John Bytheway:               00:00:03             Hello everyone and welcome to followHIM. We are continuing with our Voices of the Restoration lessons. Our topic here is Liberty Jail and we brought with us, as we always do, one of our voices of the continuing restoration. Who is Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, whom we love to have on here. Hank and I are both enrolled in the Dirk Moss Academy.

Hank Smith:                      00:00:25             Yes, we are.

John Bytheway:               00:00:26             We affectionately call it. A topic here is to me, when I was a kid, I thought that is the dumbest name for a jail ever. Liberty Jail. Today we’re gonna get some backstory. Hank, when you think Liberty Jail, what comes to mind?

Hank Smith:                      00:00:44             John, I’ve said this, every once in a while, in our years together, if Joseph Smith just gives us sections 121, 122, 123–he’s a prophet. Now, that’s one of hundreds of incredible sections of Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price. But there is something almost magical about these sections. I think of them as like 200 years before their time. How to win friends and influence people? Section 121. And then how do you get through dark times? Joseph goes from section 121 verse one, “O God, where art thou?” to section 123 verse 17, “let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power”. It’s a change that takes place because of what is taught. You don’t need to know the history of 121 through 123 to appreciate them, but when you know the history, and that’s what Gerrit’s gonna do today, it’s 3D. This comes out, the text changes.

John Bytheway:               00:01:42             I’m recalling one of the handcart pioneers that said we became acquainted with God in our extremities. This is one of those, the worst situation you can imagine. Like you said, Hank, these incredible words, thoughts, and ideas, and scripture come out of that place. I like what you said, Hank, about the history. I can’t think of anybody better than Gerrit to help us out here.

Hank Smith:                      00:02:08             I’m gonna get snug, get my popcorn and get ready to learn.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:02:12             Get it ready. Yeah. Well, especially if you want me to cover history leading up to it. I mean, we could talk all day just about the revelation itself and just how powerful a teaching this is. And one of the reasons why people will refer to Liberty Jail as that Temple Prison, right? Because, Joseph certainly is going to reveal things that touch people’s hearts even today. I was actually in a conversation with someone, not terribly long ago. They expressed the opinion that they didn’t think that anything that wasn’t received as a dictated revelation from God should be considered scripture. It’s a pretty avant-garde position to take, but they’re trying to make the argument that unless the prophet is saying, here, I’m dictating revelation, and you get the paper out, you write it down. If you expand it beyond that, if you start saying that someone’s sermon should be scripture or that a proclamation should be scripture, you’re no longer doing what a revelation is.

                                           00:03:15             I said, well, if that were the case, then you’d lose a lot of sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. You’d lose Doctrine and Covenants, section 121, 22, and 23. You’d lose 127 and 128. You’d lose section 2 and Section 13. You’d lose a lot of things. In fact, you’d even lose section 109 of the Kirtland Temple Dedicatory Prayer. If that’s the argument you’re making. You’d also lose Section 137. So, I start listing off all these, they stop me like, oh, actually you don’t need to list anymore. As soon as you said Doctrine and Covenants 121, I agree with you, there are things that can be canonized that are not received the same way, because that revelation meant so much to them. It meant so much to them, that as soon as they realized that their position they’d staked out would cost them this revelation, they said, yeah, actually I changed my mind.

                                           00:04:12             I won’t lose 121 for anything so that I’m gonna stay with. It speaks to people both in their own difficulties and then also in the difficulties they see around them in the world, and in many ways gives us this insight into Joseph Smith as who he is when he’s going through something difficult as well. You know, when you say, let’s talk about some history of Missouri. I mean there’s, there’s a lot of things we could talk about. As a brief overview, the Saints are driven out of Jackson County. They live essentially as refugees in temporary settlements outside of the county in 1834 and 1835. Eventually, the Missouri legislature decides to try to take care of their Mormon problem. I mean, it really is kind of an embarrassment to Missouri, the fact that you have a whole bunch of residents of your state who’ve purchased property, some of it from the government, that are not being allowed to access the property that they bought on the basis of indiscriminate mob violence.

