Scott Woodward: In the late summer of 1831, select groups of church members began settling on the far western frontier of the United States in Jackson County, Missouri. Earlier that year, the Prophet Joseph Smith had received a revelation identifying the area as the land of promise and the place for the city of Zion, and shortly afterward, the gathering to Zion had begun. Tensions between church members and the non–Latter-day Saint locals in Jackson County existed almost immediately. By the spring of 1832, Missouri locals began verbally threatening the Saints and occasionally vandalizing their homes to intimidate them and get them to leave. By the summer of 1833, the hatred of the locals erupted into full-blown violence against church members, culminating in their forcible expulsion from Jackson County. Today on Church History Matters, we take a close look at the various factors that led to this violent eviction of the saints from Jackson County, the response of the Missouri governor to this illegal action in his state, and the revelations received by Joseph Smith responding to this severe treatment. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today, Casey and I dive into our second episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history. Now, let’s get into it. Well, hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Hey, Scott. How we doing?

Scott Woodward: Great, man. Here we are, episode 2 of Peace and Violence in Latter-day Saint History.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I should mention, we’re basing this series off the Gospel Topics essay “Peace and Violence Among Nineteenth Century Latter-day Saints.” It’s a good read.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It’s not super long, and it’s definitely worth your time, and also, those Gospel Topics Essays are great because they have links often to primary sources, so a lot of the stuff that we’re talking about today, if you go to the Gospel Topics Essay or hit up some of those Church History Topics essays in the Gospel Library app, you’ll be able to go straight to some of the documents that we’re working through today, so take advantage of all these wonderful resources that we’ve been given.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And part of the reason that we wanted to explore this topic in particular is because of the work of people like John Krakauer and others who have suggested that the faith of the Latter-day Saints—and religious faith in general, he says—is inherently violent, right? We wanted to talk about that in our own history.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and we brought up Krakauer last episode, and I want to reiterate again, I like John Krakauer. I’m a fan of most of his books, but he wrote a book called Under the Banner of Heaven that kind of has that thesis that Latter-day Saint religion is violent, and like you said, Scott, in general, religion is violent, and we want to explore that a little bit and say, eh, is that the case? So in our first episode in this series, we introduced a model. We’re going to use this model to explore the key events of this series that we’re talking about.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And the model is this: Okay, so there’s scenario one. Situation one is situations where Latter-day Saints have been victims of violence, and these include most of the examples we cited last week, including the physical and legal attacks on Joseph Smith during the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, and then the first organized mob attack, which happens at the John Johnson farm in March 1832, where both Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon are badly beaten and tarred and feathered.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: In category one, it feels like people may have had disagreements and people may have been offended by some of Joseph Smith’s actions or his theology. Like, it has seemed like the mob attack on the John Johnson farm, historians like Mark Staker have said, was motivated by consecration. People didn’t want to consecrate.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But violence is not justified, right? And it doesn’t seem like Latter-day Saints in these early cases did anything to start the violence. They were victims of the violence.

Scott Woodward: So that’s category one, just straight up victims of other people’s prejudice that erupts into actually violent actions against us.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And the Gospel Topics essay highlights that this was something that happened in 19th century America—that a lot of people felt like in certain situations they had to take the law into their own hands—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and use violence to accomplish what they felt was necessary to accomplish, so—

Scott Woodward: A stronger strand of vigilantism than maybe we have today in our society.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And not good vigilantes like Batman.

Scott Woodward: Not like Batman, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: More like the pitchfork-and-torch kind of vigilantes that—I don’t know a famous one of those, you know? Mobs, I guess.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so situation two is situations where Latter-day Saints chose to fight back, inflicting violence on others, but only after they were attacked, so a great example of this that we’re going to talk about in a couple weeks is probably the 1838 conflict in Missouri. It’s still to this day called the Mormon War among Missouri historians.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And in this one, I mean, the Saints at first kind of gave as good as they got. Their settlements get attacked, so they attacked Missourian settlements. There’s organized militias against them, so they organized militias to fight against the Missourians. Eventually it escalates. It gets out of control, and we have things happen like Haun’s Mill and the siege of Far West, but the point here is Latter-day Saints inflicted violence on people in response to the way they were treated, too, so they gave as good as they got, at least at first.

Scott Woodward: Gave as good as they got. Eye for an eye, we might say here. A little lex talionis going on here.

Casey Griffiths: Lex talionis? Scott, that’s the first time you busted out Latin, and do it more, okay?

Scott Woodward: Okay. Yeah. Could I—should I just be the Latin guy?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, anytime you want to be like vox dei, vox populi, like, bust it out. Or e pluribus unum, or semper fidelis, you know, go crazy.

Scott Woodward: Today’s term is lex talionis, yes.

Casey Griffiths: Which means? Which means?

Scott Woodward: Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.

Casey Griffiths: Nice. I’m going to work that into a conversation with my wife tonight, probably.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: You mess with my dinner, I’ll mess with your dinner. Lex talionis.

Scott Woodward: Just a little tit for tat. Lex talionis, sister. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so example three—

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: —is probably the darkest one. This is category three. This is where—

Scott Woodward: Category three.

