Scott Woodward: 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 in the winter of 1838-39. 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. 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. Well, hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Hi, Scott. How are you?

Scott Woodward: Fantastic. Fantastic.

Casey Griffiths: Fantastic.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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, like . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah, this is—

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know.

Scott Woodward: 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, 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. Is that fair to say? Maybe it’s not the most entertaining or even, like, uplifting, but it feels important.

Casey Griffiths: It’s definitely important, and I’m even going to say that it can be uplifting, but it’s tough. 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—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I don’t think either one of us is going to 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, a hundred percent.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: 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. 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. We’re here to look specifically at whether or not there are, like, religious underpinnings that make it worse, right? Or make, or somehow inflame, violence amongst adherents of religious groups, and particularly in the Latter-day Saint tradition. And so far, Casey, where are we at? What would you say? What’s our conclusion of through our first three episodes? Does religion itself add fuel to the fire of humans in close proximity who are different, leading to conflict? Or do you think it quells it to some degree? Or is it neutral? What are your thoughts so far?

Casey Griffiths: 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. 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And they’ve tried to find peaceful solutions, but it’s complicated, right? There’s not a black and white answer here. 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—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —but I don’t know where we’d be without the teachings in the scriptures, either. Like, we talk a lot about how religion has caused war. I mean, go read The Iliad, you know? 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. 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: 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?

Casey Griffiths: 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. That’s a title we use for Christ all the time. 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, 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So we came up with this model where we had three categories. So category one is where the Saints are clear victims and don’t make any strong attempts to resist the violence.

Scott Woodward: And it’s typically victims of religious bigotry, right? Again, it’s humans that are in close proximity to each other that have differences, and sometimes we get singled out.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And we’re picked on and persecuted, and sometimes even violence is enacted against us because we are different from the status quo.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I would say the people that carried out the violence, even in this category one here, would say they were justified, but it doesn’t seem like it is if the stuff we’re putting in this category—we’re talking about stuff like when 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. I mean, just when you go back and review the historical record, the saints may have provoked the Missourians, but the actions that the Missourians took against the Saints were not justified.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: And the Saints were victims, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah. It’s category one.

Casey Griffiths: Category two is when the Saints actively engaged in an exchange of violence with their enemies, 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. 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 . . . 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, 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. Of course, the worst example of this is the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which we’re going to talk about in a couple episodes, too.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So today what we’re going to do is analyze events that took place in the summer and fall of 1838. I mentioned this is called the Mormon War, and we’re just going to use that title because that’s the title that academics use, that it’s usually used in history. We know that we’ve been asked not to use the term Mormon, but this is just kind of the historical term for it, so—

Scott Woodward: From a historical perspective—

Casey Griffiths: From a historical perspective, the Mormon War.

Scott Woodward: That’s how it has been referred to for a long time, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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. We just don’t have enough—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —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. 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. 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. 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, 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?

Scott Woodward: 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. 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, 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. So Zion’s Camp marches hundreds of miles but stops just short of Jackson County. 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, 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, and around this time, this is when Doctrine and Covenants 105 was received in which the Lord orders Zion’s Camp to return home, and He gives them direct commands about how to regain Zion 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, 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. 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.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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, 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, 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. 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. He doesn’t really articulate it, but then he just lands it with this beautiful, like, proclamation of peace to everybody. When we have groups, Casey, that are different from each other, and one of the 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. Like, your default position is peace. Sue for peace.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Cry for peace. Make proposals for peace. Do everything you can for peace. 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?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, 1834 is when section 105 is received: summer of 1834. Those are the last instructions given in Missouri, 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, and so we’re going to flash forward from that revelation to 1838, and let me kind of set the scene here.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: In the spring of 1838, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon relocate to the Latter-day Saint settlements in Northwest Missouri. 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 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.

Scott Woodward: Which is, like, kind of cool, right? The government said, we’re creating a county just for you guys.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So go to Caldwell County, stay in Caldwell County.

