ives. ♪ >> this sunday night at 8:00 eastern, we will look into the personal lives of two first ladies from the 1850's. jane pierce and harriet lane. jane pierce use -- loses her son in a tragic train accident. she spends much of her time in the white house writing heartbreaking notes to her son. orphaned at a young age, harriet lane lived with her uncle. secretary of state james buchanan and later becomes a hostess of the white house when he becomes president and the first to be called, first lady. jane pierce and terry at length this sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series, first ladies.

examining the public and private lives of the women who fill the position of first lady and their influence on the president he. for martha washington to michelle obama, sundays at 8:00 p.m. eastern on american history on c-span3. as a compliment, c-span's new book. first ladies presidential historians on the lives of iconic women. it is available as a hardcover or an e-book. during the civil war in 1863 the union army believed confederate guerrillas in kansas in the region were drying from missouri. in an attempt they imposed general order 11.

the kansas city library hosted the talk. >> my name is eli paul and the land and people of western missouri had suffered as much as any during the civil war. the 1865 edict known as order number 11 had depopulated several missouri counties, devastated homes and farms and left the physical and mental scars that took decades to heal. a local independent historian has authored two books on the subject of this burnt district.

caught between three flyers and the second and more recent senders and silence. both will be available for sale. it's resilient people and the metamorphosis that occurred with both and what one came back to after the civil war on the western border had and it. some of you may have heard me speak before and you know i have a tendency to wander around.

standing behind a podium where i have notes is foreign to me so bear with me if i get lost. several months ago, when eli and i scheduled the presentation because the civil war ended 150 years ago, the presentation was designed to pull together and end to the library celebration and revisit of the civil war history. what i tried to do this afternoon is provide some comments and some insights into what happened in western missouri at the end of the civil war. as eli mentioned, my focus is on families and communities that existed within the burnt district when the civil war again. so my expertise is not the

military it is not battles necessarily, it is families and communities in western missouri that were prosperous and thriving when the civil war began in 1861. i got started on this search because i wanted to find out what happened to all of the families that lived in the county when the civil war began. that scope is now out of control. i'm now trying to figure out what happened to all the families in the burnt district and find their history's and their stories. today, what i am going to do is try to bring some focus to what our area was light in the summer

of 1865 as the civil war drew to a close. i passed out a handout and a flyer earlier. on the upper side of the handout is a photograph of the burnt district monument in harrisonville, missouri. i had been asked to write a brochure about the history of the burnt district that vacationers could pick up at the monument when they visited. as i started to do research, i realized that i could not find a concise history of what had happened and jackson county, cat county, and bates county during the civil war. hopefully it is a start for future historians to dig even deeper into what happens, the tragedy of western missouri during the civil war.

of great importance to me when i began my research was what happened, and when did it happen. that is where the sender's in my presentation come from. what happened in the burnt district during those years that were covered by the civil war? equally as important, why is it that for those of us that grew up and were educated in western missouri, when we attended school, high school, and in some cases college and studied missouri history, order number 11 in the burnt district were not discussed. how is it that history disappeared? why is it that 150 years after the civil war, current

researchers like myself and academic historians are trying to reclaim that passed and documented. that is what the silence is about. the metamorphosis, other places in the united states reconstructed because of the devastation and damage in western missouri. the term reconstruction did not really work for me. when i looked at the city in 1870, the transformation that took place was more of a complete metamorphosis. i will talk about that also this afternoon. i want to take you back to 1865, may 1865. if you lived in kansas city and you took the local newspaper yesterday, on may the 16th, when you read your newspaper, you would have found out that the first trip from kansas city to lawrence on the union pacific eastern division railroad took

place. the train went 46 miles to lawrence. you also would have read on may 16, 1865 that in missouri the union army was executing bushwhackers. the week before, you would have read in the kansas city newspaper and article with the title "bring home our missouri soldiers. our borders are being ravaged by the bushwhackers. another article in the same

newspaper talked about the fact that there were rumors that bushwhackers were gathering in lafayette county for future attacks. on may 17, 1865, 1 hundred 50 years ago today, you would have read in the paper that jefferson davis was under strong guard. you would have read how they were constructing the trial of the assassins of abraham lincoln. you would have been reading about bushwhackers gathering in missouri and confederate troops returning home. you would have been reading about the voters. a new constitution was going to be enacted in the state of missouri. on may the 17th, 1865, there was not a firm and deep feeling and western missouri that the war was over. fighting elsewhere was fading, but here in river city, things were not as cut and dried. western missouri, the summer of

