Follow Him: A Come, Follow Me Podcast - Doctrine & Covenants 121-123 Part 1 : Dr. Alexander L. Baugh
Episode Date: October 16, 2021Joseph’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 sha...re 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.
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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 this Aris in front of me.
humored. Okay, not that I have this RS in front of me. John, we are on a really important sections lesson, a couple of sections in the doctor and covenants. And so we needed a very
important guest for a 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 I'll do it again here's to to remind you
I've always just heard people say you know in our circles Hank that this guy is the church's expert on Missouri.
And so, yeah, so Alexander Elbaugh is a professor
in chair of the Department of Church History
and Doctrine at Brighamming University,
where he has been a full-time faculty member since 1995.
He received his bachelor's degree from Utah State,
his masters and PhD from Brighamming, 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, a document's volumes 4, 5, 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. So also the past editor of the Mormon Historical Studies,
past co-director of research for the BYU Religious Studies Center. Mary, 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
ready to 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 glad to have you back.
Yeah, 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, you know, leading up to section 121, how does
Joseph Smith find himself in Liberty jail? How does he get there? You know, 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 you know if you if you asked them to just summarize the life of
Jealous of Smith and their own you know in their own words in two minutes or less
They would you know give some just generalities and then they'd say, oh yeah, he was incarcerated
in Liberty Jail.
They don't know much more, you know, there was a tough time and they eventually got out
and went to Quincy and then Navu.
Yeah, there's a lot of backstory, 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,
life redirecting of Joseph Smith's life and mission
and emphasis.
He was a changed man,
and I think we can,
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 addition of
the doctrine of 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 121-122-123.
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.
Wow.
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, but so often cited and
we just need to understand them more because they're so engaging and
sobering. The what's taught, I would say, is hundreds, 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
on as a whole. And from 18 late 1833, summer of 1836, things were going pretty well.
But the Clay County citizens never intended for us to be,
they were wanted to help,
but there was going to be a time when they moved on.
What did Benjamin Franklin say?
Fish and guests.
A fish and gap.
Three days.
A 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 look promising
and sure enough we begin to move into an incorporated 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 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 riggins 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 there here. And
far west is designated as the central gathering spot. So I can understand a little bit of
the Missourians' concerns, 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 WWFelps, we, again, as we mentioned, we lose Oliver, we lose David Whitmer,
we lose Lyman Johnson and Apostle, we lose William E. McClellan and Apostle.
We, Frederic 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 you know, I think, you know, 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 beginning began to initiate vexatious lawsuits and threatened 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 that Sidney Rigden in June, it gives this salt sermon.
And basically what he does in that sermon is, 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.
You could 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 do they go?
Well, they go to Liberty and also Richmond,
there's Clay County and also Ray County.
And people see these later day St. leaders and go,
why are you no longer with them?
Well, we've no longer began,
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 Rigden
and the more, later they sent 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 St. community,
and people are going, well, what's going on in far west?
So 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.
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, you can just temple site. And during the course
of that wonderful celebration, Sidney Rignan speaks again. And he gives a wonderful patriotic sermon,
but then he, the very last part of that, he basically becomes a little bit vitraulic and says,
He basically becomes a little bit vitraulic 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, he's back to use the word,
it'll be a war of extermination.
Well, this speech got a lot of
Missourians a little bit agitated.
Now, again, the 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 intended all,
but it was circulated that talk got actually got printed.
So not surprising,
a week later, or 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 we have...
Well, we're just mentioning this for the first time, but Caldwell's the county that was created for the Latter-day Saints, right?
Exactly.
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
to wit.
And so, and there were some other isolated settlements outside Caldwell County, but I think some Missouri
and said, no 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 will 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 the, what they call it,
the Mormon Missouri War, with the outbreak of hostilities
at the city, little community of Gallatin, which is the county seat in Davies County to the north
on August 6th in which later they say 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, you
know, he basically goes up there a couple of days later with several, 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 an election day battle, but it was a knockdown brawl,
kind of begins that conflict, if you will.
It kind of, 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
The Missouri militia up there the troops in that area
His sub commander is Alexander Donovan. They're both friends.
Both friends. They are. They are men of justice. They basically told the Davies County citizens
who's doing these terrible things to the latter. They say, 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 to do anything'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
Dewit and there was about 400 Latter-day Saints there. And these man 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, 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,'t know if 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.
Right.