Casey Griffiths: You can’t have your land back, but here’s some more land you can have, which, I mean . . .

Scott Woodward: It’s literally in the shape of a box, and in some ways it was, stay in your box. Like, here’s your box, this county.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Stay here. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So most of the Saints in Missouri—and, again, there’s more Latter-day Saints in Missouri than Kirtland, than in Ohio—they relocate to Caldwell County, where they start building a new headquarters, this city called Far West. 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. This is when the Kirtland Temple is left behind, which is a tragedy, but that’s part of this 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, and that appears to be one of the things that kind of upset the Missourians and led to physical conflict. 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. Like I mentioned, the Kirtland Saints are entering into a tinderbox, and they don’t even know it. 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.” So the Saints are already eyeing their neighbors with suspicion, their neighbors are kind of looking at them, 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. 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, therefore they can be outvoted, therefore they’ll be dominated. At the same time, too, there’s also internal conflict happening among the saints. 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, and you might have noticed in a lot of our podcasts, when we start talking about former stalwart members like all the three witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, they’re excommunicated during this time. 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. Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer are the two obvious ones, but other leaders like apostles Lyman Johnson, William McLellin, and a number of prominent former leaders are excommunicated from the church. And the conflict is set up because some of these, like William McLellin, actually leave church headquarters at Far West and go other places, but others, like Oliver Cowdery, stay in Far West. 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.

Scott Woodward: The famous or infamous Salt Sermon of Sidney Rigdon. Tell us about that.

Casey Griffiths: 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, 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, 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.

Scott Woodward: They had lost their savor.

Casey Griffiths: They lost their savor, therefore they’re good for nothing but to be trodden underfoot, and that’s violent language.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, trodden underfoot, but that’s not where he leaves it. He makes it explicitly violent, doesn’t he?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, in fact, first of all, the whole salt explanation a lot of people take to be a threat against the apostates.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But then Rigdon just flat out makes an open threat to anybody that messes with them. 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. Rigdon apparently said, “We take God and all his holy angels to witness this day that we warn 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. 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, 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. Remember, then, all men.”

Scott Woodward: I’m going to call that violent rhetoric, Casey. 

Casey Griffiths: You think?

Scott Woodward: Yeah, I think so.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That registers on my violent-rhetoric-o-meter as, like, pretty high.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Let me—what does he s—”we will follow them ’till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us.” I mean . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Oh, Sydney. Oh, Sydney.

Casey Griffiths: 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—it’s a threat, basically, but the first person to use the word extermination is Sidney Rigdon. It’s a church leader.

Scott Woodward: 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?

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know. I’ve had a lot of conversations with Alex Baugh, who’s kind of the church’s Missouri history expert.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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? 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 Rigdon’s speech . . .

Scott Woodward: He says, “it shall be between us and them a war of extermination, or we will follow them ’til the last drop of their blood is spilled.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, okay.

Scott Woodward: Or else they’ll have to exterminate us. Geez. And I love and respect Alex Baugh, so I would love to hear his additional thoughts on that.

Casey Griffiths: Well, I mean, he’s just quoting from dictionaries from the time—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —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, and that does set the tone for the 1838 conflict.

Scott Woodward: 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?

Casey Griffiths: 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. 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, 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 from our homes, our property confiscated, our lives exposed, our all jeopardized by such conduct. 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.” 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. The address was delivered on the public square under the hoisted flag representing liberty and independence.” 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, they were just fresh from being forced from Kirtland because of threats of intimidation and violence, and it seems like they’d had it. 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, 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, so that leads us to one of the more colorful groups in church history:

Scott Woodward: The Danites. 

Casey Griffiths: All right, so we mentioned Danites. There’s a lot to unpack here. Scott, tell us who the Danites are.

Scott Woodward: The Danites. Man, this is a group that you hear of in whispers in . . .

Casey Griffiths: Bad TV movies, sometimes.