1865, you see the burnt district monument, if you go back to first-person accounts of what it looked like -- i want to bar your imagination for a few minutes. -- borrow your imagination for a few minutes to read a reverend wrote, -- minutes. a reverend wrote, for miles and miles we saw nothing but loan chimneys to mark the spots where a happy home stood only five years before. for many such consecrated spots, from one to three had gone forth to fall in deadly stride. on july the seventh, 1865, on the missouri side of the line, were once the country through its inherent wealth was dotted over with nice cottages and fine

farmhouses, where everything was happy and all was prosperous scarcely anything marked the ancient habitations of ancient man except the lone and blackened chimneys of former buildings. standing boldly out. nothing marks the former cultivation of the land except that here and there, the remains of old fences, dismal fields of weed, and frightful reptiles. so you ask, and we look back and we try to picture what western missouri looked like in the summer of 1865. consider the following, 2200 square miles of western missouri , more square miles and then are included in the state of delaware, were completely laid to waste. over 12 individual towns and villages had been obliterated and did not return. around 35 thousand civilian residents had been driven out of the burnt district. the majority of those by general order number 11. 2800 family farms, including

barnes and outbuildings, had been destroyed. 3000 miles of fencing had disappeared. all of that destruction began in 1861, and on the handout i have given you, some of the things that impacted the families and communities in that period. in 1861 and 1862, the kansas brigade and the kansas seventh cavalry camped in western missouri. much of the damage that was sustained to towns and villages happened in 1861 and 1862. the families that lived in the burnt district, in addition, the

jane to lane brigade and the kansas seventh cavalry also had to deal with local bushwhackers and j hawkers who crossed their farms, who took their food. for each team out of kansas city, independence, westport pleasant hill, and harrisonville visited western missouri farms for three and a half years. when they left those farms, they

took everything with them. food, forage, livestock. it was such an event for the life of samuel partin's, my great great great grandfather, the lead me to become somewhat passionate about researching the families in missouri's burnt district. in november 1862, the parsons farm was visited by a forage team. the team left with all their forage, their livestock, their

food. so as winter fell, the family had to fight through the winter of '62, '63 on their own will and their own gumption. the families that lived in western missouri lived in a war zone. many families during the civil war in other states and other communities did not live actually in a war zone, but the families that lived here experienced skirmishes on the road on a regular basis. battles on a regular basis were fought in the burnt district. assassinations and individual murders began in 1861 and continued all the way through 1865. and early into 1866, which makes it extremely difficult sometimes to put a date on the specific day when the civil war ended in

western missouri. it took quite a while to bring the violence to a halt. with order number 11, the depopulation of the burnt district began in earnest. within 15 days, approximately 30,000 civilians, union and confederate, were driven out of western missouri to parts unknown. as they left, homes, villages, farms were burned to the ground. on the left-hand side of the flyer there is a picture of martin rice. one of the things i try to do in this presentation was avoiding some of the more well-known personalities and well-known

names because it's more interesting to read first-hand accounts are at you may never have heard of martin rice before. he was the poet laureate of jackson county, cap county, and western missouri from probably 1862 1890. he wrote a book called "world rhymes." martin rice wrote a first-hand account of what he witnessed during order number 11 as thousands of civilians,

mostly men, women, and children, exited western missouri. on the back of the flyer is a reduced copy of this mural. and my copy is also reduced. the original is 14 feet long and 40 inches high. everybody in this mural was a living, breathing resident of the burnt district when order number 11 was implemented during their stories were collected as i conducted research. it's important for you to think about what it was like in august and early september of 1863 as these people exited western missouri. let me bar your imagination for a moment. you live in western missouri. you know what it is like when it has not rained for six weeks. all the ponds and all the streams have dried out. the lakes and ponds are more like sludge than water. the average temperature, the average daytime temperature during that exodus every day was between 90 and 100 degrees. when you look at that mural, you see smoke rising in the air. those are firms burning. families left their homes and in