Casey Griffiths: —the saints acted as the aggressors. They’re the ones that started the violence, and they carried out acts of violence, and probably the most graphic example of this is the darkest day in the history of the church: the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which happens in the 1850s. And so as we go through these, we’re going to refer back to this model, and we’re not going to try and justify events like retaliating during the 1838 conflict or initiating the violence that happened in Mountain Meadows, but we do believe it’s important to understand the context that they took place in.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Context is always crucial when we’re interpreting facts and events, and we always try to situate these things within their historical context, always. That’s really important to us. You got to understand what was happening.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So we started last time talking about how persecutions in New York and Hiram, Ohio were aggressions directed towards specific individuals, people like Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon, but what we’re going to talk about today is the first systematic persecution that wasn’t directed at a person per se, but at the Latter-day Saints as a group, and . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: This begins in full throttle in 1833 in Jackson County, Missouri, though there’s a lot of things that kind of gradually lead up to the just straight-up outbreak of mob violence against the saints. That leads us to today’s burning question, which is, what were the factors that led to the violence and forceful eviction of the saints from Jackson County, Missouri in 1833?

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So we’ve got our question. Let’s set the scene.

Scott Woodward: So as we’ve discussed many times on this podcast in different series, Latter-day Saints believe in Book of Mormon prophecies about a New Jerusalem to be built upon the American continent at some point. Even one of our Articles of Faith—Joseph Smith articulated this in the Wentworth letter in Nauvoo: we believe in the literal gathering of Israel, the restoration of ten tribes, and that Zion, the New Jerusalem, will be built upon the American continent. And the early Saints eagerly anticipated revelations that would reveal the place, the location for the New Jerusalem, and the Lord sort of teased at the location a little by little, little breadcrumbs throughout the Doctrine and Covenants, the first several sections of the Doctrine—the first half of the Doctrine and Covenants up to section 52, and the first one was in the summer of 1830 when the Lord told the Saints, “Now, behold, I say unto you . . . it is not revealed, and no man knoweth where the city Zion shall be built, but it shall be given hereafter. Behold, I say unto you that it shall be on the borders by the Lamanites.” That there’s the hint. This is section 28. Now, the border by the Lamanite at that time was along the western side of Missouri. Missouri was the edge, the Western edge of the United States, and so somewhere beyond the edge of Missouri there.

Casey Griffiths: The frontier, yeah, near unorganized Indian territory. You can probably see this on the maps in your scriptures, but . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Go to the frontier, the edge of European civilization of that day.

Scott Woodward: The borders by the Lamanites, and—so just as a few months later, Joseph Smith and all the saints were commanded to gather to the Ohio in Kirtland, in the spring of 1831, Joseph holds a gathering of all the priesthood members of the church, and there receives a revelation commanding him to hold the next meeting in Missouri, and this is D&C 52. And almost immediately after, Joseph sets out for Missouri with a group of elders designated in revelation by the Lord, and the Lord tells him that he will reveal to them the place of their inheritance, the New Jerusalem, he says. And when they get there, the very first revelation received in Missouri is section 57 of the Doctrine and Covenants, where the Lord announces that that is the center place of Zion, that that is the place where the New Jerusalem would be built. And so shortly after Joseph returns back to Ohio, many of the saints there start preparing to gather to the site of Zion, the New Jerusalem. Now we know the place, and so over the next two years, from 1831 to ’33, more than a thousand Latter-day Saints gathered to Independence and the surrounding areas. Now, here’s the problem: Independence, Missouri was already inhabited by original settlers, right? There are people that are already there, and when suddenly they get an influx of over a thousand Latter-day Saints who think differently than them, who see the world differently than them, who have a different religion than them, this is going to set the scene for conflict. In fact, in a lot of ways, it’s hard to imagine a more difficult place for the Saints to build Zion than in Independence, Missouri—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —given the—who’s already there, right?

Casey Griffiths: And I’ve got to wonder if this is by design. Like, Independence was difficulty level 10. You’re going to take a bunch of people from the Northern United States who believe Native Americans are part of the house of Israel and put them into this place, which was already sort of volatile, to be honest with you. The Lord was asking a lot of the early Saints to build Zion here, but I also think there might be a purpose behind that. Anyway, keep going.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. No, and you point out a good thing: that the original settlers there, the non-LDS people, saw Native Americans as, like, a threat, but Latter-day Saints come skipping along and saying they are the descendants of Father Lehi. These people are heirs of the promises made to the house of Israel, and we need to preach the gospel to them, and so that makes Latter-day Saints immediately suspect in the eyes of the original settlers. Add to that another layer, that Missouri at this time is a slave state, and there’s a lot of tension at this time over the rights of slaves and fears that slaves might rise up against their masters, right? I mean, this is just shortly after the old Nat Turner revolt occurred, right? In 1831, that year, a slave named Nat Turner rose up against his masters in Virginia, which resulted in the deaths of—what? Like, sixty-five white people? And then, in retaliation, the European settlers then kill over 120 slaves, and news of that had spread all over the nation. And there were some fears about slave revolts, right? Well, most of the Latter-day Saints emigrating to Jackson County came from the North. They came from the Free States. And a lot of them held the belief that slavery was wrong. So this, too, was a cause of much tension between them and the original settlers, and so as you think about, you know, that on top of their religious beliefs, where you’ve got these people coming into town, like, over a thousand of them, saying they believe in additional scripture, they believe in new revelation, they believe in modern prophets, and a host of other things that cause them to be, again, suspect in the eyes of the original settlers, which, by the way, this is still—these beliefs that Latter-day Saints have are still the cause of conflict between some Latter-day Saints and other Christian groups today. Many of the Saints believed that before they could build the city of Zion, the New Jerusalem there, that God would have to cleanse the land, which you can imagine how that went over when the original settlers learned of that, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: This is highly offensive. So, I mean, from the very beginning, this is like oil and water, right? Latter-day Saints and the original settlers coming in—like, there couldn’t be two different groups from one another.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and you’ll see this highlighted in the history. Like, W. W. Phelps—most people know W. W. Phelps as a hymn writer. He’s the editor of the newspaper in Independence that the church sponsors, and the church printer, and he’s an abolitionist, and so, the situation was ripe for conflict. The other thing is if you start to superimpose the maps—there’s maps of what the city of Zion was going to look like—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —it’s clear that, like, if they were building what they were planning on, at least half of the already existing settlement of Independence would just have to go away.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: In the August design—there’s a design set out in August 1833 that would have completely wiped Independence off the map, and so the cultural differences and the millennial expectations of the Saints do kind of set up—this is a recipe for conflict, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And because of these clear differences, tensions between church members and the Jackson County locals existed almost from the time the first church members began settling there in the summer of 1831. That’s when you have the Knight family and a couple people come in and start setting it up. In fact, even before their arrival, the Lord told a group of church members in Ohio that the land of Missouri was both the future “land of your inheritance” and also the current “land of your enemies.” That’s in Doctrine and Covenants 52 verse 42. So the Lord is trying to tell them—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —prepare for some turbulence, I guess.

