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By
Matthew Franck
The Missouri
Mormon Experience: From Conflict to Understanding
By Matthew Franck
Two ancestors of Michael Hutchings
offered profoundly different narratives of Missouri as it concerns
the treatment of Mormons in the 19th Century.
One was witness to the raw brutality
of the Haun’s Mill Massacre, himself a bullet-ridden survivor of
the violence. Another was rescued from a steamboat explosion by
kindhearted Missouri settlers, some of whom had sought to drive
Mormons from the state only 14 years prior.
So it was fitting that Hutchings should
share a few words at the conference designed to provide a more complete
picture of the notorious bloodshed — but also the unheralded compassion
— that accompanied the Mormons’ early sojourn through the state.
Hutchings was among nearly 600 participants
of the “Missouri Mormon Experience: A Conference of History and
Commemoration.” The two-day event was held at the Missouri Capitol
on Sept. 8-9, drawing top historians of Mormonism and statewide
elected officials.
For Hutchings, the value of reopening
the history books on the era is clear. He said both Missourians
and Mormons have a duty to know the history, “to learn from it,
and to allow ourselves to be healed by it.”
Honoring Senator Bond
The unprecedented event was the product
of collaboration between the Missouri State Archives and the Columbia
Missouri Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The weekend’s events included the presentation of 15 papers by historians
from across the country.
Each presenter explored, at least indirectly,
the so-called “Mormon War,” that pitted adherents of a new religion
against frontier settlers. The strife escalated to open warfare
in 1838, prompting Gov. Lilburn Boggs to issue an “Extermination
Order,” forcing all Mormons from the state.
U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond joined
a crowd of more than 400 on the steps of the Missouri Capitol on
Sept. 8 to lament that such a document was ever penned.
Senator Bond on the Missouri Capitol steps.
(All photos are by Tyson Anderson.)
“What makes it difficult to understand
is that this barbarism was state sanctioned and even state ordered,”
he said.
It was Bond who, while serving as
governor 30 years ago, rescinded the Extermination Order, a decision
he said was essential to healing the generations-old conflict.
“You bet I would do it again if I
found something like that besmirching our honor,” Bond said.
Elder Maury Schooff,
of the Seventy, a representative of the LDS Church, presented Bond
with a framed copy of both the Extermination Order and Bond’s recision
order.
Elder Maury Schooff
Later, participants flocked to the
Capitol Rotunda to view a display of the original documents. Friday’s
event included a free concert by performers from Branson, featuring
the Brett Family Singers and the Hughes Brothers.
A Positive Focus
The conference also paid homage to
Lyman Edwards, a former stake president of the Community of Christ
(formally RLDS Church), who played a key role in asking Bond to negate the Extermination
Order.
Edwards said Bond’s gesture of 30
years ago was one directed to both the LDS and RLDS Church.
“The official action was for all the
corners of Mormonism,” he said.
Bond and many other participants of
the weekend’s event said they came not to reflect on the Extermination
Order but on the “great path this state has made moving toward tolerance.”
Senator Bond
That sentiment was shared by a lead
organizer of the event, who said he hoped both Missouri and the
more than 56,000 members of the LDS Church in the state will move
beyond the divisions.
“We’re not emphasizing that today,”
said Michael Reall, president of the Columbia Stake of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. “This conference is to be an opportunity
to look at people as people.”
Joining Reall
at the Friday ceremony was Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, whose
office oversees the State Archives. Carnahan told the crowd that
she hoped the event would increase understanding of a troubled episode
in the state’s history.
“How we today decide to remember and
learn from those experiences will shape our future,” said Carnahan,
who was joined at the event by her mother, former U.S. Sen. Jean
Carnahan.
A Call for Greater Understanding
Missouri State Archivist Kenneth Winn
kicked off the event’s academic discourse with a keynote address
at a Friday banquet at Lincoln University .
Winn reflected on the need to reach
a greater understanding of the Mormon conflicts, ones that involves
not only historians of Mormonism, but of Missouri . Unfortunately,
he said, leading Missouri history textbooks contain little to no
mention of episodes like the Haun’s Mill
Massacre.
Winn described a kind of disconnect
as the Mormon War is considered. Often, he said, historians of Mormonism
have studied how the conflicts shaped the subsequent behavior of
the Church. But far less often, he said, have Missouri historians
recognized how the Mormon War changed the state.
