followHIM - Doctrine & Covenants 121-123 Part 1 : Dr. Alexander L. Baugh

Episode Date: October 16, 2021

Joseph’s months in Liberty Jail were some of the most difficult yet provided the most sublime, oft-quoted, and transcendent sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. Dr. Alexander Baugh returns to share the background to these sections and the historical context to Joseph’s incarceration, the Battle of Crooked River, and Haun’s Mill  in Part 1 of this special three-part episode. Shownotes: https://followhim.co/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FollowHimOfficialChannel"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com/products/let-zion-in-her-beauty-rise-pianoPlease rate and review the podcast.

Welcome to Follow Him, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I'm Hank Smith. And I'm John, by the way. We love to learn. We love to laugh. We want to learn and laugh with you. As together, we follow Him. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith, and I am here with my wonderful, affable co-host, John, by the way. Hello, John, by the way. Hi. Thank you for calling me affable, and someday I hope to know what that means. You are affable. It means approachable, courteous, gentle, good-humored. Okay. Not that I have a thesaurus in front of me. John, we are on a really important

sections lesson, a couple of sections in the Doctrine and Covenants. And so we needed a very important guest for our very important lesson. Who's with us today? Yes. Thanks, Hank. I have looked forward to this, these three sections from Liberty Jail for a long time and so glad to have Brother Bob with us again. And if you've listened to us before, you've heard us introduce Brother Bob, but this guy is the church's expert on Missouri. And so, yeah, so Alexander L. Baugh is a professor and chair of the Department of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, where he has been a full-time faculty member since 1995. He received his bachelor's degree from Utah State, his master's and PhD from BYU. He specializes in researching and writing about the Missouri period of early church history, 1831 through 1839. He's the author, editor,

or co-editor of 10 books, including three volumes of the document series of the Joseph Smith Papers, documents volumes four, five, and 6. In addition, he's published more than 80 historical journal articles. Sorry, 80 just made me laugh. It's just a funny number. No, that's a lot. Yeah, that is a lot. He's also the past editor of the Mormon Historical Studies, past co-director of research for the BYU Religious Studies Center. He's married to the former Susan Johnson. They're the parents of five children.

They live in Highland, Utah. And we're so glad to have you back. And I've got my red pencil ready to mark and learn these sections even better. Thank you so much, Hank and John, for the second invitation. I mean, this is very, very, very kind of you to include me again. I'm honored to be here. Alex. I'm just glad to have you back. We just can't say enough. Alex, you're not only just an incredible historian, you're a great friend.

And I've been looking forward to this interview. Let's jump right in, Alex. I know you know way more than you can tell us, but if someone were to ask you, leading up to section 121, how does Joseph Smith find himself in Liberty Jail? How does he get there? How far back do we need to go to give everybody kind of a background to this section? Well, you're spot on. I think most people are, if you asked them to just summarize the life of Joseph Smith in their own words in two minutes or less, they would give some just generalities and then they'd say, oh yeah, he was incarcerated in Liberty Jail.

They don't know much more. It was a tough time. And they eventually got out and went to Quincy and then Nauvoo. And, yeah, there's a lot of back story, I guess you might say. But it's a very, very, such a significant episode in Joseph Smith's life. This is a life-changing, redirecting of Joseph Smith's life and mission and emphasis. He was a changed man. And I think we'll definitely highlight that in more detail.

But I am so grateful that Orson Pratt, in the 1870s, as he's preparing a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, would go through some of the original documents that were housed in the old historian's office and look at these letters. Now, again, we just have the Liberty Jail material is section 121, 122, and 123. And had he not put that in there, there would have been even less understanding of the situation he was in. But you think about it, and I think you'd both agree, in almost every single general conference, these sections, at least 121 and 122, are mentioned almost every conference. It just happens over and over again because there's so much meaning behind what Joseph Smith's experiencing here and what the Lord is trying to help him understand. So these are powerful revelations. They're all powerful revelations. Don't get me wrong. so often cited and we just need to understand them more because they're,

they're so engaging and, and sobering. The, the, what's taught, I would say is, you know, hundreds to a hundred, 200 years before it's time. We're in Jackson County from 1831 to 1833. Things break down there. We move on. We go to Clay County and things were relatively well. They were okay. Clay County citizens were very tolerant and understanding quite as a whole. And from late 1833 to summer of 1836, things were going pretty well. But the Clay County citizens never intended for us to be – they wanted to help, but there was going to be a time when they moved on.

What did Benjamin Franklin say? Fish and guests stink after three days. Man, we've been there three years. Yeah. So it's like a lot of parents when their kids move in, so what are your plans? What are you getting out of here? So what exactly were you thinking? So by 1836, we're beginning to look elsewhere, and we had some help.

