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COLUMBIA - We all know what the 2007 edition of the border war is all about, but how much Missouri history do you know?
Here's a brief history lesson. The border war started before the civil war, it was based on slavery. If you go back about 155 years ago to the Kansas-Missouri border, there was a real battle underway. Remember the term "Order Number 11?" The Union army said everyone living in four Missouri counties needed to move out. That order lead to an ugly fight that was captured on canvas by Missouri painter George Caleb Bingham. That slice of Missouri history is on display at the State Historical Society on the MU campus. Art Curator Joan Stack looked at the painting with KOMU News and explained what the painting means.
"At the center of the painting we see Kansas red leg about to draw his gun so there's this suggestion of violence," Stack explained. "Also this man on the ground has been shot. Now, again, during Order #11 there wasn't that much violence, but it did happen and Bingham wants to highlight that aspect of the order. He also reminds us that women and children were involved. We have two women in the center of the painting. We have this little boy who was apparently Bingham's own son served as the model for this. This boy who is grabbing the leg of his grandfather, hoping- they're actually trying to stop grandfather from upsetting the red leg and getting shot like the man below. Another interesting aspect is that he actually includes African Americans in the painting. We can presume that these probably were slaves, but they too were being displaced. And you see this woman here holding another woman who has perhaps fainted. These two men, the man and the little boy, fleeing in horror from the scene. And Bingham was one of the few people to represent African Americans during this time in paintings. Missouri was upset that Kansas was going to come in as a free state into the Union and wanted to convince the people of Kansas that maybe they ought to come in as a slave state. So they sent in Missourians to try to convince the Kansans but also to pretend to be Kansans and vote in their elections. Now the Kansans didn't like this, so they began to actually have skirmishes about this issue even before the Civil War. And of course it happened even after the Civil War. There were a lot of guerilla bands. The Bushwhackers in Missouri, the Jayhawkers in Kansas who were not officially affiliated with any army, but would come back and forth across the border raiding homes, burning people's houses."
Reported by: Jim Riek
Posted by: Jen Reeves
Published: Friday, November 23, 2007 at 1:47 PM
Last Updated: Sunday, November 25, 2007 at 11:59 PM |
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