The following transcription is taken from:
Paul DeBry, “Destruction
of Jackson County in the Civil War,” The Journal of Collegium
Aesculapium (Fall 2011): 33-37
The Prophecy:
“Doniphan, I advise you not to
take that Jackson County land in payment of the debt. God’s wrath hangs over
Jackson County. God’s people have been ruthlessly driven from it, and you will
live to see the day when it will be visited by fire and sword. The Lord of
Hosts will sweep it with the besom of destruction. The fields and farms and
houses will be destroyed, and only the chimneys will be left to mark the
desolation.”
— Prophet Joseph Smith to Gen.
Alexander Doniphan
The Result:
“Nowhere during the Civil War did
people suffer such terror and tribulation as those unfortunate enough to reside
in the guerrilla-infested regions of Missouri [Jackson and surrounding
counties]. Compared to what they experienced, the civilians who were in the
path of Sherman’s famed March to the Sea through Georgia got off lightly.” [1]
Jackson County, in the western
frontier of Missouri, was on the far reaches of the American frontier in 1831
when Mormons—members of the newly established Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints—began to settle there. Lewis and Clark had passed through
this country on their famous expedition only 27 years earlier. They were
following the Missouri River, which comprises the northern border of Jackson
County. They had come from St. Louis, on the other side of the state, 250 miles
to the east.
Missouri had only been a state
for 10 years when the first Saints arrived.
In the 1830s, Jackson County was
a river town on the frontier—an easy place for those trying to escape
civilization and justice to hide out beyond the reach of the law. This was a
place of “degradation, ferociousness and jealousy” according to B. H. Roberts.
It was a wild land where it was difficult to enforce the law.
Even those in high positions in
the government, community, churches, and professional life were of low
character and were often corrupt individuals.
The Latter-day Saints who settled
there were mostly honest, hard-working people. They were predominately from New
England and the eastern states. Their well-kept homes and productive farms
brought envy and jealousy to the rabble who were living there when the Saints
arrived. They coveted what the Mormons had built and wanted their homes, farms,
crops, orchards, and animals for themselves. They also feared the Mormons and
the influence their honest, moral lives would have on their moral “freedom”.
The violence, persecution,
depravity, and injustice suffered by the Mormons in Missouri is well
documented. LDS historian B.H. Roberts, speaking of their persecutors, wrote:
“These [mobbers] were led and
abetted by lawyers, members of the state legislature, by county and district
judges, by physicians, by professed ministers of the gospel, by merchants, by
leading politicians, by captains, majors, colonels, and generals—of several
grades—of the militia, by many other high officials of the state including the
Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and finally by the action of the state
legislature which appropriated two hundred thousand dollars to defray the
expenses incurred by the mob-militia in carrying out the Governor’s order,
exterminating the Saints from the state.
“The persecutions then of the
Latter-day Saints in Missouri, and their final expulsion from that state, were
crimes against the enlightenment of the age and of the state where the acts
occurred; a crime against the constitutions and institutions both of the state
of Missouri and of the United States: as also a crime against the Christian
religion. All this we have in mind when speaking of the severity and cruelty of
these compared with other persecutions. The state of Missouri was guilty of a
greater crime when it persecuted the Latter-day Saints than states were which
in the barbarous times of the dark ages persecuted their people.” [2]
Executive Order 44:
“Extermination Order”
From the highest level of
government, where the rights of all citizens should be protected, on October
27, 1838 Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs issued an order to drive all
Mormons from the state of Missouri or exterminate them.
With this extermination order, it
was now legal to murder the Mormons, burn their homes, abuse them, plunder
their belongings—all under the protection of the law and backed up by the
governor and the the army of the state of Missouri.
In Far West, now under the
authorities of the state, the mobs, called state militia, were free to carry
out their outrageous acts. The Mormons were told by the general of the
army/mob: “‘You need not expect any mercy, but extermination, for I am determined
that the Governor’s orders shall be executed.’
