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Episode: 090 What Was the "Mormon War" of 1838?

Author: Scripture Central
Duration: 01:17:31

Episode Shownotes

The fall of 1838 marked the first time the Latter-day Saints engaged in organized retaliation against their enemies. The setting was Northern Missouri and the situation was what is referred to as the “Mormon War.” Here the Saints marched on some nearby settlements that were supporting and equipping their enemies

and conducted raids where they pillaged stores and torched buildings. Things only escalated from there and eventually culminated in the infamous “Extermination Order” of Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs, the Hawn’s Mill massacre, the imprisonment of Joseph Smith and other Church leaders in Liberty Jail, and the wholesale removal of Latter-day Saints from the state of Missouri. On this episode of Church History Matters, Casey and I walk through the history of this tumultuous time and think about what the conflict of 1838 might teach us about the justified and unjustified use of violence among Latter-day Saints—and its consequences. For show notes and transcript for this and other episodes go to https://doctrineandcovenantscentral.org/church-history-matters-podcast/

Full Transcript

00:00:07 Speaker_02
The fall of 1838 marked the first time the Latter-day Saints engaged in organized retaliation against their enemies. The setting was northern Missouri. and the situation was what is referred to as the Mormon War.

00:00:21 Speaker_02
Here the saints marched on some nearby settlements that were supporting and equipping their enemies, and conducted raids where they pillaged stores and torched buildings.

00:00:31 Speaker_02
Things only escalated from there, and eventually culminated in the infamous extermination order of Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs, the Hans Mill Massacre, the imprisonment of Joseph Smith and other church leaders in Liberty Jail,

00:00:43 Speaker_02
and the wholesale removal of Latter-day Saints from the state of Missouri in the winter of 1838-39.

00:00:50 Speaker_02
Today on Church History Matters, Casey and I walk through the history of this tumultuous time and discuss what the conflict of 1838 might teach us about the justified and unjustified use of violence among Latter-day Saints and its consequences when we choose to engage.

00:01:05 Speaker_02
I'm Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths. And today, Casey and I dive into our fourth episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history. Now let's get into it.

00:01:18 Speaker_00
Well, hi, Casey. Hi, Scott. How are you? Fantastic. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic. And man, it feels like I say this a lot, but I've been dying to talk about what we're going to talk about today. But that might be everything in church history.

00:01:35 Speaker_02
Like, yeah, this is a, I don't know. This is an intriguing series. It's kind of a downer. We're talking about peace and violence, but kind of emphasis on the violence it seems like so far.

00:01:48 Speaker_02
in the Latter-day Saint tradition, and it could seem like a downer, and some of the stories are downright sad, Casey, and we're going to talk about some of those today, but I think overall this is an important topic.

00:02:00 Speaker_02
Is that fair to say maybe it's not the most entertaining or even like uplifting, but it feels important.

00:02:05 Speaker_00
It's definitely important. And I'm even going to say that it can be uplifting, but it's tough.

00:02:12 Speaker_00
It's tough stuff to talk about, but we need to talk about it because like we mentioned in some of our introductory episodes, people like John Krakauer have kind of made the assertion that Latter-day Saints are violent and by extension that religion is violent and

00:02:28 Speaker_00
I don't think either one of us is gonna deny that there's been a lot of violence associated with religion, but to say that religion causes people to be violent is maybe, it's a gross oversimplification.

00:02:39 Speaker_02
Yeah, 100%.

00:02:40 Speaker_00
And to say that Latter-day Saints are violent, I think is a gross oversimplification too, that doesn't pay attention to a lot of the context about what's going on.

00:02:49 Speaker_02
Yeah, no, amen. I think from like a, historical, sociological perspective. I think it's fair to say that when there are differences between two groups, and those two groups are placed close to one another in proximity, sometimes that leads to conflict.

00:03:05 Speaker_02
That's just true of any two groups who have ideological or major cultural differences. That's going to happen, that this is a human phenomenon.

00:03:14 Speaker_02
We're here to look specifically at whether or not there are religious underpinnings that make it worse, or somehow inflame violence amongst adherents of religious groups, and particularly in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

00:03:28 Speaker_02
And so far, Casey, where are we at? What would you say? What's our conclusion through our first three episodes? Does religion itself add fuel to the fire of humans in close proximity who are different, leading to conflict?

00:03:40 Speaker_02
Or do you think it quells it to some degree, or is it neutral? What are your thoughts so far?

00:03:45 Speaker_00
Well, boy, you're asking questions that it would take a couple hours to answer, right? But I think in our study of church history so far, we've come across episodes where there's been violence, but it doesn't feel like it was justified.

00:03:57 Speaker_00
And I think a review of the history of the church will show that in most cases, not in every case, but in most cases, the saints haven't been seeking violence and they've tried to find peaceful solutions, but it's complicated, right?

00:04:09 Speaker_00
There's not a black and white answer here.

00:04:11 Speaker_00
We kind of ran into that when we talked about Zion's camp last week, where there's martial language in the scriptures, and anybody that reads the Bible will acknowledge that there's martial language and that there's some glorification of war.

00:04:26 Speaker_00
But I don't know where we'd be without the teachings in the scriptures either. We talk a lot about how religion has caused war. I mean, go read the Iliad, you know?

00:04:35 Speaker_00
It feels like the Bible, the teachings of Jesus Christ, have done a lot to quell violence to the point to where it feels like in a lot of the literature before that, we just didn't even question it.

00:04:47 Speaker_00
It was just a fact of life, and pillage and destruction were part of the human experience. And Jesus was the one that came along and introduced radical ideas like love your enemy. do good to them that curse you.

00:04:58 Speaker_00
And I just don't think it's fair to say religion causes war when we don't know how much it prevents war, too.

00:05:06 Speaker_02
No, I think that's wise. Yeah, and you've done a good job categorizing the different kinds of violence that Latter-day Saints have experienced or engaged in. Do you want to just review your categories?

00:05:18 Speaker_00
Yeah, let's go through that. So, I mean, as Latter-day Saints, and I'm an active practicing Latter-day Saint, we follow the Prince of Peace. a title we use for Christ all the time.

00:05:28 Speaker_00
And the teachings found in the Book of Mormon and the Bible and other Latter-day Revelations record that violence can be justified if it's defensive, if it's in defense of your family or your home or your faith.

00:05:42 Speaker_00
And in our three-tiered model, we're talking about a group of people, the Latter-day Saints, who have high ideals but don't always live up to them. So we came up with this model where we had three categories.

00:05:52 Speaker_00
So category one is where the saints are clear victims and don't make any strong attempts to resist the violence.

00:05:59 Speaker_02
And it's typically victims of religious bigotry, right?

00:06:02 Speaker_02
Again, it's humans that are in close proximity to each other that have differences, and sometimes we get singled out, and we're picked on and persecuted, and sometimes even violence is enacted against us because we are different from the status quo.

00:06:16 Speaker_00
Yeah. And I would say the people that carried out the violence, even in this category, one kind of would say they were justified, but it doesn't seem like it is.

00:06:24 Speaker_00
If the stuff we're putting in this category, we're talking about stuff like with Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were tarred and feathered at the John Johnson home or when the saints were forcibly expelled from their homes in Jackson County in 1833.

00:06:35 Speaker_00
I mean. Just when you go back and review the historical records, the saints may have provoked the Missourians, but the actions that the Missourians took against the saints were not justified. Right. And the saints were victims.

00:06:49 Speaker_00
So yeah, it's category one. Category two is when the saints actively engaged in an exchange of violence with their enemies.

00:06:56 Speaker_00
And this sometimes follows the philosophy of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, where this could be justified, but they're saying basically, we're not going to take it. We're going to fight back. Sometimes the violence is defensive in nature.

00:07:08 Speaker_00
Sometimes it was offensive in nature. We've mentioned that the topic we're talking about today, the 1838 so-called Mormon war in Missouri is an example of this. And today we're going to do a deep dive and analyze that. So.

00:07:22 Speaker_00
And then category three is when the Saints were active aggressors, when they're the ones that are carrying out violence. And there are examples of this, though they are thankfully rare in church history.

00:07:33 Speaker_00
But Latter-day Saints have demonstrated that they are susceptible to the same kind of fear and paranoia and bloodlust that has sometimes affected other people.

00:07:42 Speaker_00
Of course, the worst example of this is the Mount Meadows Massacre, which we're going to talk about in a couple episodes too. Yeah. So today, what we're going to do is analyze events that took place in the summer and fall of 1838.

00:07:53 Speaker_00
I mentioned this is called the Mormon Worm. We're just going to use that title because that's the title that academics use, that it's usually used in history.

00:08:01 Speaker_00
We know that we've been asked not to use the term Mormon, but this is just kind of the historical term for it. From a historical perspective, the Mormon Worm has been referred to for

00:08:12 Speaker_02
long time.

00:08:13 Speaker_00
Yeah. Yeah. And I'd say the reason why we've highlighted this, because Scott, we're not talking about every episode of violence in Latter-day Saint history.

00:08:20 Speaker_00
We just don't have enough time to talk about all that, and we're trying to do a focused exploration of the topic of violence in Latter-day Saint history.

00:08:27 Speaker_00
This one's significant because this is probably the first time where Latter-day Saints engage in organized resistance to their enemies and fight back. There's, you know, incidents here and there.

00:08:38 Speaker_00
Joseph Smith fought off his attackers at the John Johnson home. There was resistance in the 1833 persecutions, but this time the Saints go on the offensive.

00:08:46 Speaker_00
They attack some of the settlements of the people that are attacking them, and there's an active exchange between them and their foes. And like I mentioned, some of these acts were defensive and some of them were offensive.