Scott Woodward: Bad TV movies, yeah, but no, this group is probably the most infamous of the groups that were organized during this time, 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. That’s—

Casey Griffiths: I know!

Scott Woodward: —one of the titles of this vigilante group. 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 scholars’ synthesis on the Danites. I think this is really helpful. So, again, this is right in your Gospel Library. It says this: “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. Joseph Smith believed that opposition from church dissidents and other antagonists had weakened and ultimately destroyed their community in Kirtland, Ohio. By the summer of 1838, church leaders saw the rise of similar threats to their community in Missouri. 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.” I just have to pause, Casey, just . . . Daughters of Zion just doesn’t sound very intimidating.

Casey Griffiths: Let me help you with that a little bit, because it is more intimidating than it sounds to a person in the 21st century. So . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah, in the 21st century, that just doesn’t fall as, like, this, like, group you should fear, right?

Casey Griffiths: 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, and I will make thy hooves brass, and thou shalt beat in pieces many people, and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord and their substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.”

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Which, you know, Samson’s a Danite and things like that, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It’s very biblical here, and even the name Daughter of Zion is more threatening than initially it sounds to us.

Scott Woodward: Sounds like initially people that are coming to your door selling cookies, is what Daughters of Zion initially sounds like.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, it sounds like a—

Scott Woodward: But when you go to the Book of Micah, that changes the tone significantly, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: “Beat in pieces many people” is one of the more memorable biblical passages associated with the Latter-day Saints.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, 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. 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. These militias clashed with other Missouri opponents, leading to a few fatalities on both sides. In addition, Latter-day Saint vigilantes, including many Danites, raided two towns believed to be centers of antagonism for the Church, burning homes and stealing goods.” We’re going to talk more about that in a few moments. “While vigilantes who opposed the Church targeted and sometimes killed non-combatant Latter-day Saints, Danites primarily confiscated or destroyed property they feared could be used by their opponents.” So no records of Danites, like, killing people in the same way that our enemies were killing us. They continue, “Historians generally concur that Joseph Smith approved of the Danites, but that he probably was not briefed on all their plans and likely did not sanction the full range of their activities. The Danites existed for only five months, from June through October 1838, and were only ever active in two counties in northwestern Missouri. 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.” 

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: It has led to a lot of myth and whispers about a secret society of vigilantes, 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.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I should note 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—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and was later excommunicated from the church. Never comes back. 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 exposé he wrote after he was excommunicated from the church, but that kind of had the fingerprints of his lawyer heavily on it, so 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. And if we’re being honest, there’s a lot we don’t know, but it does appear that the stories of Danites, which were sort of, like, a whole subgenre of literature, 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.

Scott Woodward: No. No Danites.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: A much-embellished myth—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —is that—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. And so as you hear stories, if you hear stories, just know kind of how to categorize them. That’s helpful for me.

Casey Griffiths: Okay.

Scott Woodward: So then what happens next, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: So the other thing that was really increasing tension between the Saints and their neighbors was that a lot of the Missourians believed the Saints should only stay in Caldwell County.

Scott Woodward: Stay in your box. Stay in your box.

Casey Griffiths: 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. But with all the refugees from Kirtland arriving in the area, Joseph Smith and others start looking for other places to settle. 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. Today it’s known as Adam-ondi-Ahman because Joseph Smith receives a revelation—this is Doctrine and Covenants 116—that identifies Spring Hill as Adam-ondi-Ahman and then invests it with kind of this millennial expectation that it’s going to be the place where the Ancient of Days will visit his people. 

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So this leads to the first violent conflict between the Saints and the settlers in Missouri. So this anti-Mormon sentiment, this idea the Saints are crossing their boundaries—and then Sidney Rigdon’s speech really doesn’t help—leads to a brawl over bloc voting in the primary election of Gallatin. 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.

Scott Woodward: County seat of Davies County, right? So . . .