many cases, their neighborhoods were set on fire as they walked out of their yards. there was no water. everybody impacted by order number 11 was considered a rebel. as they left western missouri, many communities would not provide them with food. in many cases, they could not buy food until they got to the other side of the state. you don't see people with water or food along the side of the road in that mural, passing out water and food. that did not happen. as these people left, in cass county, only a third of the prewar residence returned after the war. as they left missouri and they settled in other states or they settled in central missouri, they took the history of what had happened here out in their heads and their hearts. because they never came back

the history walked out with them the civil war ended, and what began was a period of intense activity in western missouri as people try to claim their lives and rebuild the area. in addition to that, a cloak of silence, heavy silence, fell over what it happen during the civil war. if you look at the reasons why that happened, it becomes easy to understand under the circumstances why silence continued through decades after

the civil war. it's very interesting to look at the population of the burnt district because it helped explain much of what happened. in 1860 -- i am an old-school schoolteacher. i can't just talk about it, i have to show it. if i throw numbers out quite often, the size of the numbers overpowers the story involved. look at a chart, right? in 1860, the burnt district had a population. free whites and salves together -- slaves together and 40,000. on september the 30th, 1863, a month after general order number 11 was issued, i estimate there were 6000 civilians left in the burnt district.

seven years later, in 1870, the population of the burnt district was 90,000. when you consider a third of the 40,000 never return, only 1/3 did not return, -- returned, 2/3 didn't, most of these 90,000 were people new to missouri. they had no prior experience personal experience, of the border war. -- war, of the civil war. as they moved into western missouri to begin anew, and someone were to ask them on the

street what happened here in 1863, they had no knowledge. only one in six of the residence in the burnt district in 1870 had any personal experience with what had happened here before the end of the civil war. what does that look like? it looks like this. there are 17,200 beans in this jar. that is a significant number because it is -- a represents

half of the citizens that left western missouri during the civil war. when you look at this jar and you see this dark colored bean those are the people that lived here that had personal experience with western missouri's civil war history. the white beans, the light beans represent new residents to western missouri that had no knowledge.

it's pretty easy to understand just the change in population had an impact. not so fast. something else happened the summer of 1865. it had a tremendous impact on silencing the history of western missouri. on july 4, 1865, the great constitution was enacted in the state of missouri. the drake constitution has been described by historians as

draconian. it was meant to punish. any resident in the state of missouri that had ever aided or abetted rebels against the united states government -- once again, i would like to turn to someone who actually lived during the period. what this meant was you had to take an oath. and the operative words in the oath were, have ever. you go to vote, you take the oath. it disenfranchised many citizens in the state of missouri. it meant that unless you took the oath, you could not be a minister in a congregation, you could not hold public office

you could not vote. here is how it was received by the later senator from the state of missouri. under the leadership of hamilton r gabel had disappeared, the jacobins under the leadership of charles d drake were in possession. the drake constitution had been enacted or it the most rheumatic, the most cruel, the most outrageous enactment ever known in a civilized country. no man could practice law, teach school, preach the gospel, act

as a trustee, hold any office of honor, trust, or profit, or vote in any election unless he swore he had ever sympathized with the cause of the confederacy or any person fighting for it. the father who had given a trig of water or a crust of bread to his son who belonged to the confederate forces was ostracized and put under the ban of law. blair came back and went to the polls dressed in his major

generals uniform and demanded the right to vote without taking the oath. it was denied. he immediately commenced suit against the election officials. so, if you were a dark colored bean and you had any prior knowledge or experience with western missouri civil war, the drake constitution helped to create silence. you did not know if something you could have said could have been held against you because you might have aided and abetted

the southern cause. for a least five years after the civil war and burnt district when people voted, they were sensitive to being disenfranchised. they kept -- they kept a list of people. it helped them post silence. the pictures on the handout are of great interest. on the left is andrew j nugent. things during that period were never as simple as we thought they were. andrew jean nugent was a slave owner. he was a constitutional unionist. he lived in the burnt district. during the civil war, he fought for the union, he lived in kansas city, and he represented jackson county when the drake constitution was drawn up early in 1865. andrew nugent signed the missouri ordinance that freed all the slaves in the state of missouri. on july 4, 1865, andrew nugent addressed here in kansas city all of the new friedman who were celebrating their first independence day as free citizens of the united states. while andrew nugent was living in western missouri, he was a friend of the gentleman in the right picture, the reverend major abner dean in jail. you are very familiar with a painting about order number 11 by george caleb and him --george caleb bingham. caleb also painted this picture

