GENERAL ORDERS,
HDQRS. DISTRICT OF THE BORDER,

Numbers 20.
Kansas City, Mo., November 20, 1863.

I. Loyal persons, formerly resident in that party of the district from which the inhabitants were required to remove by General Orders, Numbers 11, may obtain permits to return and safeguards for persons and property in the manner and on the terms herein prescribed.* Applications for such permits and safeguards will be made to the officer commanding at one of the following stations nearest the applicant's place of residence, to wit, Westport, Independence, Hickman Mills, Pleasant Hill, Harrisonville, Trading Post, and must be accompanied with satisfactory proof of the uniform loyal conduct and reputation of the applications. When the applicant is the head of a family, the permit or safeguard will name the applicant and the non-adult children of the family. Each adult of a family will make separate proofs and receive a separate permit and safeguard. The commanding officer of each of the stations named will keep a record of the names, ages, and places of residence of persons to whom such permits and safeguards are issued by him, and of the persons by whom their loyalty is shown, and also in like manner a record of persons to whom he refuses to issue such permits and safeguards. Transcripts of the record will be sent to these headquarters, from time to time, with the tri-monthly reports. Such permits and safeguards will be in the form hereinafter prescribed. When proof is made in any case to the satisfaction of the station commander, he will fill up carefully the blanks in such form, and sign the permit and safeguard, and forward the same to these headquarters for the approval of the general commanding. No such permit and safeguard will be valid without such approval indorsed upon it. Save in exceptional instances, such permits will not be given at present to personal owing no lands or crops or having no sufficient means of support in the district named, nor to persons living in the timber more than 3 miles distant from any station, nor to persons having near relatives or connections in the rebel service. Where is their judgment such exceptions should be made, commanders of stations will send to these headquarters, in writing, the reasons for such exception.

II. If any person in the military service of the United States shall knowingly and willfully commit any act of injury to the person of property of any resident holding such safeguard, he shall be arrested and sent here for trial by court-martial for the offense of forcing a safeguard, which is one of the gravest in the Articles of War. If any person not in the military service of the United States shall knowingly and will fully commit such act of injury, he shall be arrested and sent here for trial by military commission. When any person holding such safeguard or permit shall willfully violate any one of the conditions on which it is given, such person shall be arrested and sent here by the nearest station commander for trial and punishment. In case the person so offending is a woman and the head of a family, she shall be ordered out of the district by such commander, and, failing to go, will be sent here with her family for removal.

III. If any person or persons shall settle in the district named without such permission in writing being first regularly obtained, such persons or persons will be notified by the nearest station commander to leave the district, and, on failure to do so, will be arrested and sent here for removal.

IV. The requisite authority having been obtained, commanders of stations named above will cause all the men who are allowed to return to be organized, as far as practicable, in companies in the several neighborhoods.