Casey Griffiths: County seat of Davies County, yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —in Davies County, and so, yeah, this is already rife with potential conflict, okay?

Casey Griffiths: 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. 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 headed 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” 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, 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 ’em, [G. D.] them.” This candidate who thinks he’s going to lose because the Latter-day Saints tend to vote in a bloc starts causing problems.

Scott Woodward: So he’s the one standing up on the whiskey barrel, trying to whip people into a frenzy, and . . .

Casey Griffiths: 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’s told, and starts to shove him and beat him, and then it turns into a riot, sort of. So . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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, because it’s just so objectively awesome.

Scott Woodward: It’s objectively awesome.

Casey Griffiths: So he says, “I went to where the affray 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 muss together, every one of the Missourians trying to get a lick at a Mormon. It made me feel indignant to see from four to a dozen robbers on a man, and all damning him and G-damning the Mormon. I turned around and ran a few steps to get a stick, and I soon found one suitable, though rather large. 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. First, I remembered 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. I did not want to kill anyone, but merely to stop the affray, and went in with the determination to rescue my brethren from such miserable curs at all hazards, thinking, when hefting my stick, that I must temper my lick just so as not to kill. When I got in reach of them, I commenced to call aloud 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. I took great care to strike none except those who were fighting the brethren. When I first commenced, there were some six or eight and an old Mr. Durfee, and 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. I continued to knock down every man I could reach that was lifting a stick against the brethren. 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. While gazing on the scene, Brother Riley Stuart had in his hand what the backwoodsman calls a knee to place between weight poles in 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. It looked as if he was certainly killed. I told Stewart he’d better leave, for he had killed that man. He then started to run and got off some 20 or 25 paces when some ten or a dozen men took after him, throwing stones and sticks at him and anything they could get, swearing they would kill him. 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. 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. As he was several steps ahead of me, I sprang with all power that was in me to overtake him. 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 dirk 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. 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. 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. 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. He stooped down and picked up a stone, swearing he would kill every Mormon in Davies County before Saturday night. 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. 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. They had killed Dick and mashed his mouth, too, hoo hoo.” This is all in the original document, by the way. So good. “And he ran off, bellowing into the brush. I will mention another occurrence which took place. Brother Olmsted, previous to the affray, had purchased half a dozen earthen bowls, and as many teacups and saucers, which he tied up with a new cotton handkerchief and swung to his wrist. One of the mob struck him when he raised his arm, the blow striking the bowls and saucers and broke them. He then commenced using them over their heads, and when the affray 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. 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. 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 at man the second time.” 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 was with me to my own astonishment.” Yikes.

Scott Woodward: Okay, yikes. So that’s the beginning of physical violence that’s going to now build to become the Mormon Missouri War, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I like how he calls it affray. Other peoples 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.

Scott Woodward: And they were struck first, right? Latter-day Saints were hit first.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, Latter-day Saints were hit first, but after the riot’s 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 threaten him, and so they didn’t start the fight, but it sounds like they ended it.

Scott Woodward: 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, 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 declined to vote that day. Man. What a scene. What a scene.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and, I mean, there’s a lot of distortions that come out of this incident. People start reporting that some Missourians were killed—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and it just increases the tension. Joseph Smith, when he hears about it, says “There is great excitement at present among the Missourians, who are seeking, if possible, an occasion against us. We do not fear them, for the Lord God, the Eternal Father, is our God, and Jesus is our strength and confidence,” 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 happen down the road.

Scott Woodward: All right, so while the election day battle at Gallatin lit the spark, as you said, Casey, organized persecution against the Saints continues to rise. The first really sustained confrontation between the Saints and the Missourians comes at this settlement called DeWitt, which is located over in Carroll County. So October 1st, several hundred local citizens lay siege to the settlement of Latter-day Saints in DeWitt, 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. So they’re not now attacking—now they’re just, like, surrounding and not letting supplies in, which is another form of intimidation, right?

