Book excerpt: For 11 years, astride the Missouri-Kansas border, Cass County endured the vortex of our nation’s most violent confl ict. Citizens struggled between three raging fi res, Secessionism, Unionism, and an undying Border War. Cass County’s uncivil war, intimate, cruel, and total, suffered no man, woman or child to escape loss or injury – their individual stories weave history’s fabric. Violent circumstances forged leaders who shaped Missouri’s political and military history. Caught Between Three Fires, for the fi rst time, reconstructs a lost history, erased by total destruction, Order No. 11, and time’s purposeful neglect.