washington DC.
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Fur Traders Descending the Missouri,
Geoge Caleb Bingham, 1845, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. |
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed the new territories to decide by plebiscite if they would permit slavery. Proslavery border ruffians mainly from Missouri would cross the border to vote in the Kansas Territory. Missouri border ruffians became para military guerrilla groups called Bushwhackers. The raids between Kansas and Missouri continued. After the Civil War began, many of these men opted to stay in guerrilla bands instead of enlisting into the army. Mustering into the army would require their leaving their homes unprotected. Thomas Ewing, a lawyer from Ohio, was promoted to Brigadier General in March 1863, and became commander of the District of the Border. Ewing was convinced that the women in rural western Missouri were aiding the proslavery Bushwhackers. In the summer of 1863, Ewing jailed 11 female relatives of the Bushwhackers and temporarily put them in a Kansas City building, before transferring them to Saint Louis for trial. The building, owned by Bingham’s mother-in-law collapsed and five of the women died. One of the the dead was the sister of "Bloody Bill Anderson." Most of the injured had relatives that rode with Quantrill's Raiders or the Younger Brothers. In retaliation, Quantrill led an an attack on Lawrence, Kansas. Over 160 men and boys were killed. No women were injured.
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| An engraving published in Harper's Weekly with the caption: The destruction of the city of Lawrence, Kansas, and the massacre of its inhabitants by the Rebel guerrillas, August 21, 1863. |
This wasn't the first time Lawrence was attacked. Lawrence was
founded in 1854 by anti-slavery settlers from Massachusetts. In 1856 approximately 800 proslavery settlers, mainly from Missouri attacked, burned and looted Lawrence. One person was killed and Lawrence was temporarily without a free state newspaper. The 1856 raid on Lawrence, Kansas is usually referred to as the Sacking of Lawrence and the 1863 raid is usually called Quantrill's raid or the Lawrence Massacre.
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Ruins of Free State Hotel after Sacking of Lawrence,
May 21, 1856.
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General Ewing's problems were multiplying after Quantrill's raid on Lawrence. The majority of the residents of western Missouri were pro-Confederacy and thought Ewing was incompetent and doing too much. The pro-Union residents of Kansas thought he was incompetent and not doing enough. Senator James Henry Lane of Kansas, who also was a Brigadier General of volunteers known as the Kansas Brigade or Jayhawkers, threatened that he would invade Missouri if Ewing didn't take control of the situation. Ewing didn't take Lane's threat lightly since two years earlier Lane invaded Missouri, burned the town of Osceola and executed 9 men after a summary court-martial.
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General Lane's raid on Osceola, Missouri, September 23, 1861.
Ewing decided to depopulate the area and and issued his Order 11 on August 25, 1863. Everyone, regardless of loyalty, living in rural areas on the Missouri side of the border in the first three and a portion of a fourth county south of The Missouri River would have to leave their home. Those who could prove their loyalty to the Union could move to a military station in the district or into Kansas, but not the border counties of Kansas. The order allowed the owners two weeks to gather their grain before it would be destroyed. As owners fled their homes there was widespread looting and burning. Livestock was seized by Jayhawkers, Bushwhackers, and Union troops. The area affected by Order 11 became known as the Burnt District. Frequently all that remained of a burnt homestead was the chimney, locally known as Jennison's tombstones. Charles "Doc" Jennison was a Colonel in the Union Army and also had led Jayhawker units who wore red leggings.
The Bushwhacker Museum is in Vernon County, Missouri, which was one of the counties affected by Order 11. Despite the recent removal of Confederate statues, it is doubtful that, in this area of rural western Missouri, the name will be changed any time soon. Folks in this part of Missouri do not want to rename the museum as long as the University of Kansas athletic teams use Jayhawks as their mascot. On the 150th anniversary of the raid on Osceola, the town asked the University to change their mascot. They refused.
