1. Shelly Kagan, Normative Ethics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); Michael Hechter and Karl-Dieter Opp, eds., Social Norms (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001).
2. Richard Maxwell Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence in America,” in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, eds., The History of Violence in America: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 45-89, provided a very useful summary of various kinds of violence–criminal, feuds, lynch mobs, racial, ethnic, religious, urban rioting, serial killing and mass murders, assassinations, police violence, labor violence, agrarian uprisings, vigilantes, and wars. This essay discusses only a few of these types.
3. H.C. Brearley, “The Pattern of Violence,” in W.T. Couch, ed., Culture In the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934), 678-92; John Hope Franklin, The Militant South (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1956); Jack K. Williams, Vogues In Villainy: Crime and Retribution In Ante-Bellum South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959), 31-38; Richard Maxwell Brown, American Violence (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970); Leonard L. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); sections of relevant chronology in Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace, eds., American Violence: A Documentary History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970); Raymond D. Gastil, “Homicide and a Regional Culture of Violence,” American Sociological Review 36 (June 1971): 416-27; Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973); W. Eugene Hollon, Frontier Violence: Another Look (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), esp. 216 (for his thesis that Americans have tended “to over-emphasize the violent side of the frontier, in comparison to that of the cities, and to give short shrift to the peaceful and orderly side”); Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflict (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975); David Grimsted, “Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting,” American Historical Review 77 (April 1977): 361-97; David J. Bodenhamer, “Law and Disorder on the Early Frontier: Marion County, Indiana, 1823-1850,” Western Historical Quarterly 10 (July 1979): 323-36 (by contrast, found “a remarkably peaceful frontier” in this case study); Dickson Bruce Jr., Violence and Culture in the Antebellum South (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979); W. Stuart Harris, “Rowdyism, Public Drunkenness, and Bloody Encounters in Early Perry County,” Alabama Review 33 (January 1980): 15-24; Michael Feldberg, The Turbulent Era: Riot and Disorder in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), esp. 77-80 (for “Recreational Rioting”); Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Edward L. Ayers, Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th-Century American South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 98-117; Roger D. McGrath, Gunfighters, Highwaymen, & Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), esp. 261-71 (for his summary of scholarly assessments that “The Frontier Was Violent” versus scholarly assessments that “The Frontier Was Not Especially Violent”); Elliott J. Gorn, “`Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,” American Historical Review 90 (February 1985): 18-43; Carl E. Prince, “The Great `Riot Year’: Jacksonian Democracy and Patterns of Violence in 1834,” Journal of the Early Republic 5 (Spring 1985): 1-19; David Brion Davis, From Homicide To Slavery: Studies in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987); Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (New York: Viking, 1988); Robert M. Ireland, “The Libertine Must Die: Sexual Dishonor and the Unwritten Law in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Journal of Social History 23 (Fall 1989): 29-44; Charles Van Ravenswaay, “Bloody Island: Honor and Violence in Early Nineteenth-Century St. Louis,” Gateway Heritage 10 (Spring 1990): 4-21; Morgan Peoples, “Brawling and Dueling On the North Louisiana Frontier, 1803-1861: A Sketch,” North Louisiana Historical Association Journal 21 (Fall 1990): 99-108; David T. Courtwright, “Violence in America,” American Heritage 47 (September 1996): 36-46; David T. Courtwright, Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder From the Frontier to the Inner City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 9-151; Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996); Hendrik Hartog, “Lawyering, Husbands Rights, and the Unwritten Law in Nineteenth Century America,” Journal of American History 84 (June 1997): 67-96; Kenneth E. Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscape of Violence and Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997); Anne Spencer Lombard, “Playing the Man: Conceptions of Masculinity in Anglo-American New England, 1675 to 1765,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1998; David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), ix (his omitting most “incidents of economic, racial, ethnic, religious, and youth” violence), 85-113 (the South’s culture of violence, including discussions of dueling on 88-89, 97-99); David Peterson del Mar, “Violence Against Wives By Prominent Men in Early Clatsop County,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 100 (Winter 1999): 434-450; Michael A. Bellesiles, ed., Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Christine Daniels and Michael Kennedy, ed., Over the Threshold: Intimate Violence in Early America (New York: Routledge, 1999); Scott C. Martin, “Violence, Gender, and Intemperance in Early National Connecticut,” Journal of Social History 34 (Winter 2000): 309-25; David Edwin Ballew, “The Popular Prejudices of Our People: Kinship, Community, and Male Honor, in the Alabama-Mississippi Hill Country, 1820-1890,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Mississippi, 2000; Sean T. Moore, “`Justifiable Provocation’: Violence Against Women in Essex County, New York, 1799-1860,” Journal of Social History 35 (Summer 2002): 889-918.
4. For example, Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 to 1775,” William and Mary Quarterly 31 (July 1974): 345-68; Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Barnburning and Other Snopesian Crimes: Class and Justice in the Old South,” in Orville Vernon Burton and Robert C. McMath Jr., eds., Class, Conflict, and Consensus: Antebellum Southern Community Studies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 173-206 (esp. 177, that according to the South’s norms, “class crimes were misdeeds of anonymity and insignificance,” with title-word referring to Colonel Snopes in William Faulkner’s short story “Barn Burning”); Susan G. Davis, “`Making the Night Hideous’: Christmas Revelry and Public Disorder in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia,” American Quarterly 34 (Summer 1982): 185-99; Gene Sessions, “`Years of Struggle’: The Irish in the Village of Northfield, 1845-1900,” Vermont History 55 (Spring 1987): 88; Peter Way, “Shovel and Shamrock: Irish Violence in the Digging of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,” Labor History 30 (Fall 1989): 489-517; Michael A. Gordon, The Orange Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Michael Kaplan, “New York City Tavern Violence and the Creation of a Working-Class Male Identity,” Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Winter 1995): 591-617; Matthew E. Mason, “`The Hands Here Are Disposed To Be Turbulent’: Unrest Among the Irish Trackman of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,” Labor History 39 (August 1998): 253-72.
5. Robert Shoemaker, “Male Honour and the Decline of Public Violence in Eighteenth-Century London,” Social History 26 (May 2001): 190-208, with quote on 200.
