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Zion part 37
S2E22 · Zion Part 4 (early violence in Missouri)
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 22 · 1:06:14

Zion Part 4 (early violence in Missouri)

The Jackson County mob turned violent in July 1833 right after the Church newspaper printed an article for free Black members who might want to move to Zion.

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The question ·
Why is it that in July of 1833, a mob forms and violently demands that the Latter-day Saints leave their lands?
Gerrit

Richard opens the mailbag with John from San Diego, whose kind email and worry about diving too deep into Church history set Gerrit off on Late War, honest methodology and why prophets can make mistakes. Then the hosts turn back to Zion and ask why the Missourians' dislike turned violent in July 1833. Gerrit explains that W. W. Phelps published "Free People of Color," quoting Missouri law for Black converts, and he walks through Missouri's slave laws and the Southern fear of slave revolts. Reading the mob's own manifesto, he lands on its stated reason: the Saints had dared to invite free Black men and women into their church and their county.

Who comes upW. W. PhelpsJoseph SmithBrigham YoungDenmark VeseyNat TurnerThomas Jefferson
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Zion part 37

Richard jokes about the never-ending Zion series, and they open the mailbag.

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, we're going to conclude part 37 on Zion.
Gerrit It feels like that, doesn't it?
Richard It is, it is. This is our first four-parter, but we're going to be talking a little bit about, as when last we left you, talking about how kind of setting the table for the expulsion from Missouri.
Gerrit I feel like we need to read some fan mail first, though.
Richard Let's go to the mailbag.
Gerrit Let's go to the mailbag.
Richard All right.
Gerrit We realized that many people have written in who, we have not read your letter yet on the air.
Richard I will say, some of the emails are very, very funny.
Gerrit Yeah, there are clearly people who are smarter than us.
Richard Way funnier, way better.
Gerrit Way funnier. I didn't even want to talk about funny. I wanted us to have a chance.
Richard Yeah. Well, so John from San Diego.
Gerrit Who already lives in the greatest place on earth.
Richard By the way, John, so I serve my mission, Riverside, California. So people would live in my mission, and then they would go to where you live if they wanted to enjoy the weather, the beach.
Gerrit John, what I want most in my life is to someday be the Mormon Battalion Visitor Center Mission President. Actually, just a missionary there.
Richard Right, yeah.
Gerrit Or perfect, maybe just a visitor.
Richard You get to talk about church history, perfect weather.
Gerrit I'm living in San Diego, and all I talk about is American history and Mormon history. It's the greatest thing that...
Richard Well, I mean, that is a dream, sure.
Gerrit Are you saying that your dream is different? What, do you want to be at the Winter Quarters Visitor Center?
Richard Well, yeah, my dream is to be at the Winter Quarters Visitor Center.
Gerrit I need snow to be on the ground for longer than it is in Star Valley, Wyoming.
Richard Look, obviously, we're huge in Omaha, huge.
Gerrit Well, we were before we...
Richard Before we started making fun of...
Gerrit No, no, then we left. In 1846 and 47, we were huge in Omaha.
Richard What? So, John writes in, Gentlemen, as far as podcasts focusing on 19th century American religious history and rice tariffs by faithful Latter-day Saint scholars, this is probably my favorite. Top 10, anyway.
Gerrit That's nice.
Richard How many 19th century rice tariff-related podcasts are there?
Gerrit I can think of four or five right off the top.
Richard And they are better.
Gerrit And they are better. They have better production values. It's better. Yeah, they're more faithful.
Richard But seriously, after discovering it a couple of months ago, I've been listening on my commute and have finished all of the episodes. Entertaining, helpful and uplifting. For background, I'm around your age. So he's 23, 24.
Gerrit Yeah. Maybe a little older.
Richard 22, 23. But always worried about diving too deep into LDS history. Actually, just stop there. I remember several times where people would come up to you and when you were working for the Joseph Smith Papers, you know, they do church history, and they ask you about that, and they almost come to you with like the concern, right, of like, so you still a member?
Gerrit Right, with the idea behind it being, you know, because this is how anti-Mormonism is presented to people. The way it's presented to your average, you know, faithful member of the church, yeah, you know, they don't spend a ton of time reading a bunch of anti-Mormon subreddits because they have lives and they're just, you know, trying to take care of their families and working a job and trying to serve in their church calling. And the fact that they haven't devoted their lives to reading every single thing there is about church history is used against them by antagonists who are trying to undermine their faith by presenting something that the person hasn't heard about and always in an incredibly negative context. And then using the fact that you don't know about that thing as proof that your whole religion is a sham. This is a ridiculous methodology of trying to determine truth.
Gerrit Because nobody knows everything. So that means every person on earth, we could completely destroy if we found the one thing that they don't know about, brought it up to them and said, what else are they lying to you about? Which is essentially the thing. And so what it's created in our culture, because you hear people say things like, oh yeah, once I found out the real truth about Joseph Smith, that's when I left the church. And by real truth, what they mean is, they went to the university, they got a degree in history, they then went and got a master's degree in history, they then went and got a PhD in history, they then spent two to three decades of their life researching in archives, going to Yale, going to the University of Chicago, going to the various places, reading all of the original firsthand documents themselves, and then coming to an informed conclusion that's actually published by non-Latter-day Saints sources in academic presses. That's what they mean.
Richard That's what I mean. That's what I mean every time I say it.
Gerrit Every time you say it. Obviously, I'm being somewhat facetious.
Richard Well, so...
Gerrit And by somewhat, I mean...
Richard Well, so let me be fair to you, though, really quickly. So we've talked about this in a previous podcast that we don't remember and isn't archived well, but I will say that there are things that you can understand and that you're like, okay, let's talk about that as it relates to issues. The example that we always give is the late war versus view of the Hebrews. View of the Hebrews, when you talk about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, view of the Hebrews, okay, well, I can understand. Let's talk about this. Let's contextualize this. Late war, straight up lying to me.
Gerrit Right, because the idea that many Americans, many Europeans, many people in the world believed that the Native Americans inhabiting North and South America had to be some way descended from the lost tribe of Israel was a pretty popular belief in Joseph Smith's time. It was not something that today, one of the things that makes Latter-day Saints unique is that they believe that and it's something that's often attacked by other people. But so, you know, that's a very good example where the problem isn't that you can't come to terms with the fact that there were lots of people who believe that the Native Americans in North and South America were in some way descended from the lost tribes of Israel in Joseph Smith's time. The problem is we didn't know about it. And so, yeah, there's a very different response to that, but someone might use the shock value of saying, have you read this? This proves that Joseph Smith just copied the whole Book of Mormon from the view of the Hebrews, even though the book is like literally completely different in every way and none of the writing is the same and none of the words are the same, but the idea is the same and the fact that you don't know about it is used as proof that the Book of Mormon isn't what it says it is.
