Missouri Executive Order 44 - Background

Background

Executive Order 44 was issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri during the 1838 Mormon War, which had been caused by friction between the Mormons and their neighbors, largely due to tensions resulting from the growing economic and electoral power of the Mormon community. The war ended with the expulsion of almost all Mormons from the state of Missouri. The Mormons had been given a county of their own to settle in after their expulsion from Jackson County in 1833, but the increasing influx of new Mormon converts moving to northwestern Missouri led them to begin settling in adjacent counties. This provoked the wrath of other settlers, who had operated under the assumption that the Mormons would remain confined to Caldwell County.

Missouri was governed during this time by Boggs, who was notorious for his own personal disdain for the Mormon religion. As the conflict between Mormons and their neighbors escalated during the fall of 1838, Boggs refused to forcibly intervene to prevent depredations against the Mormons, which in turn often led to retaliation by the latter against their perceived enemies. Ultimately tensions escalated into open conflict, culminating in the looting and burning of several Mormon farms and homes, the sacking and burning of Gallatin by Mormon "Danite" elements, and the taking of Mormon hostages by a militia unit commanded by Cpt. Samuel Bogart, operating in northern Ray County (to the south of Caldwell). When Mormon militia from the town of Far West moved south to the militia camp on the Crooked River to rescue their co-religionists, the resulting battle aroused considerable terror throughout the western part of the state. Lurid rumors of a planned full-scale Mormon invasion of Missouri had run rampant throughout the summer, and these only increased as reports of this "Battle of Crooked River" reached the capital at Jefferson City, with spurious accounts of Mormons allegedly slaughtering Bogart's militia company, including those who had surrendered. Further dispatches spoke of an impending Mormon attack on Richmond, county seat of Ray County, though in fact no such attack was ever contemplated. It was in this environment of fear and misinformation that Boggs chose to act.

Boggs issued Executive Order #44 to General John Clark, whom he had appointed to head up the state militia forces being assembled to reinstate citizens of Daviess County (north of Caldwell) who had been allegedly driven from their homes by renegade Mormons. Having heard lurid reports of alleged Mormon depradations on the Crooked River, Boggs directed Clark to change his mission to one of direct military operations against the Mormons themselves.