TREACHERY AT MIDNIGHT

War is devastating. The Civil War in Cass County was hell on earth. On the shared border between Kansas and Missouri the sayings brother against brother, father against son and neighbor against neighbor must have certainly originated here. It was not only spoken--it was lived.From the Border War, which began five years BEFORE the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, to the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, fear was an everyday companion to the people who lived in this rural Missouri county.This is the story of one family who met each new day with the fear of being robbed, beaten or murdered. Even with Federal protection papers to prove him as a Union man, Robert Allison Brown, whose home was better-known as Wayside Rest where many a weary traveler was given a meal and a bed, was set upon nearly a dozen times. His family was terrorized, property stolen and buildings burned. Through the eyes of his fourteen-year-old daughter, Lizzie, you, too, can experience how Cass County became known as The Burnt District during those turbulent Civil War years.