Richard And in that case, if somebody has an issue like that, you provide the context and you're like, okay, let's talk about it. And the reason that I bring this up as an example is that there's there are two Gerrits. There is View of the Hebrews Gerrit, and then there's Late War Gerrit. And so you can tell, because Gerrit was going down Late War. We were getting full Late War Gerrit.
Gerrit I was getting angry.
Richard Right, because Late War makes you angry because...
Gerrit Well, I'm angry when people are dishonestly trying to destroy other people's faith. And look, anytime that you claim to be an expert on something, and you don't actually have any training or degree in that thing, you don't get to be wrong. You don't get to be wrong because you're the one who became a self-proclaimed expert in it. And which is fine to be a self-proclaimed enthusiast and to spend all your time talking about it, reading it to yourself. But the moment you use it to try to affect other people's faith, you don't get the luxury of being wrong. You don't get the luxury because you're the one trying to destroy someone else's faith. And so I think a lot of people have someone in their life who has said something to them like, well, if only you've read what I've read, then you wouldn't believe the church was true. Have you ever read this? If you've read that, then you wouldn't believe. Now, of course, there's a fundamental misunderstanding in that.
Gerrit And that is that your testimony comes from something that you've read. Now, obviously, I understand that the Book of Mormon is something that you read, but even reading the Book of Mormon doesn't give you a testimony. The Holy Spirit of God gives you a testimony. The Spirit testifies to you, and that's why you believe. And so if the Spirit testifies to you, and that's why you believe, then you can't read something that makes that not the case, right? But that's the way that these things are presented.
Richard And so the late war specifically, it's deception. They're taking excerpts, pages, tens of pages apart, putting them together, squeezing them to make them look like they are coming straight from, copied from the Book of Mormon.
Gerrit Yeah, by using ellipses or as we recorded in that episode, dot, dot, dot, over and over and over again, it deceptively made it seem like it was almost verbatim verses coming from the book, The Late War and the Book of Mormon. One of the points though that we made in that podcast is if that was the actual explanation of where the text of the Book of Mormon came from and if it was actually a viable one, and if it was actually something that could be replicated, the people writing about The Late War wouldn't be the ones making it. The thousands of history and literary and religious professors in the world who would love to make the greatest splash in all of American religious history by proving where the real text of the Book of Mormon comes from would be the ones writing on it. Anything that you can only find on someone's subreddit or YouTube is obviously not very good scholarship, because if it was good, actual scholars who've actually devoted their life to it and not just a little bit of time on the weekends would be the ones writing about it.
Gerrit And so I think that is one of the things that's frustrating to me, is a lot of times people will criticize, you know, the church's history, and they'll say, well, you know, the fact that I haven't heard about this, that proves the church is lying, that proves the church is hiding it, and they'll want to criticize the church on a purely secular level. Okay, well, if we want to criticize it on purely secular documents, then guess what? You don't get to say things like, well, it stands to reason that. Well, I know that Brigham Young sent a letter to the Saints in southern Utah, telling them to let all the wagon trains pass in peace, and the Mountain Meadows Massacre happened anyway, but that's probably because Brigham Young also sent another letter saying you should also kill all of them and disregard the letter that I sent. Well, that's not history. Now, it might help you sleep at night if you're an antagonist of the church and you want to demonstrate how horrible Brigham Young is, but what do you have?
Gerrit You have an actual letter from Brigham Young saying, don't do anything to the immigrants. And so I think that this question, I know we've gone off on a tangent here, but really that's what most of the podcast is.
Richard Well, yeah, no.
Gerrit Because we want this to be part 11.
Richard Yeah, Zion's Zion, part 38, 39.
Gerrit I just need to get it up to the formation of ZCMI and we're golden.
Richard Well, so going back to the email, going back to John's email here, what happens is that he said something about diving too deep into church history and then that was a trigger for you. That's right.
Gerrit I have a lot of unresolved anger.
Richard Well, the issue that you have there, as you explained very well, is just that people try to use some of these things to take people away from their faith, and that's very frustrating for you. Because John's sentiment is the sentiment of many, many members, and I can understand why that possibly would be the case, why they might be nervous about diving into some of these issues.
Gerrit Well, when everyone is telling you that if you read more, then you're going to stop believing, and then you have people on the other side, inside of the church saying, yeah, you shouldn't look at any of that, because it'll cause you to stop believing, it's a very, very natural thing to say, well, I was a little worried. You know, and what I love about John is not only that he lives in San Diego, because I desperately want to trade places with him, but is that I love the fact that John loves his faith so much that he hesitated for that reason. He didn't hesitate because he's afraid of what he's going to, he hesitates because he loves his faith so much that he doesn't want to have anything damage his faith. Faith is a choice. You have got to want to believe. You don't just, this is not just an angel appears to you and you're going to believe for the rest of your life because angels are appearing to Laman and Lemuel and it's not helping, or at least not for very long.
Richard It helps for a minute.
Gerrit Okay, all right, we're no longer hitting him, but soon we'll be on the boat and he's going to die. But I mean, the reality is you have to want to believe. And so I really appreciate the sentiment that he's expressing. As Richard said, I often will have people ask. And it's because of the untruth that has been perpetrated by the enemies of the church that if only you knew more, then you wouldn't believe. Now, what happens when you are then confronted in that conversation with people who have multiple books, articles, publications on Joseph Smith history who are well qualified, some of the most qualified people to write and talk about it, working at the church history department or BYU or other places, who believe? Well, then you have to turn to personal attacks. Well, yeah, they have to do that because otherwise they'd lose their job.
Gerrit So you go immediately from, oh, if only you knew more, then you wouldn't believe to, oh, that guy still believes, let's attack him. If you remember, that's exactly what was going on in our previous podcast when we were talking about Zion. How do we describe what's going on with people like Ezra Booth? Oh, yeah, crazy. Yeah, yep, they just, you know, they went, woohoo, and the next thing you know, they're cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and that's the reason why they would ever become a Latter-day Saint. And so, you know, I, I really resonate with, with what John is saying there. But then I also resonate with the fact where he says, you know, as I have read more, it's had the opposite effect. And, and that's one of the things I love to say, because people will say, you know, have you ever, have you ever read anything that kind of made you go, Oh man, I don't think Joseph Smith's a prophet anymore. Right. Look, have I read things in which Joseph Smith makes errors and mistakes?
