1833–1857

Violence and the Mormon Conflict

Missouri, the Danites, and the Nauvoo Expositor, 1833–1844

Between 1833 and 1844 the Latter-day Saints were driven from three Missouri counties and finally from the state, and their founding prophet was murdered in an Illinois jail. In the same years Latter-day Saints organized a secret band called the Danites, burned and looted two Daviess County towns, and destroyed an opposition newspaper press in Nauvoo. This topic assembles the documents on both halves of that record and the very different readings historians have built from them.

What is actually in dispute

Historians dispute how far Joseph Smith directed the Danite band and the October 1838 raids, and whether the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor was a defensible exercise of municipal nuisance law or the illegal act that made Carthage inevitable. Faithful writers place responsibility on Sampson Avard and on mob provocation; critical and much neutral scholarship places more of it on the First Presidency itself.

Zion and its neighbors

The Missouri conflict did not begin in 1838. On 20 July 1833 a citizens' meeting at Independence demanded that Latter-day Saint printing, storekeeping and mechanical labour in Jackson County stop. When the brethren refused, the mob pulled down the house of W. W. Phelps that contained the printing establishment, destroyed papers and type, and turned the family and furniture into the street. Edward Partridge, the bishop, was marched to the courthouse square, stripped of hat, coat and vest, daubed with tar from head to foot and covered with feathers, for the offence, as he told the crowd, of declining to leave the county where he had lived two years.1

By November 1833 roughly twelve hundred Saints had been driven across the Missouri River into Clay County. Phelps wrote the following spring that all hope of redress was at an end: the district attorney had told him he could not penetrate the mob's death oath, and the mob had by then burned nearly all the Mormon-owned buildings in the county.2 Zion's Camp marched west in 1834 and dispersed without fighting. In December 1836 the legislature carved a new county, Caldwell, out of thinly settled land in the north and the Saints built Far West there. It was a compromise that worked only as long as the Saints stayed inside it, and after the Kirtland collapse sent thousands of converts west in 1838, they did not.3

Far West and the crisis of dissent

The first violence of 1838 was internal. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, John Whitmer, W. W. Phelps and Lyman Johnson — men who between them had presided over the church in Missouri and witnessed the gold plates — were removed and excommunicated that spring, and went on living in Caldwell County with property and lawyers. On 17 June Sidney Rigdon preached from the pulpit on salt that has lost its savour, fit only to be cast out and trodden underfoot. He named no one. John Corrill wrote that it was plainly understood he meant the dissenters, and that he indirectly accused some of them of crime.4

The next day the five men received a letter, presumably drafted by Rigdon and signed by eighty-three others, accusing them of joining "a band of counterfeiters, thieves, liars, and blacklegs of the deepest dye" and of setting up a "nasty, dirty, pettifogger's office." It ended: "We will put you from the county of Caldwell, so help us God." They left, and their property was attached.5 Reed Peck testified at Richmond five months later that in the same Salt Sermon Rigdon said he would assist to erect a gallows on the square and hang them all, and that Joseph Smith rose afterwards to say he did not wish to do anything unlawful, then spoke of the fate of Judas.6

The Danites: what the record says, and who says it

Around the same weeks a society formed under Dr. Sampson Avard, called first the Daughter of Zion and later the Danites. Corrill, writing within a year, described men who "secretly entered into solemn covenants, before God, and bound themselves under oath to keep the secrets of the society, and covenanted to stand by one another in difficulty, whether right or wrong," and who further covenanted "that the word of the presidency should be obeyed, and none should be suffered to raise his hand or voice against it."7 They were organized in tens, fifties and hundreds, with Avard a brigadier general and Jared Carter a captain general.

The oath as Avard gave it at Richmond ran: "In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I do solemnly obligate myself ever to conceal, and never to reveal, the secret purposes of this society called the Daughters of Zion. Should I ever do the same, I hold my life as the forfeiture."8 He called Joseph Smith "the prime mover and organizer of this Danite band," said the First Presidency attended a meeting in the Far West schoolhouse where Smith blessed the officers and prophesied they would bring forth the millennial kingdom, and produced a written Danite constitution.