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: 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. So approximately about 400 Latter-day Saints abandon their homes and then move over to Caldwell County, right? Go back into the Mormon box.

Casey Griffiths: 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 figures. He’s part of the 1833 persecutions.

Scott Woodward: That’s right. 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, “The quarrel was between the Mormons and the mob, and that we must fight it out.” So you guys deal with that, you know? Fight it out amongst yourselves. 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. 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.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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 to then to punish the mob-supporting citizens. 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, 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. 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 1, it narrates the story this way: I like how they tell it. “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-Ahman, so, 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. 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. David Patten,” he’s an apostle, “rode out of Adam-ondi-Ahman 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. 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-Ahman.” So they’re, like, clearly plundering here. “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. 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.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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, but as “good-intentioned,” air quotes, as this might have been, Casey, this seems to backfire, doesn’t it?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Big time.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Let’s pause and analyze for a second here.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They didn’t do this until after the governor had basically said, I’m not going to do anything.

Scott Woodward: Fight it out.

Casey Griffiths: 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. 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. 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, you know, in contradiction to the Lord’s instructions that he gave them in section 98 and section 105.

Scott Woodward: To sue for peace.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. What about section 98? It says if they come upon you—was it three times?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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?

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know. I mean, there were multiple offenses. Like, a Latter-day Saint—DeWitt had been destroyed, essentially.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But it seems like it backfires. So the militia raids into Davies from Caldwell only kind of succeeded in providing those anti-Mormon forces 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 Millport. 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: “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. He and David Patten were now organizing a rescue party to take them back. They rode south, gathering men from outlying settlements until their force numbered around 75. The prisoners were being held in a camp along Crooked River 12 miles from Far West.”

Scott Woodward: Charles and David—these are two apostles, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and the leader of the main militia force is David Patten, who at this time is the president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Scott Woodward: Riding into battle to try to save some prisoners.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Captain Fear Not, they called him, and there’s stories about David Patten 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: At the conclusion of the battle, four men lay dead, fifteen wounded, though the outcome of the conflict was widely inflated by far-flung rumor. But blood has been shed. Three people on the Latter-day Saints’ side: Patrick O’Bannon, a scout that was helping them; Gideon Carter; and David Patten is fatally wounded in this. One Missourian is killed, we think by Parley P. Pratt. Parley talks about how he was going down the hill, and a Missourian came up behind him, and he wheeled around and fired and saw the man crumple, but the point is that after October 25th, blood has been shed, and the conflict has escalated to the point to where people are being killed now, and it’s a war. It’s, like, a straight-up war, and this leads Governor Boggs to issue the infamous extermination order, which—I’m just going to read the text of the extermination order: 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. 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 force . . . to any extent you . . . think necessary.” Once accounts of Crooked River start to circulate, Boggs orders out the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, and twelfth divisions of the Missouri militia, October 26th, around the time the extermination order is issued.

Scott Woodward: And the extermination order is issued, what, like October 27th officially? Is that right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, October 27th is the date that it’s issued. Man alive. Like, Sidney Rigdon used extermination, but as kind of a threat. This is a different situation. This is a government order that uses the term extermination. And, again, Alex Baugh would say extermination can mean to be expelled. His—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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, this officially—officially-officially—sanctioned harming Latter-day Saints. It officially puts in harm’s way every Latter-day Saint who would not deny their faith, doesn’t it?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I mean, Hyrum Smith later says, I “endeavored to find out the cause the 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. 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. 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: “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, 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, 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.” 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 number 44, dated October 27, 1838, issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs.” So thanks, Governor Bond.

Scott Woodward: As of 1976—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —this is no longer an active order on the books.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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. They were riding their bikes or walking along the road, and someone hit them with their car and ran, and then they—that guy got caught, and then he said—

Casey Griffiths: He cited.

Scott Woodward: —and then he cited this extermination order as legal justification for him to have struck the missionaries. Do you know if that’s true at all? Is there any truth to that story? Are you familiar?