00:08:58 Speaker_00
And that leads us all to the burning question of today's episode, which is, What does the conflict of 1838 teach us about the justified and unjustified use of violence in defense of the Saints?

00:09:22 Speaker_02
Let me just do a quick recap of our last episode. In Missouri, in 1833, Latter-day Saints were living in Jackson County and the surrounding areas, and they were forcibly removed from their homes.

00:09:34 Speaker_02
They were left as refugees up in Clay County, Missouri, where they lingered in kind of limbo, not knowing if they would ever receive their lands back. But following the commandment of the Lord given in Doctrine and Covenants 101 and 103,

00:09:48 Speaker_02
Joseph Smith led a group called Zion's Camp, or the Army of Israel, I think is how they originally referred to themselves, to Missouri in the hopes of bringing relief to the Saints there and possibly helping them to regain the lands that they had lost, to be something of a standing army to protect them once the governor of Missouri helped escort them back into Jackson County.

00:10:09 Speaker_02
So Zion's camp marches hundreds of miles, but stops just short of Jackson County.

00:10:14 Speaker_02
They at that point were threatened, but as we told that cool story in a miraculous turn of events, a severe storm arose that stopped the impending mob attacks from happening.

00:10:23 Speaker_02
And in the wake of these events, many members of Zion's camp wanted to fight the Missourians that were ready to go and to go get their lands back.

00:10:30 Speaker_02
And around this time, this is when a Doctrine and Covenants 105 was received in which the Lord orders Zion's camp to return home. And it gives them direct commands about how to regain Zion.

00:10:42 Speaker_02
Because the governor at the time had seen the bloodbath, the writing on the wall of what was about to happen, and he had actually reneged on his agreement to escort the saints back to Jackson County with his own state militia.

00:10:54 Speaker_02
And so now it was only Zion's camp. And so the Lord says, no, we're not doing this. But let's talk about how to regain Zion.

00:11:04 Speaker_02
The Revelation does speak, section 105 does speak of raising a large army, but it also suggests that it's not going to be used as a violent force. In fact, section 105 ends on the most peaceful note possible.

00:11:17 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:11:18 Speaker_02
It reads like this. It says, this is verse 38 through 40. And again, I say unto you, sue for peace. not only to the people that have smitten you, but also to all people.

00:11:28 Speaker_02
And lift up an ensign of peace and make a proclamation of peace unto the ends of the earth. And make proposals for peace unto those who have smitten you according to the voice of the Spirit which is in you.

00:11:38 Speaker_02
And all things shall work together for your good." So that's where we ended last time, was the Lord saying, disband, go home, sue for peace.

00:11:50 Speaker_02
There may be a day when another army is raised, but he never talks about them going on the offense, only to maintain protection and defense in some way.

00:11:59 Speaker_02
He doesn't really articulate it, but then he just lands it with this beautiful proclamation of peace to everybody.

00:12:06 Speaker_02
When we have groups, Casey, that are different from each other, and one of those main differences is religion, and one of those religious groups is Latter-day Saints, in the midst of those differences that often end in conflict at some point, the Lord gives clear instruction here.

00:12:20 Speaker_02
Your default position is peace. Sue for peace. Pray for peace. Make proposals for peace. Do everything you can for peace.

00:12:29 Speaker_02
So that's where we left off last time, that's where we find ourselves in the latest revelations of the Lord concerning this, as of, what year are we, 1833? Yeah, 1834 is when section 105 is received, summer of 1834.

00:12:43 Speaker_00
Those are the last instructions given in Missouri.

00:12:46 Speaker_00
And then boy, the saints enter into a period where a lot of good things happen, like the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, the appearance of the Savior in the Kirtland Temple, but also tension in Missouri.

00:12:57 Speaker_00
And so we're going to flash forward from that revelation to 1838. And let me kind of set the scene here. Yeah. In the spring of 1838, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon relocate to the Latter-day Saint settlements in Northwest Missouri.

00:13:13 Speaker_00
In the wake of the conflicts in Jackson County, the Saints spend several years as refugees in Clay County, where they do experience some persecution. But eventually, the Missouri legislature, and let's give them a little credit here, the Missouri

00:13:25 Speaker_00
legislature appoints Caldwell County, which is this newly created county. They carved it out of a larger county and they say specifically, this is where Latter-day Saints can settle.

00:13:34 Speaker_02
Which is kind of cool, right? The government said, we're creating a county just for you guys.

00:13:39 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:13:39 Speaker_02
So go to Caldwell County, stay in Caldwell County.

00:13:43 Speaker_00
You can't have your land back, but here's some more land you can have, which I mean, it's literally in the shape of a box.

00:13:50 Speaker_02
And in some ways it was stay in your box. Like here's your box, this County.

00:13:54 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:13:54 Speaker_02
Stay here. Yeah.

00:13:56 Speaker_00
Yeah. So most of the saints in Missouri, and again, there's more latter day saints of Missouri than Kirtland and Ohio. They relocate to Caldwell County where they start building a new headquarters, the city called far West.

00:14:08 Speaker_00
Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon are relocating. They're just the vanguard of a large migration of saints who were moving from Ohio to Missouri. This is because of the severe apostasy that happens in Kirtland. It forces them to abandon their homes there.

00:14:22 Speaker_00
This is when the Kirtland Temple is left behind, which is a tragedy. But that's part of the scene is there's a lot of Latter-day Saints moving into the area because of what happened in Kirtland in a very short period of time.

00:14:35 Speaker_00
And that appears to be one of the things that kind of upset the Missourians and led to physical conflict.

00:14:42 Speaker_00
So Joseph Smith is going to get there early in the spring of 1838 and conflict is going to start up in August and then get really severe during the fall of 1838.

00:14:53 Speaker_00
Like I mentioned, the Kirtland Saints are entering into a tinderbox and they don't even know it.

00:14:57 Speaker_00
For instance, in July, 1838, Parley P. Pratt, who's in Missouri writes, it was a common boast that as soon as we had completed our extensive improvements and made a plentiful crop, they would drive us from the state of Missouri and once more enrich themselves with the spoils.

00:15:14 Speaker_00
So the Saints are already eyeing their neighbors with suspicion. Their neighbors are kind of looking at them.

00:15:20 Speaker_00
And it appears that a lot of the roots of this 1838 conflict are linked to this rapidly increasing Latter-day Saint population that will make them a force politically.

00:15:31 Speaker_00
So the Missourians, just like they did in 1833, are worried that the Saints have different values than them, that there's going to be more of them, and that under the American political system, they're going to be outnumbered.

00:15:43 Speaker_00
Therefore, they can be outvoted. Therefore, they'll be dominated. At the same time, too, there's also internal conflict happening among the saints.

00:15:50 Speaker_00
So, after what happens in Kirtland, there's sort of this desire to clean house and remove members who had not upheld the leadership of the church.

00:15:58 Speaker_00
And you might have noticed in a lot of our podcasts when we start talking about former Stalwart members like the Three Witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, they're excommunicated during this time.

00:16:10 Speaker_00
In the spring of 1838, there's kind of this movement to, all right, let's move on. Let's get rid of these people who aren't supporting the church.

00:16:18 Speaker_00
Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer are the two obvious ones, but other leaders like Apostles, Lyman Johnson, William McClellan, and a number of prominent former leaders are excommunicated from the church.

00:16:29 Speaker_00
And the conflict is set up because some of these, like William McClellan, actually leave church headquarters at Far West and go other places. But others like Oliver Cowdery stay in Far West.

00:16:39 Speaker_00
there is a feeling among the faithful members of the church that they should get out of here, and that leads to the next sort of spark, which is the Salt Sermon, as it's become known.

00:16:50 Speaker_02
The famous, or infamous, Salt Sermon of Sidney Rigdon. Tell us about that.

00:16:55 Speaker_00
Yeah, okay, okay. So the 4th of July, 1838, there's a big procession conducted in Far West that leads them to the site where the temple is going to be built. And on that day, Sidney Rigdon gives what's known as the Salt Sermon.

00:17:09 Speaker_00
And it's called the Salt Sermon because Rigdon's quoting from the Sermon on the Mount about salt being trodden underfoot, which is also mentioned in section 101 of the Doctrine and Covenants, so he's not completely off base here.

00:17:19 Speaker_00
But Rigdon sort of compared the apostates that were still in Far West that was saying they were salt, which was good for nothing, but to be trodden underfoot.

00:17:29 Speaker_02
They had lost their savor.

00:17:30 Speaker_00
They lost their savor, therefore they're good for nothing, but to be trodden underfoot, and that's violent language.

00:17:37 Speaker_02
Yeah, underfoot, but that's not where he leaves it. He makes it explicitly violent, doesn't he?

00:17:42 Speaker_00
Yeah, in fact, first of all, the whole salt explanation, a lot of people take to be a threat against the apostates, but then Rigdon just flat out makes an open threat to anybody that messes with them.

00:17:54 Speaker_00
So, this is one published version of the salt sermon, and again, we don't have great records of it, but it reads as follows.

00:18:00 Speaker_00
Rigdon apparently said, we take God and all his holy angels to witness this day that we weren't all men in the name of Jesus Christ to come on us no more forever. For from this hour we will bear it no more.

00:18:14 Speaker_00
Our rights shall no more be trampled upon with impunity. The man or the set of men who attempts it does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob that comes on us to disturb us, it shall be between us and them a war of extermination.

00:18:31 Speaker_00
For we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us. For we will carry the seat of war to their own houses and to their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.

00:18:43 Speaker_00
Remember then, all men." I'm going to call that violent rhetoric, Casey. You think?