6. Richard Maxwell Brown, No Duty To Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 4-5 (for quotes), 7 (for 1806 decision and subsequent rejection by American jurisprudence of the English common-law “duty to retreat”). Shoemaker did not emphasize this as a factor in the statistical declines of violence he identified for London in the 1700s, so my concluding comment in the previous paragraph is my application of Brown’s thesis to Shoemaker’s study.
7. E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 225-26 (for first quote), 225 (for second quote, which came first in his narrative).
8. Don C. Seitz, Famous American Duels, With Some Account of the Causes That Led Up To Them and the Men Engaged (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1929); William O. Stevens, Pistols At Ten Paces: The Story of the Code of Honor in America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1940); Harnett T. Kane, Gentlemen, Swords, and Pistols (New York: Morrow, 1951); J. Winston Coleman, Famous Kentucky Duels: The Story of the Code of Honor in the Bluegrass State (Frankfort, KY: Roberts Printing Company, 1953); Wilmuth S. Rutledge, “Dueling In Antebellum Mississippi,” Journal of Mississippi History 26 (August 1964): 181-91; Guy A. Cardwell, “The Duel In the Old South: Crux of a Concept,” South Atlantic Quarterly 66 (Winter 1967): 50-69; Sheldon Hackney, “Southern Violence,” American Historical Review 74 (February 1969): 906-25; James D. Van Trump and James Brian Cannon, “An Affair of Honor: Pittsburgh’s Last Duel,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 57 (July 1974): 307-15; Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 17-118, 275-84; Nancy Torrance Matthews, “The Duel In Nineteenth-Century South Carolina: Custom Over Written Law,” Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association (1979): 78-84; Stephen M. Stowe, “The `Touchiness’ of the Gentleman Planter: The Sense of Esteem and Continuity in the Antebellum South,” Psychohistory Reviewain 8 (1979): 6-17; Nicholas B. Wainwright, “The Life and Death of Major Thomas Biddle,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 104 (July 1980): 326-44 (in which he and Congressman Spencer Pittis killed each other in an 1831 duel); Jack K. Williams, Dueling In the Old South: Vignettes of Social History (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1980); Michael Stephen Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767-1878 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Stephen W. Brown, “Satisfaction at Bladensburg: The Pearson-Jackson Duel of 1809,” North Carolina Historical Review 58 (January 1981): 23-43 (involving Congressman Joseph Pearson); E. Lee Shepard, “Honor Among Lawyers: The Case of Charles Marshall Jones and Edward Sayre,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 90 (July 1982): 325-38; Kenneth S. Greenberg, “The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South,” American Historical Review 95 (February 1990): 57-74; James M. Denham, “The Read-Alston Duel and Politics in Territorial Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 68 (April 1990): 427-46; Dick Steward, Duels and the Roots of Violence in Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).
9. Arthur Scherr, “James Monroe, John Adams, and Southern Honor: Dueling With the Passions,” Southern Studies 7 (Summer/Fall 1996): 1-26.
10. Joanne B. Freeman, “Dueling As Politics: Reinterpreting the Burr-Hamilton Duel,” William and Mary Quarterly 53 (April 1996): 289-318; Arnold A. Rogow, A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Thomas Fleming, Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
11. Myra L. Spaulding, Dueling In the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.: Columbia Historical Society, 1928); Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), 292-95.
12. Official Record From the War Department, of the Proceedings of the Court Martial Which Tried, and the Orders of General Jackson For Shooting the Six Militia Men, Together With Official Letters from the War Department, (Ordered To Be Printed By Congress) Showing That These Americans Were Inhumanely & Illegally Massacred (Washington, D.C.: J. Elliot, 1828); Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson (New York: Twayne, 1966), 41-43, 55-56, 57-58, 59, 60-61, 78-82; Lowell H. Harrison, “An Affair of Honor: The Jackson-Dickinson Duel,” American History Illustrated 8 (April 1973): 38-43; D. Michael Quinn, “Benton, Thomas Hart (1782-1858),” and Thomas D. Clark, “Jackson, Andrew (1767-1845),” in Howard R. Lamar, ed., The New Encyclopedia of the American West (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 92, 559-61.
13. John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 31-32; Thomas D. Clark, “Harrison, William Henry (1773-1841),” in Lamar, New Encyclopedia of the American West, 471. Illinois was originally part of Indiana Territory, over which Harrison was governor. For brief narratives, historians often simplify references to the Illinois portion of Indiana Territory by describing them as occurring in Illinois Territory. The same approach applies to early events in Arizona before it was officially split from New Mexico Territory.
14. Thomas O. Jewett, “Lincoln’s Duel,” Lincoln Herald 89 (Winter 1987): 142-43; Lowell H. Harrison, Lincoln of Kentucky (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2000), 73.
15. Joan Newman and Graeme Newman, “Crime and Punishment in the Schooling Process: A Historical Analysis,” in Keith Baker and Robert J. Rubel, eds., Violence and Crime in the Schools (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books/D.C. Heath and Company, 1980), 11 (for Massachusetts schools in 1837), 12 (for Princeton and the University of Virginia).
16. Elizabeth M. Geffen, “Violence in Philadelphia in the 1840s and 1850s,” in Roger Lane and John J. Turner Jr., eds., Riot, Rout, and Tumult: Readings in American Social and Political Violence (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), 113.
17. I first described early Mormonism as “a Culture of Violence” in The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1997), 241.
18. Alma R. Blair, “The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints: Moderate Mormonism,” in F. Mark McKiernan, Blair, and Paul M. Edwards, eds., The Restoration Movement: Essays on the Mormon Past (Lawrence, KS: Coronado Press, 1973), 207-30; Paul M. Edwards, Our Legacy of Faith: A Brief History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1991); Richard P. Howard, The Church Through the Years, Volume 1 (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1992). In 2001 the RLDS Church officially changed its name to Community of Christ, which defines itself as one of the “Peace Churches.”
19. For example, in his Internet article, “Militias and Mormon Culture??” (at www.jefflindsay.com/militias.shtml, accessed on 3 March 2011), Jeff Lindsay wrote: “In Utah, I knew of very few Mormons who owned guns … I honestly don’t recall ever seeing a gun during my years living in that state … The Church teaches its members across the world to find peaceful, legal, orderly solutions to problems, even when those problems might be bad laws or oppressive governments.” In the middle of discussing Mormon history from Joseph Smith (including the Missouri “Danites”) to pioneer Utah, Lindsay exclaimed: “Violence is not part of Mormon culture!”