Casey Griffiths: I don’t. 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. 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.

Scott Woodward: 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, 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.

Casey Griffiths: 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. 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 Hawn’s Mill Massacre.

Scott Woodward: The Hawn’s Mill Massacre.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, so that’s the next part of the story.

Scott Woodward: Clearly, easily, the Mormon Missouri War’s most tragic event. It 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? 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 October 27th issuing of the extermination order and the atrocities of Hawn’s Mill on October 30th, three days later. Is that correct?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And some of the sources surrounding Hawn’s Mill talk about how the Saints were disarmed coming into the area, which makes it sound like this was already in the works, that it wasn’t the result of the extermination order: it happened independent of it.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: But the extermination order may have provided a kind of legal justification for Hawn’s Mill after the fact.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, Alex is the expert, and he doesn’t think that the extermination order—or there’s any indication that the people that attack Hawn’s Mill haven’t heard about the extermination order yet. That’s possible, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Scott Woodward: Perfect. So it starts a little earlier than the extermination order. Late October, the Saints at Hawn’s Mill started hearing rumors that mobs were coming to burn down their town. And by the way, Hawn’s Mill, this settlement, is based around a mill owned by a man named Jacob Hawn, and there’s a black shop there. 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.

Casey Griffiths: A lot of the people at Hawn’s 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so it first starts out with rumors that the Missourians are going to come burn their town down. These threats escalate by October 25, 1838 here, when a band of twenty men come into the settlement and take the Latter-day Saints’ weapons. After confiscating their weapons, these vigilantes met with Latter-day Saint settlers to negotiate peace. However, quoting now, “The attempts made by vigilantes to confiscate the Mormons’ weapons, followed by the peace negotiations, 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.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Two, lull them into a false sense of security through these peace negotiations, and then three, attack.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: That makes sense. So still fearing the possibility of violence, the members of the mill community send Jacob Hawn, who is the mill owner, go to Far West and to seek advice from church leaders, and he goes, and what’s even a little more remarkable about that is that Jacob Hawn is not a member of the church at the time, nor would he ever be, although he had a brother who was. So he goes to Far West to seek counsel from Joseph Smith, and several sources indicate that when Jacob Hawn 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. According to some reports, Jacob is said to have replied, “We think we are strong enough to defend the mill so as not to risk the lives of the citizens.” 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. 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.” Philo Dibble, who’s another church member in the area, he recorded, “While I was at Far West, Brother Joseph had sent word by Jacob Hawn, who owned the mill, to inform the brethren who were living there to leave and come to Far West, but Mr. Hawn did not deliver the message. And then in a discourse given in August of 1842, Joseph himself says in Nauvoo, “None had ever been killed who abode by my counsel. At Hawn’s Mill the brethren went contrary to my counsel. If they had not, their lives would have been spared.” 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 still deeply saddened the prophet four years later.