Our attorney and good friend, Alexander Donovan, was now a member of the state legislature. And we had done some exploratory work and seen some areas in northern Missouri that looked promising. And sure enough, we began to move into an unincorporated Ray County. So it's kind of, it's attached, but it's not actually fully Ray County. And this is when Donovan says, let's make a county for the Latter-day Saints. And he does. And guess who signs it? Boggs, the governor, creates this county for us.

And we begin moving in in summer of 1836, and quite frankly, things go well. We figure we've solved the problem. We have our own county. But things break down beginning in 1838, and one of the key things that really kind of started to alarm people was in March of 1838, Joseph Smith arrives in Far West. He left Kirtland in January, but he arrives two months later, and Sidney Rigdon's there with him, and Hiram Smith's on his way. So here comes the first presidency of the church. And for seven, eight years, the Missourians are going, well, their headquarters are in Kirtland, but the leadership's there.

We have a body of them here. But that signaled some red flags, I think, to the Missourians. Here comes Joseph Smith. Here's the first presidency. They're here. And far west is designated as the central gathering spot. So I can understand a little bit of the Missourians' concerns. Now, not everyone, of course, but that I think is very significant. I think the other sad thing is that the apostasy in Kirtland kind of transplants into Missouri. And no sooner does Joseph Smith get there than we have to deal with some of the key leaders of the church who are, let's just put it this way, a little bit shaky.

So Alex, how is Joseph Smith showing up in Missouri? How is he handling all this? Well, he kind of passes it off a little bit to the Missouri High Council. And again, it's just a rather convoluted situation, but they have to deal with some of the problems. And unfortunately, some of the leaders, main leaders of the church get caught up in this. So besides John Whitmer and W. W. Phelps, again, as we mentioned, we lose Oliver, we lose David Whitmer, we lose Lyman Johnson, an apostle. We lose William E. McClellan, an apostle. Frederick G. Williams is having problems. So here's this kind of high-powered leadership that is just—they're just struggling. And the church is trying to deal with this kind of internal dissension. It's a sad episode, but I think we just move on, and this will play

out, as you can see in section 121, when Joseph is reflecting upon the loss of these wonderful men who have become disaffected from the church. So that's another thing. The other problem, of course, is they continued to create problems and began to initiate vexatious lawsuits and threaten them. And so unfortunately, we have an episode in which the dissenters are kind of dealt with in a harsh way, and that is that Sidney Rigdon, in June, gives this salt sermon. And basically what he does in that sermon is try to tell everyone who is creating the problem, all the ones who are creating problems, if you're creating problems, it's time to leave. And if you don't leave, we'll help you.

And within a matter of a few days, most of these dissenters left far west. Back in those days, you could warn people out of town. I mean, that was a common thing, and I won't go into that in too much detail. But they left. Well, where did they go? Well, they go to Liberty and also Richmond. There's Clay County and also Ray County. And people see these Latter-day Saint leaders and go, why are you no longer with them?

Well, we're no longer going to be affiliated with them. And so they see, well, these Missourians would say, well, boy, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon and the Latter-day Saint leadership must be bad, corrupt men. They're not at all. But the point is they were expelled. They're now out of the Latter-day Saint community. And people are going, well, what's going on in Far West? It doesn't look good to have apostles disaffecting, right? It's not a good PR move.

And people, I got to imagine, yeah, that the Missourians are going, this looks unstable. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, to complicate things, we have a dedication of the cornerstones of the Far West Temple on July 4th. Wonderful day, Independence Day. We're celebrating this, and the Latter-day Saints are just excited to be able to dedicate this temple, this temple site. And during the course of that wonderful celebration, Sidney Rigdon speaks again. And he gives a wonderful patriotic sermon. But then he, the very last part of that, he basically becomes a little bit vitriolic and says, now we're here, we don't intend to cause any problems, but if things come to push and shove, we'll shove back. And he said, in fact, he used the word, it'll be a war of extermination.

Well, this speech got a lot of Missourians a little bit agitated. Now, again, Latter-day Saints had no intentions of hurting anyone, but they saw that as a call to the Latter-day Saints are going to come and incite war and conflict. That wasn't the intent at all, but it was circulated. That talk actually got printed. So not surprising, a month later in early August, we have elections. Well, where have we now settled? And this is another important factor is that by 1838, we've expanded beyond Caldwell County. Now, Caldwell, we're just mentioning this for the first time, but Caldwell's the county that was created for the Latter-day Saints, right? Exactly, yeah.