20. As examples of the official endorsement by LDS headquarters of violence against newspaper reporters, LDS dissenters, unfriendly non-Mormons, and federal officials until 1890, see the following articles in newspapers published by LDS headquarters, Deseret News (the LDS Church’s official newspaper since 1850) and Salt Lake Herald (the official newspaper of the LDS Church’s political party, The People’s Party, from 1872 to 1891): “The Killing of Brassfield,” Deseret News [weekly], 12 April 1866, 148 (reported that the murder of a non-Mormon was due to a “general feeling of just indignation” that he had legally married a Mormon’s polygamous wife and attempted to adopt her children legally); “What Is a Riot?” Deseret Evening News, 19 August 1874, [3]; “`Take That You Handsome Son of a Bitch’: Jerome B. Stillson, the New York Herald `Commissioner’ Attacked–In a Horn,” Salt Lake Herald, 1 June 1877, [3]; “Investigation of the Assassination Fabrication, Deseret Evening News, 2 June 1877, [3]; “He Survives–The Improbable Story Going to Grass: Who Has Seen a Black Goatee With a Tall Gentleman Attached To It: Stillson the Laughing Stock of Salt Lakers,” Salt Lake Herald, 3 June 1877, [3]; “A Tribune Editor Assaulted,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 14 November 1878, [3]; “Assault and Battery,” Deseret Evening News, 14 November 1878, [3]; “Retaliation” and “Another Whipping Affair,” Deseret Evening News, 6 August 1879, [2, 3]; “The Whipping Case,” Deseret Evening News, 8 August 1879, [3]; “CHASTENED. The `Tribune’ Local Editor Soundly Thrashed. THE PENALTY OF LYING,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 1 November 1884, 9; “A REPORTER RAWHIDED. ENCOUNTER BETWEEN A RESPECTABLE CITIZEN AND A `TRIBUNE’ REPORTER,” Deseret Evening News, 10 November 1884, [3]; “A HAMMERED`HERO.’ A `TRIBUNE’ REPORTER COMES TO GRIEF,” Deseret Evening News, 8 December 1884, [3]; “A BLISSFUL LOT. Another of the `Tribune’ Crew Rewarded. A TROUNCING WELL MERITED,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 9 December 1884, [2]; “Punishment for Scandal-Mongers,” Deseret Evening News, 12 December 1884, [2]; “MALICIOUS ACCUSATIONS,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 16 September 1885, 4; “VARIAN TAKES A HAND: After Deputy [Andrew J.] Burt for Mauling [non-LDS] Deputy Collin … Burt is Fined $25 in the Police Court but Varian Wants Him Given an Extra Dose,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 12 November 1885, 8; “The Collin Examination: M’Murrin Not the Only Witness Missing … M’Niece Says There Was a Plot to Assassinate,” Deseret Evening News, 23 January 1886, [5]; “The Collin Case: Is Collin or McMurrin the Defendant?” Salt Lake Herald, 25 January 1886, 12; “McMurrin,” Salt Lake Herald, 26 January 1886, 4; “AN UNFORTUNATE OCCURRENCE: District Attorney Dickson Assaulted by a 16-year-old Boy in the Continental Hotel–a Reprehensible Action … THE FEAR THAT HAUNTS AN F.O.H. [Federal Office Holder] WHEN HE THINKS A `MORMON’ IS LOOKING AT HIM,” Deseret Evening News, 23 February 1886, [3]; “THE ASSAULT ON DICKSON: Hugh [J.] Cannon Pleads Guilty, and Is Fined,” Deseret Evening News, 24 February 1886, [3]; “Blood Flows From a `Tribune’ Liar’s [Reporter’s] Nose,” Deseret Evening News, 10 March 1886, [3]; “THRASHING A REPORTER. Don Carlos Young Remodels the Phiz [sic] of C.T. Harte to Suit His Fancy,” Salt Lake Daily Herald, 11 March 1886, 8; “The Battery Case,” Deseret Evening News, 11 March 1886, [3]; “The Cannon Boys: Frank J. Cannon Shoulders the Blame–The Others Discharged,” Salt Lake Herald, 2 May 1886, 1; “A Just Verdict,” Deseret Evening News, 11 May 1889, [2] (editorial applauding the acquittal of Howard O. Spencer for first degree murder of Sgt. Pike who “richly deserved his fate”); “The Usual Dish of Sensations,” Deseret Evening News, 22 November 1889, [2] (LDS headquarters’ last condemnation of investigation by non-LDS officials of religiously motivated killings by Mormons).
21. Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher, rev. ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 53; David Hackett Fischer, Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper Torchbooks/Harper & Row, 1970), 135-40; Paul K. Conkin and Roland N. Stromberg, Heritage and Challenge: The History and Theory of History (Wheeling, IL: Forum Press, 1989), 204.
22. Richard Lyman Bushman “with the assistance of Jed Woodworth,” Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 295. Their source-notes for this discussion did not mention the 2002 version of my essay on this topic, but their bibliography (page 704) cited it.
23. Truman Coe, “Mormonism,” The Ohio Observer, 11 August 1836, page 82 (near end of long, first paragraph), original in Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Recent transcriptions of the original sometimes inaccurately lowercase “Prophet,” as in Milton V. Backman Jr., “Truman Coe’s 1836 Description of Mormonism,” BYU Studies 17 (Spring 1977): 352.
24. In fact, that is what Jeff Lindsay did in his Internet article, “Militias and Mormon Culture??”
25. Although there is a regional emphasis on the South in much of the literature about the code of male honor in early America, it was a national phenomenon, as indicated in the previously cited studies by Brown (R.M.), Courtwright, Hartog, Ireland, Kaplan, Lombard, Martin, Moore, Stevens, and Van Trump/Cannon. For cross-cultural studies of the usually violent dimensions of male honor, see Donna T. Andrew, “The Code of Honour and Its Critics: The Opposition to Duelling in England, 1700-1850,” Social History 5 (October 1980): 409-34; Robert A. Nye, Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Kevin McAleer, Dueling: The Cult of Honor in Fin-de-Siecle Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); Robert A. Nye, “The Modern Duel and Masculinity in Comparative Perspective,” Masculinities 3 (Fall 1995): 69-79; Elizabeth Foyster, “Male Honour, Social Control and Wife Beating in Late Stuart England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6 (1996): 215-24; Petrus Cornelius Spierenburg, ed., Men and Violence: Gender, Honor, and Rituals in Modern Europe and America (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998); Elizabeth Foyster, “Boys Will Be Boys?: Manhood and Aggression, 1600-1800,” in Tim Hitchcock and Michele Cohen, eds., English Masculinities, 1660-1800 (London: Longman, 1999), 151-66; Thomas W. Gallant, “Honor, Masculinity, and Ritual Knife Fighting in Nineteenth-Century Greece,” American Historical Review 105 (April 2000): 359-82.