Scott Woodward: Probably going to be some conflict there.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And, I mean, public threats and intimidation don’t take long to start up, especially as the saints start to multiply in numbers. We’re talking about the spring of 1832, so less than a year after the place is identified as the location for the city of Zion, there’s written handbills posted in various places warning church members to leave the county and then verbal warnings and threats to church leaders, and finally the violence starts with things like throwing stones and bricks through their homes and breaking windows several nights in a row. So it flares up in the spring of 1832, then it kind of calms down. Then, in the fall of 1832, hostilities briefly flare up again. There’s hostilities and intimidation, briefly, as some gunshots were fired at the homes of some church members, so—

Scott Woodward: Geez.

Casey Griffiths: —this is the heat increasing gradually, but, after the fall of 1832, it subsides. Again, things kind of do calm down. Now, that September, in Doctrine and Covenants 84, the Lord told Missouri church members that they needed to repent of some specific things. “Otherwise,” he warns, “there remaineth a scourge and judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion.” That’s Doctrine and Covenants 84, verse 58.

Scott Woodward: That’s ominous.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, so the Lord’s, again, from the beginning, said this is going to be challenging, but is starting to warn them, like, you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. A scourge is coming. During the winter and spring of 1833, due to the circulation of a lot of false stories about the saints, hatred towards the saints festers and intensifies, and a mob spirit secretly begins to spread wider and wider. So, gradual increase. In March of 1833, the Lord told Joseph Smith in Doctrine and Covenants 90 that, although, “your brethren in [Missouri] begin to repent . . . Nevertheless, I am not well pleased with many things,” and this includes that William McClellan, Sidney Gilbert, Edward Partridge, “and others have many things to repent of,” adding, “I, the Lord, will contend with Zion, and plead with her strong ones, and chasten her until she overcomes and is clean before me.” That’s Doctrine and Covenants 90, verses 34-36. So there’s this gradual pattern of warning of the Saints in Missouri, and by the way, the warnings of the Doctrine and Covenants are supplemented by a documentary record that we have, you can find in the Joseph Smith Papers and other places, that really there was a lot of disunity among the Saints in Missouri, and there were a lot of problems. I mean, they hadn’t been there for very long, but it also seems like conflict was rife among them, and they were struggling to carry out the directives that they’d been given.

Scott Woodward: And we should note, too, that these revelations coming to Joseph Smith are coming to him over in Ohio. I mean, that’s a long ways away, and so the Lord is sending these messages through the prophet—I can’t remember how many miles. Is it a thousand miles? I mean, it’s a lot of miles.

Casey Griffiths: Around 800 miles from Kirtland to Missouri.

Scott Woodward: There you go.

Casey Griffiths: And Joseph Smith is traveling to Missouri. In fact, in the spring of 1832, not long after he and Sidney Rigdon were attacked—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —they go to Missouri, and they kind of get a stern talking to from the Missouri saints, which, again, leads us to believe that there were major problems happening there, and the Lord was trying to warn the saints to knock it off.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Or that there was something that was going to happen.

Scott Woodward: Now let’s flip the camera back over to the Missourians, from their perspective, these original settlers in Missouri, and let’s talk about why they wanted the Mormons out. So months later, okay? This is now—we’re in the summer of 1833, the verbal threats, the house stonings, the window breaking starts happening again, and then on July 15th, a declaration was written and signed by some, like, 300 of the Jackson County locals, and they issue this. They circulate it in the county, wherein they declared their intentions to rid their society of the Mormons, “peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.” And what’s insightful about this document is they actually declare, like, exactly why they hate church members so much.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And why they want to eject them from their society. And so this is not us speculating: This is actually in their document as to why they hate the Mormons, so.

Casey Griffiths: This is kind of incredible because they literally, like, published their thesis, so we don’t have to do a lot of guesswork about why the Missourians wanted the saints to leave. I mean, they just pretty much flat out say—

Scott Woodward: They just say it.