Nearly everything about that testimony is contested, and reasonably so: Avard had been captured, threatened with prosecution, and had every motive to shift blame. Latter-day Saint petitioners wrote in 1839 that "octor Avard also swore false concerning a constitution as he said was introduced among the danit[e]s," and no other witness claimed to have seen the document before he produced it in court.9 But two things do not depend on Avard. Reed Peck, a former Danite hostile to Avard, testified that Avard brought the presidency to a meeting to show the society his course was according to their will, and that they approved it, though Avard had not explained to them what he had been teaching.10 And Joseph Smith's own journal for 27 July 1838 — a paragraph later cancelled in the manuscript — reads: "We have a company of Danites in these times, to put to rights physically that which is not righ[t], and to clense the Church of verry great evils which hath hitherto existed among us, inasmuch as they cannot be put to rights by teachings & persuaysons."11

The Fourth of July and the language of extermination

On 4 July 1838 the Saints paraded at Far West, laid the temple cornerstones, and heard Rigdon deliver the day's oration from a stand on the public square with Joseph Smith as president of the day and Hyrum as vice president. A company of Danites marched in the parade, by Smith's own journal. Rigdon said the Saints had turned the other cheek again and again and were wearied of it, and then: "We take God and all the holy angels to witness this day, that we warn all men in the name of Jesus Christ, to come on us no more forever... And the 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 blood is spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us; for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses and their own families, and one part or the other shall be utterly destroyed."12

It was printed as a twelve-page pamphlet on the church's own Far West press — the only book that press produced — and reprinted in Missouri papers. The August Elders' Journal, edited by Smith, commended it and recommended members obtain a copy.13 Ebenezer Robinson, who printed it, later insisted Rigdon "was not alone responsible for the sentiment expressed in his oration, as that was a carefully prepared document, previously written, and well understood by the First Presidency," and afterwards regretted his own part.14 A Liberty resident wrote in the Western Star that until the Fourth of July no threats had been heard against the Mormons in any quarter. By September anti-Mormons in Daviess and Livingston were writing to Boggs that the Mormons were preparing for "a war of extermination." Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, Orson Hyde and Jedediah Grant all later condemned the speech.

From an election-day brawl to a war

On 6 August 1838, at the Daviess County polls in Gallatin, the Whig candidate William Peniston mounted a whiskey barrel and told the crowd that if they suffered the Mormons to vote the people would soon lose their suffrage, denouncing them as horse thieves and, in John L. Butler's report of the words, saying they had no more right to vote than Black men — a slur that many accounts of the brawl leave out.15 Nobody died. Rumours that seven men had been killed went out to the adjoining counties the same night.16

Through September and early October the Saints lost DeWitt in Carroll County to a siege, burying members who died of privation on the evacuation. Then, on 18 October, they took the offensive. Companies under David Patten, Lyman Wight and Seymour Brunson struck Gallatin, Millport and Grindstone Fork. Patten's men emptied Jacob Stollings's store, goods were hauled to the bishop's storehouse at Adam-ondi-Ahman, and buildings burned. Austin King reported to Boggs: "At this time there is not a citizen in Daviess except Mormons."17

Latter-day Saints denied the burnings for a generation; Bushman notes that at the court hearing the prosecutors could not produce one eyewitness to a Mormon setting a fire, and that the Mormons argued Gallatin had been burned by a mob from Platte.18 But Parley Pratt wrote in his own 1839 history that "some of our troops, exasperated to the highest degree, retalliated in some instances by plundering and burning houses, and bringing the spoil to feed the hungry and clothe the naked," and said he was inclined to believe it.19 Thomas Marsh, president of the Twelve, left the church the day after Gallatin and swore an affidavit describing the raids, a Danite "destroying company" that would burn Liberty and Richmond, and Smith's intention to take the state.20

Crooked River, Order 44, and Hawn's Mill

On 24 October a militia detachment under Samuel Bogart disarmed Latter-day Saints in the strip between Caldwell and Ray and took three prisoners. Around midnight the leaders at Far West resolved to free them. About sixty men rode out under Patten — the Danite code name was Captain Fearnaught — and at daybreak charged a well-positioned enemy on the banks of Crooked River. One Missourian and three Mormons died, Patten among them.21 They had attacked not a mob but a company of state militia. That, and not the Daviess raids, is what made the treason charge.