I've heard you say this before, Alex, this has been, we're up to seven years now of incredible restraint. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. citizens. But now the problem is we just we're just not getting any getting any help. Now we got some from
Atchison and Donna, fun up in Davies County, but there comes a point of self-defense. Maybe in fact, let me go to
a daughter in 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, I mean 134 verse 11. We believe that man 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. Other saying is, if people come against
use 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 exegency 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. 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 Galatin, they went to Millport,
and they went to the Grinestone Forks settlements
where these perpetrators were kinda centered.
And yeah, they burned Jacob Stolling's store. Now, unfortunately, that also included
a post office. And, you know, again, that's a federal bill, federal offense. So sure enough,
you know, they, they, they'd send a message, please leave us alone. We have a right. We have rights. Now again, it's offensive. Is this Lyman, Lyman White?
Okay.
We got Lyman White, who's a war of 1812 veteran.
We've got one, we've got the toughest guy we've got in the church.
David Patton, Captain Fairnot, labeled 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 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 down, and he wasn't involved in any of that.
But they come back and sure enough, things are really starting to break down.
and sure enough, things are really starting to break down.
I should say more, I use Mormon and I hope, or that's what they call the listers.
I think we'll be over.
Yeah, yeah.
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 the Latter-day Saints were, you know, they're coming.
So what happens? A man by name is Samuel Bogart down in Ray County says, well, we don't want any of
this happening in 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
words sent that they're going to kill them.
He takes three L they sent 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 to go to our people. Yeah, we got to save these guys. They're going
to die.
Were they trumped up charges or did he just grabs three random guys? Yeah, Addison Green, Seely, 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 letter he wants because
he's come after us, right? Yeah, so he's in. Did those guys do anything wrong?
No, no, no, no, it was just a strategy on his part. There's in the wrong place. Yeah. And where does he camp just below the county line? And what does he do?
He waits. And word is sent that, you know, 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 them 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, as state troops.
And here's the Latter-day Saint Moliscia,
the Caldwell Moliscia coming after him,
outside their jurisdiction.
And sure enough, a battle ensues
and three Latter-day Saint men are killed, including Paton.
And we did, one Missouri was killed, Moses Roland. But what happens is a man
by the name of, I think it was Wiley Williams, is immediately dispatched to Jefferson City where the
capital 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 Kirkland River took place on the 25th and two
days later he's getting the message and he says that 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 the 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 laterary saints have 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. Let Ernie 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 is 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 bogs 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
Bog's 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. That's not what he intended
Nope, yeah, and I've heard you say that before and that's important
I think it 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, and I think there's been this misconception in the church that he,
he's a cold blooded thirsty killer. Well, he was a Christian, 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 him and let's make sure they leave the state.
And that bears, that comes into the Liberty Jail experience and up, up try to tie that
in.
But simply put, he's basically trying to tell his, 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, they'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 piece 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? He's acting off of rumor. No question.
In fact, David Rice Atchison, who's the regional militia commander and again, sympathetic
the Latter-day Saints, writes him and says, you've got to come out here.
You've got to see for your first hand 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 to, they come from a number of areas. What
does he do? He relieves David Rice-Achuson 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 down back down the 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. Now they're the Samuel D. Lucas from Jackson County who is a
does not like the Mormons. Yeah, he hates them. Yeah. So he's out 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 Santa part of the state. He's
got to get there. And by the time he gets there, the Latter-day Saints of Surrendered and Samuel
Lucas has got Joseph Smith down in independence. He's not even on the scene
to conduct this the 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 out the closest group of Latter-day Saints and
murder them
And these people are there some of them you you've told me before Alex
There's some of these people are just stopping there on the way to get to far west because they're they're coming from Ohio
Yeah, this is this is the last one of the last groups to come. Notice what time
a year it is. We're October. The harvest season is done. We're 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 going,
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 late 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,
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 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 and very steadfast. 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.
Every single memorial day,
I go up to Richmond because my wife's family is from there. And I put rows on Amanda Barnes Smith
grave every, every memorial day. I've done it. I think we're about 14 years. She is my heroine.
14 years. She is my heroine. I just I look forward to to 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. So anyway, when Joseph Smith learns of this terrible incident, he asked Colonel Henkel, the regional
commander of the Latter-day Saints.
He has a state commission officer ship 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,
some discrepancies, but Hinkle basically says
meets with Lucas and their officer, his officers
and agrees to bring Joseph Smith and few others down
and Joseph thinks it's going to be for negotiation purposes.
All this is covered really, really well
in volume six of the Joseph Smith papers.
I just have to say it's, 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 marshal. And they do. And on November one, they hold a court marshal 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 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 gonna, we're 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 St. Defenders
in Caldwell County.