of major dean in jail, because abner dean refused to take the oath. he was put in jail in jackson county. abner dean and men like him with the courage to stand up for healing stood up for healing after the civil war. abner dean had been a captain in the union army. i think his story after the civil war, abner dean became a rallying point for people in western missouri because he wanted to heal. he wanted our communities to move on and move into the future.

the other thing that drove silence during this period in 1865 and beyond was what i call on the exhibit the commercial engine. before the civil war began kansas city, independence, saint joe, leavenworth, west point harrisonville, all of these towns were vying to drive growth , commercial growth, economic growth, west. when the civil war ended, this emphasis on growth and the future reenergized those 90,000 new people that we had. it also caused people's focus to move forward and let go of the past. it was a natural consequence. the metamorphosis of western missouri was really driven by what happened in kansas city. one of the reasons why the burnt

district fell by the wayside is because missouri had such a terrible reputation during the civil war that when you were trying to build a new city and build a new economy, who would want to come and live in the burnt district? if you use that term burnt district, not many people are going to come. this became a land of

opportunity. what happened after the civil war as those 90,000 people were moving into the area, a new culture was transplanted in the burnt district. before the civil war, much of the areas you saw on the burnt district was anchored in a southern culture. missouri had been a slaveholding state. many of those people had come from virginia and kentucky. after the war, the culture of western missouri became more northern. the people that came to kansas city represented many different nationalities in many different states, but the vast majority of those people came from places like iowa, illinois, indiana ohio, pennsylvania, new york

looking for opportunity. when they moved into the area, not only did they bring a northern focus culture with them, but they also brought a culture of energy, commercial growth, and let's get going. i also have on the chart what i call [indiscernible] in july of 1865, in my first book, the last chapter in that book is entitled "the first train." in july 1865, the first train pulled into pleasant hill, missouri. on that train were many returning southern veterans. in september of 1865, the first train pulled in from independence in to kansas city on the missouri union-pacific. during the next five years, a very significant thing happened here in kansas city. before the civil war and even during the civil war, there had

been considerable competition between cities in western missouri to grab the railroad. we want to be the hub. between 1865 and 1870, kansas city did become the hub. think of this. in 1860, the population of kansas city was 4400 citizens. in 1870, it was 32,000 citizens. many of those new people came to work on the railroad. in 1860, those 4400 people in kansas city or half the size of saint joe, almost half the size of leavenworth, kansas. slightly bigger than

independence. but by 1870, we grab the railroads. the picture on the right-hand side is an iconic picture. i thought it was appropriate because on july the third, 1869, the hannibal bridge was dedicated as it crossed from the north land where i live today over the missouri river into kansas city. with the completion of that bridge, kansas city's economic explosion began to be solidified. all the railroads that were then

built throughout the burnt district across kansas, across the united states. many of those railroads came through kansas city. the other thing that is important in terms of the metamorphosis is that the city itself literally, physically transformed. i bore my wife on a regular basis as we come across the ridge today and remind her that in 1869, when this bridge was completed, the missouri river bluffs were 120 feet high. and they are gone. because we removed them. we literally transformed the landscape. the west bottoms were transformed.

all of a sudden, by 1870 western missouri and the burnt district began to move into a new future. the past was left behind. when i started speaking today, i began in may of 1865. i would like to return to may of 1865. it will bring back some memories for you as recent as last night. because a week after, may the 17th, 1865, a tornado blew down much of the town. i would submit the tornado is a visible symbol of a challenge that was faced in 1860 -- 1865

we are faced with today. not all the challenges that remain are as visible. i believe one of the values in studying the history of the burnt district is to pull the lessons out of that period so we can learn from them and leverage them in our lives today. thank you. [applause] >> i'm very interested in the people who left the burnt district, the civilians. how many of those were people of color, since presumably there were many slaves in the area what happened to those people and did any of them come back

