The response to Quantrill's Raid was swift and destructive

Missourian William Quantrill's 1863 attack on Lawrence is notorious for the ruthless massacre of more than 150 townspeople &mdash all murdered in cold blood for inhabiting Kansas' foremost settlement of abolitionists.

Less notorious is the immediate reaction of Union forces to the near-annihilation of Lawrence.

Union soldiers under Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing Jr. &mdash including many vengeful Kansans &mdash laid waste to several counties

in Missouri while executing a brutal decree of deportation known as "General Order No. 11."
Indeed, a 2,500-square-mile swath of the Show Me State was thereafter branded "the burnt district."

Today, a doctoral student in archaeology at the University of Kansas is unearthing the vanished history of General Order No. 11. Ann M. Raab, who grew up in Kansas City, Mo., is excavating home sites in Bates County, the region worst torn by General Order No. 11.

Her work to shed light on the Civil War hostility between Missouri and Kansas is the subject of a feature article in the March/April issue of Archaeology magazine.

"I'm trying to figure out the impact on the civilian population of this endemic warfare that was going on for almost a decade," said Raab. "With people just trying to live their life with this constant fighting, it would have an impact on their social structures, economic status and cultural traditions."

To determine where to dig, Raab looks to historical records and features remaining on the landscape &mdash like hand-dug, stone-lined wells. Then Raab tests an area with an auger and a probe to see where structures could be buried under the soil. Finding a Civil War-era home, she sets up a grid and starts excavating. According to Raab, the human cost of General Order No. 11 can be found not far beneath the topsoil.

"Every structure in two sites that we found had significant evidence of very intense burning," said the KU researcher. "The rock itself breaks and changes color in a specific way when it's heated to a certain point. We found burned wood, we found burned and melted glass and burned ceramics. So these places went down in a fire."

With a trowel and screen, Raab searches for information about life before, during and after General Order No. 11. In humdrum household artifacts like dishes and bottles, Raab has found evidence that the Union Army's evacuation decree forever altered life in the four Missouri counties: Bates, Cass, Jackson and Vernon.

"I'm finding a trend towards much more mundane items after the war," she said. "Before, it was fancily decorated serving ware, after the war it was a lot of plain white ware. People didn't have the same economic status. Even though it's the same family that I'm excavating, there's a definite decrease in their economic status after the war."

Today, the long shadow of General Order No. 11 still darkens parts of Missouri, according to Raab.

"There was a long-term impact on the counties," she said. "Particularly in Bates County, since it was so devastated. In Cass County and Jackson County, you still have the cities of Harrisonville, Kansas City and Independence. But in Bates, the economic center was West Point. It was completely burned down and never rebuilt. The county has never recovered from that &mdash it's still a rural county. The population in the county now is around 17,000, which is what it was right before the war."

Photos from the dig:

In addition, Raab sees lingering resentment over border violence in Kansas and Missouri today.

"As for the continued tensions between Kansas and Missouri &mdash both the states and the schools &mdash I definitely think that some of it is lingering from the Civil War. I can tell that with people that I talk to in Missouri, where I'm from. There's a holdover. It's not the same kinds of feelings &mdash it's been transferred to the universities and the sports arena. But it's definitely there."

But resilient bad will over Quantrill's raid and
General Order No. 11 also has sparked
appreciation for the region's history. Raab's interest in the Civil War era stems from her childhood and family history in Missouri's Clay County.

"I grew up hearing all of these stories about Quantrill and the Border Wars and Frank and Jesse James and the Younger brothers," Raab said. "There's even legend in my family that one of my relatives was married to Bill Gregg, who rode with Quantrill. But I try not to play that up very often when I'm here in Lawrence."

By Brendan M. Lynch