Mormonism and Violence - History of Religious Violence Against Mormons

History of Religious Violence Against Mormons

Early Mormon history is marked by many instances of violence, which has helped shape the church's views on violence. The first significant instance occurred in Missouri. Mormons tended to vote as a bloc there often unseating local political leadership. Differences culminated in hostilities and the eventual issuing of an executive order (often called the Extermination Order) by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs declaring "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State." Three days later, a militia unit attacked a Mormon settlement at Haun's Mill, resulting in the death of 18 Mormons and no militiamen. The Extermination Order was not formally rescinded until 1976.

In Nauvoo, Illinois, conflict was often based on the tendency of Mormons to "dominate community, economic, and political life wherever they landed." The city of Nauvoo had become the largest in Illinois, the city council was predominantly Mormon, and the Nauvoo Legion (the Mormon militia) continued to grow. Other issues of contention included polygamy, freedom of speech, anti-slavery views during Smith’s presidential campaign, and the deification of man. After the destruction of the press of the Nauvoo Expositor, Joseph Smith, Jr. was arrested and incarcerated in Carthage Jail where he was killed by a mob on June 27, 1844. The conflict in Illinois became so severe that most of the residents of Nauvoo fled across the Mississippi River in February 1846.

Even after Mormons established a community hundreds of miles away in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah in 1847, anti-Mormon activists in the Utah Territory convinced President Buchanan that the Mormons in the territory were rebelling against the United States due to the Mountain Meadows massacre and plural marriage. In response, President Buchanan sent one-third of USA's standing army in 1857 to Utah in what is known as the Utah War.