00:18:49 Speaker_02
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. That registers on my, my violent rhetoric. Amateur as like pretty high. Yeah. Let me, what is this? We will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled or else they will have to exterminate us. I mean, yeah. Oh, Sydney.

00:19:05 Speaker_02
Oh, Sydney.

00:19:07 Speaker_00
The thing that kills me here is the word extermination gets thrown around a lot in the 1838 conflict because. Governor Boggs issues the infamous extermination order, which, again, is awful on its own terms. And this isn't an extermination order.

00:19:22 Speaker_00
It's a threat, basically. But the first person to use the word extermination is Sidney Rigdon. It's a church leader.

00:19:29 Speaker_02
Do you think Governor Boggs knew about this sermon? Because I know it was published in a pamphlet. Do you think he's riffing off of this sermon in his extermination order subsequently?

00:19:40 Speaker_00
I don't know. I've had a lot of conversations with Alex Baugh, who's kind of the church's Missouri history expert.

00:19:46 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:19:47 Speaker_00
He tries to soften extermination by saying it doesn't necessarily mean what we use it today for today. This sounds like genocidal language, right?

00:19:56 Speaker_00
But he notes that extermination in dictionaries from the time could also mean expulsion, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're going to kill everybody though brickton speech.

00:20:06 Speaker_02
He says it shall be between us and them a war of extermination comma or we will follow them to the last drop of their blood is spilled. Yeah, okay. Or else they'll have to exterminate us, geez. And I love and respect Alex Boss.

00:20:18 Speaker_02
I would love to hear his additional thoughts on that.

00:20:20 Speaker_00
Well, I mean, he's just quoting from dictionaries from the time, basically, that do allow you that little wiggle room. But this speech is, you know, an open kind of, hey, we're not going to take it anymore. If anybody comes against us, we will fight.

00:20:33 Speaker_00
And that does set the tone for the 1838 conflict.

00:20:37 Speaker_02
So that's Sidney Rigdon, but what did Joseph Smith say about that? Does he endorse this? Does he push back? What's Joseph's response to the salt sermon?

00:20:45 Speaker_00
The record showed that Joseph Smith gave a short address after. We don't know exactly what he said, but in his journal, it seems like he's okay with this.

00:20:52 Speaker_00
For instance, his journal from the day says, this day was spent celebrating the 4th of July in commemoration of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

00:21:00 Speaker_00
and also to make our declaration of independence from all mobs and persecutions which have been inflicted upon us time after time until we could bear it no longer, being driven by ruthless mobs and enemies of the truth.

00:21:13 Speaker_00
From our homes, our property confiscated, our lives exposed, are all jeopardized by such conduct.

00:21:20 Speaker_00
We therefore met on this day in far west Missouri to make our declaration of independence and to lay the cornerstones of the house of the Lord agreeably to the commandment the Lord had given to us.

00:21:30 Speaker_00
Then he goes on to say, the order of the day was most splendid and beautiful. Several thousands of spectators were present to witness the scene.

00:21:35 Speaker_00
The address was delivered on the public square under the hoisted flag representing liberty and independence.

00:21:40 Speaker_00
So it seems like while Joseph Smith wasn't, he didn't give the most inflammatory rhetoric from the time, it also appears that he didn't disapprove of what Sidney said, that they felt like at this time they'd been pushed out of place after place after place, Jackson County.

00:21:55 Speaker_00
They were just fresh from being forced from Kirtland because of threats of intimidation and violence, and it seems like they'd had it.

00:22:02 Speaker_00
In fact, it sounds like the mentality in the summer of 1838 was that the saints were just tired of being pushed around and would fight back against any attempts to take their lands.

00:22:11 Speaker_00
And because of this, some of the saints actually begin to organize into vigilante groups designed to threaten or intimidate those who they saw as enemies of the church.

00:22:20 Speaker_00
So, that leads us to one of the more colorful groups in church history, the Danites. Alright, so we mentioned Danites. There's a lot to unpack here. Scott, tell us who the Danites are.

00:22:45 Speaker_02
The Danites, man, this is a group that you hear of in whispers in... Bad TV movies sometimes. Bad TV movies, yeah. But this group is probably the most infamous of the groups that were organized during this time.

00:23:02 Speaker_02
And they go by several names, but the name most people know them by is the Danites. My personal favorite is the Society of the Daughter of Zion. one of the titles of this vigilante group.

00:23:15 Speaker_02
Now, you can actually look up on the church's gospel library, you can look up under church history topics, you can look up Danites. And let me just read a little bit from the Joseph Smith Papers Scholar's synthesis on the Danites.

00:23:28 Speaker_02
I think this is really helpful. So again, this is right in your gospel library.

00:23:32 Speaker_02
It says this, quote, in 1838, Joseph Smith and other church members fled from mobs in Ohio and moved to Missouri, where Latter-day Saints had already established settlements.

00:23:41 Speaker_02
Joseph Smith believed that opposition from church dissidents and other antagonists had weakened and ultimately destroyed their community in Kirtland, Ohio.

00:23:49 Speaker_02
By the summer of 1838, church leaders saw the rise of similar threats to their community in Missouri.

00:23:55 Speaker_02
At the Latter-day Saint settlement of Far West, some Latter-day Saints organized a group known as the Daughters of Zion, or the Danites, whose objective was to defend the community against dissident and excommunicated Latter-day Saints, as well as other Missourians.

00:24:11 Speaker_02
I just have to pause. Daughters of Zion just doesn't sound very intimidating.

00:24:15 Speaker_00
let me help you with that a little bit, because it is more intimidating than it sounds to a person in the 21st century.

00:24:21 Speaker_02
So, yeah. And the 21st century, it just doesn't fall as like this group you should fear, right?

00:24:26 Speaker_00
Yeah. So, this is also from the Joseph Smith Papers site, but apparently the name was taken from a passage in the Book of Micah in the Old Testament, which reads as follows, Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion, for I will make thy horn iron,

00:24:41 Speaker_00
And I will make thy hooves brass and thou shall beat in pieces many people and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth. Okay.

00:24:54 Speaker_00
So that's a little bit more threatening and apparently the name Danite, there's several different explanations that come from it, but the most common one is that the Danites were derived from the Israelite tribe of Dan.

00:25:06 Speaker_00
which, you know, Samson's a Danite and things like that. So it's very biblical here, and even the name Daughter of Zion is more threatening than initially it sounds to us.

00:25:16 Speaker_02
Sounds like initially people that are coming to your door selling cookies is what Daughters of Zion initially sounds like.

00:25:24 Speaker_00
Yeah, it sounds like it.

00:25:24 Speaker_02
But when you go to the Book of Micah, that changes the tone significantly.

00:25:28 Speaker_00
Yeah. Be it in peace as many people is one of the more memorable biblical passages associated with the Latter-day Saints.

00:25:35 Speaker_02
We could call that violent biblical rhetoric. So let me continue quoting from this Church History Topics article. It says, Danites intimidated church dissenters and other Missourians. For instance, they warned some dissenters to leave Caldwell County.

00:25:50 Speaker_02
During the fall of 1838, as tensions escalated during what is now known as the Mormon-Missouri War, the Danites were apparently absorbed into militias largely composed of Latter-day Saints.

00:26:01 Speaker_02
These militias clashed with other Missouri opponents, leading to a few fatalities on both sides.

00:26:07 Speaker_02
In addition, Latter-day Saint vigilantes, including many Danites, raided two towns believed to be centers of antagonism toward the church, burning homes and stealing goods. We're gonna talk more about that in a few moments.

00:26:22 Speaker_02
While vigilantes who opposed the church targeted and sometimes killed noncombatant Latter-day Saints, Danites primarily confiscated or destroyed property they feared could be used by their opponents.

00:26:34 Speaker_02
So, no records of Danites killing people in the same way that our enemies were killing us. They continue, Historians generally concur that Joseph Smith approved of the Danites,

00:26:46 Speaker_02
but that he probably was not briefed on all their plans and likely did not sanction the full range of their activities.

00:26:53 Speaker_02
The Danites existed for only five months, from June through October 1838, and were only ever active in two counties in northwestern Missouri.

00:27:02 Speaker_02
Though the existence of the Danites was short-lived, it resulted in a long-standing and much-embellished myth about a secret society of Latter-day Saint vigilantes." Yeah. It has led to a lot of myth and whispers about secret society of vigilantes.

00:27:19 Speaker_02
So, but that's it. That's as far as we know, historically, like it was during this really confined period of time during these troubles and they were confined to the Caldwell and Davies counties and that's it. So.

00:27:31 Speaker_00
Yeah. I should know here that a lot of our information about Danites has to be filtered through a guy named Samson Averd. who was apparently one of the founders, and was later excommunicated from the church, never comes back.

00:27:44 Speaker_00
The other person that a lot of information comes from on the Danites is John D. Lee, who's involved later on in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and it's from a book that's supposed to be an expose he wrote after he was excommunicated from the church, but that kind of had the fingerprints of his lawyer heavily on it.

00:28:02 Speaker_00
The article I think here is really fair in kind of establishing, here's what we know. There's a lot that we don't know.

00:28:08 Speaker_00
And if we're being honest, there's a lot we don't know, but it does appear that the stories of Danites, which we're sort of like a whole sub genre of literature.

00:28:16 Speaker_00
It appears in the 19th century are really overblown because they only operate during that summer and fall of 1838 and only in that small area of Missouri. And so does the church still have Danites today? No, not really. No.

00:28:31 Speaker_02
No Danites. Much embellished myth. That's how we can talk about anything that really comes after that time period of fall of 1838 is in that zone of or in that realm of myth.