Winn cited the fact that many of the
lead players in driving the Mormons from the state were under the
age of 40 at the time of the conflict. Those same players, he said,
would re-emerge in subsequent violent conflicts in the state, such
as the border war with Kansas.
“The Mormon War framed the thinking
of an entire generation of young men and it framed it for violence,”
he said.
But Winn also called for a reexamination
of the Missouri settlers, particularly in light of comments made
by some Mormons of the era who referred to their new neighbors as
backward, uneducated and lazy.
Winn noted similar statements were
made by Missourians of the immigrating Mormons. He said that while
it was true that the frontier settlements were less refined than
their Eastern peers, they aspired to economic prosperity.
“When the Church met them, they had
barely set down the origins of community,” he said.
On Saturday, numerous presenters picked
up on that theme, reflecting on how the conflict is best understood
by studying the clashing worldviews that fed the discord. The discussions
were held in the House Chambers of the Missouri Capitol before an
audience of nearly 300 participants.
The Conflict in Context
Jan Shipps, of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis,
offered Saturday’s keynote address. Shipps,
who is among the most published authors on Mormon history, said
members of the faith came to the state with entrenched beliefs about
their destiny to lay claim to the area.
She said the Mormons’ belief of a
Zion in Jackson County ran much deeper than the beliefs that led prior religious communities
to congregate in other regions of the nation.
“It didn’t permit people to move on
to another Utopian community,” Shipps
said. “This was the land of promise; there was nothing ambiguous
about it.”
Steven Harper, assistant professor
of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, elaborated
on that point.
Harper said Mormons and Missourians
had starkly contrasting concepts of authority. Missourians honored
the will of the people in their quest for a Jacksonian
Democracy; Mormons were led by revelation.
The conflict, he said, rooted from
a simple question: “Was ultimate authority in the people, or in
the God of Joseph Smith?”
Other presenters, however, followed
a different route, exploring how the thirst for land may have contributed
to efforts to drive Mormons from the state.
Jeffrey Walker, of the Joseph Smith
Papers Project of the LDS Church , said the timing of the Extermination
Order needs to be considered in the context of land rights. Only
weeks after the document was signed, many Mormon settlers were to
exercise preemptive rights to purchase land in Caldwell and Daviess
Counties .
Walker said many Missourians feared
those transactions would take place. He suggested that key leaders
in the effort to expel the Mormons later purchased the same plots
the Mormons left behind.
Winn, the state archivist, said he
believes the strife of the era “reflects poorly on all the players
at some point in the story.”
And yet, the conference repeatedly
highlighted episodes of goodwill from Missourians toward Mormons,
even soon after the Extermination Order was issued.
The Path toward Healing
Richard Bennett, professor of Church
History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, said the process
of attempting to move beyond the conflicts happened relatively quickly
for many Mormons and Missourians.
“That healing process that this conference
is dedicated to began very early in this Church and this State,”
he said.
Several presenters offered episodes
that suggested that Missouri was not universally hostile to Mormons,
even at the height of the conflict.
One research paper focused on the
relative kindness of Columbia residents, even after Parley P. Pratt
and other Mormon leaders mounted an escape from prison. Another
paper addressed the hospitality of St. Louis residents toward Mormons
as they passed through the city on their trek to Utah .
But those accounts pale next to the
kindness of the residents of Lexington, Mo., who rallied to rescue
passengers of the Steamboat Saluda after it exploded on the Missouri
River in 1852. Dozens of the passengers were Mormon, and yet the
town spared no expense in nursing survivors back to health.
Fred Woods, a professor at Brigham
Young University, screened a film
on the incident during the conference. He said the Saluda explosion
proves that even a few years after the Mormon War, Missourians sought
redemption.
Reall , meanwhile, reflected even more
broadly on that point.
In the years since the Mormon War,
he said, the nation as a whole has moved toward a greater respect
for the rights of all, regardless of their beliefs. The Bill of
Rights was a largely unexercised document when Mormons reached Missouri;
today it is a foundation for tolerance, he said.
Even so, he said, “it’s not a simple
process to maintain religious freedom. It requires great vigilance.”
Matthew Franck is member of the
LDS Columbia Missouri Stake. He works as a journalist who covers
the Missouri state government.
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