Gerrit Yes. So if part of the problem is you go into it thinking, well, Joseph Smith's never made a mistake. Well, then if you find a mistake, you're going to, you're going to be really upset. So as part of it is starting realizing that we're all humans and that Joseph doesn't know everything before he knows it. He only knows whatever it is that God has revealed to him at the time. And like everyone else, he is subject to his own ideas and his own passions and his own emotions. And at times they get the better of him. And we all know that, you know, otherwise we'd have another 116 pages in the Book of Mormon because Joseph gave in to his, his emotions at the time and, and you know, multiple other times. But the actual, the effect, you know, as John said, is that the more you actually understand the whole story, the more that you can put things in context, the more you study all of the writings that Joseph wrote, all of the teachings that he gave.
Gerrit Someone coming out and saying, Oh yeah, Joseph Smith's just a liar, lied about everything, comes across as an incredibly, incredibly weak argument. There's too much to allow for this just piddly little throwaway line. Just like it's an incredibly weak argument to say, the only people who believe in the church are people who either crazy or being paid. Well, there's lots of other people, dare I say, more intelligent than whoever that person is who believe. And that means the argument's not a very good one. So, I love that question. I know it's a little bit off of our topic.
Richard Well, so, but he actually comes back to Missouri, which is, I mean, other than him saying nice things is the main reason we read it.
Gerrit Again, we only read nice ones.
Richard Well, obviously, but we receive so many mean emails. We read none of those.
Gerrit Yeah, we read, we're going to start reading some of them. The problem is they're all from Becky and Angie.
Richard From our wives. So, he also asked about the graphic details associated with Missouri. The majority of the things we know are about Hans Mill, and we don't really know a lot on both sides. Things that the Mormons did, things that the Missourians did, and you would love some additional context there.
Gerrit This is another great question, and honestly, Missouri is the most, it's the most difficult time in church history to keep straight. Because we don't have a whole lot of time to learn things in church. We don't even have Sunday school every week anymore. And so when people are like, oh, you know, how come I didn't learn more about the historical events surrounding this? Well, it's a pretty easy answer. I mean, what do you think two hours a month is going to get you, right? I mean, the church has produced the Volume Saints, right, which is very helpful in placing things in a chronology and helping people understand with a story. But as we go into talking about the expulsion from Jackson County, I think it's really important for people to recognize there are two time periods of violence in Missouri. When I was younger, I merged them all in my mind together. In fact, we were laughing a little bit last night as we watched the movie Legacy because we weren't just watching the whole movie.
Gerrit We were looking for a quote, and all we do is...
Richard The Missouri quote that we gave last night.
Gerrit And then we watched, if families can be forever. But there's a part where they're trying to show the passage of time and have this incredible... It's a great artistic motif where they show the main leading woman, Eliza, as she's a little girl and they move to Missouri, and that's the story. And there she is unpacking things from the pack, and she waves a blanket in the air to shake it out. And when the blanket comes back down, she's 10 years older, right? She goes from being an 8-year-old girl to being 18 and several men competing for her hand. Well, the reality is not much time actually passed from the time that they would have gotten there to the time where she's shaking that blanket is like a year and a half. And I think that's actually a little bit emblematic of how we tend to view Missouri. We don't talk about what happened there as much for several reasons.
Gerrit One, there isn't an existing temple in Missouri. So with Kirtland, you have the Kirtland Temple and its dedication. With Nauvoo, you have the Nauvoo Temple and its dedication and all the things that happened there. With Missouri, you didn't have a focal place like that. We weren't in Jackson County. We wanted to build a temple. We tried to build a temple. They drove us out. And so we kind of condense the events that happened in 1833 and 1834 with the actual, the later events that happened five years later. They actually are, I mean, obviously they're all connected because they're in Missouri, but they're not the same violence. So the violence when the printing press is destroyed, sorry, that's kind of a spoiler alert for the rest of the podcast. You don't have to listen to me.
Richard All of the printing presses are destroyed.
Gerrit Tammy, you can turn it off now. I already told you what happened. The printing press is destroyed. The reality is that the violence that takes place in 1833 is separated from the violence that takes place in 1838. Hans Mill and the violence of what's often referred to as the Mormon War in Missouri, where there is just wholesale slaughter and assault and murder and other violence. That is a second, a different period of violence than the one that we're talking about here in Jackson County. And so I think that's really important when you're studying Missouri to realize the Latter-day Saints get there in 1831. In 1833 and early 1834, there are violent assaults that drive them from Jackson County. It's not for another four to five years until the fall of 1838 that you have the extermination order and the violence that takes place with Hans Milne at Far West.
Gerrit So just so everyone can keep that straight, Richard, you keeping it straight?
Richard I'm keeping it straight. So one event throughout all of Missouri.
Gerrit In fact, Missouri was part of Ohio at the time. It just gets merged together, and it's very confusing because the church has two headquarters at the same time, essentially. The headquarters of the churches in Ohio, but the future, not only headquarters of the church, but future headquarters for Jesus on Earth is the new Jerusalem that they're trying to build in Zion. And so the timeframe becomes very difficult to follow. So in deference to John's request, when we do cover that later period of Missouri, and we're going to put that off as long as we possibly can, Richard, at some point.
Richard No, that's right. If someone wants to know about it, we will not get to it.
Gerrit Yeah. If you have a question about things, well, which leads to what his last comment was, I think you probably need to share that as well.
Richard Also, quoting, also, please do polygamy. And when I say do polygamy, I mean, discuss it. Don't practice it. It's tough to understand from our point of view. I would love to hear your perspective.
Gerrit I appreciate the fact that John cares about our welfare enough that he doesn't encourage us to actually practice polygamy. But I could see how someone could read that the wrong way. You do need the caveat. At some point, we'll get to it. But we are going to talk a little bit about the, you know, I've tried to present some of the side of the Missourians and the Missouri newspapers, as well as some of the conflicts going on in the church at the time. And I left last episode saying that we were going to talk about the spark that really caused the violence, because it actually kind of happens overnight. Are there a lot of factors that go into the violent removal of Latter-day Saints from Jackson County? Of course there are. Is it all just religious bigotry? Well, of course it's not. And it's actually very difficult to put your finger on exactly the reason why a despised minority group is hated by the majority.