Casey Griffiths: —point one, point two, point three: Here’s the reasons why.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So let me walk through these real quick. So the first thing is they say that the Mormons were poor, lazy, deluded, religious fanatics, or they were knowing deceivers who pretended to receive revelation, healing the sick, speaking in tongues, performing miracles, such as was done by the apostles in ancient times, all of which was blasphemous and openly, “derogatory of God and religion.” Number two: They said that the Mormons bombastically claimed that, “their God had given them this county of land, and that sooner or later they must and will have possession of our lands for an inheritance,” and I can kind of see their point on this one. Like, of all the points, I’m like, yeah, that one’s kind of—that one’s kind of brutal, like—and Latter-day Saints should have not waved this in the face of the locals. I mean, there’s some things Latter-day Saints could have done a lot better. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy here, but . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, there’s some blame to be shared here. I mean, it’s not exactly in How to Win Friends and Influence People that you walk in and say, the land must be cleansed of you, Gentile, which it sounds like the saints were doing, and they were pretty direct with, so.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It’s kind of a twisted manifestation of faith, but it is what it is.

Scott Woodward: In a weird way. Yeah. Okay, now the third thing they write is—and this is their biggest complaint of all, and they say that it centers on their fears of the effect that the Mormons would have on their slaves. Keep in mind, Missouri is a slave state here, right? They accused them of, “tampering with our slaves to sow dissensions and to raise seditions among them.” They accused W. W. Phelps of using his newspaper to implicitly invite, “free Negroes and mulattos from other states to become Mormons and remove and settle among us.” This, they fear, will be, “one of the surest means of driving us from the county, since it would corrupt our Blacks and instigate them to bloodshed.” Now, think, again, this is just on the heels of the Nat Turner revolt, and so that fear is still in the air. They said that it would require them—if the Blacks come into this county, it would require them, the white locals, to, “receive into the bosom of our families as fit companions for our wives and daughters, the degraded free Negroes and mulattos who are now invited to settle among us. Under such a state of things,” they declared, “even our beautiful county would cease to be a desirable residence, and our situation intolerable.” So—and then just a few days later, in a follow-up resolution written on July 20, they mentioned each of these points again, and then they added one more: They added the fear that Mormons posed a political threat as well, saying that since they intend to continue to gather to Jackson County, it’s only going to be a matter of time until, “the civil government of the county will be in their hands when the sheriff, the justices, and the county judges will be Mormons.” So in the name of self-preservation, they concluded that this community of Mormons, now only 1,200 strong, needed to be blasted in the germ, they said, like, nipped in the bud, yeah, before it could grow any larger in Jackson County, so we need to act now while they’re still small. Otherwise, we’re going to be out. So they threatened, straight up saying, “if they refuse to leave us in peace as they found us, then we agree to use such means as may be sufficient to remove them.” They write that right in their declaration. So, man. Now, of course, when church leaders read this, they deny any of this is true. They refute it, but their refutations are futile.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And while you’re reading that, I mean, I thought of that old church movie Legacy, where they have a scene where the guy’s like, these Mormons are coming into town it, there going to be no time before you have a Mormon sheriff and a Mormon mayor, and everybody’s like, yeah!

Scott Woodward: Yeah!

Casey Griffiths: But, I mean, in the movie, that feels like a contrivance, but when you start to read through the documents, no.

Scott Woodward: That’s exactly what they said. Yeah, this was actually their fear.

Casey Griffiths: They never deny it. They never go back on it. They’re like, yeah, they like black people. Yeah, they’re deluded. Yeah, there’s too many of them. In the early American Republic, there really was this generalized fear that if you lost control of the politics, you lost control of the situation, and this happens to the Saints again and again and again. Like, 10 years later, you’re going to hear some of the same justifications when Joseph Smith is murdered in Nauvoo, so it’s a sad fact.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and the Saints are conspicuous because we always have this command to gather, so we become very conspicuous in any community.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We start to grow in large numbers, and that typically made the locals nervous.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Ultimately this is going to lead us to just come out to Utah, right? Just to be like, all right. We’re going to leave, and we’re just going to be our own thing, and we’ll build the kingdom of God out there without any local neighbors around to bother, and who won’t bother us back.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and it affects us in different ways, too. For instance, when we talked with Andrew Bolton from Community of Christ, I was surprised to hear him say that an early principle of the RLDS church was to not gather: that this has caused too many problems, so we’re going to stay small and not be threatening. But whenever Latter-day Saints did gather, I mean, to a certain degree, even in Utah, persecutions started to flare up, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: All right, so that sets the scene, and it’s not very many days after the mob manifesto is issued that outright violence begins. So on our timeline, on July 20, a delegate of thirteen locals meets with six church leaders and demand that W. W. Phelps’s printing office and Sidney Gilbert’s store and all other shops be closed and for the Latter-day Saints to leave the county immediately. Now, church leaders ask for three months to consider their demand. This is refused. They are then asked for ten days, to which the mob leaders responded that fifteen minutes was the most that could be granted. Given such short notice, each church leader responded that they couldn’t consent to the demands, so it’s not long after that a mob of several hundred people storms W. W. Phelps’s print shop. This is a two-story brick building with a print shop on the second floor, and his family lived on the first floor. There’s still a plaque in downtown Independence that marks where this is. The mob throw the printing press from the upper floor. They destroy it. They scatter the type and the paper throughout the streets while Phelps’s wife and children are forcefully thrown out of the home on the first floor, and their furniture was thrown out behind them and broke in pieces, and then the building itself was destroyed.

Scott Woodward: Geez.