Reports reached Jefferson City that fifty or sixty Missourians had been massacred. With Marsh's affidavit already on his desk, Boggs wrote to General John B. Clark on 27 October: "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State, if necessary, for the publick good. Their outrages are beyond all description."22 Doniphan, marching under Lucas, ignored the extermination clause; he reported to the governor that it was entirely illegal.23

Three days later, at a mill settlement on Shoal Creek that had signed a truce with a local militia captain on 28 October, several companies emerged from the woods in the late afternoon. Men waved and called for quarter; the militia fired and charged. The blacksmith's shop the Saints had chosen as a fort had gaps wide enough to shoot through. Thomas McBride was cut to pieces after surrendering his gun. Ten-year-old Sardius Smith, hidden under the bellows, was found and shot at point-blank range. Joseph Young's affidavit put the number killed and mortally wounded at eighteen. The bodies went into an unfinished well.24

Richmond, Liberty, and the evidentiary problem

Far West surrendered on 31 October after Colonel Hinkle brought the leaders into the militia camp. A court-martial condemned them to be shot; Doniphan, the only lawyer present, called the proceeding illegal as hell and refused his orders. Beginning 12 November, Judge Austin A. King heard evidence at Richmond for more than two weeks against some sixty defendants and found probable cause against thirty-four. Six, including Joseph and Hyrum Smith, went to Liberty Jail charged with overt acts of treason; Parley Pratt and four others were held at Richmond for the murder of Moses Rowland at Crooked River.25

Almost everything later written about the Danites descends from that hearing, and from the state's 1841 printed compilation of it — a book this corpus does not hold in its own right, though every camp quotes it. The compilation is the ur-text for Avard's testimony, for Marsh's affidavit and for the extermination order itself. Reading the underlying documents rather than the summaries matters here more than usual: the defendants offered essentially no defence at Richmond, Albert Rockwood writing a few days later that they thought it would be of little use and would jeopardise the witnesses. The record that survives is therefore mostly the prosecution's.

Nauvoo: charter, Legion, kingdom

In Illinois the Saints rebuilt with a charter that gave Nauvoo its own municipal court, its own habeas corpus, and its own militia. The Legion was divided into two cohorts; Joseph Smith held a commission as lieutenant general and enjoyed noting that it outranked every officer in the United States Army.26 Stephen A. Douglas certified that Legion members were exempt from other militia duty. To Hancock County neighbours this looked less like a chartered militia than a private army answering to a prophet who was also mayor, judge and, from February 1844, a candidate for president of the United States.

In March 1844 a secret council met, recorded by William Clayton as the "Council of Fifty or Kingdom of God." Faithful writers describe it as a preparatory legislature for a millennial government with Christ as king of kings; critics, following Klaus Hansen and D. Michael Quinn, describe a shadow government whose ordination of Smith as king made the theocracy charge concrete. The corpus holds the Joseph Smith Papers edition of its minutes.27

The Expositor and Carthage

On 7 June 1844 William Law — until recently Smith's counselor in the First Presidency — his brother Wilson, Charles Ivins, the two Higbees and the two Fosters published one issue of the Nauvoo Expositor. Its prospectus called for "the UNCONDITIONAL REPEAL OF THE NAUVOO CITY CHARTER; to restrain and correct the abuses of the Unit Power; to ward off the Iron Rod which is held over the devoted heads of the citizens of Nauvoo," and "to advocate unmitigated disobedience to Political Revelations." Its twelfth resolution read: "That we will not acknowledge any man as king or law-giver to the church; for Christ is our only king and law-giver."28 Beneath the resolutions ran affidavits. William Law's said that Hyrum Smith had read him a document said to be a revelation from God which "authorized certain men to have more wives than one at a time, in this world and in the world to come."29