But in early May, mid-May, Joseph Smith had gone up to the area which we call Adam-on-Diamond to visit Lyman White and to do some explorations. And that's where Joseph Smith learns that this area was Adam-on-Diamond. And during June of 1838, a lot of Latter-day Saints began moving up into that region. So we've expanded outside where we weren't supposed to be in terms of some people's minds in their view. Now, it's a free country. You can settle anywhere you want. But we had also settled in a little area in Carroll County, a little community called DeWitt. And there were some other isolated settlements outside Caldwell County. But I think some Missourians said, now hold it, we created this county for you.

Why are you going outside that boundary? In a very real way, they kind of created a Mormon reservation. Confine yourselves to Caldwell, we'll be fine. But we've kind of expanded out too far. So that caused, I'm sure, some red flags. So what happens then? And it all begins, historians kind of give as far as a timeline of what they call it, the Mormon-Missouri War, with the outbreak of hostilities at the little community of Gallatin, which is the county seat in Davies County to the north, on August 6th, in which Latter-day Saint men come there to vote. It's election day. It's the state elections. And sure enough, a good old brawl breaks out and no one's killed.

But there's some pretty sore skulls and some bruises and, you know, cracked heads. And unfortunately, the word is out that a couple of people were killed and Joseph Smith has to go up there and try to settle the—he basically goes up there a couple of days later with a couple hundred men and goes to Adam Black. He's the justice of the peace up there and says, now you have to maintain the peace. You've got to do this. That's your responsibility. Well, Adam Black took that as a threat, and he actually issues a charge against

Joseph Smith. So you can see things starting to break down. And so the election day brawl, they call it the election day battle, but it was a knockdown brawl, kind of begins that conflict, if you will. It's the inaugural event. And then, unfortunately, for the next several weeks, there's a lot of hostilities perpetrated against the Latter-day Saints in Davies County. And it gets so bad that a regional militia is called to go up there and settle the differences. And it was led by none other than David Rice Atchison. And Atchison is the regional militia commander of the Missouri militia up there, the troops in that area. His subcommander is Alexander Donovan. They're both friends, right?

Both friends. They are. They are men of justice. And they basically told the Davies County citizens who's doing these terrible things to the Latter-day Saints, leave them alone. They have a right to be here. Now, just settle those differences. They do, and they retreat, and we think things are going to be okay. Well, these Davies County citizens who are very antagonistic to the Latter-day Saints say, well, okay, if we can't incite anyone here, we can't do anything right now, they pick another spot, and they go down to Carroll County. Now, this is a county still there today. It's just east of Ray County, and that's where the Latter-day Saints had established a small community called DeWitt.

And there was about 400 Latter-day Saints there. And these men in Davies County incited the people in Carroll County, let's go after the Latter-day Saints here and get them out of your county. And they literally, from October 1 to October 10, 10 days, surrounded that community and literally starved us out. There was no one killed. There were some shots fired. But finally, the Latter-day Saints have to agree to leave, and they do. And most of them made their way to Far West. One woman dies on the way to Far West, but there was kind of a side fatality.

But Joseph Smith writes Governor Boggs and says, you've got to do something. And Boggs basically sends the message, no. It's between the Mormons and the mob. I can't call out troops every time we have problems. And this is when the church leadership decides, well, we have to do something. Now, I don't know if, you know, you've all known what a mad dog can do. If you put a dog in the corner and, you know, treat him badly, eventually he's going to defend himself. I've heard you say this before, Alex.

This has been, we're up to seven years now of incredible restraint. Totally. From the Latter-day Saints. I think our ability, we really have to commend them for trying so hard to maintain peace and order. They're trying to be law-abiding citizens. But now the problem is we're just not getting any help. Now, we got some from Atchison and Donovan up in Davies County, but there comes a point of self-defense. Maybe, in fact, let me go to Doctrine and Covenants, if you don't mind, just for a minute. Section 134. Now, that's the marvelous section on laws pertaining to government in

general, you know. It's a wonderful, wonderful synopsis of the role of government and religion and so on. But look at what verse 11, 134 verse 11. We believe that men should appeal to the civil law for redress of all wrongs and grievances, where personal abuse is inflicted or the right of property or character infringed, where such laws exist as will protect the same. All they're saying is if people come against you personally, you have a right to go to the courts to try to rectify and solve that dispute or engagement. But look at this. But we believe that all men are justified in defending themselves, their friends, and property,

and the government from unlawful assaults and encroachments of all persons in times of exigency, where immediate appeal cannot be made to the laws and relief afforded. If the government's not going to step in and help us, we've got to do something. And I feel like the Latter-day Saints did everything they could to try to maintain order and peace. But finally, we've got to do something. We have to protect ourselves. And so what happens? Well, we go into Davies County. This is in the first weeks of October, actually mid-October. And our men up there decide to go after the men who were perpetrating these offenses. And I guess I'm not proud of it, but what would you do? And they went to Gallatin, they went to Millport,

and they went to the Grindstone Fork settlements where these perpetrators were kind of centered. And yeah, they burned Jacob's Stolling store. Now, unfortunately, that also included a post office. And again, that's a federal offense. So sure enough, they sent a message, please leave us alone. We have rights. Who's heading up this offensive? Is this Lyman White? We got Lyman White, who's a War of 1812 veteran. We've got the toughest guy we've got in the church, David Patton, Captain Fear Not.