00:28:46 Speaker_02
And so as you hear stories, if you hear stories, just know kind of how to categorize them. That's helpful for me.

00:28:52 Speaker_00
Okay.

00:28:52 Speaker_02
So then what happens next, Casey?

00:28:54 Speaker_00
So the other thing that was really increasing tension between the Saints and their neighbors was that a lot of the Missourians believe the Saints should only stay in Caldwell County.

00:29:04 Speaker_02
Stay in your box. Stay in your box.

00:29:06 Speaker_00
Yeah. It was almost treated like the way a Native American reservation was treated later on. Like, you guys stay there. That's your land. That's where you belong. Yeah.

00:29:14 Speaker_00
But with all the refugees from Kirtland arriving in the area, Joseph Smith and others start looking for other places to settle.

00:29:20 Speaker_00
Specifically, they're looking at places like Davies County, which is just to the north, Carroll County, which is another county in the area. But a lot of the conflict centers around their decision to settle at a place called Spring Hill.

00:29:32 Speaker_00
Today, it's known as Adam-on-Diomond because Joseph Smith receives a revelation. This is Doctrine and Covenants 116 that identifies Spring Hill

00:29:42 Speaker_00
as Adam-ondi-Amon and then invest it with kind of this millennial expectation that it's going to be the place where the Ancient of Days will visit his people.

00:29:51 Speaker_00
So, this leads to the first violent conflict between the Saints and the settlers in Missouri.

00:29:57 Speaker_00
So, this anti-Mormon sentiment, this idea the Saints are crossing the boundaries, and then Sidney Rigdon's speech really doesn't help, leads to a brawl over block voting in the primary election at Gallatin.

00:30:08 Speaker_00
So, a lot of church members come down from Gallatin and they are going to the city, because Gallatin's the county seat, still is, to vote.

00:30:20 Speaker_02
Get this straight, this is the county that the Missouri settlers don't want the Latter-day Saints in, and here the Latter-day Saints come to vote in Davies County. And so, yeah, this is already rife with potential conflict, okay?

00:30:36 Speaker_00
Yeah, so they're coming down to vote, and apparently on the day that they're going to vote, a lot of Missourians are there, some of them have been drinking.

00:30:45 Speaker_00
We're going to rely on the account of a Latter-day Saint named John Butler, who says, William Penniston, one of the candidates, stood upon the head of a whiskey barrel and made a very inflammatory speech against the Saints, stating that he had it a company to order the Mormons off their farms and possessions, stating at the same time, he did not consider the Mormons had any more right to vote than the

00:31:06 Speaker_00
Swear word here, starts with a D, ends with a D, and then he uses an offensive racial term that starts with an N. When he was through, he called on all hands to drink, which they did, for whiskey passed free and they drank as freely.

00:31:19 Speaker_00
And I at this time retired a little back from the crowd, rather behind the grocery nearby where I heard them voting. I heard the words, and again, swear word here, G, D. them. Kill him. G. D. them."

00:31:32 Speaker_00
This candidate who thinks he's going to lose because the Latter-day Saints tend to vote in a block starts causing problems.

00:31:39 Speaker_02
So he's the one standing up on the whiskey barrel trying to whip people into a frenzy.

00:31:44 Speaker_00
Yeah, and he's using offensive language, and then a guy named Richard Weldon apparently walks up to a little Mormon preacher, this is the way the story is told, and starts to shove him and beat him, and then it turns into

00:31:58 Speaker_00
A riot sort of, so we're going to go off John Butler's account here and Scott, you and I talked about this. We don't know how to edit this cause it's just so objectively awesome. It's objectively awesome.

00:32:09 Speaker_00
So he says, I went to where the Afray was and saw that they had attacked the brethren with sticks, clapboards, and anything they could use to fight with. They were all in a must together. Every one of the Missourians trying to get a lick at a Mormon.

00:32:22 Speaker_00
It made me feel indignant to see from four to a dozen robbers on a man, and all damning him and gee damning the Mormon. I turned around and ran a few steps to get a stick, and I soon found one suitable, though rather large.

00:32:35 Speaker_00
It was the piece of the heart of an oak, which I thought I could handle with ease and convenience. Returning to the crowd, many thoughts ran through my mind.

00:32:44 Speaker_00
First, I remember that I had never in my life struck a man in anger, had always lived in peace with all men, and the stick I had to fight with was so large and heavy that I could sink it into every man's head that I might chance to strike.

00:32:58 Speaker_00
I did not want to kill anyone, but merely to stop the afray and went in with the determination to rescue my brethren from such miserable curse at all hazards, thinking when hefting my stick that I must temper my lick just so as not to kill.

00:33:11 Speaker_00
When I got in reach of them, I commenced to call out for peace and at the same time making my stick move to my utter astonishment, tapping them as I thought light, but they fell as dead men, their heads often striking the ground first.

00:33:24 Speaker_00
I took great care to strike none except those who were fighting the brethren.

00:33:28 Speaker_00
When I first commenced, there were some six or eight and an old Mr. Durfee, and a few steps further some ten or a dozen men on Brother Olmsted and Brother Nilsen, but they were so thick around them that they could not do execution to advantage.

00:33:41 Speaker_00
I continued to knock down every man I could reach that was lifting a stick against the Brethren.

00:33:46 Speaker_00
After getting through and seeing the Brethren on their feet, I looked and saw some of the men lying on the ground as though they were dead, some with their friends holding them up, and some standing leaning against a little grocery.

00:33:55 Speaker_00
While gazing on the scene, brother Riley Stewart had in his hand, what the backwoodsman calls a knee, to place between weight poles and log cabins a piece of lumber about two and a half feet long, small at one end, and struck Dick Welding, an overhanded blow on his head, cutting the side of his head three or four inches in length, the skin pulling down.

00:34:12 Speaker_00
It looked as if he was certainly killed. I told Stuart he'd better leave for he had killed that man.

00:34:18 Speaker_00
He then started to run and got off some 20 or 25 paces when some 10 or a dozen men took after him, throwing stones and sticks at him and anything they could get swearing they would kill him.

00:34:28 Speaker_00
I saw that they could overpower him and called for him to come back, for we could do better business when together. And he took the little circuitous route to keep from meeting those pursuing him.

00:34:38 Speaker_00
At the crisis, one of the mob drew a glittering dirk, the blade some six inches long, waving it in the air and at the same time swearing it should drink Stuart's heart's blood. He started to meet Stuart as he was returning back to the crowd.

00:34:51 Speaker_00
As he was several steps ahead of me, I sprang with all power that was in me to overtake him.

00:34:55 Speaker_00
Before he met Stuart, just as he and Stuart met, he made a blow at his neck or breast, but as Stuart was passing in a run, his dirt passed over his left shoulder close to his neck and stuck in his right shoulder blade and bent it to the point of round as much as an inch.

00:35:09 Speaker_00
Just as he made his lick I reached forward as far as I could and hit him on the side of the head and fetched him helpless on the ground and at the same instant received a blow from one behind me with the butt end of a loaded horse whip which took me right between the shoulders.

00:35:23 Speaker_00
I felt the jar only in my breast and had I not been stooping forward as I was at the time I made my blow he would have taken me to the head no doubt and perhaps fetched me down.

00:35:31 Speaker_00
While Stuart was running off James Welding, Dick's brother, came along and saw his brother lying in his gore. He bawled and swore that they had killed Dick.

00:35:38 Speaker_00
He stooped down and picked up a stone swearing he would kill every Mormon in Davies County before Saturday night.

00:35:43 Speaker_00
Just as the word came out of his mouth, Washington Voris, standing near him, hit him square in the mouth with a stone that would weigh near two pounds, I think, and straightened him out of the ground.

00:35:51 Speaker_00
He soon gathered up as he rose with his mouth badly cut and bleeding, put his hand on his face, and began to cry, saying that he never saw people hit as hard as the Mormons.

00:36:00 Speaker_00
They had killed dick and mashed his mouth to who who this is all in the original doc so good, and he ran off bellowing into the brush. I will mention another occurrence which took place.

00:36:10 Speaker_00
Brother Olmsted, previous to the effray, had purchased half a dozen earthen bowls and as many teacups and saucers, which he tied up with the new cotton handkerchief and swung to his wrist.

00:36:19 Speaker_00
One of the mobs struck him, and when he raised his arm, the blow striking the bowls and saucers and broke them.

00:36:24 Speaker_00
He then commenced using them over their heads, and when the effray was over, I saw him empty up his broken earthenware on the ground in pieces, not larger than a dollar, and his handkerchief looked like it had been chewed by a cow.

00:36:36 Speaker_00
I have thought ever since that the time they had fun to pick the pieces of earthenware from their heads, for they were pretty well filled, the whole scene was soon over.

00:36:43 Speaker_00
I believe there were as many as thirty men with bloody heads, and some of them badly hurt. I believe that I knocked down as many as six or eight myself. I never struck a man the second time."

00:36:53 Speaker_00
He ends his account by saying, "...and the Lord did strengthen my body far beyond the common strength of man, so much so that the enemy could not stand before me. It was the power of God who was with me to my own astonishment."

00:37:05 Speaker_02
Yikes. Okay, yikes. So that's the beginning of physical violence that's going to now build to become the Mormon Missouri War, right?

00:37:16 Speaker_00
Yeah. And I like how he calls it a fray. Other people's call it a fracas. I just love the wording back here, but I mean, it happens because they're being denied their franchise to vote basically.

00:37:27 Speaker_02
And they were struck first, right? Latter-day Saints were hit first.

00:37:30 Speaker_00
Yeah. Latter-day Saints were hit first, but after the riots over and it seems like Latter-day Saints win the riot battle, they do surround the home of the judge who is carrying out the election and sort of threatened him.

