Replies

Did I say anything about polygamy being the cause of the MO mobs?

Missouri opposition was based on bloc voting and paranoia due, at least partly, to Mormons preaching about how they would soon take over the property of the gentiles, that they would be exterminated, etc.

IOW, Missourians opposition was based on much the same reaction as has occurred in more recent communities when “weird” cults start moving into an area in large numbers. See the Rajneeshis and the Church Universal and Triumphant.

Here’s a quote from a sermon preached by Sidney Rigdon in July 1838. It was well tailored to reduce tensions. /s

“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 until 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 their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed...”

Joseph Smith, wisely (that’s also sarcasm) chose to print this speech as a pamphlet and distribute it widely.

The famous extermination order of Boggs was issued in October, fairly obviously with wording influenced by Mormon threat. But Mormons make much of Boggs’ order and generally ignore the rhetoric leading up to it. It is also relevant that, AFIK, not a single Mormon was actually killed as a result of the Extermination Order.

As a private practice, polygamy started sometime around 1831. Rumors immediately started to fly, as the 1835 version of Documents and Covenants shows, since it denied that it was a Mormon practice. This was, of course, a lie. So there were certainly beliefs, accurate as it turned out, among Missourians of the time that Mormons were secretly practicing polygamy.

Mormon leadership of the time also had a real problem with tolerating dissent and apostasy. They’d take illegal action against dissenters and disgruntled members, who of course were more than happy to stir up neighboring gentiles with “revelations” about secret practices, some being true and some false. But of course the gentiles had no way of knowing which were which.

There were quite a number of weird religious cults running around the American west at the time. None precipitated major persecution or warfare other than the Mormons, who did so repeatedly, in OH, several times in MO, in IL, and in UT, again several times.

I grew up in the area of the Missouri Mormon War and have been to a number of the battlefield sites. It is at least arguable that the Mormons made a habit of talking big, pissing people off, and starting wars they were never able to finish.

There was plenty of fault to go around, and I make no excuses for Boggs or the other mob leaders, but the Mormons have made a practice of obscuring their own complicity in what happened and exaggerating their losses.

For example, it is entirely possible that fewer Mormons died in all the mob attacks combined, with some of those deaths being in combat rather than plain murders, than Mormons slaughtered in a single attack on gentiles in 1857. And of course that attack intentionally murdered men, women and children who had surrendered on promise of having their lives spares. It remains the worst single atrocity committed by white Americans on white Americans in our entire history.

My beef with the Mormon portrayal of this period is that they often compare their persecution, implicitly at least, with that suffered by the early Christians. This is, to my mind, a slander on the early Christians. Mormons, unlike them, bear considerable responsibility for provoking the attacks of their persecutors.

The attacks on the Mormons, BTW, were part of an overall breakdown of law on the frontier, as addressed by a very young Lincoln in January, 1838. People in the midwest had gotten into the habit of taking direct “democratic” action rather than using the law.

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/lyceum.htm