Yeah. Labeled as this, you know, he was courageous to a fault. And then we have Seymour Brunson. And they're the men who kind of go after these men in Davies County. Now, if they didn't get the message, well, it caused problems, additional problems. As soon as you do something, someone else, the hostilities will escalate. There's retribution and so on and so forth. And that's exactly what happened.

Now, Joseph Smith was up there, but he was at Adam on the Alam, and he wasn't involved in any of that. But they come back, and sure enough, things are really starting to break down. I should say Mormon. I use Mormon, and I hope our listeners— That's what they call this then. I think we'll be okay. But a lot of these people, in fact, it got so bad that many, if not almost all, of the non-Latter-day Saints decided to leave Davies County, and they went over to Livingston County, fearing the Latter-day Saints were, you know, they're coming.

So what happens, a man by the name of Samuel Bogart down in Ray County says, well, we don't want any of this happening in our county. And so he begins to patrol the line between Ray County on the south and Caldwell County on the north. And I really believe he's trying to bait the Latter-day Saints because he takes three prisoners and then immediately word sent that they're going to kill them. He takes three Latter-day Saint men, and with his force, he takes them and he camps on Crooked River. Well, when we hear about that, what happens? Well, we get a small group. We're going to go get our people. Yeah, we got to save these guys. They're going to die. Were they trumped up charges, or he just grabs three random guys? Yeah, Addison Green, Seeley, another. Yeah, they were just on the borders there of the county.

So they pick up these three men. And I really think he was baiting the Latter-day Saints. He wants the Latter-day Saints. Come after us, right? Yeah. That's a reason. Did those guys do anything wrong? No, no, no.

It was just a strategy on his part. They were just in the wrong place. And where does he camp? Just below the county line. And what does he do? He waits. And word is sent that they're going to kill these guys by morning. And so who comes in to rescue? Well, David Patton. He gets about 60 men and says, let's go rescue these people. We find a young man who knows where they're at. His name's Patterson O'Banion. They come down in the middle of the night, and in the early morning hours, they find him camped on Crooked River.

Now, the problem is we have our own militia, but we can only confine ourselves to Caldwell County. So he's legitimate, if you will say that, state troops. And here's the Latter-day Saint militia, the Caldwell militia, coming after him outside their jurisdiction. And sure enough, a battle ensues, and three Latter-day Saint men are killed, including Patton. And we did—one Missourian was killed, Moses Rowland. But what happens is a man by the name of, I think it was Wiley Williams, is immediately dispatched to Jefferson City, where the Capitol is, and he tells Governor Boggs that the Mormons who completely annihilated this militia company by Bogart. And so he gets a false report.

And what is the issue? Extermination order on the 27th. Now that battle of Crooked River took place on the 25th. And two days later, he's getting the message. And he says, we've received news of an entirely terrible report. The Mormons must be treated as enemies and exterminated, or in other words, driven from the state. So now we have the entire regional militia, actually militias from all over the middle part of Missouri, now starting to formulate and come against the Latter-day Saints.

So unfortunately at this time, on the 30th, a local militia unit from Livingston County, where most of the Davies County citizens had fled, when they came there, they go, what are you doing leaving your homes and coming here? And they said, well, the Latter-day Saints have, they've expelled us. And they said, well, you know what? We can do better than that. There's a little community on the fringes of Caldwell County at Hans Mill. And why don't we, instead of just driving them out, why don't we just go kill them and send a stronger message? So that perpetrates the Hans Mill Massacre on October 30th. And unfortunately, again, they were in the wrong

place. Latter-day Saints were in the wrong place at the wrong time. None of these people had done anything to the Missourians up there in Davies County, none of them. And I've researched as many as I can to find how many, where these marauders were coming from. And they were from Davies County and also Livingston County. So they're coming now to, as kind of a revenge factor. Well, you, we had to leave our county. Now we'll just enact this against you. So it was totally illegal. There's incredible evidence to know that there was no extermination order received. They didn't know that, but that's not what Boggs was even implying. He wasn't saying, let's go in and kill people. And later he will say, and I should say, I've mentioned this on numerous occasions, but Boggs' intention was a removal order, not an extermination order.

Exterminate in an 1828 Webster's Dictionary is to remove from within one's borders. That's the first definition. So it's not legal to go and kill Latter-day Saints. This is not legal. And that's not what he intended. Nope. Yeah. And I've heard you say that before, and that's important.

