Extermination Order

The extermination order is the name commonly used to refer to an executive order signed on October 27, 1838, by Lilburn W. Boggs, the governor of Missouri during the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838.¹ The order sought to put a quick end to the conflict by calling for the Saints to be “exterminated or driven from the State if necessary.”²

Throughout 1838, vigilantes had threatened and attacked Latter-day Saint settlers in Missouri. By October, civil authority in northwestern Missouri had broken down, and Church members had been expelled from their homes. Appeals by the Saints for protection against mob attacks went largely unnoticed by local militias. Latter-day Saints took self-defense measures, and some struck back at suspected mob havens by burning dwellings and confiscating goods. When a state militia company collided with a Latter-day Saint rescue party at Crooked River, shots were fired and four people were killed, three of whom were members of the Church.³

The skirmish stirred the already excited local press into exaggerating Latter-day Saint violence. Moreover, the conflicts took place more than 100 miles away from the state capital, which hindered effective communication. Across the state, many believed that the Saints were waging an offensive war. Governor Boggs, who concluded the Latter-day Saints had made “open and avowed defiance of the laws” and had “made war upon the people of this State,” issued the executive order authorizing state forces to suppress the supposed uprising.⁴

General Samuel D. Lucas, who was encamped with the state militia outside Church headquarters in Far West, received the order on October 30 and marched on the city. He demanded that all Latter-day Saints sign over their property as payment for the other residents’ losses and leave the state immediately. After arresting Joseph Smith, Lucas held a hasty court-martial and called for Joseph’s execution. Alexander Doniphan, the officer charged with carrying out the execution, believed the action was illegal and refused the order. For the most part, however, state militia members used the threat of force authorized by the order, resulting in the Saints migrating en masse to Illinois.⁵

Boggs’s intentions in issuing the executive order remain uncertain. Many have assumed he authorized genocide and have associated the order with the massacre of 17 Latter-day Saints at Hawn’s Mill three days after it was issued. But vigilantes, not the state militia, carried out the massacre, and no evidence suggests the vigilantes were aware of the governor’s order.

At the time, the meaning of the term extermination included the possibility of forced evacuation. For example, in the case of the forcible removal of American Indians, United States officials used the phrase exterminating war to describe the use of force to achieve either the Indians’ “total expulsion” or “total extinction.”⁶ Military leaders expected expulsion orders to be met with hostile resistance, meaning “extinction” was a possibility, though evacuation was the more likely outcome.⁷

Though public opinion remained divided, the expulsion order met with measurable criticism. A legislator who was not a member of the Church wrote an editorial a month after the order was issued that condemned the use of the state militia against the Latter-day Saints as an infringement on religious and civil rights. Less than two months later, a member of the Missouri state legislature called the order unconstitutional and promised to challenge it “if he stood alone in the midst of ten thousand.”⁸ Communities in Illinois offered safe haven to refugee Latter-day Saints, expressing their objections to Missouri’s persecutions. The violence against the Saints gained national attention by late 1839, when Joseph Smith led a delegation to seek redress at the nation’s capital.⁹

During the century following the expulsion of the main body of the Saints, small numbers of them lived in Missouri, apparently without conflict. Over time, the Church established branches and stakes throughout the state. In the late 20th century, more people began to recognize the immorality of state violence against minority groups. In 1976, Missouri governor Christopher S. Bond officially rescinded Boggs’s order, arguing that it “clearly contravened the rights to life, liberty, property and religious freedom” guaranteed by both the constitutions of the United States and the state of Missouri. On behalf of the citizens of Missouri, Bond expressed “deep regret for the injustice and undue suffering” the order had caused the Latter-day Saints.¹⁰