afterwards? tom: if you look at the burnt district and the slave population in each of the counties, when the civil war began, the county had 400. after the civil war, the african-american population was virtually zero. in cass county, there were 1000 slaves in 1860. after the civil war, i think there were about 450. as i studied their ages, many of those folks had actually been born outside of cass county or they had been born in missouri during the civil war. in jackson county, many of the friedman came and lived in kansas city. there was working kansas city. -- work in kansas city and they stayed in kansas city. i don't have a number in my head. i can't nail down the exact size of the population. during the civil war, many slaves in the counties i have studied were actually liberated

and they moved to kansas and then up through iowa. i the time the civil war ended many of those who had been here in 1860 were outside of the area. >> we mentioned the people who came here after the civil war, ohio, illinois. was it strictly the land was cheap, there was greater opportunity here? could you go into more detail? tom: the 90,000 people who came here in 1863 after order number 11 had been implemented. the radical union sent a man named minor tea graham back to illinois in ohio to recruit

people to come and live in western missouri. but the war was still going on. not many people came. after the civil war, once the railroads were anchored in the city, the city became a well-known beacon for people to work on the railroad and to work in the industry's that were coming up out of that. there was a huge irish population that came to kansas city after the civil war. the german population also increased. it was the work in kansas city but there was a tremendous volume of land that was available. the people that did not come back, a lot of those folks sold their land from illinois, from eastern missouri, from iowa. people from the burnt district literally ended up in all of the united states literally five years later. >> of the people who never

returned to the burnt district what about their property rights? did they ever receive some compensation for farms or their property? tom: the question is what happened to the land. the starting point for understanding the land is if you vacated western missouri during the civil war, you probably had not paid your property taxes. after the civil war, many of the folks who had left who had not paid their property taxes, their land went back to the county. other families that had not paid their property taxes were allowed to sell part of their palms to pay for back taxes. in addition, many families that moved to illinois or eastern missouri actually sold their

land during the civil war. knowing they were not going to come back. some of the land was requisition taken over by the counties for any veterans that had been accused of treason in the area. tremendous turnover in land for all of those reasons. >> i have a question about the 6000 that remained. how were they able to stay? was there bribery going on where they loyal to the union? one place in particular i know it little bit about, they are virtually untouched. he was a slaveholder. i'm curious to hear you talk about the 6000 that stayed. tom: the 6000 that stayed, how did that happen? after order number 11 was issued , in the beginning, right after order number 11, people thought the southern sympathizing

families had to leave. but the union families had to stay. that was clarified, because order number 11 said off. some people wanted to stay. in harrisonville, pleasant hill, independence, kansas city, and westport, loyalty committees were formed in those towns. what happened was the loyalty committees were composed of local unionists. if you wanted to stay in pleasant hill as an example, you would go in front of the loyalty

committee. and you would say, i have been loyal to the union and i want to stay. if the loyalty committee deemed you were a unionist, you could stay. otherwise you had to leave. in base county, after order number 11, there were no civilians in cass county there were about 725 at harrisonville and pleasant -- pleasant hill. it was possible to stay if you were a certified unionist during that time. >> i have two questions. one, a friend of mine observed or really asked what were the other general orders up to number 11. and then secondly, the second-largest city in missouri

during the civil war was oc a look, missouri. what happened to the other cities in the area in terms of increase or decrease like that? tom: in terms of population -- two questions. the first question i cannot answer. that was, what were the other orders that led up to order number 11. there were a couple orders before order number 11 that are important to this history. order number nine in order number 10. one of those orders define how the union authorities were to deal with southern families. the other order gave specific directions on how to deal with former slaves. i don't really have the time to go into detail. the numbering of the orders, they were all sequential. when the general came to kansas city in june of 1863, his first general order was number one. this was the 11th that he made. the other question had to do

with what happened to some of the other towns like o selah. o selah was destroyed september 26, 1861. osceola rebounded. pleasant gap was completely destroyed. it never returned. papen phil was completely destroyed in base county. butler was destroyed. it did return, and it is still the county seat. west point, missouri, the largest town on the missouri-kansas border, was completely destroyed in december of 1861, and it never returned.