I think, and you said it just now, or removed from the state. And I think today when we call an exterminator, we're not saying, would you take these cockroaches with you back to your place? Yeah, an exterminator is to kill them all. And that's, so this is a good clarification. Yeah. And I think there's been this misconception in the church that he's a cold-blooded, thirsty killer. Well, he was a Christian. He had 10 children, but he was acting politically. And he's just trying to wash his hands of all this. And he's just saying, well, we just got to get rid of them, and let's make sure they leave the state. And that comes into

the Liberty Jail experience, and I'll try to tie that in. But simply put, he's basically trying to tell his people now, we're going to send the militia and they will enact a surrender and we're going to make sure the Mormons leave the state. Now, if they don't, there'll be greater repercussions. But that's his original intent. Now, there was some confusion with some of the generals. What does that really mean? But I think it was clear that that was, we negotiate a peace and then we'll have to do something to try to make arrangements so that they will leave the state. It seems like our governor, Governor Boggs here, is just acting off

hearsay, right? That he never, he's acting off of rumor. No question. In fact, David Rice Atchison, who's the regional militia commander, and again, sympathetic to the Latter-day Saints, writes him and says, you've got to come out here. You've got to see for your first, you know, firsthand what's going on. They're very much aware that the Latter-day Saints are getting picked on. And the governor could have done a lot to try to restore order, but he refuses. He just doesn't come to the scene of action. And that's his responsibility, but he doesn't do it. How far away was he?

Where was the governor? Well, Jefferson City is, what, 150 miles maybe? And the other sad part about this is when he decides to actually call regional militia or state militia, if you want, they come from a number of areas. What does he do? He relieves David Rice Atchison of his command. And he puts a guy in place named John B. Clark from central Missouri who has no clue what's really going on over there. And he's not at the scene of action. David Rice Atchison has to get on his horse and go back down to Liberty.

Now his troops are there, but he's no longer the regional militia commander. And guess who takes charge? There's no regional commander. So the commander from Jackson County and also Lafayette County are two counties south of the Missouri River, none other than Samuel D. Lucas from Jackson County, who does not like the Mormons. Yeah, he hates them. Yeah. So he's up there. He's in charge until John B. Clark gets there. Now, John B. Clark, like you say, he's from Howard County.

That's just center part of the state. He's got to get there. And by the time he gets there, the Latter-day Saints have surrendered, and Samuel Lucas has got Joseph Smith down in Independence. He's not even on the scene to conduct this surrender. Let's talk more just for a second about Hans Mill. I know that Latter-day Saints are interested in this. So these people, they weren't part, and I want to be clear, we hadn't killed anyone. We were defending ourselves and the act of revenge was find the closest group of Latter-day Saints and murder them. And these people are, some of them, you've told me before, Alex, some of these people are just stopping there on the way to get to Far West, because they're coming from Ohio. Yeah.

This is one of the last groups to come. Notice what time of year it is. We're October. The harvest season is done. They're just trying to get there before bad weather. And a group of one of the last groups headed up by the Quorum of 70 is the brother of Brigham Young is Joseph Young. And he's with a few saints there. And this is the incident, of course, with Amanda Barnes Smith.

She's in this Kirtland poor camp kind of coming at the very end and just happens to be laid over 16 miles away from Far West. They have one more day to get there, and they're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so these are Latter-day Saints who are living in the area, in the community, and they've done nothing in terms of the Davies County situation. They weren't involved in that. And then a number of them are also just coming into the county as they are making their way to Far West to winter there

during the last leg of the journey. So it's so traumatic. It's just unbelievably bizarre circumstances. A totally innocent group. They come on the afternoon of the 30th, and there's about 200 to 250 of them. Again, every single one of them is either from Livingston County or Davies County to the north, every one of them. And they're acting under the guise of militia, but they've received no orders to do this, and they just go at us. And there's 17 men and boys killed and another 15 wounded.

It's the worst tragedy in our history associated with the persecution. It's just, we could take a whole session on that. We have one woman who's injured, Mary Steadwell. Fortunately, just her hand, but a couple of boys. It's just brutal. It's a sad, sad event. And I have to tell you, Amanda Barnes-Smith is my hero, a heroine. She is an amazing woman. Her story is just one of complete faith and devotion to the cause. Won't go into it, but she comes to Utah. She is a stalwart Relief Society sister in Salt Lake. She goes up to Richmond to visit her daughter, passes away, and she's buried in the Richmond Cemetery. And every single Memorial Day,

I go up to Richmond because my wife's family is from there. And I put a rose on Amanda Barnes Smith's grave every, every Memorial Day. I've done it, I think, for about 14 years. She is my heroine. I look forward to seeing her. And if any of her descendants are in the church but not in the church, they need to read her history of her sacrifice. It's powerful stuff. Anyway, when Joseph Smith learns of this terrible incident, he asked Colonel Hinkle, the regional commander of the Latter-day Saints. He has a state commission officership in the militia. He's a legitimate militia, but he's a Latter-day Saint. He says, beg like a dog for peace.