Casey Griffiths: And we’ve made reference to this. This is—the Book of Commandments, the earliest version of the Doctrine and Covenants, was supposed to be printed in Independence, and this is where Mary Elizabeth Rollins and her little sister, Caroline, and several other members of the church run in and grab the printed copies of the revelations, which is the reason why we have any copies of the Book of Commandments, but they go straight for the printing press. Then the mob goes to Sidney Gilbert’s store, which is only about a block away. They begin to do the same. This point, Sidney Gilbert intercedes and agrees to pack up his goods and close the store, and so the mob stops. Then the mob goes after church leadership. So Bishop Edward Partridge, who lives not far away, too, is taken from his house by the mob, along with church member Charles Allen. They’re marched to the public square, where they’re publicly tarred and feathered before a taunting crowd. In fact, I pulled this up: This is Edward Partridge’s account of this incident. I love Edward Partridge.

Scott Woodward: He’s so good.

Casey Griffiths: One of my favorite accounts from church history. He says—this is a history he writes later on: “I told the mob that the saints had suffered persecution in all ages of the world, that I had done nothing which ought to offend anyone, that if they abused me, they would abuse an innocent person, and that I was willing to suffer for the sake of Christ, but to leave the country? I was not then willing to consent to it. I bore my abuse with so much resignation and meekness that it appeared to astound the multitude, who permitted me to retire in silence, many looking very solemn, their sympathies having been touched as I thought, and as to myself, I was so filled with the spirit and love of God that I had no hatred towards my persecutors or anyone else.” So . . .

Scott Woodward: Wow, what a man.

Casey Griffiths: I know. He’s awesome. It’s basically his nonviolent response, in his recollection, that disarms the mob, that that’s what finally stops them from rampaging is that he stands up and says, this is what people did to Christ. And that he sits there and takes it causes the mob to just kind of gradually wander off, and unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story, but . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He does stop the violence that day, I guess. It’s—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —it’s three days later, on July 23, that a mob of 500 people, armed and waving red flags, rode into the town, threatening death and destruction to the Mormons. And seeing the mob’s determination, these six leaders that had met with them courageously offered to sacrifice their lives to the mob if they would satisfy them and turn away their wrath from the rest of the saints and let them stay in the land and live there in peace, but the mob refuses this offer, saying that everyone should die for themselves or leave the country. So church leaders at this point don’t have any choice. They sign an agreement on this day that half of the Saints would leave Jackson County by January 1, 1834, and the other half by April 1, and they’re hoping to buy some time to try and consult with Joseph Smith and other church leaders in Ohio and to try to get help from the Missouri governor, so they haven’t given up, but it doesn’t seem like they have a lot of choice at this point.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Unless they want further violence to come upon them.

Scott Woodward: Now they know that the mob is serious. They’ve seen what they’ve done three days ago. Now 500 men are saying, sign this agreement or else, and so sign it they did. Sign it they did. Okay, so now let’s talk about Joseph Smith’s response when he learns of all of this. So Oliver Cowdery was actually in Missouri, and he is sent shortly thereafter—after the mob threatens, after the leaders sign the agreement to leave, he is sent to Ohio to consult with church leaders there, and he arrives on August 9, 1833. Meanwhile, actually a week earlier, on August 2, Joseph had received section 97, where the Lord warned that if Zion, “observe not to do whatsoever I have commanded her, I will visit her according to all her works, with sore affliction,” including, he said, “with sword, with vengeance, [and] with devouring fire.” That’s pretty remarkable, considering that Joseph would not have known exactly the extent to which things had ramped up at that point. And then Oliver Cowdery just shows up seven days later and confirms that some of this had already begun. Then four days later, after Oliver arrives, Joseph receives section 98, which contains counsel intensely relevant to both the situation of the saints in Missouri and the saints in Kirtland, who had also recently begun to experience severe persecution. Here the Lord counsels church members to be temperate in their reactions to violence, to follow constitutional law, and to renounce war and proclaim peace, offering forgiveness to wrongdoers, which is awesome. He also outlines conditions under which self-defense is justified in his eyes. After, I think he says, three provocations, right? And then on August 18, after learning from Oliver Cowdery more of the particulars of what was happening there, Joseph writes a letter to church leaders in Missouri declaring, he says, that, “It is the will of the Lord that not one foot of land should be given to the enemies of God or sold to them,” so they’re to hold the ground. They were to hold their ground. Shortly thereafter, Orson Hyde is sent from Ohio to Missouri, where he and W. W. Phelps were to carry a petition from the afflicted Missouri Saints to the Missouri governor, whose name is Daniel Dunklin, and to solicit his protection and help in obtaining, you know, damages, they call them, for the loss of property and personal abuse. So they also request Dunklin to raise troops “to help them sue for redress.” I’m now quoting from a document from this time: “to help them sue for redress and perhaps even to help prosecute the perpetrators of anti-Mormon violence for treason against the government. And to his credit, Governor Dunklin said he was willing to help the saints, but he says, you must first try the law and the courts. And so he advises them to sue their enemies for damages. So they do. They actually hire four lawyers ready to help them sue, but, boy, Casey, this backfires, doesn’t it?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it does, in a big way. And unfortunately, yeah, it doesn’t defuse the situation: it inflames the situation.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: When the mob in Jackson County finds out about this petition to the governor and that they hired lawyers to help prosecute them, they become enraged, and the violence just starts all over again. So they start stoning houses, they start breaking windows—again, small aggressions at first, just like the lead up to it, but by October 31, things escalate dramatically, and it’s less than a week that the saints find themselves forcibly expelled from Jackson County.

Scott Woodward: Man.

Casey Griffiths: Eyewitness among the saints, Parley P Pratt is there. He’s in Zion. He’s acting as the school teacher in Zion, and this is what he records, okay? He said, “Thursday night, the 31st of October—”

Scott Woodward: Halloween.