a lot of those towns never returned. another reason is after the railroads came, it was like the interstates today. if you were on the interstate and you could get an exit, your town would do well. in those days, if you were on the railroad and you could get a depo, you did well. wherever the railroads went, the town's seem to thrive. if you missed the railroad, your town dried up. >> my question is why were this particular area of missouri selected for this punishment. the whole state of missouri was a slave state, was it not? why was this little strip particularly chosen for this punishment? tom: i think that this area --

that is one of the things i try to address in my book, is why here. why not in kentucky or southern ohio? or illinois? or iowa, northern missouri? part of the reason that it happened here, i think, and i will just rattle a few off these counties were prairie counties. missouri was a slave state. when kansas opened as a territory in 1854 and missourians started to vote in kansas, it is easy to get across that border.

when missourians voted in kansas in 1854, 18 55, they left their names at the polls. when the civil war started, in many instances, it wasn't necessarily the arbitrary discussion of the farm, but the targeted destruction of a farm. in 1854, in 1855, the angst between these counties and the anger -- and the kansas territory began. in 1856, a lot of men from these county led groups of went into kansas. -- men into kansas. during that period, people knew each other. they knew each other. they had lived next to some of these people. when the civil war started and

things got really ugly, it wasn't always in an anonymous situation. people on both sides had lift. they worked their way down the left. a lot of the damage and western missouri occurred in 1861 and 1862 and 1863. when quantrill went to lawrence, that was the spur, the trigger that allowed you link and the federal authorities to implement order number 11. you need to know that order number 11 was already being planned when quantrill went to lawrence. martin rice, the man on the flyer that i handed out, was on his way to meet with you link to argue against order number 11 when the raid happened at lawrence. a couple of things were well

known. it was well known that quantrill was going to go to lawrence, and it was well known that the federal authorities were planning an order like order number 11. >> back to the 6000 that stayed, was it part of order 11 requiring them to leave their homesteads and move into the shadow of military installations? tom: that's correct. there were military installations at harrisonville pleasant hill, independence, west work, and kansas city. in kansas city, if you think of brush creek, everything north of brush creek was excluded from order number 11. but what they wanted to do was empty the countryside. they wanted the unionists who stayed in the area to move into the military installation so they did not have people out in

the countryside who could either be targeted by the bushwhackers or could be aiding the bushwhackers. >> from the point of view of the union authorities, did order number 11 solve their problems? tom: i would say no. i don't base that on an opinion, that if you read what some of the officers who were involved in this wrote after the war, if it was to stem bushwhacking, it did not succeed. if it was to stand -- stem raids into kansas, he was effective. but if you know missouri history, once the burnt district was leveled, the bushwhackers moved east. in jackson county in 1864, it was a horrific year. it did not really solve the bushwhacking problem, i don't think. >> the devastation in the southern economy and the

opportunity here, can you tell me why there were not more southerners that came into this area after the war? tom: the number one reason would be the drake constitution. if they moved into this area they would not be citizens. a lot of the lawyers and doctors and white-collar workers who supported the south from missouri did not come back. i don't know why somebody would want to move someplace where they would have fewer rights than they would have had from their former home. >> i will do the last question. why the hard feelings now and western missouri? it makes it sound like the descendents of order number 11 really don't have anything they should be carrying on for so many decades. tom: that's a good question. my response to that is i think that because after the civil war, the research and the

history that did not document what had happened in western missouri. so the battles that happened inside the state were not documented. that is what they are trying to do now. >> let's thank tom again. [applause] >> "the civil war," airs every saturday. to watch more of our civil war programming anytime visit our

website. you are watching american history tv, all weekend, every weekend. >> always been considerable. they're different. he said that is made from the park of the trees that we pick from the top down. the only difference that i have found between the democratic leadership and the republican leadership was that one of them was skinning from the ankle up and the other from the ear down. [laughter] >> he was one of the great populists. that flip was one of the great examples of appealing to the masses with a good yarn.

he became demagogy with his own power and was consumed by that. >> he was a maverick. he gave just as much grief to his own pottery leadership -- party leadership as his opponents. if they were all mavericks nothing would get done. we were fortunate to some degree but the qe loans have been in the distinct majority. >> former house historians on the history of the house and senate, its leaders, characters and scandals. coming up next, from the university of virginia in charlottesville, a conference on the end of the civil war. in this