Adam Jortner - No Place for Saints: Mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America

NO PLACE FOR SAINTS

W ITNESS TO H ISTORY
Peter Charles Hoffer and Williamjames Hull Hoffer, Series Editors

MOBS AND MORMONS IN JACKSONIAN AMERICA

ADAM JORTNER

Johns Hopkins University Press | Baltimore

2021 Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jortner, Adam Joseph, author.

Title: No place for saints : mobs and Mormons in Jacksonian America / Adam Jortner.

Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2021] | Series: Witness to history | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020047868 | ISBN 9781421441764 (paperback) | ISBN 9781421441771 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Joseph, Jr., 18051844. | Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsHistory19th century. | Mormon ChurchHistory19th century.

Classification: LCC BX8611 .J67 2021 | DDC 289.309/034dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047868

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

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For David and Susan

Open your ears; for which of you will stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY IV, PART II

T HIS BOOK RELIES on archival research and assistance from a variety of extraordinary institutions, including the Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University, Ohio Historical Society, State Historical Society of Missouri, Library Company of Philadelphia, American Antiquarian Society, University of South Carolina Library, and others. Brent M. Rogers, Spencer McBride, Kristine Haglund, and Roger Launius all read drafts or pieces of chapters. Their advice has made this book better. The anonymous reviewers at Johns Hopkins University Press provided valuable assistance. Laura Davulis and the entire staff at Johns Hopkins University Press worked tirelessly over several years and a pandemic to bring this book to press. I am grateful too for the love and support of Emily, Charles, and Sam; this book would not exist without them.

Note to the Reader: I have sought to keep the spelling and grammar of nineteenth-century sources just as they were, but where it would impede comprehension, I have silently corrected it.

NO PLACE FOR SAINTS

A GROUP OF A MERICAN CITIZENS met in orderly fashion on July 20, 1833, and decided to attack their neighbors.

Between four and five hundred residents of Jackson County, Missouri, were led by an appointed group of gentlemen. They convened a public meeting intended to deal with the twelve hundred Mormons who had also settled in the county and who needed to be blasted in the germ. Mormons were a set of fanatics, pretended Christians, and characterized by the profoundest ignorance, the grossest superstition, and the most abject poverty. Should Mormons win elected office, the other residents of Jackson County would be subject to the vexation that would attend the civil rule of these fanatics.

The real crime, though, was Mormon religion. Mormons believed in modern revelation and a restoration of New Testament miracles in the American nineteenth century, and the July 20 meeting declared that such a belief was dangerous. The assembled citizens did not trust Mormons as jurors, witnesses, or sheriffs, because Mormons do not blush to declare and would not upon occasion hesitate to swear that they have wrought miracles, and have been the subjects of miracles and supernatural cures; have converse with God and his angels. They hated the Mormons for speaking in tongues. The Mormon faith could not be trusted, because its beliefs were extravagant and unheard of. Five hundred Gentiles (non-Mormons) had decided that twelve hundred Mormons would have to go.

So they votedunanimouslyto expel them. Hundreds of citizens (and several elected officials) signed a pledge demanding that the Mormons leave the county and never return. They insisted the Mormons must shut down the Evening and Morning Star (the local Mormon newspaper) as well. This action would occur peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. If the Mormons refused, then their brethren who have the gifts of divination would know what awaited them. The comment was at once mockery and threat. One member of the meeting insisted he would expel the Mormons from Jackson County even if he had to wade up to his neck in blood.

The assembled Missourians appointed a committee of twelve to march into the Mormon neighborhoods of Independence and demand to meet with Mormon leaders. The committee presented their demands and gave the Mormons fifteen minutes to comply. Flummoxed, the Mormon leadership declined. The twelve returned to the group, who (in their own words) unanimously resolved to destroy the Mormon printing office. The group became a mob, marched to the office, and tore down the two-story building, smashing the presss type and scattering it in the street. The Mormon bishop Edward Partridge was dragged to the town square, stripped, and covered in tar and feathers. The mob then gave the Mormons three days to think about it.

On July 23, the attacks resumed. The mob arrived in Mormon neighborhoods carrying a red flag in token of blood. Several leading Mormons, including David Whitmer, were brought by bayonet to the town square, tarred and feathered, and held at gunpoint. The commanding officer, wrote John Greene, then threatened them with instant death, unless they denied the Book of Mormon and confessed it to be a fraud: at the same time adding, that if they did so, they might enjoy the privileges of citizens. Whitmer and the others did not deny their faith that day, but they did sign an agreementunder threat of further violencethat they would leave the county.

The expulsion of the Mormons from Jackson County is one of the great acts of religious violence and repression in United States history. The July attacks were just the beginning. In September, the mobs returned, demanding Mormons leave immediately and declaring that any effort to defend themselves would be taken as an act of war: The mob threatened, that if we petitioned or prosecuted, they would massacre us in toto, wrote one Mormon. In October, the mobs struck with fury, leaving houses in ruins, and furniture destroyed and strewed about the streets; women... weeping and mourning, while some of the men were covered with blood. Militias swarmed upon Mormon homes and gathering places. In response, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith gathered several hundred faithful believers in Ohio and marched across the country to help his brethren fight back. A church raised a battalion to fight a militia spawned by riotous meetings intent on expelling a new faith.

It had all seemed to begin so politely, with a popular meeting adopting the forms of self-government and Jacksonian democracy. Those who wrote the Mob Manifestoas the document recording the demands that Mormons leave Jackson County has come to be knownrepeatedly referred to themselves as citizens. They met peacefully and voted on resolutions. They expressed concerns about their local government, and then they decided to destroy and assault Mormon properties and persons to make their point. By calling