Casey Griffiths: 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 Hawn’s Mill were rebellious. I don’t think they were.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Like I said, it’s possible Jacob Hawn 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. 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 Hawn’s Mill, it seems like, did not know they were supposed to gather, either because of deliberate obfuscation on Jacob Hawn’s part or because Jacob Hawn misunderstood what was going on.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Either way, not following Joseph’s counsel led to tragedy.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: On October 30, 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. 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, but when the hostile mob’s appearances eventually gave them away, Latter-day Saints immediately hoisted a white flag. “Seeing the superiority of their numbers, David Evans, the community leader and Mormon captain, swung his hat, cried for peace, and called for quarter, but his pleas were completely ignored, and the Livingston militia instead hastened their swift and brutal attack. 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, “It was about four o’clock, while sitting in my cabin with my babe in my arms and my wife standing by my side, 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.” So 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. 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. And writing about that experience, Latter-day Saint David Lewis wrote, “When men ran out and called for peace, they were shot down. When they held up their hats and handkerchiefs, crying for mercy, they were shot down. When they attempted to run, they were cut down by the fire of guns, and when they stood still, they were shot down by putting their guns through the cracks of the building,” referring to the blacksmith shop. 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. By the end of the attack, fifteen men and two boys had been brutally murdered, and fifteen others were wounded. Survivors include a dozen helpless widows, thirty or forty orphaned or fatherless children, who were fearing further attacks. 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: 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 Hawn’s Mill, and maybe just suffice it to say that those stories have been written. You can look them up on the Church’s website. There’s some great resources 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? I mean, am I brushing over this too quick? The miracles? That’s fair.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, go and look up Amanda Smith. She’s an amazing, amazing lady. We should note a couple things: The name Hawn is usually spelled wrong. Alex Baugh found the grave of Jacob Hawn in Oregon, weirdly enough because the author Beverly Cleary is a descendant of Jacob Hawn, so he tracked down her family line, and 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 Hawn’s Mill, and they’re in the process of beautifying it, and direct—it’s still kind of hard to get to Hawn’s Mill in Missouri, but—

Scott Woodward: It really is.

Casey Griffiths: —it’s one of those sites that if you go to Missouri, you should go see. There’s still, I’ve got to be honest, a dark spirit that hangs over that place. Like, you can feel that something bad happened there.

Scott Woodward: 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 lingers like a malevolent ghost—

Casey Griffiths: Oh, yeah.

Scott Woodward: —over nearly every decision that church leaders make in the next decade or so, certainly in Joseph Smith’s life—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —as they think about what is in the best interest of the saints.

Casey Griffiths: 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 Hawn’s Mill. Is this going to be another Hawn’s Mill? But that’s actually not the end of the story, so . . .

Scott Woodward: 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 decide 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. So you could say in some ways—I don’t want to say this too strongly, Casey, but—in some ways, the specter of Hawn’s Mill influenced Joseph and Hyrum’s decision to eventually go to Carthage Jail, where they will be martyred.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I think that’s fair to say. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. It’s part of the chain of events. Hawn’s Mill, that’s how extreme the violence becomes, but it colors everything that happens after. The same day that the attack on Hawn’s Mill happens, 2,000 militia—that’s an estimate—surround Far West, the main Latter-day Saint community in this area.

Scott Woodward: What, about 5,000 Latter-day Saints that live in Far West on a normal day?

Casey Griffiths: That’s the high estimate. The number you usually hear about those available to defend Far West is about 300.

Scott Woodward: Oh, okay.

Casey Griffiths: But Far West is a big city, and some interesting things happen here. Joseph Smith hears about Hawn’s Mill, 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. George Hinkle—

Scott Woodward: George Hinkle.

Casey Griffiths: —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. 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. 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.“ And he continues, “had the army been composed of so many bloodhounds, wolves, and panthers, they could not have made a sound more terrible. 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.”

Scott Woodward: He writes so vividly.

Casey Griffiths: He’s so good. Yeah, he’s such a good writer.

Scott Woodward: So they get captured here, and the whole enemy army just erupts in, like, jubilation here, like the fiends of hell.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And this is on the heels of what’s happened at Hawn’s 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. 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, 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. 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 Doniphan—

Scott Woodward: He’s so good.

Casey Griffiths: —is a non–Latter-day Saint lawyer who had worked with the Saints, even helped set up Caldwell County. He defends the Mormon prisoners. He argues, “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.”

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Sorry for the language there. So despite this, the prisoners are condemned to death, and Doniphan was actually ordered to carry out the execution the next day, but he refuses. 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.”

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow. So he’s making personal threats here.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Doniphan is.

Casey Griffiths: Doniphan’s 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, and later on he comes to Utah, and they have a huge parade for him later on in his life.

Scott Woodward: I love when he says to Lucas, too, that if you execute these men, I will hold you accountable before an earthly tribunal, so help me God.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He’s like, woo! 