Gerrit And the reason why is that majority group that dislikes the minority group has more than one reason that they would give as the reason why. I am not in any way advocating bigotry. So for those of you who are about to deceptively edit this to try to say that I am, I'm not. But I want you to think of the bigoted comments that people have made surrounding the religion of Islam. Okay. People who have a real problem with Muslims, is it just one thing? Is it just the, you know, if only they didn't, you know, I've got a real problem with Ramadan and that's the, I mean, or isn't it really a litany of things? Isn't it, oh, you know, Muslims are, you know, antithetical to democracy, or Muslims don't allow for freedom of worship, or Muslim, right, there's a list of things that anti-Islamic people are going to claim.
Gerrit It's not simply just one thing, and they actually all kind of feed in together. And so with the Latter-day Saints moving to Jackson County, are they doing intemperate things, like saying, hey, God gave us this land, and it's all going to all be ours, and God's going to build his city here? Yes, and while that might be true, that's not the way you want to lead your first discussion, right? This is not like, you know, patriarchal blessings.
Richard That's all you need to know.
Gerrit That's all you need to know. There are certainly some things that the saints are doing that are aggravating the Missourians. But there is a disproportionate level of power, right? The saints are in the minority. So yes, they might be irritating the Missourians because they talk about this being the Promised Land and because they're all blasphemers and they're believing Joe Smith and talking to God and his angels. But they also aren't in a position to harm the majority, although as more and more Latter-day Saints move to Missouri, they are now more and more, at least in local elections, a threat to existing politicians. The Saints are going to have this problem over and over and over again because they gather together. Someone wrote in one of my classes that, and he was very antagonistic towards the Church, and said, I don't think that we should give the Church as much of a pass.
Gerrit They were obviously causing the problems everywhere they went. I mean, look at shakers. You didn't see people attacking their communities. Obviously, it's the Latter-day Saints who are doing things. Well, they couldn't have picked a worse example because, first of all, there's not very many shakers. Well, today there's two, and they've excommunicated one another. I'm not even exactly sure which shaker is the real shaker. Will the real shaker please stand up? We don't know, right? But shakers refused to participate in local elections or politics, and their communes were generally 100 to 200, you know, maybe 500 people, whereas the Latter-day Saints are moving together in masses in the thousands. So it really is comparing apples and oranges. And as more and more Latter-day Saints move to a community, land prices go up, which might be great if you're the person trying to sell land to Latter-day Saints, but not as great if you're someone who's trying to buy land in that area where your parents had land and you want to have land.
Gerrit And so they all kind of combine together. So if all of these stresses exist already, why is it that in July of 1833, a mob forms and violently demands that the Latter-day Saints leave their lands? This is not a demand that the Latter-day Saints, you know, hey, we need you to turn your music down because on Saturdays we're trying to get ready for our Protestant Sabbath. No, this is a demand that they vacate all of the property that they have purchased legally. This is not a matter of the Latter-day Saints are squatting on land. And you know what? You've stayed since through Christmas. It's time, Uncle Eddie, to get in your RV and drive home. This is a demand that they essentially abandon not only all of their property, but a place that they believe God has told them a new Jerusalem is going to be built, the city of Zion that will usher in the Second Coming of Jesus.
Gerrit What triggers this response? Well, W. Phelps, who we talked about in our last episode, who was the editor of the Church's newspaper, published an article entitled Free People of Color. In this article, he is addressing Black Latter-day Saint converts, free people of color being a reference to non-enslaved African Americans. He starts off by saying, To prevent any misunderstanding among the churches abroad respecting free people of color, who may think of coming to the western boundaries of Missouri as members of the church, we quote the following clauses from the laws of Missouri. What's demonstrated here in this 1833 article is that, first of all, there are Black members of the church in 1833, and there are enough Black members of the church that Phelps believes this is an important article to write.
Gerrit We know that there are Black members of the church as early as 1831 in Ohio. Obviously, it's harder to track some Black members of the church in early church history because none of our early records put a mark next to someone and say, by the way, Black, right? So unless we have other sources, journals, diary entries, articles that reference the race of the person who's a member of the church, we don't have a way of knowing it. I mean, we do know in some cases there are obviously Black men and women who are members of the church. Well, he goes on in this article to... he has the Missouri statutes out there in front of him, and there are things that he wants people to know. I'm going to read part of the statue. This is going to be very jargony. Richard, because he's doing a business PhD, will understand it because it'll be like, oh, yes, this is much easier to read than anything I'm reading at Oklahoma State, but this will be a little bit tedious, but to just give you an idea.
Gerrit Section four. Be it further enacted, that hereafter, no free Negro or mulatto other than a citizen of some one of the United States shall come into or settle in this state under any pretext whatever, and upon complaint made to any justice of the peace, that such persons in his county, contrary to the provisions of this section, it shall appear that such person is a free Negro or a mulatto that he have come into this state after the passage of this act, and such persons shall not produce a certificate attested by the seal of some court of record in some of the United States, evidencing that he is a citizen of such state, the justice shall command him forthwith to depart this state. And in case such Negro or mulatto shall not depart from the state within 30 days after being commanded to do so, as the aforesaid, any justice of the peace upon complaint thereof to him may cause such person to be brought before him and may commit him to the common jail of the county in which he may be found until the next term of the circuit court to be held in that county.
Gerrit And the said court shall cause such person to be brought before them and examine them in the cause of their commitment. And it shall appear that such person came into the state contrary to the prescriptions of this act and continued therein after being commanded to depart. As aforesaid, such court may sentence such person to receive ten lashes on his or her back and order him to depart this state. And if he or she shall not depart, the same proceedings shall be had and punishment inflicted as often as it may be necessary until such person departs the state. So you can see part of what is going on in these new South States, these states that were not original 13 colonies, places like Missouri and Kentucky and Tennessee and Mississippi and Alabama. Slavery has become an integral part of not only their political system and their social system, but also their economy.