                                           00:05:27             So it’s not like the Latter-day Saints sold everything they had in Jackson County in 1834, when they’re violently driven out. They still own all of that land. They just don’t have the ability to access it because of armed violence. The Saints, of course, are continually petitioning the courts and the government. I think Missouri is one of the places where Joseph really learns that a corrupt local and state government can be just as or more tyrannical than any dictatorship on Earth. Because at the time, state governments had an awful lot of power. The federal government was limited in its power, especially prior to the American Civil War. And the idea of majority rules, the idea of democracy, that we tend to look at as a very, very positive thing, right up until you end up being a hated minority group. And if you’re a hated minority group, inside of a political entity like a state, or even a county, or even at a town level, it will always be more politically advantageous for politicians to further inspire hate of a hated minority group than it will be to defend them.

                                           00:06:58             You gain votes by saying, what are these Mormons doing? And you lose votes by saying, hey guys, what if we like didn’t drive them off their land and stuff? That’s not a way to win votes in 1834, Missouri, 1835. Joseph, I think, it’s here that he’s learning it writ large before. Look, they dealt with local oppression for sure. I mean, Colesville is persecuting Latter-Day Saints, but the state of New York isn’t persecuting Latter-Day Saints. Local corrupt individuals filing claims against them. They’re doing things. Lucy Harris is doing things in New York. The state of New York itself is not sending a militia to arrest Joseph Smith. It’s these little petty fiefdoms, the little local governments, that are exercising authority. And the same thing happens in Ohio. When the Saints arrive in Ohio, Iber Howe, the publisher of the first anti-Mormon book, the Mormonism Unveiled, the editor of the Painesville Telegraph, he brags about the fact that they undertook every legal means of driving the Mormons from their county.

                                           00:08:11             You can actually see this in the political record. You can see them deliberately trying to prevent Latter-day Saints from gaining voting rights, to prevent Latter-day Saints from exercising their local township rights. To give you an idea, prior to 1834, one Doctor Philastus Hurlbut…

Hank Smith:                      00:08:34             The good doctor.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:08:36             The good doctor, and by good we mean not a doctor at all.

John Bytheway:               00:08:40             He was born a doctor. That was his proper name.

                                           00:08:44             It was. You know, he’s excommunicated from the church for committing adultery while he is on his mission. Then he begs to get back into the church, gets back into the church, then is excommunicated almost immediately thereafter because he again, attempts to commit adultery. Then undertakes a speaking circuit, speaking out against the church, claiming that he’s some kind of insider. He has all kinds of inside information because he’s an elder in the Mormon church.

                                           00:09:08             Everyone’s like, oh, you mean you’re an adult man? But he claimed that he had this inside information. He’s going to actually take his rhetoric so far that he’s going to publicly call for Joseph Smith’s murder. And according to George A. Smith, he’s going to say, I’m gonna wash my hands in the blood of Joseph Smith. Well, that’s going to go to a court, it’s gonna go to a trial that Joseph Smith fears that Doctor Philastus Hurlbut will wound beat or kill him, is what the record says. The judge in a time when Latter-day Saints don’t win court cases, it’s bad enough that the judge actually sides with Joseph Smith and puts Doctor Philastus Hurlbut under a bond to keep the peace. Essentially, you have to put up a certain amount of money and if you make any more threats or if you violently attack Joseph or his family, you’re gonna lose his money. You know, as well as whatever criminal stuff goes on.

                                           00:10:04             After he’s essentially convicted of that, he’s publicly declaring that he wants to murder Joseph Smith. And he is publicly declaring it enough that a court in Ohio in 1834 says, yeah, that’s not okay. After the court says, yes, you were making death threats against Joseph, the town of Kirtland, elects him to a public office. Kinda gives you an idea of where local governments are in their attempt to persecute Latter-Day Saints using these local legal means. You have this happening all over Missouri, both on the local level, but then you also have it happening on county levels and on state levels because the state of Missouri actually has a problem. They have thousands of residents of their state that have been dispossessed violently that they don’t actually have any legal means of saying they can’t go to their homes. But you have no political will to actually marshal troops to go get them back to their homes, because then you lose the election.

                                           00:11:23             So, in 1836 Missouri does something that they think will help alleviate the problem. They take a portion of the state that is relatively uninhabited. They create a new county, in 1836, called Caldwell County. Now this county, it’s much more populated to the south of it, which is Clay County and it’s much more populated to the north of it, which is Daviess County and frankly, the land in Caldwell County. I apologize to anyone from Missouri listening who happens to live in Caldwell County, but since there’s like four people who live there now, I’m pretty sure they’re not listening.