There was 2,500 Missourians camp south of far west.
Now, that's not good odds.
And fortunately, again, I think I think
Joseph acted correctly. And he was willing to, okay, let's at least negotiate a piece. But in the
process, he is put into, he's taken into custody, which I think surprised him. Now, what happens is
they have this court martial. Now, what happens is they have this court
martial. Now, I should mention the individuals they have now in their custody are Joseph
Smith, Sydney, Reagan, Parley Pratt. He was in the Battle of Crook and River. Lyman White,
of course, he was up there in Davies County. And George they get Amos Alignment and Hyrum. Amos Alignment and Hyrum.
So there's our seven prisoners. And he, on the evening of the first, he says, let's have a court
marshal. They have a court marshal now. It was not all unanimous, but basically it was, we're
going to court marshal 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,
I, 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 and he's willing to
take on Lucas and Lucas has to back down. There's just no question. He's he can't do this.
And so sure enough, he said, I'm going to march into Donovan just save Joseph Smith's life.
There's no question. And I am a Donovan fan. So as 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. It says 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 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 son again,
sons again. There's higher him in there as well. And Lucas says, we're going to take these
boys down to the 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 back
story. 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 Hank Olbel later say, hey, I thought they were just
gonna talk with you too, but I think there was some
there was some misdeeds by Henkel.
Now, again, that's a whole another story.
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 helpful for Joseph Smith.
Henkel tries to save his neck. So he decides to be a test, you know, give 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.
Sure.
So independence is the county seat for Jackson County
and liberty is the county seat for Clay. Now, it takes him a couple of days to get there
and they leave on the second in later years when Harley writes his autobiography. He says on November
3rd, a very important event happened that night or 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,
or 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 law 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-reminisense, 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 on October
November one October 30th. 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 as six months.
Now, it will all work out.
But, 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 we
Maybe a couple of weeks whatever, but it's gonna be pretty drawn out
The Lord's timetable is sometimes so
You know a small moment, right?
I
Wanted to ask another question that
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. We now own Hans Mill, the site of Hans Mill.
We received that property.
We received the far west,
what we thought and think is possibly the far west cemetery.
A lot of acreage in Jackson County,
and also the Joseph Smith home in Kirtland.
We now own that and there's some markers there, but
it's 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 sub-boy 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. It 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 fourth, it's raining, it's terrible weather,
obviously November of 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's 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 Nolan house or Nolan 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 in the 7 prisoners
in another vacant house in Richmond. It's just to the north of the courthouse that's being built, a new brand new courthouse in Richmond.
And this is where they decide to hold this hearing. In the meantime, they go about and rest 57 additional Latter-day Saint-Man. So by the time this hearing is conducted, 64 Latter-day
Saint-Man are being going to be tried in a what we call a preliminary hearing, enrichment.
Under the auspices and direction of Austin King, who's the circuit court judge judge and Austin King will later become the governor of Missouri. He's no
He's no fly by night judge. He's a he's a pretty respected judge now unfortunately
Judge King's
Brother-in-law Hugh Brazile 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
Missouri Insight.
And a number of these are Latter-day Saint men who have now become, if we could call it,
have disinfected.
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 Calville 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, missteps by the Latter-day
Saints. Crime committed. Crime committed. And after those that hearing, Judge King, and by the way,
guess who defended the Latter-day Saints? Alexander Donovan. Not if it'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 Party 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.
Something, these men were involved in some things
that were probably not right.
Now, again, I think Joseph's entirely innocent myself,
but so Judge King says we are going to have
their final hearing in March.
And but in the meantime, since they're going to be charged
with overt acts of treason, this is non-baileable.
So they have to be put in prison. They can't post bail and say, well, we'll come back when the hearings held.
Yeah, this is a
kind of a capital offense you'd call it and 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's still trying to help us.
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.
The first presidency, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Hiram.
And then we have Alexander McCray, 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 Roland,
Norman Sheer, Darwin Chase, Lumen Gibbs, and Morris Phelps.
So these men were put into custody
in Richmond to away to hearing.
So 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
later days, St. Prisoners, Parley P. Pratt being the most prominent, end up having a wonderful
escape.
It's a marvelous story.
It's kind of, 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 numbers did not make it. And, well,
I King followed 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.
Alex, and I just, I 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 days,
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, if you're going to prosecute
later days, saints, you also have to prosecute
those who committed acts against them.
So, that plays into the final chapter of everything, which I hope we can talk about here in just a few minutes.
Please join us for Part 2 of this podcast.
you