Gerrit In many of the older slave states, there is a very high population of free black men and women. Why? Well, because although slavery and servitude was for life, you add all these individual emancipations that took place as a result of the Revolutionary War and that rhetoric, and as a result of the Second Great Awakening. The idea that comes out of the Second Great Awakening is that every single soul has absolute value equally in the eyes of God. And that rhetoric alone caused some fervent Christians to say, I cannot be a slave owner because that soul is equal in the eyes of God to me. So you have in many of these states, large free black populations. In South Carolina, for instance, it's estimated that as many as 5% of the black population of South Carolina are free blacks whose families have either purchased their own freedom, been granted freedom, over the course of time that you have this population.
Gerrit In Delaware, an enormous amount of the black population, which Delaware is still a slave state at the time, an enormous part of the black population, in fact, most of the black population of the state, is actually free. So in other states, the attempt to make slavery absolutely stark on the basis of racial lines has already been blurred a little bit, because black doesn't necessarily mean slave in Delaware. It could mean slave in Delaware, but oftentimes it doesn't. What you find on the state legislatures of these new, booming southern states like Missouri is that they enact laws like the one I just read because they don't want the word free black to actually be a term in their society.
Gerrit Black can only equal slave. And many of these states will actually adopt statutes that require owners. Hey, obviously it's your property, which I mean, obviously despicable, we've been talking about people in terms of property, but they would enact laws saying, if you want to free your property, if you want to free your slave, fine, of course, you're willing to do whatever you want with your property, but then you need to pay to transport him or her out of the state. And you have to put up a bond with the state promising that that now free black man or woman will not return, and if they return, you're going to forfeit that money. These laws were designed to prevent there from being any free black men and women living in the state. And you can see there, oh, yeah, the only way that you'd be allowed to move to Missouri is if you have a certificate demonstrating you are a citizen of another state. Well, since citizenship is not conferred upon most black Americans in other states, I'm guessing they don't have a whole lot of citizenship records to procure, to put forth.
Gerrit It's simply a way of the slave power of Missouri, of these bigoted whites who are trying to maintain their stranglehold on racial slavery in Missouri. It's a way for them to enact violence against black men and women in an effort to prevent their becoming a free black part of the society. Another aspect of this in Missouri and in other southern states is every time there was a slave revolt, and they were relatively few and far between actually in the United States, and there's a really great demographic reason for that. There are slave revolts in places like Haiti and Barbados and the Bahamian Islands, and in all of the West Indies islands, there are various slave revolts at different times, and they happen quite a bit. But demographically, there's a lot greater chance of success for a slave revolt in Barbados.
Gerrit In Barbados, 90% of the population is black and enslaved, and only 10% are white overseers. Well, you can do the math on it, and you don't have to get a hold of too many guns before you are able to drive, at least temporarily. Now, of course, all these slave insurrections are then put down violently by these European powers who still claim those places, except for Haiti, where Haiti, they are able to withstand even Napoleon's forces, and Haiti becomes this first independent republic in the Western Hemisphere outside of the United States, this former slave colony. Well, in the cases of the United States, slaves are, though they happen to be the majority in some counties, and by the time of the American Civil War in Mississippi and in South Carolina, black men and women make up the majority, slight majority in both of those states, demographically, slaves don't even make up a quarter of the population in the South.
Gerrit That makes a slave uprising much more difficult long term, because you already aren't the ones in power, you already aren't the ones with the guns and the horses and the swords, and by the way, there's three to four to five times as many whites opposing you, so that makes those, so there actually aren't very many. But one of the arguments that Southerners made is that many slaves love slavery, they just love it. I mean, well, their docile demeanor is fitted to being a worker laboring in the fields and they can't ask for more and they're lucky that they have the food that I give them and all kinds of condescending bull as they try to justify slavery. And so when slave revolts do happen, however infrequently they happen, often there are two people that are blamed.
Gerrit One, freed blacks. My slaves had no problem at all being a slave until Denmark VC in South Carolina, until he, a free black man, started getting quote unquote uppity and trying to convince other enslaved blacks that they could become free like him and plans a revolt for which it doesn't actually take place and he's executed and dozens of other slaves surrounding him are also punished and executed. And the worst or the most successful, most violent, I don't know how you want to describe it, but the most consequential slave revolt in antebellum American history occurs in 1831. The slave Nat Turner in Virginia leads an incredibly violent and successful in the short term revolt locally against the plantation owners.
Gerrit And it is very much a race war. It is at least according to the confessions of Nat Turner, which they are presented in courts and they are purportedly written by him as they're dictated to a white lawyer. And he supposedly acknowledges that they are his words in court. I mean, you'll notice I'm being a little bit hesitant, but because I don't know. Let me just say this. It was not above Southern jurisprudence to put words inside of a condemned black man that they were going to execute. So that could have happened. I mean, but generally people take at least part of what this is as being at least somewhat true. And the point was to kill in this uprising, to kill every white person that they could. And they are indiscriminate. They kill men, women, children and babies in this slave revolt.
Gerrit And it is horrifying to Southerners. And so again, who are you going to blame this on? Because if you simply say, oh, well, this is what happens when people are very oppressed, they end up reacting violently trying to get their freedom, well, then you're acknowledging that the system of slavery is oppressive and that slaves hate it. Which should actually be a pretty easy conclusion to come to. It seems like, oh, yeah, those people who are owned, they love being owned and being sold away from their families and treated like garbage and property. I mean, obviously, it's preposterous to us today to hear someone try to make that argument. But that argument was made all of the time in the 19th century. Anyway, one way that you try to justify it is by saying that it wasn't my slaves who would have ran away or started this uprising on their own. It's these abolitionists who are filling their heads with all kinds of nonsense about how they should revolt.
Gerrit Or it's these free blacks who are filling their heads with all kinds of nonsense about how they should revolt. And so these two classes of people, northern agitators who were opposed to slavery and free black men and women, were seen by Southerners who were unwilling to actually look themselves in the mirror and realize where the real violence and outbreaks of violence were coming from, the society, the system of slavery itself. They were the scapegoat of Southerners. The slaves will be fine, we'll be able to handle the slaves as long as these abolitionist whites don't come down and try to rile them up, and as long as free blacks don't come in and try to rile them up. That's the argument that's made. Well, Phelps is going to go on to provide commentary after he quotes some of the state law. Slaves are real estate in this and other states, and wisdom would dictate great care among the branches of the Church of Christ on this subject.