00:37:42 Speaker_00
And so they didn't start the fight, but it sounds like they ended it.

00:37:46 Speaker_02
Yeah, and I remember after the fight, one of the accounts says that one of the Missourians looked at them and said, you guys are welcome to vote now.

00:37:54 Speaker_02
And they said, no, we don't want to walk into the booth, like thinking that maybe that once they got into the booth and then the Missourians could surround them. So they, they declined to vote that day, man. What a scene. What a scene.

00:38:08 Speaker_00
Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of distortions that come out of this incident. People start reporting that some Missourians were killed. Yeah. And it just increases the tension.

00:38:19 Speaker_00
Joseph Smith, when he hears about it, says, there's great excitement at present among the Missourians who are seeking, if possible, an occasion against us.

00:38:25 Speaker_00
We do not fear them for the Lord God, the eternal father is our God and Jesus is our strength and confidence.

00:38:31 Speaker_00
But it just seems like things are getting worse and the election day battle that John Butler participates in kind of lights the spark that lights the fuse. That's going to lead to some really serious things that happened down the road.

00:38:54 Speaker_02
All right, so while the Election Day Battle of Gallatin lit the spark, as you said, Casey, organized persecution against the Saints continues to rise.

00:39:04 Speaker_02
The first really sustained confrontation between the Saints and the Missourians comes at this settlement called DeWitt, which is located over in Carroll County.

00:39:14 Speaker_02
So October 1st, several hundred local citizens lay siege to the settlement of Latter-day Saints in DeWitt.

00:39:21 Speaker_02
And for several days, the saints succeed in defending their community there, but supplies leading into the town were cut off and the town was laid to siege.

00:39:31 Speaker_02
So they're not now attacking, now they're just like surrounding and not letting supplies in, which is another form of intimidation, right?

00:39:39 Speaker_02
So fearing that any deaths among the Missourians attacking the settlement might lead to greater violence, the saints give in and they agree to evacuate DeWitt on October 10th.

00:39:50 Speaker_02
So approximately about 400 Latter-day Saints abandon their homes and then move over to Caldwell County, go back into the Mormon box.

00:39:57 Speaker_00
Yeah. And we should note that they do try to reach out to the state government, right? They're trying to involve the governor, but the governor of the state is Lilburn Boggs, one of the most infamous figure. He's part of the 1833 persecutions.

00:40:10 Speaker_00
That's right.

00:40:10 Speaker_02
Yeah. They actually had reached out to governor Boggs to actually help them come quell the mob mentality in his state. But instead of relief on October 9th, 1838 Boggs replies to them, quote, the quarrel was between the Mormons and the mob.

00:40:26 Speaker_02
and that we must fight it out." So you guys deal with that, you know, fight it out amongst yourselves.

00:40:34 Speaker_02
So his reply is then met with plundering and burning on both sides of the issue and meetings where saints covenanting to defend themselves and their cause and the Danites are raising their howls and trying to do their best.

00:40:48 Speaker_02
If the governor's not going to help, then the saints are left to defend themselves. So seeing no chance at receiving help from the state, the saints give in, Casey, and they start to engage in raids on their enemies.

00:41:01 Speaker_02
It was made to church leaders that there was no appeasing the anti-Mormon mob, and so church leaders make the fateful decision to proactively try to deprive the mob of their bases of operations in Davies County, and then to punish the mob-supporting citizens.

00:41:18 Speaker_02
So it's important to note here that this offensive effort by the Latter-day Saints was just meant to deprive the mob of their supplies and try to discourage them from continual attacks. Of course, the opposite happens.

00:41:30 Speaker_02
But on October 14th through the 24th, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon lead 400 men to Davies County to protect the saints there. This group burns Gallatin and Millport and expels almost all non-Mormons from the county.

00:41:44 Speaker_02
Seems like Lyman White was the primary mover here. Nobody was killed, but some Missourians were given 24 hours to evacuate. In the book Saints, volume one, it narrates the story this way. I like how they tell it.

00:41:59 Speaker_02
In his 4th of July speech, Sidney had said the saints would not go on the offensive, but if their enemies went unchecked, what happened to the saints in DeWitt could happen in Adam-ondi-Ammon.

00:42:10 Speaker_02
Hoping to weaken the mobs and bring a rapid end to the conflict, the saints decided to march on nearby settlements that supported and equipped their enemies.

00:42:18 Speaker_02
Dividing their men into four units, church and militia leaders ordered raids on Gallatin and two other settlements. The fourth unit would patrol the surrounding area on foot. The next morning, October 18th, was shrouded in fog.

00:42:31 Speaker_02
David Patton, he's an apostle, rode out of Adam-ondi-Amen with a hundred armed men bound for Gallatin. When they arrived in town, the men found it empty except for some stragglers who fled as the men approached.

00:42:44 Speaker_02
Once the streets were clear, the men broke into the general store and filled their arms with goods and supplies the refugee saints needed in Adam-ondi-Amen. So they're like clearly plundering here.

00:42:54 Speaker_02
Several men emerged from the store with heavy crates and barrels, which they hefted onto wagons they had brought with them. When the shelves were empty, the men went into other shops and dwellings, taking quilts, bedding, coats, and clothing.

00:43:07 Speaker_02
The raid lasted several hours. Once they packed away all they could carry, the men torched the store and other buildings and rode out of town. This is Latter-day Saints doing the eye for an eye here.

00:43:19 Speaker_02
Their ostensible purpose was to cut the legs from underneath the mob, get rid of supplies, and discourage anyone in the surrounding area from supporting the mob.

00:43:32 Speaker_02
But as good-intentioned air quotes as this might have been, Casey, this seems to backfire, doesn't it? Big time.

00:43:40 Speaker_00
Yeah, let's pause and analyze for a second here.

00:43:42 Speaker_02
Yeah.

00:43:43 Speaker_00
They didn't do this until after the governor had basically said, I'm not going to do anything, fight it out, fight it out. And so you could argue that they were just taking his advice. Okay. We've got to solve this on our own.

00:43:55 Speaker_00
Let's take out their base of operations. At the same time, the saints are evicting people forcibly from their homes. They're doing the same thing that's been done to them.

00:44:04 Speaker_00
That's one of the things that makes this a tragedy is that they go on the offensive. And I do think that this is in contradiction to the Lord's instructions that he gave them in section 98 and section 105.

00:44:16 Speaker_02
Pursue for peace.

00:44:18 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:44:18 Speaker_02
Yeah. What about section 98? It says if they come upon you, was it three times? Yeah. Then you can retaliate. But if you don't, then you're more blessed. What about that? Do you think this fits there or maybe not really?

00:44:31 Speaker_00
I don't know. I mean, there were multiple offenses like a Latter-day Saint Dewitt had been destroyed essentially.

00:44:37 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:44:38 Speaker_00
And just aggression after aggression, after aggression, they may have felt like this was a case where, you know, if you turn around and punch the bully in the nose, he'll leave you alone. Yeah. But it seems like it backfires.

00:44:50 Speaker_00
So the militia raids into Davies from Caldwell only kind of succeeded in providing those anti-Mormon forces

00:44:58 Speaker_00
with the justification they were looking on to launch an all-out attack on Latter-day Saints and turn the neutral state militia, because at this time, every town has its own little militia unit and most of them were neutral, but most of the neutral militia starts to see the Saints as the aggressors after the sack of Gallatin and Mill.

00:45:18 Speaker_00
So far, there's been a lot of property destroyed, but no one killed. And that changes on October 25th with the battle of Crooked River. So here's the setup. Saints writes this to just set up Crooked River.

00:45:30 Speaker_00
On the night of October 24th, Charles Rich reported that the mob had attacked settlements to the South. Families of Saints had been driven from their homes and two or three men had been beaten and taken prisoner.

00:45:41 Speaker_00
He and David Patton were now organizing a rescue party to take them back. They rode South, gathering men from outlying settlements until their force numbered around 75.

00:45:50 Speaker_00
The prisoners were being held in a camp along Crooked River, 12 miles from far west.

00:45:55 Speaker_02
Charles and David, these are two apostles, right?

00:45:57 Speaker_00
Yeah, and the leader of the main militia force is David Patton, who at this time is the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

00:46:03 Speaker_02
Riding into battle to try to save some prisoners.

00:46:07 Speaker_00
Yeah. Captain fear not. They called him and there's stories about David Patton wearing a white coat that he just wasn't afraid of anything. They do find the militia a skirmish happens at the battle of crooked river. Yeah.

00:46:21 Speaker_00
At the conclusion of the battle, four men lay dead, 15 wounded, though the outcome of the conflict was widely inflated by far-flung rumor. But blood has been shed.

00:46:31 Speaker_00
Three people on the Latter-day Saints side, Patrick O'Bannon, a scout that was helping them, Gideon Carter, And David Patton is fatally wounded in this one. Missourian has killed.

00:46:42 Speaker_00
We think by partly P Pratt partly talks about how he was going down the Hill and a Missouri came up behind him and he wheeled around and fired and saw the man crumple. But the point is, is that after October 25th, blood has been shed and yeah.

00:46:54 Speaker_00
The conflict has escalated to the point of where people are being killed now, and it's a war. It's like a straight up war.

00:47:01 Speaker_00
And this leads Governor Boggs to issue the infamous extermination order, which I'm just going to read the text of the extermination order.

00:47:10 Speaker_00
It reads, the Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public good. Their outrages are beyond all description.

00:47:19 Speaker_00
If you can increase your force, you are authorized to do so to any extent you may think necessary. And that last part is just as important where he says you can increase your You're forced to any extent you think necessary.