Casey Griffiths: Halloween. “—between forty and fifty, many of whom were armed with guns, unroofed and partly demolished ten dwelling houses, and in the midst of the shrieks and screams of women and children, whipped and beaten in a savage manner several of the men, and with their horrid threats, frightened women and children into the wilderness.” So—

Scott Woodward: Yikes.

Casey Griffiths: —straight up forcible violence, forcing them out. “Saturday night, November 2, a party of the mob made an attack upon a settlement about six miles west of town. Here they tore the roof from a dwelling, broke open another house, found the owner, Mr. David Bennett, sick in bed. Him they beat inhumanly, and swore they would blow his brains out, and discharging a pistol, a ball cut a deep gash across the top of his head. In this skirmish, one of their men was shot in the thigh. On Tuesday and Wednesday nights,” this is the 5th and 6th of November, Parley records, “women and children fled in every direction before a merciless mob. One party of about 150 women and children fled to the prairie, where they wandered for several days, mostly without food, and nothing but the open firmament for their shelter. Other parties fled towards the Missouri River. Parties of the mob were hunting men, firing upon some, typing up and whipping others. Thursday, November 7, on the shore of the Missouri River, hundreds of people were seen in every direction, some in tents, some in the open air around their fires, while the rain descended in torrents. Husbands were inquiring for their wives and women for their husbands, parents for their children and children for parents. Some had the good fortune to escape with their family, household goods, and some provisions, while others knew not the fate of their friends and had lost all their goods. The scene was indescribable, and I’m sure would have melted the hearts of any people upon earth, except our blind oppressors and a prejudiced and ignorant community. In short, every member of the society was driven from the county, and fields of corn were plundered and destroyed. Stacks of wheat were burned, household goods plundered, and every kind of property lost, and at length no less than 203 houses burned, according to the estimate of their own people in Jackson. The Saints who fled took refuge in the neighboring counties, mostly in Clay County, which received them with some degree of kindness.”

Scott Woodward: Man.

Casey Griffiths: So Parley’s account is pretty—

Scott Woodward: Man.

Casey Griffiths: —pretty gripping.

Scott Woodward: Meanwhile, back in Ohio, Joseph Smith learns the details of what happened on November 25, when eyewitnesses Orson Hyde and John Gould show up and tell the tale. Then later on December 10, Joseph receives letters from Missouri church leaders Edward Partridge, John Corrill, and W. W. Phelps that they had written weeks earlier, because mail traveled slowly, and these letters supply more details and seek counsel from the prophet and direction about what should be done next. Like, here’s Edward Partridge: he wrote, “We are in hopes that we shall be able to return to our houses and lands before a great while, but how this is to be accomplished is all in the dark to us as yet. I want your advice upon the subject of the lands, and also I want wisdom and light on many subjects in this time of trial,” he wrote to the prophet. Joseph actually responds in a letter that same day, saying, among other things, “I cannot learn from any communication by the Spirit to me that Zion has forfeited her claim to a celestial crown, notwithstanding the Lord has caused her to be thus afflicted. I have always expected,” he said, “that Zion would suffer sore affliction from what I could learn from the revelations which have been given.” And you can look in the revelations. He’s probably referring to probably D&C 58, D&C 84, 90, 97—these have been received over a period of over two years, and there’s always these intimations, these forebodings of some affliction that will come upon the saints if they don’t repent. He then says, “but I would remind you of a certain clause in one,” and then he cites D&C 58 verse 4, “which says that after much tribulation cometh the blessing. By this, and also one received of late, I know that Zion, in the own due time of the Lord, will be redeemed,” which is a reference to D&C 100 that he had just received, verse 13, “but how many will be the days of her purification, tribulation, and affliction the Lord has kept hid from my eyes, and when I inquire concerning this subject, the voice of the Lord is, be still, and know that I am God. All those who suffer for my name shall reign with me, and he that layeth down his life for my sake shall find it again.” Then Joseph continues, he says, “Now there are two things of which I am ignorant, and the Lord will not show me, perhaps for a wise purpose in Himself. And they are these: Number one, why God has suffered so great calamity to come upon Zion. And number two, by what means He will return her back to her inheritance with songs of everlasting joy upon her head. These two things, brethren, are in part kept back, that they are not plainly shown unto me,” he said. But then, good news, Casey: six days after he wrote that letter, the Lord actually does reveal to Joseph, in what’s now Doctrine and Covenants 101, very clear answers to both of those questions. In the first eight verses, the Lord does say that He allowed these calamities to come upon the saints, in part because of their hardness, their contentions, their lustful and covetous desires, their janglings and—is that what he calls them? Their fighting with each other and with the locals. And as section 101 progresses, the Lord actually gives a parable-formed response to how Zion might be redeemed through military means in the future. That’s verses 43-62. He then commands all church members to help redeem Zion by pooling their money together to purchase Jackson County and the surrounding area. And then he invites the scattered saints themselves to continue to petition government leaders for help and to legally hold on to their property. And so that’s kind of the section 101 response. So maybe possibly military means might come into play here, but for sure, let’s pool our money and try to buy out the Jackson County settlers. Let’s purchase it legally. Let’s purchase all the land we can, and at this time, there’s about forty different settlements of saints throughout the United States, and they’re not all just in Ohio and Missouri. There’s people back east and other places. And so this is kind of an all call. Section 101’s an all call to all the saints in the church to pool their money. He says there is sufficient even now in the church, collectively, to be able to redeem Zion by purchasing the lands. Sad to report that this money was not raised, and the land was not purchased, but this is a possibility the Lord outlines in section 101. So in the aftermath here now of section 101, Missouri church leaders petition both Missouri Governor Daniel Dunklin, and they even reach out to U. S. President Andrew Jackson for assistance. Governor Dunklin was actually quite responsive to them. He called for both civil and military courts of inquiry. Sending the Attorney General with witnesses protected by a military escort to Jackson County in order to criminally prosecute the mob and to order the mob to restore the weapons they had stolen from the Saints. This part of the story is cool, right? It sounds like the Saints are going to get a little bit of—a little bit of help here. It looks like things might turn. The tide may turn in their favor, but so widespread was the hatred of the saints that the Jackson County Court and the jurors refused to do anything. The small, little military escort and the witnesses were actually driven back out of the county, causing the Attorney General to advise the saints to “relinquish all hopes of criminal prosecution against this band of outlaws.” That’s the Missouri Attorney General’s advice.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And does that show how bad it is? Like, the attorney general of the state is, like, nothing you can do.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: These guys are outlaws. Like, they’re basically just admitting that there’s anarchy in a county in their state, and they’re not going to do anything about it, which . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know, you know? You read later things where Joseph Smith and the other saints talk about Missouri, and stuff like this just makes me go, yeah, they were right. Missouri was a lawless land during this time.