26. Joseph Smith diary, 21 February 1843, in Joseph Smith Jr., et al., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1902-32; 2nd ed. rev. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978], hereafter History of the Church), 5: 285 (“till he said he had enough”); Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1987), 310 (“till he said enough”). This would have appeared in the never-published third volume of Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith, 2 vols., with a different subtitle for each volume (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1989-92).
27. Joseph Smith diary, 1 January 1843, in Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 267.
28. History of the Church, 5: 216; also Rodger I. Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1990).
29. History of the Church, 1: 261-65; Max H. Parkin, “A Study of the Nature and Cause of Internal and External Conflict of the Mormons In Ohio Between 1830 and 1838,” M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1966, 248-55; Donna Hill, Joseph Smith: The First Mormon (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 144-47; Susan Easton Black, “Hiram, Ohio: Tribulation,” in Larry C. Porter and Black, eds., The Prophet Joseph: Essays On the Life and Mission of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1988), 161-74; Karl Ricks Anderson, “Hiram, Ohio,” in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia of Mormonism: The History, Scripture, Doctrine, and Procedure of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 2: 588; Blaine Yorgason and Brent Yorgason, Joseph Smith: Tarred and Feathered (Orem, UT: Grandin Books, 1994). History of the Church, 1: 261n, explained that Rider apostatized because a revelation misspelled his name, but this official LDS account ironically misspelled both the first and last names of “SYMONDS RIDER,” as he signed his name in bold-face in a letter to the editor condemning the Mormons, in Ohio Star (Ravenna, OH), 29 December 1831.
30. D. Elton Trueblood, Studies in Quaker Pacifism (Philadelphia: Friends Peace Committee, 1934); Peter Brock, The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1660 to 1914 (York, Eng.: Sessions Book Trust; Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
31. History of the Church, 1: 390-95; Richard L. Bushman, “Mormon Persecutions in Missouri, 1833,” BYU Studies 3 (Autumn 1960): 11-20; Warren A. Jennings, “Zion is Fled: The Expulsion of the Mormons from Jackson County, Missouri,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida, 1962; Warren A. Jennings, “Factors in the Destruction of the Mormon Press in Missouri, 1833,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (Winter 1967): 57-76; Warren A. Jennings, “The Expulsion of the Mormons from Jackson County, Missouri,” Missouri Historical Review 64 (October 1969): 41-63; T. Edgar Lyon, “Independence, Missouri, and the Mormons, 1827-1833,” BYU Studies 13 (Autumn 1972): 10-19; Warren A. Jennings, “The City in the Garden: Social Conflict in Jackson County, Missouri,” in F. McKiernan, Blair, and Edwards, Restoration Movement, 99-119; Ronald E. Romig and John H. Siebert, “Jackson County, 1831-1833: A Look at the Development of Zion,” Restoration Studies 3 (1986): 286-304; Church History in the Fulness of Times (Salt Lake City: Church Educational System, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989), 127-39; Ronald E. Romig and John H. Siebert, “First Impressions: The Independence, Missouri, Printing Operation, 1832-1833,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 10 (1990): 51-66; James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1992), 94-95; Robert J. Woodford, “Book of Commandments,” Clark V. Johnson, “LDS Communities in Jackson and Clay Counties,” Max H. Parkin, “Missouri Conflict,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1: 138, 2: 922-25, 927-28.
32. John Corrill, A Brief History of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints, (Commonly Called Mormons;) … With the Reasons for the Author for Leaving the Church (St. Louis: By the author, 1839), 19.
33. The best work on this idea/theology during Joseph Smith’s lifetime is Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993). For the continued legacy of Smith’s statements, the disappointed expectations of his followers, and the institutional redefinitions by the LDS Church (headquartered in Salt Lake City), see Dan Erickson, As a Thief in the Night: The Mormon Quest For Millennial Deliverance (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998).
34. For the full text, context, and implications of this 1833 revelation, see my The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books/Smith Research Associates, 1994), 80-84. Nevertheless, as I discuss on its page 111, early Mormon pamphleteering and editorials continued to describe theocracy as a distant, millennial circumstance until Smith changed the emphasis both publicly and privately in 1842.
35. Note 31; History of the Church, 1: 407, 410-15, 423-31; Howard H. Barron, Orson Hyde: Missionary, Apostle, Colonizer (Bountiful, UT: Horizon Publishers, 1977), 42-43; also B. Pixley’s different perspective about this Mormon “ambuscade” in his letter to editors of New York Observer, 7 November 1833, in William Mulder and A. Russell Mortensen, eds., Among the Mormons: Historic Accounts by Contemporary Observers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), 81-83.
William G. Hartley, My Best For the Kingdom: History and Autobiography of John Lowe Butler, A Mormon Frontiersman (Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1994), 44-45, also interpreted the military provisions of the 1833 revelation in a cumulative manner. However, he offered a lengthier time frame: “… Saints probably counted the expulsion from Jackson [in 1833] as one provocation and the force departure from Clay County [in 1836] as a second. Persecutions in Kirtland and its collapse [in late 1837] might have been seen as a third offense. Expected abuses of Saints in northern Missouri [in mid-1838] could easily run the count up past four.” To the contrary, as indicated in my discussion to follow, an 1834 revelation and commandment verified that the three-fold restraints of the 1833 revelation had been fulfilled and no longer applied.
36. B.F. Norris to Mark Norris, 6 January 1834, Mark Norris papers, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan.
37. History of the Church, 1: 493, 263; Warren A. Jennings, “The Army of Israel Marches Into Missouri,” Missouri Historical Review 62 (January 1968): 107-35; Roger D. Launius, Zion’s Camp: Expedition to Missouri (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1984); Lance D. Chase, “Zion’s Camp,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4: 1627-29; Bruce A. Van Orden, “Zion’s Camp: A Refiner’s Fire,” in Porter and Black, The Prophet Joseph, 192-207.
38. History of the Church, 2: 39.
39. History of the Church, 2: 88 (referring to 12 June 1834).
40. History of the Church, 2: 39, 180-86, 201-04.
41. Nicholas Lockyer, Christ’s Communion With His Church Militant … (London: John Rothwell, 1644); William Tilson Marsh, The Tabernacle and the Temple, or, The Church Militant, and the Church Triumphant … (London: Hatchard; Birmingham: J.M. Knott; Colchester, Eng.: Taylor, 1839); Hymns of the Church Militant (New York: R. Carter, 1858).
42. Joseph Smith diary, 1 January 1843, in Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 267; History of the Church, 5: 216, deleted this entry; see Note 26, last sentence. Luke S. Johnson served as Kirtland’s constable from April 1834 to April 1835, and not again until the last week of December 1837. The latter period would have been too late for this incident due to Smith’s own hasty retreat from Ohio in January 1838. See Kirtland Township Trustees minutes (1817-38), 123-24 (7 April 1834), 135 (6 April 1835), 161 (23 December 1837), Lake County Historical Society, Mentor, Ohio.
43. “History of Luke Johnson,” Latter-Day Saints Millennial Star 27 (1865): 5, with transcription in Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, comps., They Knew the Prophet (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1974), 31.
44. Calvin W. Stoddard v. Joseph Smith Junior (based on an original complaint by Grandison Newell), court documents (21 April, 7 May 1835), Janes Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California; State of Ohio v. Joseph Smith Jr., Book Q, 497-98 (16 June 1835), Court of Common Pleas records, Geauga County courthouse, Chardon, Ohio. From 1827 to his death in 1836, Stoddard was married to Joseph’s older sister Sophronia Smith (b. 1803).
According to Ohio law at this time, a criminal case (“State of Ohio versus”) could be instituted by a citizen’s complaint against the defendant for criminal behavior (“Calvin W. Stoddard versus”), which in turn could begin with an original complaint by a third party (in this case, Grandison Newell) on behalf of the battered plaintiff. It is unclear, at least to me, whether the court costs were assessed against Stoddard (for allowing the criminal complaint to proceed to trial concerning the charge of battery against himself, the plaintiff) or were assessed against Newell (the original complainant who began the court proceedings).
45. Origins of Power, 594-95; Irene M. Bates and E. Gary Smith, Lost Legacy: The Mormon Office of Presiding Patriarch (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 74.
46. History of the Church, 2: 295, 335; Joseph Smith diary, 29 October and 16 December 1835, in Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 43, 79; Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 59, 107; Dean C. Jessee, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839 (Salt Lake City: The Church Historian’s Press/Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2008), 77, 124.
47. “Benjamin F. Johnson to George S. Gibbs, April-October 1903,” in E. Dale LeBaron, Benjamin Franklin Johnson: Friend to the Prophets (Provo, UT: Grandin Book Company, 1997), 221.
48. Warren Parrish letter, 5 February 1838, with signed endorsement by Apostles Luke S. Johnson and John F. Boynton, and by Seventy’s Presidents Sylvester Smith and Leonard Rich, published in Painesville Republican (Painesville, OH), 15 February 1838.
49. Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saints Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News/Andrew Jenson Historical, 1901-36), 3: 577; Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1830-1972), 31 May 1879, 246 reels, microfilm, Special Collections, Marriott Library, with original in Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; Lester E. Bush Jr., “Mormonism’s Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8 (Spring 1973): 16-21; Newell G. Bringhurst, “Elijah Abel and the Changing Status of Blacks Within Mormonism,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Summer 1979): 23-36; Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 37-38; entry for Mormons,” in Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West, eds., Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 5 vols. (New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA/Simon & Schuster, 1996), 4: 1854-55.
50. Last accusation against Elijah Abel by Jedediah M. Grant, which “was substantiated by the written testimony of elder Zenas H. Gurley,” in First Council of Seventy’s minute book (1835-43), 81-82 (1 June 1839), Archives, Church History Library (hereafter cited as LDS Archives), with complete transcription currently available to the public in D. Michael Quinn’s research files, Beinecke Library. This meeting (in fact, the entire day) is absent from History of the Church.
For Grant, see Gene A. Sessions, Mormon Thunder: A Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). For Gurley, see Clare D. Vlahos, “The Challenge to Centralized Power: Zenos H. Gurley, Jr. and the Prophetic Office,” Courage: A Journal of History, Thought and Action 1 (March 1971): 148-58. Gurley’s first name has been spelled both “Zenas” and “Zenos,” but I used the spelling I found in most manuscripts and original sources.
51. Joseph Smith diary, 24 September 1835, in Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 35; Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 41-42; Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839, 64. There are slight variations in these transcriptions.
52. History of the Church, 2: 282. Deseret News 1993-1994 Church Almanac (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1992), 396, shows 8,835 total members in 1835, with 7,500 located in the two stakes of the Church (one in Ohio and one in Missouri). More recent almanacs do not separate stake membership from the total LDS membership of 8,835 in 1835.
53. F. Mark McKiernan and Roger D. Launius, eds., An Early Latter Day Saint History: The Book of John Whitmer (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1984), 151 (hereafter cited as The Book of John Whitmer); also Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 42n2.
54. For example, Letter From the Secretary of War, Transmitting a List of the Names of the Clerks Employed in the War Department, During the Year 1820; and the Compensation Allowed To Each … (Washington, D.C.: War Department, 1821), which was a peace-time publication. During the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union after 1945, the U.S. government officially changed these terms to “Secretary of Defense” and “Department of Defense.”
55. Marvin S. Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 53.
56. “Another Mormon Invasion,” Daily Missouri Republican (St. Louis, MO), 17 May 1836, referring to “letters from Kirtland, Ohio have been received here by the last mail from persons of undoubted veracity …”
57. “Petition of Joseph Smith Jr. to Ariel Hanson,” 7 November 1836, Lake County Historical Society. The signers (showing those with verified membership in the Mormon paramilitary Danites in 1838) were LDS First Presidency members Joseph Smith (Danite), Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon (Danite), Frederick G. Williams, and John Smith (Danite), Apostles Brigham Young, William Smith, and Parley P. Pratt (Danite), Seventy’s Presidents Joseph Young, Zebedee Coltrin, Lyman R. Sherman, and Leonard Rich. Re-arranged in alphabetical order with corrected spellings of names, the other signers were: Solomon Angell, Loren W. Babbitt, Edson Barney, Royal Barney Jr., Isaac H. Bishop, Roswell Blood, Edmund Bosley, Norman Buell, Jacob Bump, Horace Burgess, Reynolds Cahoon (Danite), William F. Cahoon, James M. Carroll, Jared Carter (Danite), Hiram Clark (Danite), Marcellus F. Cowdery, Warren A. Cowdery, William Cowdery, John Davidson, Lysander M. Davis, Maleum C. Davis, David Dort, Bechias Dustin, Sterry Fisk, Solomon Freeman, George W. Gee (Danite), John P. Greene (Danite), John Gribble, S[elah] J. Gri[ffin], Isaiah Harvey, Nathan Haskins, Jonathan H. Holmes, Vinson Knight (Danite), Lorenzo L. Lewis, Garland W. Meeks, Artemus Millet, Roger Orton, Ebenezer Page (Danite), John D. Parker, Burton H. Phelps, William D. Pratt, David H. Redfield, John Reed, Ezekiel Rider, Ebenezer Robinson (Danite), Peter Shirts, Asael Smith, Don C. Smith, George A. Smith (Danite), Samuel H. Smith (Danite), Harvey Stanley, Christopher Stillwell, Hyrum Stratton, Ezra Strong, Benjamin Sweat, Chauncy G. Webb, Edwin Webb, Joseph Willard, and Willard Woodstock.
58. McKiernan and Launius, The Book of John Whitmer, 161.
59. Painesville Telegraph (Painesville, OH), 9 June 1837; also Grandison Newell v. Joseph Smith Junior, Court of Common Pleas records, Book T, 52-53 (5 June 1837), Geauga County; Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 55-56, 384n17; and brief discussions of the case in B.H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: “By the Church,” 1930), 1: 405; in Max H. Parkin, “Mormon Political Involvement in Ohio,” BYU Studies 9 (Summer 1969): 500; and in Bushman “with” Woodworth, Rough Stone Rolling, 337.
60. Donald Q. Cannon and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., Far West Record: Minutes of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1844 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1983), 167 (for April 1838 testimony about the investigations “last fall”), 171n18 (for Fanny Alger); Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 37-38 (which gives the incorrect date of “the summer of 1837” for Patten’s inquiry).
61. Brigham Young statement to apostles in Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff’s Journal: 1833-1898 Typescript, 9 vols. (Midvale, UT: Signature Books, 1983-85), 5: 63 (25 June 1857). Young accurately dated this incident as occurring “in the fall of 1837.” See Note 60 for the date.
Young said that he was less severe with other Mormons than the founding prophet was. See Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London and Liverpool: Latter Day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854-86), 8: 317-18.
62. LeBaron, Benjamin Franklin Johnson, 221.
63. History of the Church, 2: 484-93, 508-12, 529; Mary Fielding Smith letters to Mercy R. Fielding Thompson, July-October 1837, in Kenneth W. Godfrey, Audrey M. Godfrey, and Jill Mulvay Derr, eds., Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982), 60-68; Robert Kent Fielding, “The Growth of the Mormon Church In Kirtland, Ohio,” Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1957, 245-64; Parkin, “Study of the Nature and Causes of External and Internal Conflict of the Mormons in Ohio Between 1830 and 1838,” esp. 309-17; Davis Bitton, “The Waning of Mormon Kirtland,” BYU Studies 12 (Summer 1972): 455-64; Marvin S. Hill, “Cultural Crisis in the Mormon Kingdom: A Reconsideration of the Causes of Kirtland Dissent,” Church History 49 (September 1980): 286-97; Milton V. Backman Jr., The Heavens Resound: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Ohio, 1830-1838 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1983), 310-41; Karl Ricks Anderson, Joseph Smith’s Kirtland: Eyewitness Accounts (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1989), 193-223; Church History in the Fulness of Times, 169-80; Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 106-28; Hill, Quest For Refuge, 55-80; Milton V. Backman Jr. and Ronald K. Esplin, “History of the Church: 1831-1844,” and Backman, “Kirtland,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 2: 609-10, 797; Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, 117-25; Origins of Power, 61-62.
64. Hill, Quest for Refuge, 70. In view of that assessment by Marvin S. Hill in 1989, I was mystified by his rejection in Sunstone (November 1997) of my analysis of early Mormonism’s culture of violence as presented in Extensions of Power.
65. Francis M. Gibbons, Joseph Smith: Martyr, Prophet of God (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1977), 228-29; Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 65. Hill, Joseph Smith, gave the traditional account (223-24) that Smith was unaware of the Danites and quickly repudiated them, but she concluded (225) that he had at least peripheral involvement with the Danites and gave approval of their early activities.
66. William Swartzell (a Danite) daily journal, 14 July 1838, in his Mormonism Exposed, Being a Journal of a Residence in Missouri From the 28th of May to the 20th of August, 1838 (Pekin, OH: A. Ingram Jr., Printer, 1840), 18.
67. Dean C. Jessee and David J. Whittaker, “The Last Months of Mormonism in Missouri: The Albert Perry Rockwood Journal,” BYU Studies 28 (Winter 1988): 23, as a slightly different version of Albert P. Rockwood to Luther Rockwood, 29 October 1838 (rather than 22 October, as in Jesse and Whittaker), Beinecke Library.
Nevertheless, as I discuss in Origins of Power, 111, until 1842, early Mormon pamphleteering and editorials did not discuss the Daniel prophecies as applying to the LDS Church at present, but instead discussed theocracy as a distant, millennial circumstance. Joseph Smith changed the emphasis both publicly and privately in 1842, thus introducing the Missouri Danite interpretation to the Church at large.
68. John Smith diary, 4 August, 1 September 1838, George A. Smith Family papers, Manuscripts Division, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; John E. Thompson, “A Chronology of Danite Meetings in Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri, July to September, 1838,” Restoration: News, Views, and History of the Latter Day Saint Movement 4 (January 1985): 11-14; Stephen C. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 38, 44.