00:47:33 Speaker_00
Once accounts of Crooked River start to circulate, Boggs orders out the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 12th divisions of the Missouri Militia, October 26th, around the time the extermination order is issued.

00:47:46 Speaker_02
And the extermination order is issued, what, like October 27th officially? Is that right?

00:47:50 Speaker_00
Yeah. October 27th is the date that it's issued. man alive. Like, Sidney Rigdon used extermination, but it's kind of a threat. This is a different situation. This is a government order that uses the term extermination.

00:48:04 Speaker_00
And again, Alex Baugh would say extermination can mean to be expelled. Part of his argument is the extermination order says exterminated or driven from the state, but that's dangerous rhetoric then and now. It's no doubt that it's dangerous.

00:48:19 Speaker_02
Yeah. This officially, officially, officially sanctioned harming Latter-day Saints. It officially puts in harms away every Latter-day Saint who would not deny their faith, doesn't it?

00:48:31 Speaker_00
Yeah. I mean, Hyrum Smith later says, I quote, endeavored to find out the cause that Latter-day Saints were subjected to such violence and even death, and he continues, all I could learn was that it was because we were Mormons.

00:48:43 Speaker_00
Now we should note, and sometimes a rumor comes up that it's still legal to kill a Mormon in Missouri. The extermination order was officially rescinded in 1976.

00:48:53 Speaker_00
The Missouri governor, who was Christopher Bond, Kit Bond at the time, actually issued a statement. It's really cool. I'm just going to read part of it here.

00:49:00 Speaker_00
Whereas on October 27th, 1838, the governor of the state of Missouri, Lilburn W. Boggs, signed an order calling for the extermination or expulsion of Mormons from the state of Missouri.

00:49:10 Speaker_00
And whereas Governor Boggs' order clearly contravened the rights to life, liberty and property and religious freedom as guaranteed by the constitution of the United States. as well as the constitution of the state of Missouri.

00:49:22 Speaker_00
In this bicentennial year, as we reflect on our nation's heritage, the exercise of religious freedom is without question one of the basic tenets of our free democratic republic."

00:49:30 Speaker_00
And then he says, "'I use the power vested in me and do hereby order as follows, expressing on behalf of all Missourians deep regret for the injustice and undue suffering caused by the 1838 order, I hereby rescind executive order

00:49:44 Speaker_00
Number 44, dated October 27, 1838, issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs. So thanks, Governor Bond. As of 1976. Yeah.

00:49:53 Speaker_02
This is no longer an active order on the books. Yeah. Do you know why he rescinded it? I heard a rumor and I don't know if you can validate this or not about some missionaries getting hit, like a hit and run.

00:50:10 Speaker_02
They were riding their bikes or walking along the road and someone hit them with their car and ran, and then that guy got caught. And then he cited this extermination order as legal justification for him to have struck the missionaries.

00:50:26 Speaker_02
Do you know if that's true at all? Is there any truth to that story? Are you familiar?

00:50:31 Speaker_00
I don't.

00:50:31 Speaker_00
I was at a meeting of Mormon History Association in 2016, where we celebrated the 40th anniversary of this happening, and they talked about how it was done in conjunction with the bicentennial of the United States, and that the Mormon History Association and a number of Latter-day Saint politicians had worked with Governor Bond to end it.

00:50:53 Speaker_00
I don't know if that's true. I mean, I know that that part's true. I don't know if the story about the missionaries getting run down is true or not.

00:51:00 Speaker_02
Yeah. Okay. Throwing it out there. If anyone hears that rumor, it may or may not be true, but the official occasion is that it was a 200 year anniversary of our nation.

00:51:10 Speaker_02
And he thought in the spirit of religious freedom and celebrating that he would rescind this on 25th day of June, 1976. Thanks Governor Bond.

00:51:31 Speaker_00
The extermination order is issued on October 27th, and then on October 30th, the most bloody incident of the Mormon War takes place. I've talked to Alex Baugh about this, and he doesn't think that the two are linked.

00:51:45 Speaker_00
He doesn't think that there was time for the extermination order to make it to the people. But what we're talking about is the Hans Mill Massacre. Hans Middle Massacre. Yeah, so that's the next part of the story.

00:51:57 Speaker_02
Clearly, easily, the Mormon-Missouri War's most tragic event takes place on October 30th, three days after the extermination order is issued, but it doesn't seem like, this is according to Alex Baugh, is that correct?

00:52:12 Speaker_02
It doesn't seem like there was enough time for the message to be able to get to the end of the row for Missourians to know about this, and so we're not sure if there was a connection between

00:52:23 Speaker_02
October 27th issuing of the extermination order and the atrocities of Hans Mill on October 30th, three days later. Is that correct?

00:52:31 Speaker_00
Yeah. And some of the sources surrounding Hans Mill talk about how the saints were disarmed coming into the area, which makes it sound like this was already in the works, but it wasn't the result of the extermination order.

00:52:43 Speaker_00
It happened independent of it. Okay. But the extermination order may have provided a kind of legal justification for Hans Mill after the fact. Right.

00:52:51 Speaker_00
Yeah, Alex is the expert and he doesn't think that the extermination order, or there's any indication that the people that attack Hans Mill haven't heard about the extermination order yet. That's possible, but it doesn't seem likely.

00:53:03 Speaker_02
Perfect. So it starts a little earlier than the extermination order. Late October, the Saints at Hans Mill started hearing rumors that mobs were coming to burn down their town.

00:53:16 Speaker_02
And by the way, Hans Mill, this settlement is based around a mill owned by a man named Jacob Hahn. And there's a black shop there.

00:53:24 Speaker_02
There's a few houses, maybe 20 to 30 families live around that mill area and maybe a hundred families in the extended neighborhood. So we're not talking about a very big settlement at all.

00:53:34 Speaker_00
A lot of the people at Hans Mill too are refugees. So part of the reason why it's so bad is a lot of them are living in tents. They don't have any place to run for shelter.

00:53:43 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:53:44 Speaker_00
So most of the men run into one of the only standing structures in the settlement, which is the blacksmith shop, and they get bottled up in there. And that's where a lot of the killings take place.

00:53:53 Speaker_02
Yeah, so it first starts out with rumors that the Missourians are going to come burn their town down. These threats escalate by October 25th, 1838 here, when a band of 20 men come into the settlement and take the Latter-day Saints weapons.

00:54:08 Speaker_02
After confiscating their weapons, these vigilantes met with Latter-day Saints settlers to negotiate peace. However, quoting now, the attempts made by vigilantes to confiscate the Mormons' weapons, followed by the peace negotiations,

00:54:22 Speaker_02
were actually part of the overall plan of the Missouri regulators to ensure the eradication of the Mormon community." Their hope is, step one, leave them defenseless, take their weapons.

00:54:33 Speaker_02
Two, lull them into a false sense of security through these peace negotiations. And then three, attack.

00:54:40 Speaker_00
And all this happens before the extermination order is issued, which is another reason why Alex Baugh thinks it was in the works before the extermination order was sent. That makes sense.

00:54:48 Speaker_02
So still fearing the possibility of violence, the members of the mill community send Jacob Hahn, who is the mill owner, go to Far West and to seek advice from church leaders.

00:55:00 Speaker_02
And he goes, and what's even a little more remarkable about that is that Jacob Hahn is not a member of the church at the time, nor would he ever be, although he had a brother who was.

00:55:09 Speaker_02
So he goes to Far West to seek counsel from Joseph Smith, and several sources indicate

00:55:14 Speaker_02
that when Jacob Han met with Joseph Smith on October 25th, I think it was that same day, five days before the massacre, that Jacob was warned by the prophet to move all the families out of the settlement and bring them to the safety of Far West.

00:55:30 Speaker_02
According to some reports, Jacob is said to have replied, quote, we think we are strong enough to defend the mill so as not to risk the lives of the citizens.

00:55:38 Speaker_02
Jacob returns to the settlement and he either misunderstood the prophet's directions, failed to tell the saints living there about Joseph's warnings, or he deliberately misled them to try to protect the mill and his own livelihood there.

00:55:51 Speaker_02
According to one resident of the settlement, Jacob actually returns and says, if we thought we could maintain the mill, it was Joseph's counsel for us to do so. Close quote.

00:56:03 Speaker_02
Philo Dibble, who's another church member in the area, he recorded, And then in a discourse given in August of 1842, Joseph himself says in Nauvoo, quote, none had ever been killed who abode by my counsel.

00:56:29 Speaker_02
At Hans Mill, the brethren went contrary to my counsel. If they had not, their lives would have been spared, close quote.

00:56:37 Speaker_02
It's not clear whether Joseph is only referring to Jacob or whether he was unaware that the saints did not receive his counsel, but that was his assessment that's still deeply saddened the prophet four years later.

00:56:49 Speaker_00
Pete Yeah, that quote gets used a lot in general conference speeches. And it just needs to be contextualized because sometimes it's misused to make it sound like the saints at Hans Mill were rebellious. I don't think they were.

00:57:02 Speaker_00
Like I said, it's possible Jacob Hahn misunderstood what Joseph was saying. It doesn't seem likely, but it's possible. It sounds like he was the one that was responsible for them being there and not evacuating to Far West.

00:57:13 Speaker_00
So I think Joseph Smith was right But people that use that quote as kind of a, hey, follow the prophet or bad things will happen, are maybe misunderstanding that the saints at Hans Mill, it seems like, did not know they were supposed to gather.

00:57:26 Speaker_00
Either because of deliberate obfuscation on Jacob Hahn's part, or because Jacob Hahn misunderstood what was going on.