The city council met on 8 June and again on 10 June, from ten in the morning until half past six with a break. Willard Richards's rough minutes record the mayor saying that if he had a city council who felt as he did the establishment would be a nuisance before night, that it was a greater nuisance than a dead carcass, and that he would rather die tomorrow and have the thing smashed than live and have it print. Hyrum Smith believed the best way was to smash the press and pi the type. The council passed a libel ordinance and ordered the abatement. About eight o'clock the marshal reported that he had removed the press, type and printed papers into the street and fired them; Smith addressed the returning posse and told them they had done right.30

Two days later a Carthage justice of the peace wrote out a warrant charging Smith and others with unlawfully and with force destroying property. Nauvoo's own municipal court discharged him on habeas corpus, and the next day he took his seat as judge and discharged the rest — which to non-Mormons confirmed everything the Expositor had said about a man beyond the law. On 18 June he declared martial law. On 25 June he surrendered at Carthage on Governor Ford's pledge of protection, was bailed on the riot charge, and was immediately served with a treason writ, which was not bailable, without any hearing.31

On 27 June Ford discharged the Warsaw militia, left two companies of the Carthage Greys at the jail, and rode to Nauvoo. In the late afternoon the discharged Warsaw company came back. Willard Richards, writing soon after, recorded a rustling at the door, the cry "surrender," three or four shots, a ball through the door, and a hundred armed men outside. Hyrum was struck in the face and fell saying he was a dead man; Joseph emptied a pepperbox pistol into the entry and was shot at the window. John Taylor's announcement, later canonized, put it: "They were shot in Carthage jail, on the 27th of June, 1844, about five o'clock p.m., by an armed mob--painted black--of from 150 to 200 persons."32 Nine men were indicted; four fled; five were tried in 1845 and acquitted.

What carried west

The Danite band as an organization did not survive Missouri; David Whittaker's judgment that there is no evidence of any such body afterwards is widely accepted. The word did survive, and was attached in turn to the Nauvoo police, to Smith's bodyguards, and in Utah to men like Orrin Porter Rockwell and William Hickman. By the end of the nineteenth century at least fifty-six anti-Mormon novels in English had built on the Danite myth, and Conan Doyle put "Angels of Darkness" into the first Sherlock Holmes novel.33 Brigham Young dismissed it from the pulpit in 1867: "Is there war in our religion? No; neither war nor bloodshed."34

The rhetoric, though, did not stay in Missouri. During the Reformation of 1856–57 Young preached that there were transgressors who, if they knew the only condition on which they could obtain forgiveness, "would beg of their brethren to shed their blood, that the smoke thereof might ascend to God as an offering to appease the wrath that is kindled against them," and Jedediah Grant asked for a place to be designated and a committee appointed to shed such blood. Wilford Woodruff wrote that Young's preaching made the hearts of many tremble. Paul Peterson's study for the Journal of Mormon History argues there was more method than madness in it and that Young knew such a practice would be illegal; Will Bagley and others treat it as a literal reality in the world that produced Mountain Meadows eleven months later. The Church stated in 2010 that blood atonement is not its doctrine.35