We've got to, this has got to stop. And unfortunately, and again, there's some discrepancies, but Hinkle basically says, meets with Lucas and their officer, his officers, and agrees to bring Joseph Smith and a few others down. And Joseph thinks it's going to be for negotiation purposes. All this is covered really, really well in Volume 6 of the Joseph Smith papers. I just have to say there's a lot of components here. But when Joseph gets down there, Lucas immediately puts him under arrest and several others. They decide to now, of course, go after the leadership so that we can now somehow negotiate some sort of surrender.

But in the meantime, Lucas is going, well, we can settle this rather quickly. And that is, let's just go ahead and have a court-martial. And they do. And on November 1, they hold a court-martial for Joseph Smith and seven prisoners. You have to love Joseph Smith for not escalating the violence after Hans Mill, right? Because there would be a natural piece of me that says, look, you're killing our little boys. You're shooting these little children. We are going to come after you.

But he says, no, don't do it, right? I don't want to see any more bloodshed. Yeah, he's trying to somehow restore some sort of element of peace. And I think he realizes the numbers, we just didn't have the numbers. Now, there was about 900 Latter-day Saint defenders in Caldwell County. There was 2,500 Missourians camped south of Far West. Now, that's not good odds. And fortunately, again, I think Joseph acted correctly. And he was willing to, okay, let's at least negotiate a peace. But in the process,

he's taken into custody, which I think surprised him. Now, what happens is they have this court marshal. Now, I should mention the individuals they have now in their custody are Joseph Smith, Sidney Riggin, Parley Pratt. He was in the Battle of Crooked River. Lyman White, of course, he was up there in Davies County. And George W. Robinson. Now, that's Joseph Smith's secretary. And then they get Amos Saliman and Hiram. Amos Saliman and Hiram. So there's our seven prisoners. And on the evening of the first, he says, let's have a court-martial. They have a court-martial. Now, it was not all unanimous, but basically it was, we're going to court-martial him. And he ordered Joseph Smith and these other six prisoners to be shot the following morning, taken to Far West and shot. And that's when Donovan steps up and says, you cannot do this.

Joseph Smith is a civilian, and Donovan, he's not a soldier, has nothing to do with state militia. And he says, if you execute these men, in fact, Donovan was told to do it. He says, I refuse to. He's telling a superior officer, I cannot do this and will not. And if you do, I will hold you responsible before an earthly tribunal. So help me God. He's an attorney and he's willing to take on Lucas, and Lucas has to back down. There's just no question. He can't do this. And so, sure enough, he said, I'm going to march tomorrow.

Alexander Donovan just saved Joseph Smith's life. There's no question. And I am a Donovan fan. So is Joseph Smith. He named his son Alexander Hale Smith after Donovan. Now, he didn't know him long, but this man helped him and helped the church. So meanwhile, then there's a surrender. And basically what happens now is the next day, Joseph Smith's taken up. This is now November 2nd. He's taken up with these six other prisoners back to Far West.

And what do they do? They've got a few minutes to go to their homes and get some personal effects. And they come back to the square. They're under guard. And they come back to the square. They're put in a wagon. Mother Smith can't even see them. She has to—Joseph sticks his hand through the canvas of the wagon, and she doesn't know if she's going to see her sons again.

There's Hiram in there as well. And Lucas says, we're going to take these boys down to Independence, where he's from, and they're going to wait now for the arrival of John B. Clark, who's on his way, but he's not even there. And we're going to take these men away, and then we'll see what we're supposed to do with them. So that, John and Hank, is the backstory. So Joseph thinks he's going to a negotiation and he gets arrested. Yeah. Now, again, there's some components there that are a little bit hard to all put together, but Hinkle will later say, hey, I thought they were just going to talk with you too. But I think there was some misdeeds by Hinkle. Now, again, that's a whole other story, and we can maybe talk about that a little bit because he does turn state's evidence, state's witness, in the hearing that's going to be held for Joseph Smith.

Hinkle tries to save his neck, so he decides to testify in this hearing. So he's kind of duplicit. There's no question that Hinkle's just trying to save his own skin there. I just want to make sure I understand. Independence and Liberty are different towns. Is that right? Sure. So Independence is the county seat for Jackson

County and Liberty is the county seat for Clay. Now it takes them a couple of days to get there and they leave on the 2nd. In later years, when Harley writes his autobiography, he says on November 3rd, a very important event happened that night, the previous night. And this is what he wrote. Now, again, he's writing this, what, 17 plus years later. And Parley's good. I'm not sure how his, you know, I think his facts are correct. But here's what he wrote, remembered on what happened on November 3rd. Now, this plays into Liberty Jail.