00:57:33 Speaker_02
Yeah. Either way, not following Joseph's counsel led to tragedy.

00:57:38 Speaker_00
Yeah.

00:57:38 Speaker_02
On October 30th, 1838, everything seemed normal that day. The day began. with people going about their regular business, children playing, women engaged in their usual chores, men were working in the mill and nearby fields.

00:57:54 Speaker_02
And the attack will begin sometime between three or four o'clock in the afternoon. The vigilantes were hidden by the undergrowth and some of the mill workers who could see them coming originally thought that they were saints from far west.

00:58:07 Speaker_02
But when the hostile mob's appearances eventually gave them away, Latter-day Saints immediately hoisted a white flag.

00:58:13 Speaker_02
Quote, seeing the superiority of their numbers, David Evans, the community leader and Mormon captain, swung his hat, cried for peace, and called for quarter.

00:58:22 Speaker_02
But his pleas were completely ignored, and the Livingston militia instead hastened their swift and brutal attack.

00:58:30 Speaker_02
Joseph Young, who's the older brother of Brigham Young, he'd just arrived at the settlement two days earlier, and he wrote an account where he said, quote, it was about four o'clock while sitting in my cabin with my babe in my arms and my wife standing by my side.

00:58:44 Speaker_02
I cast my eyes on the opposite bank of Shoal Creek and saw a large company of men on horses directing their course towards the mills with all possible speed, close quote.

00:58:54 Speaker_02
In a state of extreme confusion, the women and children ran into the woods and nearby homes, while many of the men ran to the blacksmith's shop, which was one of the only sturdy structures in the little village at the time.

00:59:07 Speaker_02
As the women and children fled, the men made a stand in the old log building used as the blacksmith's shop, which was neither chinked or mudded. Writing about that experience, Latter-day Saint David Lewis wrote, When men ran out and called for peace,

00:59:23 Speaker_02
they were shot down. When they held up their hats and handkerchiefs and crying for mercy, they were shot down. When they attempted to run, they were cut down by the fire of guns.

00:59:34 Speaker_02
And when they stood still, they were shot down by putting their guns through the cracks of the building." Referring to the blacksmith shop.

00:59:42 Speaker_02
It appears that there were some weapons that the Latter-day Saints had retained because some of the men and boys actually fire back at their attackers from the blacksmith shop. but they were unable to stop the onslaught.

00:59:54 Speaker_02
By the end of the attack, 15 men and two boys had been brutally murdered and 15 others were wounded. Survivors include a dozen helpless widows, 30 or 40 orphaned or fatherless children who were fearing further attacks.

01:00:09 Speaker_02
They hastily buried their husbands, sons, fathers, and friends in an unfinished well with some hay or straw strewn over the bodies and then fled. There is some silver lining that does come out of this, Casey.

01:00:24 Speaker_02
There's so many cool miracle stories that occur, some healings and some other things that are miraculous, some revelations that were received clearly by spoken voice with some of the survivors of Hans Mill.

01:00:36 Speaker_02
And maybe just suffice it to say that those stories have been written. You can look them up on Church's website. There's some great resources.

01:00:45 Speaker_02
talk about some of the aftermath and the miracles of some of those who do survive and some of the miraculous healings of some of those who are wounded, but I don't know that we have time to delve into all that today. Is that fair?

01:00:57 Speaker_02
I mean, am I brushing over this too quick, the miracles?

01:01:00 Speaker_00
That's fair. I mean, go and look up Amanda Smith. She's an amazing, amazing lady. We should note a couple things. The name Han is usually spelled wrong.

01:01:10 Speaker_00
Alex Baugh found the grave of Jacob Hahn in Oregon, weirdly enough because the author, Beverly Cleary, is a descendant of Jacob Hahn, so he tracked down her family line.

01:01:22 Speaker_00
We've talked a lot in the last couple of months about exchanges of historic sites from Community of Christ. Actually, one of the first sales of a historic site was in 2012 when Community of Christ sold us the location of Hahn's mill.

01:01:35 Speaker_00
They're in the process of beautifying it directly. It's still kind of hard to get to Hans Mill in Missouri, but it really is. It's one of those sites that if you go to Missouri, you should go see.

01:01:44 Speaker_00
There's still, I gotta be honest, a dark spirit that hangs over that place. Like you can feel that something bad happened there.

01:01:51 Speaker_02
Yeah, this is one of the darkest days in our church's history, honestly. And I think the physical trauma and the emotional trauma from this event

01:02:01 Speaker_02
lingers like a malevolent ghost over nearly every decision that church leaders make in the next decade or so, certainly in Joseph Smith's life, as they think about what is in the best interest of the saints.

01:02:13 Speaker_00
We mentioned in our series on the martyrdom that when they're discussing what to do about the Nauvoo Expositor, the two words that keep popping up are Hans Mill. Is this going to be another Hans Mill?

01:02:23 Speaker_02
But that's actually not the end of the story, so.

01:02:25 Speaker_02
That's probably a cool connection to make right here is that one of the reasons that Joseph and Hyrum initially wanted to flee Nauvoo and then they decided to come back is so that the scenes of Missouri, they kept saying, so that the scenes of Missouri will not be enacted again upon the saints.

01:02:41 Speaker_02
So you could say in some ways, I don't want to say this too strongly, Casey, but in some ways the specter of Hans Mill influenced Joseph and Hyrum's decision to eventually go to Carthage Jail. Or they will be murdered.

01:02:52 Speaker_00
Yeah. I think that's fair to say. I don't think that's an exaggeration. It's part of the chain of events. Hans Mill, that's how extreme the violence becomes, but it colors everything that happens after.

01:03:13 Speaker_00
The same day that the attack on Hans Mill happens, 2,000 militia, that's an estimate, surround Far West, the main Latter-day Saint community in this area.

01:03:23 Speaker_02
What about 5,000 Latter-day Saints that live in Far West on a normal day?

01:03:27 Speaker_00
That's the high estimate. The number you usually hear about those available to defend Far West is about 300. Oh, okay. But Far West is a big city and some interesting things happen here.

01:03:38 Speaker_00
Joseph Smith hears about Hans Mills and he wants to prevent the attack. So he leaves Far West to negotiate with the militia on the outside of the town. There's a lot of stuff that happens leading up to this.

01:03:51 Speaker_00
George Hinkle, who's a militia commander, apparently came back and told Joseph Smith that they just wanted to meet, but as soon as they go into the enemy camp, they're arrested and pronounced prisoners.

01:04:04 Speaker_00
George Hinkle later on claims that he didn't know they were going to do that, but George Hinkle is also seen ransacking Joseph and Emma's home when Far West finally collapses.

01:04:14 Speaker_00
When news of the capture of Joseph Smith and his associates passes among the Missouri militia, the soldiers yell like a lawless mob, or as Parley P. Pratt says, so many bloodhounds let loose upon their prey.

01:04:26 Speaker_00
And he continues, had the army been composed of so many bloodhounds, wolves, and panthers, they could not have made a sound more terrible.

01:04:33 Speaker_00
If the vision of the infernal regions could suddenly open to the mind with thousands of malicious fiends all clamoring, raging, and foaming like a troubled sea, then could some idea be formed of the hell which we had entered."

01:04:46 Speaker_02
He writes so vividly.

01:04:48 Speaker_00
He's so good. Yeah, he's such a good writer.

01:04:50 Speaker_02
So they get captured here and the whole enemy army just erupts in like jubilation here, like the fiends of hell.

01:04:58 Speaker_00
Yeah, and this is on the heels of what's happened at Hans Mill. Like this is bad stuff. And during the evening, the military guards keep up what he calls a constant tirade of mockery and abuse.

01:05:09 Speaker_00
They blasphemed God, mocked Jesus Christ, swore the most dreadful oaths, taunted brother Joseph and others, demanded miracles, wanted signs such as, come Mr. Smith, show us an angel. Give us one of your revelations, show us a miracle.

01:05:21 Speaker_00
Or if you are apostles or men of God, deliver yourselves and then we will be Mormons. A military court-martial convened to determine whether the prisoners should be permitted to live or die, and judges demanded the lives of the prisoners be forfeit.

01:05:34 Speaker_00
They wanted to execute Joseph and the other leaders of the Church. Now this is where one of the great non-Latter-day Saint heroes of our story entered in, Alexander Doniphon.

01:05:43 Speaker_00
is a non-Latter-day Saint lawyer who had worked with the Saints, even helped set up Caldwell County. He defends the Mormon prisoners.

01:05:51 Speaker_00
He argues, quote, they had never belonged to any lawful military organization and could not have violated military law. And he further argued that the assembled court-martial was, this is a quote, illegal as hell. Yeah, sorry for the language there.

01:06:05 Speaker_00
So despite this, the prisoners are condemned to death and Donovan was actually ordered to carry out the execution the next day, but he refuses.

01:06:14 Speaker_00
He privately tells General Samuel Lucas, you hurt one of these men, if you dare, and I will hold you personally responsible for it. And at some other time, you and I will meet again when in mortal combat and we will see who is the better man.

01:06:26 Speaker_02
Wow, he's making personal threats here.

01:06:29 Speaker_00
Yeah. Donovan is awesome. Like study his life. There's a statue of him in Richmond, Missouri, and this isn't the only amazing thing that he does. And by the way, he acts as one of the saints lawyers when they're in Liberty jail, like the guy's a hero.

01:06:42 Speaker_00
And later on he comes to Utah and they have a huge parade for him later on in his life.

01:06:47 Speaker_02
I love when he says to Lucas, too, that if you execute these men, I will hold you accountable for an earthly tribunal, so help me God.

