1833–1857
Missouri, the Danites, and the Nauvoo Expositor, 1833–1844
12 people, ordered by how much of this topic turns on them. Each note describes the person's part in this topic, not a biography — the same person carries a different note on another topic.
Smith was the head of the church during both the 1838 Missouri war and the 1844 Expositor crisis, and in Nauvoo he simultaneously held religious, municipal, judicial and military office. His own journal spoke approvingly of "a company of Danites," and he ordered the Expositor press destroyed as mayor. He was killed at Carthage on 27 June 1844 while held on a treason charge arising from that order.
Rigdon preached the 17 June 1838 "Salt Sermon" against the Far West dissenters and delivered the Fourth of July oration that threatened "a war of extermination" against any mob. He is the presumed author of the letter ordering the dissenters out of Caldwell County. Later Latter-day Saint leaders, Brigham Young among them, blamed him personally for provoking the Missouri conflict.
Avard organized and drilled the Danite band at Far West in June 1838 and administered its oath. Captured during the siege of Far West, he became the prosecution's chief witness at the Richmond court of inquiry, testifying that everything he had done was on orders from the First Presidency. He was excommunicated; both faithful and dissenting Latter-day Saints described him as untrustworthy.
Boggs had lived in Independence and had supported the 1833 expulsion from Jackson County. On 27 October 1838, acting on exaggerated reports of the Crooked River fight and on Thomas Marsh's affidavit, he ordered that the Mormons "be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State." The order was not rescinded until 1976.
Known by the Danite code name "Captain Fearnaught," Patten commanded the company that took and burned Gallatin on 18 October 1838, and led the roughly sixty men who attacked Samuel Bogart's state militia detachment at Crooked River a week later. He was mortally wounded in that fight — the act that turned a local conflict into resistance against the state of Missouri.
Wight led the Latter-day Saint settlement north of the Grand River and commanded the horse company that struck Millport. Witnesses at Richmond described him pressing Joseph Smith on whether the time had come to resist the law. He was charged with treason and imprisoned at Liberty with Smith.
Marsh left the church on 19 October 1838, the day after Gallatin burned, and five days later swore an affidavit describing the Danite organization, the burning of Gallatin, a "destroying company," and Smith's alleged ambition to "take the State." Orson Hyde attested it. The affidavit reached Boggs and was among the documents that produced the extermination order.
Corrill was an appointed church historian who broke with the leadership over the Danites and the October raids, negotiated the surrender of Far West, testified at Richmond, and in 1839 published a Brief History that remains one of the closest contemporary accounts of the Danite covenant. He later presented Latter-day Saint redress petitions to the Missouri legislature.
Doniphan had been the Saints' lawyer since the Jackson County expulsion and helped secure the creation of Caldwell County. As a militia general he refused to carry out Samuel Lucas's order to shoot Joseph Smith and the other prisoners, calling the court-martial illegal, and he treated the extermination clause of Boggs's order as without legal force.
Law was Joseph Smith's counselor in the First Presidency until he broke with him over plural marriage and the concentration of power in Nauvoo. With his brother Wilson, the Higbees, the Fosters and Charles Ivins he published the single issue of the Nauvoo Expositor on 7 June 1844, printing his own sworn affidavit that Hyrum Smith had read him a revelation authorizing plural marriage.
Hyrum was in the First Presidency during the Missouri conflict and, according to Avard, present when the Danite band was blessed. In the Nauvoo council debate of 10 June 1844 he argued that the best course was "to smash the press and pi the type." He was shot first at Carthage seventeen days later.
Ford insisted that Joseph Smith stand trial in Carthage rather than under Nauvoo's own courts, and pledged the state's protection. On the morning of 27 June 1844 he discharged the Warsaw militia, left two companies of the hostile Carthage Greys guarding the jail, and rode to Nauvoo. The discharged Warsaw company returned that afternoon and stormed the jail.