Gerrit So long as we have no special rule in the Church as to people of color, let prudence guide, and while they, as well as we, are in the hands of a merciful God, we say, shun every appearance of evil. So you can see that there's a couple of things that come out of this article. First of all, in 1833, you have the Church newspaper declaring that there is no special rule related to black men and women joining the Church. We know that they were members of the Church, and at least in this time period, there doesn't seem to be any kind of segregated worship services. Priesthood offices were still not yet being universally granted to every member of the Church. We're still in the early, early time period of the Church where a prominent lifelong male member of the Church might be a priest.
Gerrit Not everyone became an elder. That universality of ordaining all men to the Melchizedek Priesthood is something that develops later in the Church, not during 1833. You still have minutes of the deacons quorum and teachers quorum meetings in Nauvoo, and you're thinking the teachers quorum minutes. Yeah, so is it just a bunch of kids whining about what the combined activity is? No, it's adult men. Their office in the Church is they are teachers, and they don't have any other office. They don't have any other priesthood. They are teachers. So the reality of priesthood office is something that's only going to come into, or the results of universality of giving the priesthood to men in the Church is only going to have its effects later on in the Church vis-a-vis race. And of course, during this time period, there are black men who are ordained to various offices in the priesthood.
Gerrit All of these things are anathema to Missouri slave owners. All of these things are the opposite of what they are trying to cultivate as a slave society in Missouri. Remember we talked about last podcast, Missouri barely, barely made it into the Union as a slave state. So what happens when Missourians, desperate to defend slavery, read in this newspaper, what appears to be, so first of all, damning in the first part, that here these Mormons are admitting that they're letting black men and women into their church the same as they let white men and women into their church. They're not. They're not. They don't have a special rule regarding blacks in their church at all. Well, that's already a problem, because already you're mixing blacks and whites and saying that they're the same. So that's already a problem, but worse.
Gerrit Why do you think WW. Phelps is quoting the state law saying you need to bring a certificate with you when you move? Because he wants to help aid those free black members of the church to move to their pretended Zion. The reaction when this article is published is immediate, and it is violent. The residents of Jackson County, extra-legally, there's no law against publishing an article that explains the state law of Missouri. What I read, you're probably thinking, well, that doesn't sound, you know, he didn't say, oh, and by the way, let's kill all the Gentiles when you get here using the Indians for help. Why is the reaction so great? Well, we can turn to what it is that the mob says. This is the covenant that the mob comes together with in Jackson County. Quote, we, the undersigned citizens of Jackson County, believing that an important crisis is at hand as it regards our civil society.
Gerrit It's really hard for me to read this without the fake Missouri accent.
Richard It's the hardest thing I've ever seen.
Gerrit He sees my eye twitching as I'm trying to do this. But in deference to Ari and our inability to...
Richard Well, I will say, so if you go to the Legacy movie on YouTube, go to minute 5, seconds 42, and you can see this, especially this scene take place.
Gerrit Believing an important crisis is at hand as regards our civil society in consequence of a pretended religious sect of people that have settled and are still settling in our county, styling themselves Mormons and intending as we do to rid our society peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must, and believing as we do that the arm of the civil law does not afford us a guarantee or at least a sufficient one against the evils which are now inflicted upon us and seem to be increasing by the said religious sect, deem it expedient and of the highest importance to form ourselves into a company for the better and easier accomplishment of our purpose. So notice what they are starting off with the declaration there. We know that what we are doing is outside of the law. Like the Declaration of Independence, there is this justification that, yes, we are violating the laws of Great Britain, but it becomes necessary, right?
Gerrit And then Jefferson lists off all the grievances that make this extra legal violence justified. Well, they are of the same tradition, these Missourians, and are trying to appeal to the same type of rhetoric, that our cause is so moral that it doesn't actually matter what the law says. The laws can't help us to stop this, quote, pretended religious sect. Notice the demeaning nature that's going on right there. Pretended religious sect? Are you saying that these people don't even actually belong to a religion? They're such liars, they're all just pretending that they're members of a religion? Or are you saying that the religion they belong to is so farcical, I can't even say that it's a religion? Notice the attempt to justify coincides with this attempt to demean. They're going to accomplish their purpose, and I will continue, quote, a purpose which we deem it almost superfluous to say is justified as well by the laws of nature as by the law of self-preservation.
Gerrit Again, this argument to the law of nature, they know that there is no law that allows them to go to someone's house and violently force women and children into the street and burn their house down. They know that that doesn't exist, but the crisis is so great that they're going to have to take extra legal means. Back to the document. It is more than two years since the first of these fanatics or knave for one or the other, they undoubtedly are, made their first appearance amongst us and pretending as they did and now do to hold personal communion and converse face to face with the Most High God, to receive communications and revelations direct from heaven, to heal the sick by the laying on of hands, and in short to perform all the wonder working miracles wrought by the inspired apostles and prophets of old, we believe them to be deluded fanatics or weak and designing naves and that they and their pretensions would soon pass away.
Gerrit But in this, we were deceived. You can also see again, the reaction of the Missourians when the Mormons first show up is very similar to the reaction of Jonathan Hadley from podcast previous. We assumed that these people were so crazy that there's no possible way they would maintain these beliefs and certainly no one else would join them. This kind of idea that Mormons are crazy, again, this recurring theme. Back to the document. The acts of a few designing leaders amongst them have thus far succeeded in holding them together as a society. And since the arrival of the first of them, they have been daily increasing in numbers. And if they had been respectable citizens in society and thus deluded, they would have been entitled to our pity rather than our contempt and hatred. But from their appearance, from their manners and their conduct, since they're coming among us, we have every reason to believe, to fear that with very few exceptions, they were of the very dregs of that society from whence they came.
Gerrit Lazy, idle and vicious. Notice that what's done here is directly stating, these people are not Missourians. They aren't from here. They aren't people converting. They are interlopers. They are, you know, before the term was a term, they are carpetbaggers coming into our society, bringing their crazy religious views with them. Notice it even uses the word hatred. They have our contempt and our hatred. This is not, they're not attempting to be flowery here. As it goes on, we can see, this we conceive is not an idle assertion, but a fact susceptible of proof. For with these few exceptions above, named, they brought into our country little or no property with them and left less behind them. And we infer that those only yoke themselves to the Mormon car who had nothing earthly or heavenly to lose by the change.