“With that, the state army/mob
was now let loose upon the unarmed citizens of Far West, and under the pretext
of searching for arms they ransacked every house, tore up the floors, upset
haystacks, wantonly destroyed much property, and shot down a number of cattle
just for the sport it afforded them. The people were robbed of their most
valuable property, insulted and whipped; but this was not the worst. The
chastity of a number of women was defiled by force; … and some of them died
from the effects.” [3]
Boggs said, after all the
persecution the Saints had endured, that they [the Mormons] were the
aggressors.
“Their outrages are beyond all
description,” he declared.
In the history of this great
country, has such an outrageous statement ever been made by such a high
government official? In a future day, that statement will certainly echo back
to him as he stands before the eternal judge.
Joseph Smith said, “Marvel not,
then, if you are persecuted; but remember the words of the Savior: ‘The servant
is not above his Lord; if they have persecuted me, they will persecute you
also’ [see John 15:20]; and that all the afflictions through which the Saints
have to pass, are the fulfillment of the words of the Prophets which have
spoken since the world began.” [4]
During all these trials the Lord
told Joseph Smith, “Be still, and know that I am God! All those who suffer for
my name shall reign with me, and he that layeth down his life for my sake shall
find it again.” [5]
Joseph told them further to
employ every lawful means to seek redress. They were to appeal to the judges
and if rejected to take their claims to the executive, and if he were to refuse
their request, they should take their grievances to the president of the United
States. If the president rejected their pleas, their case would be taken to the
Lord. [6] Joseph took an active part in these requests, traveling himself to
Washington D.C. to speak to and be rejected by the president of the United
States, Martin Van Buren.
“In 1842-43,” wrote Samuel W.
Richards, “the Prophet selected one man from all the principle states of the
Union to write to the governor of his state setting forth the wrongs and
sufferings the Latter-day Saints had experienced by being expelled from the
state of Missouri and deprived of their homes, and appealing to them for their
assistance in obtaining redress.
“After several of these appeals
had been read, the Prophet became so aroused that he could not remain seated.
He arose to his feet and reviewed some of the terrible scenes referred to in
such language as I had never heard spoken in a public meeting before.” [7]
Only after exhausting every
earthly governmental body that could and should have helped the Saints, Joseph
took his case to the Lord.
The Lord did not reject his
people’s pleas. Their case was now in the hands of the highest court in heaven.
The state and national authorities had been given their chance to fulfill their
obligation to protect their citizens. They not only refused to uphold their
responsibilities but had, themselves, turned against the Saints. They had been
given their chance and had failed—now the courts of heaven would rule in the
case. Fifteen years later, Jackson and other western Missouri counties where
the Saints had been persecuted, began to feel the hand of the Lord upon them as
the bloody Border War with Kansas began.
A Remarkable Prophecy of
Joseph Smith
“Elder Junius F. Wells published
an article in the November number [issue] of the Improvement Era for 1902.
Elder Wells, it appears, had … an interview with the Hon. Leonidas M. Lawson,
of New York City, formerly a resident of Clay county, Missouri, and a
brother-in-law of General Alexander W. Doniphan, whose name so frequently
occurs in our pages, dealing with events in the history of the Church while in
Missouri.
“On the occasion of Mr. Lawson’s
visit to him, just referred to, they rode through Jackson county together, and
in a letter to Elder Wells, under date of February 7, 1902, Mr. Lawson relates
the following incident, which is part of a biographical sketch of General
Doniphan, prepared by Mr. Lawson:
“In the year 1863, I visited
General A. W. Doniphan at his home in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri. This was
soon after the devastation of Jackson County, Missouri, under what is known as
‘Order No. 11.’ This devastation was complete. Farms were everywhere destroyed,
and the farmhouses were burned. During this visit General Doniphan related the
following historical facts and personal incidents:
“About the year 1831-2, the
Mormons settled in Jackson County, Missouri, under the leadership of Joseph
Smith. The people of Jackson County became dissatisfied with their presence,
and forced them to leave; and they crossed the Missouri river and settled in
the counties of De Kalb, Caldwell and Bay. They founded the town of Far West,
and began to prepare the foundation of a temple. It was here that the troubles
arose which culminated in the expulsion of the Mormons from the state of
Missouri according to the command of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs. This was known
in Missouri annals as the Mormon War.