Casey Griffiths: That’s just objectively awesome. Amazing that he did that. Okay, now, Doniphan 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. He takes them into Far West and publicly parades them in front of everybody. 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? The guard retorted, you damned little brat, go back. You will see your father no more. And so when you read section, you know, 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. That’s well-documented that it happened, 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, “Silence, ye fiends of the infernal pit.”

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And as for the Saints who remain at Far West on November 6, 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. 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.”

Scott Woodward: Boy.

Casey Griffiths: We know the story, and we’ll cover it in a different episode, of what happens in Liberty Jail and everything there.

Scott Woodward: So this is where Joseph and Hyrum and other church leaders are taken into Liberty Jail.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: So in historical context, Liberty Jail, which we talk so often about because the revelation that was received there—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —that’s happening in this sequence of events right here. This is where they are taken away.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Off to Liberty Jail. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: This is where they end up in Liberty Jail, and in context, a lot of the stuff in Liberty Jail, especially the revelations, section 121, 122, and 123, received in Liberty Jail, which are some of the most powerful language in the Doctrine and Covenants, make sense, where the Lord is saying, use gentleness and meekness and kindness and love unfeigned. 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. 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. 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 to some of my students, so I don’t read it anymore. I just give a general history, like we’re doing here. 

Scott Woodward: Yeah. There’s not a category of mankind’s inhumanity to man that didn’t happen to the Latter-day Saints.

Casey Griffiths: 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: 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.” But 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 Patten’s killed. Brigham Young takes over. 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 languish in Liberty Jail while the Saints leave Missouri, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Man.

Casey Griffiths: Whoo. That’s the story. Let’s analyze for a minute here.

Scott Woodward: 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. The Saints—are they engaging in martial language? Yes. But it doesn’t look like they’re really starting most of the violence.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Are they engaging in martial action? Yes, but only in some defensive way. Yes, they were aggressors in Gallatin, et cetera, but only, in their minds, to cut off the supplies of their enemies, who they knew were coming to attack yet again, and so it—yeah. It’s complicated, right? And then you’ve 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.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: What do you want to say?

Casey Griffiths: I mean, we talked about lingering trauma for this.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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. Avery’s a young guy, and he’d never been to Missouri.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: 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 to Adam-ondi-Ahman, Far West, we were on our way to Hawn’s 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, 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 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, and, man, I was thinking to myself, I’m a Latter-day Saint, and I’m in Caldwell County on my way to Hawn’s Mill. Is this going to end poorly? Like—

Scott Woodward: Oy.

Casey Griffiths: —that lingering trauma from the 1838 conflict affected me that day. And by the way, Scott, I got wrote up for a class A misdemeanor and found guilty, which gives me a lot of street cred among Latter-day Saint historians. You know, I’m guilty of a crime in the state of Missouri. That puts me in good company as far as I’m concerned.

Scott Woodward: Oh, boy.

Casey Griffiths: But I was scared, 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. 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.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: At the same time, would it have turned out differently if they had chosen not to engage in retribution? 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. I mean, the people that attacked Far West, Alex Baugh will argue, were people that had been pushed out of Davies County by the retributive raids of the Saints, and so one act of violence led to another, led to another, and then there’s escalation until people get killed.

Scott Woodward: 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. Like, nothing positive seems to have come out of that, and this sets us up for where they go next. Like, 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.

Casey Griffiths: 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. 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. I hope I’m not sounding judgmental because, man, they were in a tough spot, and it’s hard to say.

Scott Woodward: And, again, it’s irresponsible to say that it was their religion that caused them to be violent.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: 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, and 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, and so here we are, episode four, still not seeing a case for John Krakauer to be correct here, but—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —it is what it is.

Casey Griffiths: 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.

Scott Woodward: All right. Thank you, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Thank you, Scott. Until next time.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. 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. 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 just say that one more time: All of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you’re in a position where you’re both willing and able to make a one-time or ongoing donation, please 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. And 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.