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Clarifications of Bogg's "Order" and Joseph Smith's Constitutionalism
Richard Lloyd Anderson
Histories tend to standardize the Missouri expulsion of Latter-day Saints: escalating tension in 1838 brought armed clashes, which generated a policy of Lilburn W. Boggs to force the minority out of the state-the method was an executive order in his personally harsh language, and about ten thousand Mormons left Missouri under the intimidation of state militia. Some add that troops forced an agreement to leave which Latter-day Saints quietly honored. Some note that field commanders on their own initiative had tried to execute Joseph Smith and others by military trial.
While the above outlines are correct, individual statements are only partly true. Pre-1838 policies controlled 1838 events. There was not a single expulsion order, but three major versions of it. The second commanded the punishment of Mormon leaders as an example, and the third retreated from the position that the military would expel or punish. And Mormon exiles did not leave under these orders. Expulsion directives were issued to the head of an expedition activated for a month, and military instructions had no force after the officers and soldiers were discharged at the end of November. Since the Mormon exodus took place from December to April, civilians without any authority enforced an expulsion policy that did not originate with the governor in the first place.
The real story of Mormon exile reduces Governor Boggs to a tool of the strong first-settlers' party in upper Missouri. This group deserves identification and a name; it existed in active and dormant forms for at least two years in about ten counties that ringed the Mormon area. Governor Boggs catered to this faction, to the point of allowing them unlimited freedom against Latter-day Saint settlements, and finally adopting their goals and slogans in his extermination orders. One can view him as a Jackson County member of this party from its beginnings, or as a politician afraid to challenge the upper Missouri protectionists. He elevated their expulsion-extermination program to state policy for a time, thus giving local fraternities the support to intimidate Mormon groups until this minority found political protection elsewhere. This regional private pressure caused the extermination orders, dictated their phraseology, and enforced their terms after these militia commands lapsed. The above corrective conclusions will appear by sequencing events in the bitter Mormon drama.
Boggs' Reactions to the 1833 Expulsion
Studying 1838 may create tunnel vision for the epic of banishing Mormons from Missouri. State expulsion then climaxed five years of conflict, during which sizeable Latter-day Saint groups had moved on demand from three different counties: Jackson (1833), Clay (1836), and Carroll (1838).