Gerrit And we fear that if some of the leaders amongst them had paid the forfeit due to crime, instead of being chosen ambassadors of the most high, they would have been inmates of solitary cells. But their conduct here, so it gives us a whole list. Okay, they are blasphemers, they believe this crazy religion. By the way, they are poor people, they are outsiders. You can see they are really taking this kind of shotgun approach. But they are saving the best for last. And here is where they are going to make their real argument to the populace in Missouri. But their conduct here stamps their characters in their true colors. More than a year since, it was ascertained that they have been tampering with our slaves and endeavoring to sow dissensions and race additions among them. I think what they mean by that is they were teaching the gospel to anyone, right? Of this, the Mormon leaders were informed, and they said that they would deal with any of their members who should again in like case offend.
Gerrit But how specious are appearances! In a late star, The Evening and Morning Star, the newspaper, published at Independence by the leaders of the sect, there is an article inviting free Negroes and mulattoes from other states to become Mormons and to remove and settle among us. This exhibits them in still more odious colors. It manifests a desire on the part of their society to inflict on our society an injury that they know would be to us entirely unsupportable and one of the surest means of driving us from the county. For it would require none of the supernatural gifts that they pretend to, to see that the introduction of such a caste among us would corrupt our blacks and instigate them to bloodshed. There you get the real reason. These people are claiming that they can work miracles and they're talking to God and his angels.
Gerrit I don't care about that because they aren't. But if they're going to let free black men and women join their church and if they're going to let those black men and women then move to their pretended Zion, well, that Zion isn't going to happen. But the introduction of free black men and women into our county is going to cause slave revolts that will drive us from the county. And in case you forgot, they go on. They openly blaspheme the Most High God. They cast contempt on his holy religion by pretending to receive revelation direct from heaven, by pretending to speak in unknown tongues, by direct inspiration and by the diverse pretense as derogatory of God and religion and to the utter subversion of human reason. They declare openly that their God has given them this county of land and that sooner or later they must and will have possession of our land for an inheritance. And in fine, they have conducted themselves on many other occasions in such a manner that we believe it is a duty that we owe ourselves to our wives and children, to the cause of public morals, to remove them from among us.
Gerrit And then, like their little Captain Moroni banner they're putting up there, right? But then to bring the point back to what having a mixed-race society actually could mean. They attempt to invite the specter of racial miscegenation. And that is what they come back to. To remove from us, remove them from among us as we are not prepared to give up pleasant places and goodly possessions to them or to receive into the bosoms of our families as fit companions for our wives and daughters, the degraded free Negroes and mulattoes that are now invited to settle among us. I'm often stunned that people attempt to downplay the racial slavery aspect of the violence that takes place in Jackson County.
Gerrit I realize that part of that is, look, it's an overstatement of the case to say that Mormons were a bunch of anti-slavery abolitionists. They weren't. And individual Mormons came from all different walks of life, and some were from Tennessee and owned slaves, and some were from New England and didn't care about slaves, and some were from Ohio and were absolute abolitionists their whole lives. But what individual Latter-day Saints or even the Church itself thought about slavery is relatively immaterial to what the Missourians are saying, the reason why they have to drive them out of their county, because they are inviting. Because all the things that they list in there are true, were true on the 1st of July, right? They were believing, they were blasphemers, they were believing false things, they were claiming that they had the gift of tongues, they were claiming they could work miracles, they were claiming Joseph Smith was a prophet, all of those things were already the case.
Gerrit So why wasn't there a violent reaction in June or in April or in March? Because in July, WW. Phelps publishes an article explaining that black men and women are members of the church and apparently helping them move to Jackson County to be a part of Zion. And that is what lights the powder keg. That is the point at which the Missourians say, this is a moral outrage so great that we can't even countenance the laws. We can't go through the laws. The laws aren't enough to protect our families and our wives and our daughters. We have to violently expel them. As it goes on, they give one last justification. Under such a state of things, even our beautiful country would cease to be a desirable residence and our situation intolerable.
Gerrit We therefore agree that after a timely warning and after receiving an adequate compensation for what little property they cannot take with them, this is very much an understatement, that if they refuse to leave us in peace as they found us, we agree to use such means as may be sufficient to remove them. And to that end, we each pledge to each other our bodily powers, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. And about 300 people signed this document, which they then go to present to the Latter-day Saints. This meeting, these justifications drawn up, sparked by the article that WW. Phelps writes in the Church's newspaper, demonstrate how serious the racial slavery component was to the antagonism that was already latent. Yes, they hate Mormons because they believe the wrong Bible. Yes, they hate them because they believe they have a prophet. Yes, they hate them because they're moving in and they all look like poor people and I don't like poor people anyway.
Gerrit But the trigger to violence was the Latter-day Saints had dared to breach the Southern code of what was allowable. And inviting free blacks into your church and then into our state was beyond the pales that they had placed outside of the bastions of their society. And the violence that will take place after that will all be at least partially related to the fact that Latter-day Saints were willing to allow black men and women into the church. That sounds like a ridiculous statement to say. And yet we have to take the Missourians at their word. They're the ones telling us exactly why they're going to be violent. So I think we have to accept what it is they have to say. Again, I'm not saying that every Latter-day Saint in 1833 was an abolitionist. Some of them were slave owners for crying out loud.
Gerrit But for Missourians, the idea that these northern interlopers might not only be affecting the county as they move in, but might disrupt the racial hierarchy carefully carved out of their giant rocks of bigotry, essentially. That idea is so hateful that they believe it justifies driving women and children out into the snow. It justifies violence and mobbings and tarring and featherings and burnings and destruction because you will not introduce free black men and women into this state. We will talk more about this on our next episode.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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Look, obviously, we're huge in Omaha, huge.