There were many among those who
obeyed the order of the governor, in the state militia, who believed that the
movement against the Mormons was unjust and cruel, and that the excitement was
kept up by those who coveted the homes, the barns and the fields of the Mormon
people. The latter, during their residence in the state of Missouri, paid, in
entry fees for the land they claimed, to the United States government land
office, more than $300,000, which, for that period represented a tremendous
interest.
“Following the early excitement,
Joseph Smith was indicted for treason against the state of Missouri, and
General Doniphan was one of the counsel employed to defend him, he having shown
a friendly interest in Smith, whom he considered very badly treated. Joseph
Smith was placed in prison in Liberty, Missouri, to await his trial. This place
was the residence of General Doniphan. His partner in the practice of law was
James H. Baldwin.
“On one occasion General Doniphan
caused the sheriff of the county to bring Joseph Smith from the prison to his
law office, for the purpose of consultation about his defense. During Smith’s
presence in the office, a citizen of Jackson County, Missouri, came in for the
purpose of paying a fee which was due by him to the firm of Doniphan and
Baldwin, and offered in payment a tract of land in Jackson county.
“Doniphan told him that his
partner, Mr. Baldwin, was absent at the moment, but as soon as he had an opportunity
he would consult him and decide about the matter. When the Jackson County man
retired, Joseph Smith, who had overheard the conversation, addressed General
Doniphan about as follows:
“ ‘Doniphan, I advise you not to
take that Jackson county land in payment of the debt. God’s wrath hangs over
Jackson county. God’s people have been ruthlessly driven from it, and you will
live to see the day when it will be visited by fire and sword. The Lord of
Hosts will sweep it with the besom of destruction. The fields and farms and
houses will be destroyed, and only the chimneys will be left to mark the
desolation.’ ”
“General Doniphan said to me that
the devastation of Jackson County forcibly reminded him of this remarkable
prediction of the Mormon prophet. (signed) L.M. Lawson.
“There is a prediction of the
Prophet Joseph,” remarks Elder Wells, in commenting upon Mr. Lawson’s story,
“not before put into print, and history has recorded its complete fulfillment.”
[3]
The Border War (1854-1861)
The Civil War is known to have
started when the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor,
South Carolina, in 1861. In reality, however, the war could be said to have
started six years earlier with the Border War between the counties in eastern
Kansas and those in western Missouri. Jackson County was one of the hardest
hit. As with the Civil War, the Border War was fought over the slavery issue.
Kansas, a free state, and Missouri, a slave state, destroyed, plundered, and
fought each other for many years. Three months after it finally ended, the
battle at Fort Sumter began, bringing to Missouri four more years of war and
destruction.
The Border War started only 10
years after the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and about 15 years after
Governor Boggs of Missouri issued his infamous proclamation that all Mormons
were to be either driven out of Missouri or murdered.
Many living in the border towns
of Kansas were also from Jackson County, Missouri. They had crossed the border
into Kansas and bought farms there because of the cheap land. Thus many of the
people who both caused and suffered the destruction in this Border War, on both
the Kansas and the Missouri sides, had at one time lived in Jackson County,
Missouri. Therefore, those who plundered the Saints in the 1830s were also the
ones plundering each other in the Border War some 15 years later.
Lawless mobs called
“Bushwhackers” from Missouri ruthlessly attacked and burned homes and towns in
Kansas. Mobs from Kansas, called “Jayhawkers”, retaliated by sacking, burning,
looting, and killing those on the Missouri side of the border, where the Saints
had been persecuted. Citizens on both sides of the river lived in fear of the
attacks and counterattacks that went on during those six years, prior to the
start of the Civil War.
