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The Nauvoo Legion

"Americans are remarkably fond of military parades and honors. . . . the militia system indulges their martial spirit, without the danger and expense attending a standing army." It was not so much the fondness of the martial spirit as it was the danger and expense of standing armies that caused Americans to prefer the militia system to European-style armies. In this, however, the foreign observer Grund was absolutely right: to support a full-time army in Europe was indeed a heavy burden and had been for generations. In France during the Nauvoo era, one of every eighty inhabitants was drawn from the work force to serve full time in the military. In the United States at the same time, the ratio was one in twenty-three hundred. In 1835 the United States regular army had only 8,221 men, including 674 commissioned officers.

Such a small regular army meant that a large militia was needed in the event of a national emergency. In 1844 the total membership of state militias in the United States was 1,750,000 men. Militia service was required throughout the states for white males between the ages of eighteen and forty or forty-five, except for officials, clergymen, and Quakers. The ratio of militia to the entire population was about one to ten.

Illinois law, to which the Latter-day Saints were subject after 1838, required service in the militia. In that frontier state in 1840, more than 83,000 of a total population of 470,000 served in militias. Close to 20 percent of the inhabitants were under arms. In Nauvoo the number of militiamen approached 30 percent of the population. Illinois law, similar to that of other states in age requirements for white males and terms of active duty, required service for six months with the same allowances as the regular army.

Because of the persecutions in Missouri, many of which had been at the hands of state militia, Church leaders wisely concluded they could not trust any state militia not under their control. Because by law they were required to serve in the Illinois state militia, why not, they reasoned, make it a Mormon militia, at least in Nauvoo?

The Illinois legislature agreed. The Nauvoo city charter called for the establishment of a university and of an independent military body. In keeping with this generous charter, the city government authorized the organization of the Legion on 3 February 1841. Although independent, it was at the disposal of the governor of Illinois and was required to perform the same amount of military duty as the regular state militia. Within fifteen days after becoming residents of Nauvoo, eligible males were required to join the legion unless exempted from service under United States law, by a special act of the legion, or by a certificate of inability.

The Nauvoo Legion was a unit of the Illinois state militia and under the direct orders of the governor. Yet in 1843, when J. C. Bennett, brigade inspector, and John Bills, brigade major, petitioned the state for payment for militia services, the attorney general and other state authorities decided that the legion was not a part of the state militia. According to an article in the Nauvoo Neighbor of 9 December 1843, they declared it to be "totally independent by its Charter with its own law making and enforcing powers and designed solely to sustain the Municipal Government of Nauvoo." That this move was a ploy by the state authorities to save state money was made even more apparent a year later when the governor ordered the legion to surrender its state-supplied arms and disband even before the Nauvoo charter was revoked.