Hank Smith:                      00:12:04             Besides the missionaries maybe, right?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:12:07             Well, look, there’s missionaries there. Yeah, but even most of them are in Adam-ondi-Ahman. So, I mean, even they’re in Daviess County, even they know to be in a different county. And look, if you’re looking for like a sandwich or something, you gotta go to Gallatin, you gotta go to Daviess County. Yeah, you’re not, you’re not getting anything in Caldwell County. But, the legislature establishes Caldwell County. For lack of a better term, the way they see it as a type of Latter-day Saint, or they would say Mormon, Indian reservation, meaning we’re gonna create a county for the Mormons to live in. I know it’s gonna come as a huge shock and a surprise to all of your listeners that they choose a county that’s not the best land and that isn’t very inhabited and say, oh yeah, the Mormons can have this. It’s stunning.

                                           00:12:54             It’s never happened before in American history that poor land was chosen for such things, but that’s what they do, and this is where Far West is going to be established. Now, the Saints actually embrace this because at least they now have somewhere they can go. Caldwell County’s established for the express purpose of settling Latter-Day Saints. All these saints that are refugees in Clay County, they now start moving to Far West and Far West will rapidly rise as a city. The Saints in Caldwell County, they are happy that they’re there, but as more and more saints start moving to Missouri, the land to the north in Daviess County, it’s much better land. It just is. There’s a lot of land in Caldwell County that it’s kind of swampy. It’s not drained very well. You can discover this if you go to Hans Mill today, and if you go to Hans Mill after it rained, you’re gonna know about it.

                                           00:13:52             It is mud.

Hank Smith:                      00:13:54             You’ll be calling a tow truck. Yeah.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:13:56             Yeah, you’re gonna be calling a tow truck. I mean, there are some nice parts and Far West is actually some of the best parts of Caldwell County, but it’s in the extreme western portion of the county. Much of the county is not that great for farming, whereas to the north and Daviess County, it’s really good land. It’s fertile, it’s great. Lyman Wight starts off by settling in Daviess County and he establishes a ferry across the Grand River. Because of that, you start having other Latter-day Saints that start to settle around there. You start having more and more Latter-day Saints settling in the Adam-ondi-Ahman area, especially after Joseph Smith received Revelation declaring, this is Adam-ondi-Ahman. In late 1837, and then especially in early 1838, you have more and more Latter-day Saints settling in Daviess County, not in Caldwell County.

                                           00:14:52             Now this is gonna precipitate a problem. As far as the Missourians are concerned, Caldwell County is where all Mormons should live. For the Latter-day Saints, for their part, they have this crazy idea we’ve talked about before that because they’re American citizens, they can live wherever they want. They start settling in other places. Now they’re happy, they have Far West, they’re happy they have this base of operation, but as they move to Missouri, they live wherever they want because it’s America and you can live wherever you want. Missourians on the other hand, are not okay with them exercising that right. Probably the best example of just blatant anti-Mormon antagonism in Missouri comes from a little town that you may not even know about, probably don’t talk about a whole lot. Your average church member doesn’t. And that is Dewitt. There’s a little town, Dewitt that’s on a bend in the Missouri River.

                                           00:16:04             It is not very close to these other Latter-day Saint settlements, and it’s in a much more populated county. It’s in Carroll County. What happens in 1837? The panic of 1837 destroys immigration to the west. I mean, in American history, when there’s an economic downturn, especially when it’s tied to land prices, you have this stopping of the movement West. Why? Well, how am I gonna move west? Well, I sell my farm in New York and I sell it for a certain amount of money, and then I move to Missouri and I buy five times the size of farm with the same amount of money. I mean, the same thing goes on in America today. If I live in San Diego and I’ve got a home on the beach, and that sounds pretty awesome, but if I did and I sold it, I could move to Idaho and probably buy a very substantial house with the same amount of money that I make.

                                           00:17:02             I’d buy way more land. I could buy a much bigger house. Think of that in terms of farming. We think about it in terms of housing, right? You know, if I live in California and I sell my house and I moved to Nebraska, I’m probably getting a better house. Similarly, if I live in Connecticut and I sell my well established 40-acre farm, I’m gonna sell it for a pretty high dollar value, but I’m gonna be able to take that money and I’m gonna be able to go to the frontier and I’m gonna be able to buy hundreds of acres with that money. Yeah, I’m gonna have to start from scratch and cut down trees, but I’ve increased the amount of acreage I have by hundreds with the same amount of money. What you need for that westward land movement to work is an where people have money to buy your house, buy your farm in Connecticut.