Brigadier-General Daniel M. Frost
had been employed in repressing lawlessness in the western counties of
Missouri. Reporting conditions prevailing there in November, 1860, he said:
“The deserted and charred remains
of once happy homes, combined with the general terror that prevailed amongst
the citizens who still clung to their possessions, gave but too certain proof
of the persecution to which they had all been subjected, and which they would
again have to endure, with renewed violence, so soon as armed protection should
be withdrawn. …
“With the organization of this
force, and perhaps owing also, in some degree, to the inclemency of the season,
‘jayhawking,’ as such, came to an end, though the thing itself, during the
first two or three years of the Civil War, and, in fact, as long as there was
anything left on the Missouri side of the border worth taking, flourished more
vigorously than ever. The old jayhawking leaders, however, now came with United
States commissions in their pockets and at the head of regularly enlisted
troops, in which guise they carried on a system of robbery and murder that left
a good portion of the frontier south of the Missouri river [as] perfect a waste
as Germany was at the end of the Thirty Years’ War.
“While this description confines
the scenes of violence and rapine to the border counties south of the Missouri
river—it included Jackson County, however, which was one of the heaviest
sufferers both in this border warfare and subsequently during the Civil
War—still, the counties north of that stream also suffered from lawlessness and
violence.” [9]
These “counties north of that
stream”—including the counties of Clay, Caldwell, and Ray, which also suffered
from lawlessness and violence during the Border War—were the same counties that
drove the Saints out of Missouri and into Illinois.
“Speaking of the situation in
Missouri in 1861, the out-going Governor, Robert M. Stewart, in his address to
the legislature … said:
“ ‘Missouri has a right to speak
on this subject, because she has suffered. Bounded on three sides by free
territory, her border counties have been the frequent scenes of kidnapping and
violence, and this state has probably lost as much, in the last two years, in
the abduction of slaves, as all the rest of the Southern States. At this moment
several of the western counties are desolated, and almost depopulated, from
fear of a bandit horde, who have been committing depredations—arson, theft, and
foul murder—upon the adjacent border.’ ” [10]
All this was before the Civil War
had even started—that war, which would bring even further devastation, was
still ahead.
In 1838, a man named Sterling
Price had shackled the Prophet Joseph, his brother Hyrum, and others in the
Richmond, Missouri jail where they endured haughty boasts of horrible deeds
spewing from the mouths of filthy guards.
In 1864, this same man, now
Confederate General Sterling Price, took an army of 12,000 men into Ray and
Independence in Jackson County. According to his own calculation, General Price
destroyed upwards of ‘ten million dollars’ worth of property, a fair share of
which belonged to his own friends. [11] That would be a staggering amount
today.
The Saints had suffered greatly,
but those in the western counties of Missouri, which included Jackson County,
suffered even more and over a longer period of time than the Saints did.
Even before the Civil War
started, western Missouri was laid nearly desolate because of the Border War,
and all the hardships the Missourians had inflicted upon the Saints were now
visited upon their own heads, and in a greater degree. Joseph’s prophecy was
fulfilled.
REFERENCES
1. Albert Castel & Thomas
Goodrich, Bloody Bill Anderson, (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Stackpole Books,
1998) p. 132.
2. Smith, Joseph. History of the
Church (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957) Vol. 3, page xviii. Introduction by
B. H. Roberts.
3. HC, Vol. 1, p. 487-488.
4. HC, Vol. 3, page 331 ;
punctuation modernized; from “Extract, from the Private Journal of Joseph Smith
Jr.,” Times and Seasons, Nov. 1839, pp. 8–9.
5. Doctrine and Covenants 103:27
6. HC, Vol. 1, pages 454-55.
7. “Recollections of Elder Samuel
W. Richards,” Young Woman’s Journal, XVIII (Dec. 1907), 537-38: CR (Oct. 1905),
87-89.
8. HC: Vol. 3, pages lxviii-lxix.
9. HC: Vol. 3, pages lxii-lxiv.
10. HC: Vol. 3, page lxiii.
11. HC: Vol. 3, page lxv.
Further Reading:
