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Martial Law

Martial Law
Martial Law
Martial Law

Martial Law

 American, 1811 - 1879
1872
Aquatint Engraving
21 1/2 x 31 1/8 in. (54.6 x 79.1 cm)
Union troops enforce General Order No. 11, which in August 1863 emptied the border counties of western Missouri after Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas; families plead as farms burn on the horizon. Engraved by John Sartain after Bingham's painting Order No. 11 and published by Bingham's own firm, Geo. C. Bingham & Co., in 1872.

Bingham, then Missouri state treasurer, opposed the order and used the picture against its author, General Thomas Ewing. The plate is dedicated "to the Friends of Civil Liberty." One version of the painting is in the Cincinnati Art Museum.

George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879)

George Caleb Bingham was born in Augusta County, Virginia, and grew up in Franklin and Arrow Rock, Missouri. Largely self-taught, he began as a portrait painter, with brief study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1838. Between about 1845 and 1860 he painted the river and political scenes that made him the defining painter of antebellum Missouri, among them Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, The County Election and Stump Speaking. He worked in Düsseldorf from 1856 to 1859. Bingham was also active in public life, serving in the Missouri legislature, as state treasurer during the Civil War and as adjutant general, and he became the first professor of art at the University of Missouri. He died in Kansas City in 1879.
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