Here's what he wrote. As we arose and commenced our march on the morning of the 3rd of November, Joseph Smith spoke to me and the other prisoners in a low but cheerful and confidential tone. Said he, quote, Be of good cheer, brethren. The word of the Lord came to me last night that our lives should be given us and that whatever we may suffer during this captivity, not one of our lives should be taken. Now, if that is correct, and I believe he's got it right, I don't know how accurate. I mean, that's a long reminiscence.

But Joseph knows he's going to get out of this. That gives him hope. Now, I think he's thinking it'll be a couple of weeks. Little did he know, he will not be free again for 173 days. So his captivity began on October 1, October 30. I guess we could go that date. And he'll finally get over to Quincy on April 22nd. That's 127 days.

That's just a little shy of six months. Now, it'll all work out. And I think he does have hope that, you know, his time's not yet. So he's just at least got some confidence that things will happen. But I really think he thought that this, we'll get over this. Maybe a couple of weeks, whatever. But it's going to be pretty drawn out. The Lord's timetable is sometimes so, you know, a small moment, right?

I wanted to ask another question about Hans Mill. If I understand correctly, we don't have property there. There's no memorial there. There's very little there. Is that right? Well, actually, John, just a couple of years ago, the church negotiated with the Community of Christ, the former, well, that's their name that they like to go by now. And we now own Hans Mill, the site of Hans Mill. So we received that property. We received the Far West, what we thought and think is possibly the Far West Cemetery, and a lot of acreage in Jackson County, and also the Joseph Smith home in Kirtland. So we now own that. And there's some markers there, but certainly hopeful that at some future time we'll have some sort of,

I would like to call it a memorial. And talk about interest. If you can imagine how many people in the church today are descendants of those who either died or lived there, it's a well-visited spot. And I'm so glad the church has it. It was very gracious of the community of Christ to provide that opportunity for us to purchase that property. I remember on a couple of church history tours going to a town nearby and seeing a millstone in a park. I can't remember the name of the town, but that was all that we could see at the time. That is Breckenridge. It's immediately north.

It's actually in Davies County. And it has a Subway sandwich. I remember that. And that millstone was from the Hans Mill. And it was actually photographed in, what, 1907, 1908 by George Edward Anderson. It's the famous photograph of the millstone. And the city of Breckenridge, you wouldn't want to call it a city. It's hardly even a community.

It's just a very small little town. Had that moved up there in the first part of the 20th century, and we have a nice marker there for that. Alex, you said that Joseph Smith gets arrested on November 1st, but he's not immediately put in liberty. Right. So this is where, for a whole month, he doesn't even get there for another month. So while they're down in independence, they're waiting for John B. Clark to come. And he's the one who does the final kind of negotiations of peace and so on and so forth. So while they're down there, okay, so they get down there on the 4th. It's raining. It's terrible weather.

Obviously, November, the winter season's kind of kicking in. And they are actually put in a small vacant house. And they're there for a couple of days. And while they're there, Joseph actually gets to write a letter to his wife, Emma. That's the first letter we have. It's a powerful letter. And Joseph's very optimistic. And they're treating him nicely.

The guards are quite courteous. Parley P. Pratt later wrote that we could even walk around the town. In fact, he talked about how he even went out to the location where the temple site was, and the thought hit him, I could just get right away from here. No one's guarding me right now. And then he realized that if he did that, there would be severe repercussions for the other prisoners. So he decided to come back. They then moved him over to the Noland House or Noland Tavern.

And we've put a little marker there. I don't know if you remember that, Hank. And this is the site of Clinton's drugstore. But this is where they're put for a couple of more days. And then word comes from Clark that we're going to have a hearing. But it'll be not a military one, but a civil one. And that will take place in Richmond.

So now they're transported to Richmond, and that's on the 8th and 9th of November. And they get there on the 9th, and they put them, these seven prisoners, in another vacant house in Richmond. It's just to the north of the courthouse that's being built, a brand new courthouse in Richmond. And this is where they decide to hold this hearing. In the meantime, they go about and arrest 57 additional Latter-day Saint men. So by the time this hearing is conducted, 64 Latter-day Saint men are going to be tried in what we call a preliminary hearing in Richmond under the

auspices and direction of Austin King, who's the circuit court judge. And Austin King will later become the governor of Missouri. He's no fly-by-night judge. He's a pretty respected judge. Now, unfortunately, Judge King's brother-in-law, Hugh Brazeal, was killed by the Latter-day Saints in Jackson County during that skirmish. So he's probably got a little bit of a chip on his shoulder there. But in the course of this hearing, which lasts from November 12th to the 29th, so what, 17 days, they have a number of witnesses come in, both on the Latter-day Saints side and also the Missourian side. And a number of these are Latter-day Saint men who have now become, if we could call it, have disaffected. So they've turned state's witness.