 In the 1976 film, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Clint Eastwood plays a Missouri farmer, whose homestead is burned, and his family killed in a raid by Kansas Jayhawkers. He then rides in revenge with Bloody Bill Anderson and his Bushwhackers. After the war ends, they go to a Union Army camp to surrender their weapons and take the oath of allegiance. Senator Lane and his Jayhawkers are also in the camp. The men are massacred as they are swearing the oath. Josey Wales escapes and becomes an outlaw on the run. He rides into a small town in Texas for supplies. Typical of Eastwood's directorial style of avoiding script details to inform the audience, there is a below the waist closeup of four men wearing red leggings crossing the street. |
Missouri-Kansas border raids were more intense and frequent than conflicts between other Border and Free States. After Missouri was acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, farmers from the Upper South left their lands that had been depleted by frequent cotton plantings. They brought their plantation culture of slaves, cotton, tobacco, and hemp to land along the Missouri River. Where the Missouri River turns North South at Kansas City it becomes too cold for cotton. The counties where they settled have historically been called Little Dixie. Among the first settlers of Kansas were citizens of slave states, especially Missouri. The Abolitionists' settling in Lawrence, Kansas came half a century later. It's another example of "we were here first." Abolitionists, unlike proslavery settlers, were receiving financial support from the New England Emigrant Aid Company. During the Civil War, the larger concentration of armies east of the Mississippi River limited the ability of guerrilla bands to roam. The large Mississippi and Ohio Rivers also impeded the movement of guerrilla units across several of the eastern state borders.
The soldiers that are looting the home are dressed in Union blue but they are not in the Union Army. The feathers in their hats and the red leggings were not Union Army issue. The Kansas Seventh Volunteer Cavalry, called in Missouri “Jennison's Jayhawkers”, began wearing red leggings as early as 1861. Jayhawkers with these legging were called "Red Legs" and were feared by pro-Southern sympathizers. It was a secretive organization that probably never numbered more than 100. Before the war, Jennison had a man hanged for returning runaway slaves to Missouri. The Red Leg units serving under Jennison had a reputation for murder, theft, and terror that drove many Missourians into the service of the pro-Confederate Bushwhackers or the Confederate Army.
Soon after the painting was displayed people who knew General Ewing said that it was Ewing sitting on the horse. The face is definitely similar. However, Ewing wore wore a General's jacket with two rows of buttons and a shoulder patch with his Brigadier rank. The figure in the painting is wearing a Captain's cloak and his hat, typical of Jayhawkers was not Union Army officer issue. An unsupported rumor was that Bingam wrote in a letter to General Ewing, “If you persist in executing this
order, I will make you infamous with pen and brush. . . .” There is no evidence that Ewing left his Kansas City Headquarters to watch houses being looted. A literal image of Ewing in the correct uniform would have exposed Bingham to a libel suit.
Bingham's painting lacks originality. Order 11 is similar to many history paintings about the Roman myth of the Rape of the Sabine Women. The men of Rome had committed mass kidnappings of the women in surrounding cities to obtain wives to start families. The Sabine women placed themselves between the Romans and Sabine warriors to stop the fighting.
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| The Intervention of the Sabine Women, Jacques-Louis David, 1799, Louvre, Paris, France |
Bingham had gone to Europe in 1856 and had seen David's work. Several portions of Bingam' s painting can be found in other famous works.
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Apollo Belvedere, c. 120–140 CE, Vatican Museums, Vatican City
A pro Southern and Lost Cause interpretation is that the elderly man as trying to protect his property from the Union Army.
Emancipationists would say that the black father is leading his son to the future and that the old white man is clinging to the past.
The people on the ground are arranged like a typical Lamentation painting.
Emancipationists would interpret the black woman as supporting the white woman who has fainted and as being loyal to her mistress. She is not abandoning her despite being in the midst of the carnage.
The predominant view of Bingham's Order 11 has been the pro- Confederate view of Missourians being victims of the Union Army. Was Missouri part of the Confederacy or the Union? For school history tests the expected answer is Union. It has been traditionally taught that 11 states succeeded. However, there are 13 stars in the Confederate States' flag. At the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia at a 2010 visit there was a more accurate answer. A wall sign about the dates of secession read: The secessionist factions of Missouri and Kentucky voted to secede on these dates and the Confederate government subsequently accepted those states into the Confederacy. The state were under Federal control for most of the war and were also represented in the U.S. Congress. |
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