Notes

  1. Edward Partridge, autobiography, as printed in the serialized 'History of the Persecution' in Times and Seasons vol. 6, no. 4 (1845); the same passage runs in the Millennial Star's serialization of the History of Joseph Smith. → source ↩
  2. W. W. Phelps to Joseph Smith, 27 February 1834, quoted in Dan Vogel, Charisma under Pressure (Signature Books, 2023), p. 357 — 'Thus ends all hope of redress.' → source ↩
  3. Stephen C. LeSueur, 'Missouri's Failed Compromise: The Creation of Caldwell County for the Mormons,' Journal of Mormon History 31:3 (2005), pp. 123ff. The book itself is not in this corpus; the article is. → source ↩
  4. John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints (St. Louis, 1839), quoted in Leland H. Gentry, 'The Danite Band of 1838,' BYU Studies 14/4 (1974): 'President Rigdon delivered from the pulpit what I call the Salt Sermon.' → source ↩
  5. The June 1838 letter to the dissenters, 83 signatures, quoted in Journal of Mormon History 36:1 (2010), p. 132. → source ↩
  6. Reed Peck testimony, Minutes and Testimonies, 12–29 November 1838 [State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Treason], Joseph Smith Papers transcript: Rigdon 'would assist to erect a gallows on the square & hang them all.' → source ↩
  7. Corrill, Brief History (1839), quoted in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 752. Reed Peck and Albert P. Rockwood on Danite structure, in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, pp. 752, 855. → source ↩
  8. Sampson Avard testimony, Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c. (Fayette, Mo., 1841), reproduced verbatim in Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? (1987), p. 567. Avard testimony as summarized and quoted in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 848, citing the Richmond transcript. → source ↩
  9. Alanson Ripley et al., Petition to George Tompkins, ca. 9–15 March 1839, JSP D6:349, quoted in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 754. → source ↩
  10. Reed Peck testimony, Richmond, quoted in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 855: Avard 'did not explain to the presidency what his teaching had been.' → source ↩
  11. Joseph Smith, Journal, 27 July 1838 (Joseph Smith Papers, Journal, March–September 1838); the paragraph is cancelled in the manuscript. Transcriptions by Faulring and Marquardt differ in a few words; the wording given here follows Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 754. → source ↩
  12. Oration Delivered by Mr. S. Rigdon on the 4th of July, 1838 (Far West: Journal Office, 1838), p. 12; reproduced in full on MormonThink's page responding to the Gospel Topics essay and excerpted identically in BYU Studies 14/4. George W. Robinson's entry for 4 July 1838 in An American Prophet's Record, ed. Scott H. Faulring (1987), p. 255, naming Smith president of the day, Hyrum vice president and Rigdon orator; the Danite company is noted in Smith's journal. → source ↩
  13. Elders' Journal 1 (August 1838): 54. → source ↩
  14. Ebenezer Robinson, The Return, Nov. 1889, 170, quoted in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 761, and in Journal of Mormon History 36:1 (2010), p. 18. Western Star (Liberty) and the 12 September 1838 letter from Daviess and Livingston anti-Mormons to Boggs, in Vogel, Charisma under Pressure, p. 762; the later condemnations by Young, Woodruff, Hyde and Grant are collected in BYU Studies, 'High Treason and Murder,' n. 89. → source ↩
  15. T. Ward Frampton, 'Race, Violence, and the Mormon War,' Journal of Mormon History 40:1 (2014), pp. 200–201, quoting John L. Butler's account of Peniston's words. → source ↩
  16. Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005), p. 403. → source ↩
  17. John G. Turner, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet (2025), p. 228, quoting John Smith's diary and Austin King to Boggs. → source ↩
  18. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 409, on the absence of eyewitness testimony to Mormon arson and on the counter-claim about a Platte County mob. → source ↩
