Actually it's the name of a 150-year-old painting by George Caleb Bingham. It depicts an 1863 order by Union General Thomas Ewing that evacuated four counties in Missouri, confiscating all property of the residents and burning all the farms. The order was in response to a raid by Quantrill's raiders on Lawrence, Kansas. Guess you would call Quantrill's Raiders the terrorists of the 1860s.
And like most knee jerk reactions to terrorism, the order went too far, punishing people who had nothing to do with the crime. Some of my son's ancestors, the Mockbee family, were among those run out of their home and forced to flee halfway across the state. The Mockbees weren't slaveholders. They weren't even Southern sympathizers. They just had the bad luck to settle in Missouri where the disagreement between Missouri and Kansas was the hottest.
Those four counties became a barren, burned-out graveyard dotted with crumbling chimneys where farm houses used to be. They remained deserted until well after the end of the war two years later. Bingham was a Union supporter but he painted this work to show the world that the Union had gone too far in Missouri.
I was back in my home state recently to do some genealogical research in the State Historical Society and was pleased to discover this painting on display there. It really brought to life a little bit of family history.
I love American history and did not know about this. Thank you for sharing. :)
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