Kansas City Region
General Order No. 11 emptied parts of Cass County
Understanding Cass County means knowing that a federal military order in 1863 forcibly depopulated much of it during the Civil War, a documented and consequential event that shaped settlement here.
Cass County sits right on the Missouri-Kansas border, which placed it in the middle of one of the Civil War’s most violent home fronts. In 1863, Union General Thomas Ewing Jr. issued General Order No. 11. The order affected four western Missouri counties, and Cass County was one of them. It forced people who lived more than one mile from a Union military post to leave their homes, which emptied wide stretches of the countryside. The order was a response to the guerrilla fighting along the border, and it uprooted thousands of rural families in a matter of days. This is documented military history, not folklore, and it is best told plainly and respectfully. If you want to learn more or confirm specifics like dates, the exact counties named, or population figures, the State Historical Society of Missouri and the National Park Service are good places to start, and your local county and historical society can point you to records closer to home.
References
Where this fits: this note belongs to Cass County. See every local note for the county on its page.