Scott Woodward: And they’re right there on the border of the United States, right? And border towns, from what I understand, oftentimes attracted some of the societal riffraff, right, some folks who were a little loose on the law, because if people came to apprehend them, they could jump over the border outside the jurisdiction of, like, U. S. Marshals and those kinds of things. And so in some ways, lawless folks were attracted to border towns, like Independence was, and—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —when you get enough of those together, we see what happens. They defy, for instance, the governor’s order to return the weapons of the saints that they had taken. They say, no. What are you going to do about it? So when they return and report to Governor Dunklin, he expresses his willingness to have a military guard escort the saints back to their lands and property. He said, “Under the protection of this guard, your people can, if they think proper, return to their homes in Jackson County.” But he said that he is not authorized to station the military there for any length of time after that. So he can give them a military escort, yes, but a standing military army? No.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And that essential piece of news is what’s going to factor heavily into the decision of Joseph Smith and over 200 Saints from the East to march to Missouri in what will become known as Zion’s Camp with the intent of marching with the governor’s military escort, bringing the Saints, the scattered Saints, back into Jackson County, and then when the governor’s troops withdraw, they will have this 200-plus-member military of saints there to defend the saints from ongoing attacks. In fact, church leaders write to Governor Dunklin, informing him of their intentions to form their own army, and they said, “Our object is purely to defend ourselves and possessions against another unparalleled attack from that mob. Inasmuch as the executive of this state cannot keep a military force to protect our people in that county without transcending his powers, we want, therefore, the privilege of defending ourselves and the constitution of our country.“ So this is going to lead to what’s called Zion’s Camp. We’re going to talk a lot more about this in our next episode, but Zion’s Camp is going to fail in its stated purpose.

Casey Griffiths: Spoilers.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We’re just going to spoil it. They will march from Ohio to Missouri, and on the 12th of June, 1834, before entering Jackson County, Joseph sends Orson Hyde and Parley Pratt to go meet with Governor Dunklin and say, we’re ready, and to, you know, request that the governor now calls out the state militia on the Saints’ behalf to escort them back to Jackson County, as he had offered to do, but the governor at this point, seeing the writing on the wall, that this is going to end in a bloodbath on both sides, he—I think wisely probably here—he wisely reneged on his previous commitment to have his army escort the Saints back to their homes, and without the governor’s military escorting them back, they were basically stalled, and there was nothing for the scattered saints to do, and there was nothing for Zion’s Camp to do, and so Joseph prays, section 105 is received, and there the Lord disbands Zion’s Camp at that time. There’s more to the story. We’re going to get more into it in our next episode, but—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —but this is how basically the violence of 1833 essentially ends. The saints are kicked out of Jackson County, Missouri. Some efforts by the governor to help them get back in, but ultimately those efforts fail. The efforts of Zion’s Camp to be a standing defensive army within Jackson County fail, and the Saints remain in the northern county. It’s called Clay County. The Saints go up to Clay County, and many of them also return back to Ohio. That’s kind of where this chapter of the story ends.

Casey Griffiths: If we’re following our model, where there’s category one, violence inflicted upon the Saints, category two, the Saints fight back, category three, the Saints inflict violence upon people—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —where do you think this one fits?

Scott Woodward: Well, it seems like it’s mostly category one, right? We were the recipients of violence.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And then a little bit with the Zion’s Camp, it seems like we were ready to defend ourselves if we could with the governor’s blessing, but it never seems to have amounted to that, and so we almost get to category two—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —but I don’t think we quite got there. Would you agree?

Casey Griffiths: I think there’s some people in the church that wanted to go to category two, but were sort of held back and restrained, and I don’t blame them for wanting to.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But I also think that a person that says that our theology is inherently violent hasn’t read the revelations surrounding these events. I mean—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —just to give you, like, a sample, section 98, verse 16: “Renounce war and proclaim peace, and seek diligently to turn the hearts of the children to the fathers, and the hearts of the fathers to the children.” Like, He’s telling them to not engage in violence.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And then, a little further down, in verse 23 and 24, “Now I speak unto you concerning your families—if men will smite you, or your families, once, and ye bear it patiently and revile not against them, neither seek revenge, [shall ye] be rewarded; But if ye bear it not patiently, it shall be accounted unto you as being meted out as a just measure [against] you.” And He does this again and again.