Richard Lloyd Anderson, “Clarifications of Bogg’s [sic] `Order’ and Joseph Smith’s Constitutionalism,” in Arnold K. Garr and Clark V. Johnson, eds., Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: Missouri (Provo, UT: Department of Church History and Doctrine, Brigham Young University, 1994), 64, claimed that the “only official and contemporary” reference by LDS leaders to the Danites was a statement by George W. Robinson (“a Danite officer and Church recorder”) in Joseph Smith’s “Scriptory Book” (Anderson, 71n19, 80n147).
However, Anderson nowhere acknowledges that John Smith, an assistant counselor in the First Presidency and the prophet’s uncle, made repeated references of a positive or neutral nature to the Danites in his 1838 diary. This diary’s quotes about the Danites and “the Daughters of Zion” appeared on page 44 of LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War, which Anderson’s article was trying to refute. By linking “official” and “contemporary,” Anderson was able to legalistically exclude most of the first-hand Danite evidence he didn’t like. However, since he included the private diary of the LDS president, even Richard L. Anderson’s own rules of evidence should have required him to include the Danite references written in 1838 by the First Presidency’s assistant counselor, who was also serving as a stake president in Missouri.
69. Joseph Smith diary, 27 July 1838, in Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 35; Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 262; Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839, 293. This entry did not make it into the official History of the Church.
70. Times and Seasons 4 (15 July 1843): 271.
71. Ebenezer Robinson, “Items of Personal History of the Editor,” The Return 2 (February 1890): 217. Hartley, My Best For the Kingdom, 47, also observed: “Evidence indicates that President Rigdon knew about them and gave them his blessing.”
72. Anson Call statement to B.H. Roberts (an LDS general authority serving in the First Council of the Seventy) and John M. Whitaker (the Council’s secretary), 30 December 1885, typescript, 1, Whitaker file, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah; Corrill, Brief History, 30; Hartley, My Best For the Kingdom, 46; John E. Thompson, “The Far West Dissenters and the Gamblers at Vicksburg: An Examination of the Documentary Evidence and Historical Context of Sidney Rigdon’s Salt Sermon,” Restoration 5 (January 1986): 21-27.
73. Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons, 103-07.
74. Ebenezer Robinson, “Items of Personal History of the Editor,” The Return 1 (October 1889): 145-47, 2 (February 1890): 218-19.
75. Avard testimony in Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons, 102. Leland H. Gentry, “The Danite Band of 1838,” BYU Studies 14 (Summer 1974): 424n14, acknowledged Avard’s testimony, but noted that since Rigdon did not sign the ultimatum, “it is possible, therefore, that Avard drew up the document himself.” Likewise, Church History in the Fulness of Times, 191, described this as “an unauthorized document … signed by eighty-four Church members, and it pointedly ordered the apostates to leave the county or face serious consequences.” However, “unauthorized” hardly fits a document which was signed by an assistant counselor in the First Presidency and by Second Counselor Hyrum Smith, brother of the Church President. Gentry did not list any of the signers except Avard, but suggested (425): “It is possible that the document was … presented for signing at one or more Danite meetings.”
76. Some have viewed the Danite organization as formed in June 1838 for the sole purpose of opposing a handful of LDS dissenters, whose intimidation was unquestionably its first action. Although its blood-oath enforced internal loyalty, its constitution provided for military titles, structure, and chain-of-command. This indicates that large-scale military activities were paramount for its intended use from the very beginning of the Danite organization, not an afterthought following the expulsion of the dissenters. For the Danite constitution, see Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons, 102.
77. Joseph Smith diary, 27 July 1838, in Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 262; with differences in the printed transcriptions of Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 187, and of Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839, 293. This entry did not make it into the official History of the Church.
78. Joseph Smith diary, 4 July 1838, in Jessee, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2: 249 (for quote), 249n1 (noting that “`June’ [was] penciled sideways in the margin opposite these lines,” which were otherwise dated as 4 July 1838; also Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 187; Jessee, Ashurst-McGee, and Jensen, Joseph Smith Papers: Journals, Volume 1: 1832-1839, 278; Hartley, My Best For the Kingdom, 46. This entry did not make it into the official History of the Church.
79. McKiernan and Launius, The Book of John Whitmer, 165.
80. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 46. In confirmation of just how mainstream one LDS apologist regards this 1838 death threat against Mormon dissenters, Anderson, “Clarifications of Bogg’s [sic] `Order’ and Joseph Smith’s Constitutionalism,” 63, stated: “Like many responsible contemporaries, Joseph Smith experimented with prior restraint of defamation in times of danger. But the flight of the Cowdery-Whitmer group is an exception in Joseph Smith’s policy of full rights for Mormons and neighbors.”
81. Leland H. Gentry, “A History of the Latter-day Saints In Northern Missouri From 1836 to 1839,” Ph.D. dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1965, 171. However, despite the Mormon paranoia of 1838, the following is an overstatement by Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 126: “The banishment of the dissenters initiated a veritable reign of terror against those who might doubt the wisdom of Church policy.”
82. Orson Hyde letter, 21 October 1844, in LDS newspaper Nauvoo Neighbor (edited by Apostle John Taylor in Nauvoo, IL), 4 December 1844. Although LDS headquarters intended Hyde’s letter to attack the character of Rigdon, who had been recently excommunicated for opposing the 1844 succession claims of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Hyde’s letter also verified the First Presidency’s 1838 authorization of theocratic killings.
83. Benjamin Slade testimony (November 1838) about Rigdon’s statement the previous month, in Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons, 143. For Slade as a loyal Mormon in Nauvoo and Utah, see his entry in Susan Ward Easton Black, Membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1848, 50 vols. (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1984-88), 40: 539-40.
84. Oration Delivered by Mr. S. Rigdon on the 4th of July 1838 (Far West, MO: Elder’s Journal Office, 1838), 12, as the only quote from this document in Church History in the Fulness of Times, 92. A photographic reprint of the oration is in Peter Crawley, “Two Rare Missouri Documents,” BYU Studies 14 (Summer 1974): 517-27.
85. Elder’s Journal 1 (August 1838): 54.
86. John L. Butler reminiscence, in Journal History, 6 August 1838, page 3; also John L. Butler, history and autobiography, typescript, 16-17, Lee Library.