Samson Avard, W.W. Phelps, Burr Riggs, a number of men who said, you know, we'll tell you what happened in, you know, in what was happening in Caldwell County and other places. So it's a hearing that is, again, not to, it's not the final hearing. It's a preliminary hearing to see if there's evidence that there was some sort of, you know of missteps by the Latter-day Saints. Crime committed. Crime committed. And after that hearing, Judge King, and by the way, guess who defended the Latter-day Saints? Alexander Donovan. Donovan's just kind of sitting back and seeing what they're going to do here. He's really

quite an astute attorney. He's not going to lay out his hand here. And Parley Pratt kind of gets upset with him. He kind of goes, why aren't you going after these guys? But this is a preliminary hearing. He doesn't want to play his hand. He was really smart. And just say, well, let's see what they're going to try to charge you all with. And then we can take it from there. So he's a very, very good attorney, but Pratt didn't think he was doing all his job that he was supposed to be doing. But the interesting thing is at the end of this, Judge King says, I think there's probable cause. These men were involved in some things that were probably not right. Now, again, I think Joseph's probable cause. Something, these men were involved in some things that were probably not right. Now, again, I think Joe's just entirely innocent, myself.

But so Judge King says we are going to have their final hearing in March. But in the meantime, since they're going to be charged with overt acts of treason, this is non-bailable. So they have to be put in prison. They can't post bail and say, well, we'll come back when the hearing's held. Yeah, this is a kind of a capital offense, you'd call it. And so they're going to send them over to Liberty Jail. There's two reasons they went to Liberty Jail.

Number one, it was a better jail. They're just trying to get a new jail made in Richmond. And so they said, well, let's send them over there. The other reason is Donovan, according to an attorney in Liberty, Donovan wanted them over there so he could meet with them and continue to help him so Donovan still trying to help us and so they're going to be transported over there now there's going to be six men who are ultimately sent to Liberty Jail to stand trial and these are the six men that most people are familiar with when we talk about the jail. They're the first presidency, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Hiram. And then we have Alexander McRae, Caleb Baldwin, and oh, Lyman White.

So there's our six prisoners. So while these six that I've mentioned are going to be incarcerated over in Liberty, there's several men who are going to be, most of the 64 prisoners were released, except those six. And then these men were kept in Richmond because there was not enough room in Liberty and they wanted to have the hearing over there in Richmond. And these were Parley Pratt, he was in the Battle of Crooked River where that one person was killed, Moses Rowland, Norman Shearer, Darwin Chase, Luman Gibbs, and Morris Phelps. So these men were put in jail or put into custody in Richmond to await a hearing. So there's two groups. Now, they later added two groups, and they later added King Follett.

Now, I'll just jump ahead and just indicate to you that a couple of those were finally released, but then four of them got sent down to Columbia. So, several of these prisoners who are in Richmond are eventually going to have their hearing changed to Columbia, Boone County. Now, that's the same place Joseph Smith is supposed to have his final hearing with the Liberty prisoners. But they're down there, and that story is a wonderful story because they're down there, and these Latter-day Saint prisoners, Parley P. Pratt being the most prominent, end up having a wonderful escape. It's a marvelous story. It's just downright exciting. It could be a movie, but they make their escape on Independence Day. They thought, what a good day to get our

independence, but on Independence Day. And unfortunately, one of their number did not make it. And well, King Follett actually was recaptured, and he's the last one to really be released. They're going to release him as well. So there's kind of two stories. But in our story, of course, it's the Liberty Jail group. Yeah. Alex, and I just want to get your take on this, that here you've got these Latter-day Saint prisoners who are going to go up for trial, and yet everyone knows there was another side to this.

Where's all the mobsters, and who's going to go up for trial on that side? I'm so glad you made that point. And there is no one, there is no legal action taken against any Missouri member who did anything against the Latter-day Saints. Not a thing. And that plays into the story because I think the Missouri authorities realized, if we're

going to go after the Latter-day Saints, we have to go after those who perpetrated actions and crimes against the Latter-day Saints, which they do not do. And ultimately, that will be one of the reasons I'm absolutely convinced that they have to let Joseph Smith go. They just have to. If you're going to prosecute Latter-day Saints, you also have to prosecute those who committed acts against them so uh that plays into the final uh kind of the final chapter of everything which i hope to we can talk about here in just a few minutes please join us for part two of this podcast