Scott Woodward: So you’re justified in defending yourselves if need be, but if you don’t, if you just bear it—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —nonviolently, that’s even better. Is that—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —what he’s saying?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it seems like in every instance, he’s pushing them towards finding a nonviolent solution, even though they’re under these adverse circumstances where they’re basically being given no choice to do anything other than roll over completely—they don’t have any means to fight back. And so, I mean, it’s hard to read sections like section 98, which is probably the most extensive statement we have on violence, and say that it’s inherently violent when the Lord is telling them, no, like, I will bless you if you bear this patiently, and only, it seems like, advocating defensive violence, like, you never start it, but you can defend your family, but if you don’t fight back, you’ll be blessed.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so on and so on. So, I mean, I’ve got to say that any analysis of Latter-day Saint theology that says it’s inherently violent isn’t taking into account these revelations. Just doesn’t seem like they’ve done the work.

Scott Woodward: And these are the revelations that would show our theology, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: These are the revelations that would bring out from the Lord and His prophet what we believe about war and violence and peace and conflict, and here it is. Look at section 98. Look at section 101. Look at section 103 and then 105.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And not just here: I mean, when I read through the Doctrine and Covenants to prep some of the materials that we put up on Doctrine and Covenants Central, I was really, really impressed with the fact that in almost every revelation concerning the lands in Missouri, the Lord doesn’t say seize it or take it: He says purchase it.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Use legal means.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Don’t use violence. Don’t use force. Don’t outmaneuver them. Just purchase it. Like, get the money together and buy it, because that’s non-violent.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I also think that there’s a flow there, too.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I want to talk about one more thing in these revelations. This is something that I never saw until President Oaks came to BYU and spoke. This was shortly after, you know, George Floyd and Black Lives Matter and a bunch of that stuff that was happening.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He goes to section 101, this is verses 78 and 79, and he says, “Every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment. Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.” President Oaks just flat out said in this revelation, in a revelation given in 1833, the Lord condemned slavery. And so that fits into the picture, too, where basically the Lord isn’t justifying what the Missourians are doing. In fact, he says that they’re wrong. He says that the source of the violence is that the Saints—well, the reason why the affliction comes upon the Saints is because they aren’t united, because there’s vain janglings among them, and they’re fighting against each other, but he also doesn’t back down on the morality of their cause. So it seems like he’s not too happy with the saints, but he’s also saying the Missourians are morally wrong in doing this. Like, this feels like a category one to me, where the saints didn’t start the violence: They were victims of violence.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and those verses you just read about the constitution of the land as well, seems to be the Lord really, really endorsing the idea of if something like this happens, you have the obligation to petition those in authority in the government to help you, because this is part of why I set up this land the way that it is and the constitution and established its principles so that those who are in positions of power to help can help, and they ought to help, and you ought to importune for their assistance.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He even invokes the importuning widow of the New Testament here to say, ask them. Ask the judges. Ask the civic leaders to help you out, and so every means you can go about before violence, do it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Anything you can do to avoid violence, do it. Now, after multiple provocations, are you justified in defending your family? Of course you are, but try every means in your power to avoid that. There’s another revelation where he said, there’s two ways to get the land: by bloodshed and by purchasing, and since I have commanded you not to shed blood, you really only have one option. You can only get this land by purchasing it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Everyone’s thinking of the two options, and he just nips that first one in the bud. He says, I know you’re thinking there’s these two, and you’re right: bloodshed is an option, but I’ve commanded you not to commit it. Therefore, you have one choice, and that is to purchase the land. The stage is now set, Casey, for the next chapter in this. We’ll dig a little bit deeper next time into the saga of Zion’s Camp.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We’ve mentioned it today. We’ve talked about why it was set up, and we want to dig a little deeper next time to look at some of the dynamics of this that may hold some insight about Latter-day Saints and violence.

Casey Griffiths: The events that happened in 1833, I mean, continue to echo through the rest of the history of the church. Again, the 1838 persecutions just pile on this, but what happens in Missouri kind of does set the tone where Latter-day Saints start to realize that this is going to be a harder project than we thought it was going to be. It’s not going to be easy to build the city of Zion, but these revelations, especially the ones that run from about section 97 up to section 105, kind of lay down the theology for peace and violence, and, again, it’s just hard to read them without getting a clear impression that the Lord is not okay with violence and that he wants the Saints to seek nonviolent solutions to their problems—exhaust every possible option before they use violence. And whether or not the Saints have been great at following this is a whole separate debate, but I don’t think you can argue that the principles aren’t there.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And that the Saints haven’t been steered towards being nonviolent.

Scott Woodward: Amen.

Casey Griffiths: Amen.

Scott Woodward: Well said.

Casey Griffiths: A lot of this gets wrapped up in Zion’s Camp, which we’re going to talk about next week, where there are further revelations about how Zion gets redeemed and how the Lord wants them to go about it and if violence is supposed to play a role in that.

Scott Woodward: Stay tuned until next time.

Casey Griffiths: All right. See you next time.

Scott Woodward: Thanks, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Thanks, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode Casey and I dig into the details behind Zion’s Camp as we consider this question: What does the march of a quasi-military group of Latter-day Saints led by a prophet of God say about peace and violence among Latter-day Saints? If you’re enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it or by taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Let me say that one more time: All of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. And if you are in a position where you’re both willing and able to make a one-time or ongoing donation, be assured that your contribution will help us at Scripture Central to produce and disseminate more quality content to combat false and faith-eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. Also, while Casey and I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.