87. History of the Church, 3: 56-58; Church History in the Fulness of Times, 193-210; Reed C. Durham, “The Election Day Battle At Gallatin,” BYU Studies 13 (Autumn 1972): 36-61; LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 58-64.
88. Hartley, My Best For the Kingdom, 69, 42. He referred to the post office mentioned by Philip Covington, justice of the peace for Daviess County, affidavit, 22 September 1838, and to the treasurer’s office in William P. Peniston’s affidavit, 21 October 1838, both in Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons, 43-44.
89. Hartley, My Best For the Kingdom, 42.
90. Luman A. Shurtliff manuscript autobiography (1807-51), 120, 122, 125 (for August 1838), LDS Archives, also typescript at Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. A written revelation of 8 July 1838 had appointed John Taylor as an apostle. (Doctrine and Covenants 118: 1, 6)
In Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons … (Fayette, MO: Boon’s Lick Democrat, 1841), 98, Sampson Avard, the Danite leader at Far West, testified: “As for Joseph Smith, jr., and his two counsellors, the witness does not know that they ever took the Danite oath.” This indicates that Smith was not initiated at Far West, and instead the prophet undoubtedly received his Danite initiation from Lyman Wight. Wight was the Danite leader at Adam-ondi-Ahman, the second largest organization of Danites. There was a certain symmetry in this, since Smith had ordained Wight as the Church’s first high priest in 1831, and Wight in turn had ordained Smith as a high priest. Three years later Smith secretly ordained Wight “to the office of Benamey [“Baneemy”] in the presence of an angel.” See History of the Church, 1: 176n; Cannon and Cook, Far West Record, 67; Lyman Wight to Cooper and Chidester, editors of the Strangite newspaper Northern Islander, July 1855, in Wight letterbook, 23, Archives of The Community of Christ (formerly The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), Independence, Missouri.
91. I acknowledge the possibility, as Todd Compton has argued, that sentry Shurtliff might have given a temporary military password, military sign, and military countersign (which changed nightly by conventional practice) to Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith on the night Shurtliff’s autobiography described, rather than the permanent codes given to initiated Danites. Compton acknowledges it only as “a good chance that it may have been a Danite sign and password.” He elaborated this in “Joseph Smith and the Danites,” paper delivered at Sunstone Symposium, Salt Lake City, 6 August 2010, to be published as an appendix in Leland H. Gentry and Todd M. Compton, Fire and Sword: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri, 1836-39 (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, forthcoming).
However, in my view, there is almost no probability that Shurtliff gave non-Danite signals to the two Smiths in August 1838, in view of (1) the manifold evidences of their close involvement with the Danite activities since June 1838, (2) Shurtliff’s expressed eagerness to give Danite signals to other Danites, and (3) the fact that Shurtliff recognized the approaching men as Joseph and Hyrum before he gave the signals.
92. Justus Morse affidavit, 23 March 1887, LDS Archives, with complete transcription in folder 3, box 22, H. Michael Marquardt papers, Marriott Library; History of the Church, 5: 302, 6: 337, for Morse’s continued association with Smith. Closer to the events of 1838, dissident Mormons and former Danite officers Sampson Avard and Reed Peck described Smith’s similar encouragement to plunder Missourians in Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c In Relation to the Disturbances With the Mormons, 98, 117.
93. Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review (Independence, MO: Zion’s Printing & Publishing Co., 1947), 39.
94. Oliver B. Huntington manuscript autobiography, book 1, 37-38 (1838), Lee Library; LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 119, 136.
95. LeBaron, Benjamin Franklin Johnson, 222.
96. Nathan Tanner reminiscence, in George S. Tanner, John Tanner and His Family (Salt Lake City: John Tanner Family Association/Publishers Press, 1974), 386.
97. Indictment of Parley P. Pratt for murder of Moses Rowland, filed 2 April 1839, Boone County Circuit Court Records, Case 1379, folder 17, Western Historical Manuscripts Collection, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri; John D. Lee autobiography in Mormonism Unveiled: or the Life and Confessions of the Mormon Bishop, John D. Lee (St. Louis: Bryan, Brand & Co., 1877), 73; also Reed Peck’s similar description of acts by the unnamed Parley P. Pratt, a “cold hearted villain (I know him well),” in Reed Peck manuscript, 18 September 1839, pages 99-100, Huntington Library.
98. James H. Hunt, Mormonism … Their Troubles In Missouri and Final Expulsion From the State (St. Louis: Ustick & Davies, 1844), 190-91. Although he did not acknowledge that Tarwater sustained these injuries after he was shot and lying unconscious on the ground, an assistant LDS Church historian gave a more gruesome description of his injuries, including “a terrible gash in the skull, through which his brain was plainly visible.” See Andrew Jenson, “Caldwell County, Missouri,” The Historical Record 8 (January 1888): 702; also Alexander L. Baugh, “The Battle Between Mormon and Missouri Militia at Crooked River,” in Garr and Johnson, Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History: Missouri, 93 (for discussion of Tarwater).
99. History of the Church, 3: 184-87, 326n, and 175 (for text of the governor’s extermination order; “A Heroine of Haun’s Mill Massacre,” in Heroines of “Mormondom,” the Second Book of the Noble Women’s Lives Series (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884), 86-96; “Exterminate or Expel Them!” and “Massacre at Haun’s Mill,” in Mulder and Mortensen, Among the Mormons, 102-06; Gentry, “History of the Latter-day Saints In Northern Missouri,” 430-66; “Alma R. Blair,” “The Haun’s Mill Massacre,” BYU Studies 13 (Autumn 1972): 62-67; Clark V. Johnson, “Missouri Persecutions: The Petition of Isaac Leany,” BYU Studies 23 (Winter 1983): 101-03; Clark V. Johnson, ed., Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833-1838 Missouri Conflict (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1992), 17-18, 28-31, 89-90, 274-76, 320-21, 408-09, 417-18, 440-41, 451-52, 477-78, 486-88, 490-91, 505-06, 637-39, 720-24; Alma R. Blair, “Haun’s Mill Massacre,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 2: 577. Traditional accounts misstate both the age and military experience of victim McBride. Born in 1776, he was too young to be a “veteran of the Revolution” (History of the Church, 3: 220n), which war ended in 1783. The Journal History for 30 October 1838 acknowledged that historical impossibility and suggested that McBride was a veteran of the War of 1812.