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How many 19th century rice tariff-related podcasts are there?

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There is View of the Hebrews Gerrit, and then there's Late War Gerrit.

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The Holy Spirit of God gives you a testimony.

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I have a lot of unresolved anger.

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Faith is a choice. You have got to want to believe.

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So as part of it is starting realizing that we're all humans and that Joseph doesn't know everything before he knows it.

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Well, today there's two, and they've excommunicated one another.

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But the trigger to violence was the Latter-day Saints had dared to breach the Southern code of what was allowable.

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More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
If you knew more Church history, you wouldn't believe.
The Jackson County violence was just religious bigotry.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Not knowing something about Church history doesn't mean anyone lied to you; nobody knows everything, and context matters.

Prophets are human and only know what God has revealed so far; expecting perfection sets you up to be shaken.

Missouri had two separate periods of violence: Jackson County in 1833-34 and the 1838 war with the extermination order.

By the mob's own words, the Saints were driven out partly for welcoming free Black members into the Church and their community.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

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The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagAn early "let's go to the mail bag," where they only read the nice ones (1:03, callback 18:58).
We're huge in OmahaRichard dreams of the Winter Quarters Visitor Center; they were huge in Omaha in 1846 and 47 (2:29).
The Mormon Battalion Visitor CenterGerrit still wants to trade places with John in San Diego (1:45, callback 13:52).
Japanese rice tariffsJohn's favorite 19th-century religious history and rice tariffs podcast, top 10 anyway (2:45).
Late War GerritThe angry Gerrit who appears when someone deceptively attacks faith (8:03).
Zion Part 37The four-parter that feels like 37, or 38 or 39, until the founding of ZCMI (0:38, callback 13:06).
Patriarchal blessings, that's all you need to knowCallback to Gerrit's mission story about leading with the wrong thing (27:14).
The two ShakersOnly two Shakers left, and they've excommunicated each other (28:20).
The fake Missouri accentGerrit's eye twitches reading the manifesto without the Legacy accent (50:13).
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October 2026 General Conference · cites D&C 4The Hour of Your Mission Is ComeBishop Sean DouglasBishop Douglas thanks missionaries of every age and urges the rising generation to place full-time missionary service high on their list.

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Deep dives the episode points toward
Read W. W. Phelps's July 1833 "Free People of Color" in The Evening and the Morning Star (30:33).
Early Black Latter-day Saints in Ohio and Missouri, and what the records do and don't tell us (31:36).
Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and why Southern states feared free Black people (41:35).
Keep the two Missouri conflicts straight: Jackson County 1833 versus the 1838 Mormon War (22:25).
SOT Litner · S2E22.