  19. Parley P. Pratt, History of the Late Persecution (1840), quoted in Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 409, and again in Journal of Mormon History 37:1 (2011), p. 187. → source ↩
  20. Thomas B. Marsh, affidavit, 24 October 1838, in the 1841 Missouri Document, p. 57, reproduced in The Mormon Kingdom, vol. 1, p. 79, and on MormonThink's Thomas Marsh page. → source ↩
  21. Turner, Rise and Fall, p. 229, on the midnight council, Patten's company, and the casualties at Crooked River. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 410: 'Resisting a band of vigilantes was justifiable, but attacking a militia company was resistance to the state.' → source ↩
  22. Lilburn W. Boggs to John B. Clark, 27 October 1838, copied into Joseph Smith Letterbook 2, p. 39 (Joseph Smith Papers transcript); printed as p. 61 of the 1841 Missouri Document. → source ↩
  23. Doniphan's report to Boggs, summarized in 'Alexander William Doniphan: Man of Justice,' BYU Studies, which also records his refusal of the order to shoot the prisoners. → source ↩
  24. Joseph Young, affidavit on the massacre at Haun's Mill, printed in Times and Seasons vol. 1 no. 10 (August 1840) and vol. 2 no. 3; the deaths of McBride and Sardius Smith are corroborated in Isaac Leany's petition and in Journal of Mormon History 40:1 (2014), p. 208. → source ↩
  25. Minutes and Testimonies, 12–29 November 1838, and Introduction to State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Treason, Joseph Smith Papers; the commitment orders name the defendants and their charges. Albert P. Rockwood, journal, 3 December 1838, quoted in 'High Treason and Murder: The Examination of Mormon Prisoners at Richmond, Missouri, in November 1838,' BYU Studies, n. 84. → source ↩
  26. Ordinance organizing the Nauvoo Legion, passed 3 February 1841, printed in Times and Seasons vol. 2 no. 8, with Stephen A. Douglas's opinion of 3 May 1841 as reprinted in the Millennial Star's History of Joseph Smith. → source ↩
  27. William Clayton, 'Record of the Council of Fifty or Kingdom of God— 1844'; the Joseph Smith Papers edition of the minutes is in the corpus, and the competing readings are set out in BYU Studies (Esplin) and in The Mormon Kingdom, vol. 2, pp. 48–49, quoting Klaus Hansen. → source ↩
  28. Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844, prospectus and Resolution 12. The original issue in the corpus is OCR-garbled; the wording here follows the clean transcription reproduced as 'Primary sources/Nauvoo Expositor Full Text' and by MormonThink, which agree. → source ↩
  29. William Law, affidavit sworn before Robert D. Foster J.P., 4 May 1844, printed in the Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844, with a corroborating certificate from Jane Law. → source ↩
  30. Willard Richards's rough minutes of the Nauvoo City Council, 10 June 1844, and the synopsis of the 8 and 10 June proceedings published in the Nauvoo Neighbor of 17 June 1844 (Joseph Smith Papers, 'Revised Minutes, 17 June 1844'); Hyrum Smith's 'smash the press and pi the type' is from History of the Church 6:445 as reproduced by the Tanners. → source ↩
  31. The chronology of 12–25 June 1844 as compiled by FAIR from History of the Church 6:561–74 and the Joseph Smith legal papers; the 12 June warrant by justice Thomas Morrison is indexed in the B. H. Roberts Foundation archive. → source ↩
  32. Willard Richards, journal excerpt, 23–27 June 1844 (Joseph Smith Papers, Appendix 3), and John Taylor's announcement of the martyrdom, first published in the Times and Seasons and canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 135:1. → source ↩
  33. David Whittaker's judgment and the count of fifty-six nineteenth-century anti-Mormon novels are quoted in Sunstone issue 111, p. 65, and in MormonThink's 'Conan Doyle Was Right.' → source ↩
  34. Brigham Young, discourse of 7 April 1867, quoted in FAIR's article 'Mormonism and persecution/Danites.' → source ↩
  35. Brigham Young, 21 September 1856, and Jedediah M. Grant, Journal of Discourses 4:49–51; Paul H. Peterson, 'The Mormon Reformation of 1856-1857: The Rhetoric and the Reality,' Journal of Mormon History 15 (1989), pp. 63–87; the Church's statement of 16 June 2010. → source ↩

