Caught Between Three Fires

For 11 years, astride the Missouri-Kansas border, Cass County endured the vortex of our nationâ s most violent confl ict. Citizens struggled between three raging fi res, Secessionism, Unionism, and an undying Border War. Cass Countyâ s uncivil war, intimate, cruel, and total, suffered no man, woman or child to escape loss or injury â their individual stories weave historyâ s fabric. Violent circumstances forged leaders who shaped Missouriâ 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 timeâ s purposeful neglect.

Tom Rafi ner, a Jackson County, Missouri native, has Cass County family ties stretching back 160 years. Rafi ner's ancestors lived outside Harrisonville through the Border War and well into the Civil War. He has invested six years pursuing each Cass County family's history and stories. Research has taken him to the National Archives four times. Rafi ner's reputation as a talented and engaging oral historian, and storyteller, rests upon meticulous knowledge of Order No. 11. He holds a BA degree from the University of Missouri - Columbia and an MA from the University of Missouri at Kansas City.