01:06:55 Speaker_00
He's like, whoo! That's just objectively awesome, amazing that he did that. Okay. Now, Donovan does succeed in getting Lucas to back down, but Lucas also orders the leaders of the church to climb into wagons, be ready for a journey.

01:07:11 Speaker_00
He takes them into Far West, and publicly parades them in front of everybody.

01:07:16 Speaker_00
In fact, the accounts say one wagon stopped in front of Joseph's home, a guard of six soldiers escorted him inside, and Joseph's son, this is little Joseph III, the future head of the reorganized church, asked, Father, is the mob going to kill you?

01:07:30 Speaker_00
The guard retorted, You damned little brat, go back. You will see your father no more. And so when you read section 122 and it talks about being thrust from your son who's asking if the mob's going to kill you, that's not hypothetical.

01:07:44 Speaker_00
That's well documented that it happened.

01:07:47 Speaker_00
And then they're taken out of Far West, they're dragged from Richmond to Liberty Jail, that's where the infamous incident happens, where Joseph rebukes the guards, that's at Richmond Jail, where he silently fiends of the infernal pit.

01:07:59 Speaker_00
And as for the saints who remain at Far West, on November 6th, General John B. Clark addressed them and said, I do not say that you shall go now, but you must not think of staying here another season, or of putting in crops.

01:08:10 Speaker_00
As for your leaders, do not once think, do not imagine for a moment, do not let it enter your mind that they will be delivered or that you will see their faces again for their fate is fixed. Their die is cast. Their door is sealed.

01:08:23 Speaker_00
Boy, we know the story and we'll cover it in a different episode of what happens in Liberty jail and everything there.

01:08:29 Speaker_02
So this is where Joseph and Hyrum and other church leaders are taken into Liberty Jail.

01:08:34 Speaker_00
Yeah, they're taken to Richmond Jail and then Independence Jail, and then they end up in Liberty Jail, and that's where they stay until April of 1839. They're there for five months from December until April.

01:08:45 Speaker_02
So in historical context, Liberty Jail, which we talk so often about because of the revelation that was received there, that's happening in this sequence of events right here. This is where they are taken away off to Liberty Jail.

01:08:57 Speaker_00
This is where they end up in Liberty Jail.

01:08:59 Speaker_00
And in context, a lot of the stuff in Liberty Jail, especially the revelations, section 121, 122, 123, received in Liberty Jail, which are some of the most powerful language in the Doctrine and Covenants, makes sense where the Lord is saying, use gentleness and meekness and kindness and love unfeigned.

01:09:15 Speaker_00
Part of the instructions in those revelations, too, was that Latter-day Saints should collect accounts of what happened, and that's why we know so much about the Missouri persecutions.

01:09:24 Speaker_00
There's a huge book called Mormon Redress Petitions that's worth reading, but I'm just going to warn you, it's not easy reading. It is horrible.

01:09:33 Speaker_00
At times I got enthusiastic about the redress petitions and tried to read some of them in class, but it talks about some rough stuff like sexual assault and things that happened in far West. And it was triggering some of my students.

01:09:46 Speaker_00
So I don't read it anymore. I just give a general history like we're doing here.

01:09:50 Speaker_02
Yeah. There's not a category of mankind's inhumanity to man that didn't happen to the latter day Saints.

01:09:56 Speaker_00
It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. And if you have the stomach for it, it's worthwhile to read those redress petitions. At the same time, too, some of the revelations received in Liberty Jail are profound and beautiful.

01:10:07 Speaker_00
The Lord tells the saints, "...as well as man might stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri River in its decreed course, or turn it upstream as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the latter-day saints."

01:10:20 Speaker_00
At this point, they're in jail. The Saints have to organize an exodus of the entire church to exit Missouri. With Thomas B. Marsh, who's the original quorum president, he's left the church. David Patton's killed. Brigham Young takes over.

01:10:34 Speaker_00
It turns out Brigham Young is really good at organizing exoduses, so it works out. But Joseph Smith and the other members of the First Presidency are forced to linguish in Liberty Jail while the Saints leave Missouri. Oh, that's the story.

01:10:49 Speaker_00
Um, let's, let's analyze for a minute here.

01:10:51 Speaker_02
Yeah. Wow. So we have been citing this 1838 conflict as an example of type two or category two, where saints are engaging in the conflict directly. They're taking some offensive measures here against their enemies, but this record is complicated.

01:11:09 Speaker_02
The saints, are they engaging in martial language? Yes. But it doesn't look like they're really starting most of the violence. Are they engaging in martial actions? Yes, but only in some defensive way.

01:11:24 Speaker_02
Yes, they were aggressors in Gallatin, etc., but only in their minds to cut off the supplies of their enemies who they knew were coming to attack yet again. Yeah, it's complicated, right?

01:11:35 Speaker_02
And then you got the legacy of groups like the Danites that continues to haunt the church to this day in some ways. But again, it seems like their involvement was overblown quite a bit here.

01:11:46 Speaker_00
Yeah. What do you want to say? I mean, we talked about lingering trauma for this. Yeah. A couple years ago, I was in Missouri, and I was with Avery Kirk, who's one of our great people we work with at Scripture Central.

01:12:00 Speaker_00
Avery's a young guy, and he'd never been to Missouri. And we had four or five hours before I was supposed to speak somewhere, and Avery wanted to see all the Missouri sites. So I was like, let's do this. We drove up Adam-on-Diomond, far west.

01:12:12 Speaker_00
We were on our way to Hans Mill. And there was a cop on the side of the road. And I didn't know that it was a law in Missouri that you have to like change into the other lane if there's an emergency vehicle on the side of the road.

01:12:23 Speaker_00
So I slowed down, but I drove past the guy without changing lanes. A few minutes later, the guy came up screaming behind us, like his lights on and pulled me over. And I had no idea what I'd done wrong. Like he came up and started yelling at me.

01:12:35 Speaker_00
And was like, you blew my door off. So I'm going to write you a big fat ticket. Like that was literally how he introduced himself. And then he asked me to get out of the car and come back and sit in his car.

01:12:45 Speaker_00
And man, I was thinking to myself, I'm a Latter-day Saint and I'm in Caldwell County on my way to Hans mill. Is this going to end poorly? Like what? That lingering trauma from the 1838 conflict affected me that day.

01:13:00 Speaker_00
And by the way, Scott, I got wrote up from class a misdemeanor and found guilty, which gives me a lot of street cred among Latter-day Saint historians. You know, I'm, I'm guilty of a crime in the state of Missouri.

01:13:11 Speaker_00
That puts me in good company as far as I'm concerned, but I was scared.

01:13:16 Speaker_00
And even though I'm several generations removed, being in a place where violence took place against people of my faith and where people of my faith carried out violence against others still affected me.

01:13:27 Speaker_00
And this one, I could see from a certain perspective how the saints are justified. Like they've just been pushed and pushed and pushed and finally they decide to push back.

01:13:36 Speaker_01
Yeah.

01:13:36 Speaker_00
At the same time, would it have turned out differently if they had chosen not to engage in retribution?

01:13:43 Speaker_00
It doesn't seem like it helped at DeWitt, and it's hard to see another outcome other than being forcibly evicted, but there might not have been as much bloodshed if the Saints hadn't.

01:13:53 Speaker_00
The people that attack Far West, Alex Baugh will argue, were people that had been pushed out of Davies County by the retributive raids of the Saints.

01:14:01 Speaker_00
And so one act of violence led to another, led to another, and then there's escalation until people get killed.

01:14:06 Speaker_02
I think, I think what's clear from. all the history and the evidence is that the conflict does not end well for the Saints. We're engaging in the violence. Nothing positive seems to have come out of that. This sets us up for where they go next.

01:14:21 Speaker_02
They're forcibly removed from the state of Missouri now, and that sets the stage for their settlement of Nauvoo, and then further conflicts that occur there.

01:14:30 Speaker_00
Yeah, and so this is a tough one because the Saints give as good as they got, and it's hard to say if it helped at all.

01:14:37 Speaker_00
I personally don't think it helped, though it's hard to see a good outcome happening under any circumstances here, but it doesn't seem like them engaging in violence helped. That's my verdict.

01:14:47 Speaker_00
I hope I'm not sounding judgmental because, man, they were in a tough spot, and it's hard to say.

01:14:52 Speaker_02
And again, it's irresponsible to say that it was their religion that caused them to be violent.

01:14:58 Speaker_02
What's clear here is there's two groups who are different from one another, and they're in close proximity, and there's jealousy, and there's political considerations where a big group of people who are different from you are probably going to vote different from you.

01:15:10 Speaker_02
This is not the same thing as a religion. inspiring a group of people to act out in violence like that. That template just doesn't fit any of these stories as we investigate this.

01:15:20 Speaker_02
And so here we are, episode four, still not seeing a case for John Krakauer to be correct here, but it is what it is.

01:15:29 Speaker_00
I'm glad we had the chance to kind of walk through it with this lens where they did engage in violence. Was it justified? I think so. Did it help? Probably not.

01:15:38 Speaker_02
All right. Thank you, Casey.

01:15:40 Speaker_00
Thank you, Scott. Until next time.

01:15:47 Speaker_02
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters.

01:15:50 Speaker_02
In our next episode, Casey and I discuss the Battle of Nauvoo, the Saints' removal to the West, conflicts with Native Americans in Utah, and the conflict between Latter-day Saints and federal troops known as the Utah War.

01:16:03 Speaker_02
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01:16:14 Speaker_02
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01:16:25 Speaker_02
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01:16:35 Speaker_02
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01:16:46 Speaker_02
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01:16:55 Speaker_02
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01:17:07 Speaker_02
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01:17:22 Speaker_02
Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.