Stories from the record

Human-scale episodes inside this topic, each anchored to a source.

The boy under the bellows

At Hawn's Mill the blacksmith Warren Smith put his two small sons under the bellows before going out with his gun. He was shot and crawled back into the shop to die near them. Two of the attackers came in, saw the dead man and the children, and one put his gun muzzle against ten-year-old Sardius's head and fired; the other shot the younger boy in the hip and left. The surviving brother lived. A militiaman later justified killing the child with the phrase 'nits make lice.'

Sources: Times and Seasons, vols. 1–6 · "Race, Violence, and the Mormon War," Jour…

Doniphan says no

On the night of 1 November 1838 a militia court-martial at Far West condemned Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith and three others to be shot at nine the next morning. Alexander Doniphan — the Saints' own lawyer since Jackson County, and the man who had helped create Caldwell County for them — was the only lawyer present. He told General Lucas the court-martial was illegal as hell, refused the order, and withdrew his brigade to Liberty. The executions did not happen.

Sources: Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling · Document Containing the Correspondence, Or…

Corrill cannot get out

John Corrill was an appointed church historian who had come to disapprove of the Danites and of the October mobilization. When the Saints marched on Daviess County he found he had no way to refuse. 'There was no other chance for me and the other dissenters but to pretend to take hold with the rest,' he wrote. He testified at Richmond, published his Brief History in 1839, and later carried Latter-day Saint redress petitions into the Missouri legislature — and then introduced a bill to punish anyone who attempted to prophesy in the name of the Lord. It failed by three votes.

Sources: A Brief History of the Church of Christ of…

Marsh leaves over a burned store

Thomas B. Marsh had been president of the Quorum of the Twelve since 1835. On 19 October 1838, the day after Gallatin was taken and burned, he left. Five days later he swore an affidavit at Richmond describing a company of eighty men under 'Captain Fearnot,' the goods hauled to the bishop's storehouse, and a destroying company that meant to burn Liberty and Richmond. Orson Hyde signed an attestation. Both men returned to the church years later; Marsh said in 1857 that he had got a beam in his own eye and thought he could discover a beam in Joseph's.

Sources: The Mormon Kingdom, Volume 1 · Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

A prospectus and a sledgehammer

The Expositor's publishers announced they had bought 'a new Press and materials of the best quality' and would publish every Friday. They published once. On the evening of 10 June, by Charles A. Foster's account written aboard a steamer two days later, some two or three hundred men of the Nauvoo Legion with volunteers, armed with muskets, swords, pistols and bowie knives, broke the office door with a sledgehammer and threw press and type into the street and burned them. Four months later the city council voted to make the proprietors whole: notes totalling $725, most of it to Charles Ivins.

Sources: Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844 (the single… · Revised Minutes, 17 June 1844 [synopsis of…

The bottle of wine at Carthage

Willard Richards's journal for 27 June records the small domestic detail before the killing: the guard wanted wine, Joseph gave Richards two and a half dollars for them, the guard said one was enough and would take no more, and a bottle, a pipe and two papers of tobacco came up. Each of the four men tasted the wine and the bottle went back to the guard. He had reached the top of the stairs when someone called him from below. Then the rustling at the door, the cry to surrender, and the shots.

Sources: Nauvoo Neighbor (1843–1845)

Mormon Stories leads

Search phrases for the Mormon Stories transcript database. Episode numbers are deliberately absent — the transcript index was not queried for this build, and a guessed episode number is worse than none.

Danites Sampson Avard Richmond hearing testimony Joseph Smith knowledgeExtended discussion of how much Joseph Smith directed the Danite band and how historians weigh Avard's motive to lie.
Sidney Rigdon Fourth of July 1838 oration war of exterminationTreatment of the oration as a turning point, and whether the First Presidency prepared it jointly.
Mormon depredations Gallatin Millport October 1838 burning lootingEpisodes that address Latter-day Saint aggression in Daviess County rather than only Mormon suffering.
Hawn's Mill massacre survivors accounts Sardius Smith wellNarrative retellings and any interviews with descendants or with historians of the site.
Nauvoo Expositor destruction city council legal Dallin Oaks nuisanceDebate over whether the abatement was lawful, and Oaks's law-review analysis as it is used on both sides.
blood atonement Mormon Reformation 1856 Brigham Young Jedediah Grant rhetoricHow the Utah-era violent rhetoric connects, or fails to connect, to actual killings and to Mountain Meadows.

Related topics

Joseph Smith's Plural Marriage 1831–1844 (documented through 1879)The Succession Crisis of 1844 1834–1860The Mountain Meadows Massacre 1856–1877 (with an afterlife to the present)Utah Polygamy and the Manifesto 1852–1907The Book of Mormon: Origins, Translation, and Witnesses 1820–1830 (with disputes running to the present)

People who also appear elsewhere

Joseph Smith Jr.William LawSidney RigdonHyrum SmithLyman Wight