                                           00:17:54             Whenever these panics happen, suddenly your land’s not worth as much. You can’t sell it for what it’s worth. You can’t sell it for what you own it, so you no longer are moving. It happens in Missouri a great deal, and if you read Missouri newspapers, you’ll see them commenting on the fact that the flow of immigrants to Missouri slowed down because of the economic conditions. Latter-day Saint Immigration to Missouri doesn’t just continue during the panic of 1837. It actually increases. You have a lot of Latter-day Saints moving to Missouri. They’re not the only people moving, but relatively during this economic crisis, they are among some of the only people going there. And so if you’re a Missourian, what you feel is there are thousands of Mormons coming here, and there’s not really a whole lot of other people coming here because Mormons aren’t moving to Missouri because they want to live in Missouri.

                                           00:18:55             They’re moving to Missouri because God commanded them to move to Missouri. That’s a different type of immigration. It’s not, I’m going here for economic reasons. I’m going here to get a nice farm. I’m going here because God told me to go here. And, this really increases in January of 1838. So, in January of 1838, things have gotten so bad in Kirtland, the Kirtland Safety Society’s collapsed. You have multiple members of the Quorom of the 12 Apostles who’ve apostatized, you have going out of the church, if not all the way out yet, the three witnesses, many of the eight witnesses. It’s a really terrible time for Joseph and for the church. And eventually in January, Joseph Smith receives a revelation. This is not in the Doctrine and Covenants, you know, you’re gonna go try and find it, be like, I think Gerrit lied. But no, it really is a revelation Joseph Smith receives in January of 1838, that commands him and all of the faithful members that are still left in Kirtland to move to Missouri.

                                           00:20:02             After January of 1838, you have an increased flood. So, at a time when you have the lowest amount of immigration, when that, that economic crisis has really hit, so spring of 1838, nobody’s moving to Missouri except for thousands of Latter-day Saints that are moving there because they’re not moving there because they’ve heard there’s no mosquitoes or ticks. They’re moving there because God told them to go there. Well, where are they gonna go? Well, they’re gonna go places where their Latter-day Saints are already living. You have some settlements in Adam-ondi-Ahman that suddenly you have hundreds and then thousands moving. In Far West, you have thousands and then even more thousands that are coming. Dewitt, in Carroll County, is a great example where almost overnight hundreds of Latter-day Saints move to this county.

                                           00:21:00             Now, Carroll County’s quite populated. In the immediate moment, they are not really any threat politically to Carroll County. They don’t even make up 10% of the county. They are not a threat. They’re moving into this essentially failed community where no one was living and no one’s paying taxes. So you’d think that the residents of Carroll County, Missouri would be kind of happy, oh hey, at least we’re getting tax funds from this now. The exact opposite of that. Like I said, this is a great test example of how whatever the excuses we give for why there’s violence in Missouri, Dewitt demonstrates that all of them are pretty shallow. The residents of Carroll County almost immediately come to the Latter-day Saints and demand that they leave. Okay, well we bought this land. When the Latter-day Saints don’t leave, they start to undertake a terrorist campaign.

                                           00:21:58             They start randomly getting up on the hills outside of Dewitt and shooting guns into the town. So, if you’re walking around Dewitt, you know a bullet goes past you. As things start to get worse in Missouri with the other Missouri violence, these residents feel even more emboldened and they eventually tell them, we’re demanding that you leave. And they get a cannon and they put it up on the hill above the town and they tell the Latter-day Saints that if you don’t leave, we’re gonna start shelling the town with a cannon in these early stages of violence, in the Mormon War in Missouri, the governor tries to maintain order. And we talked about this with Jackson County, but lawlessness is terrifying to border state governors because the same lawlessness that allows Mormons to be driven out of town from lands that they legally purchased is the same type of lawlessness that could have them take you out of the state capital too.

                                           00:22:58             Once you say that there’s no rule of law, boy mob violence is scary to the frontier, because you don’t have the ability to put it down very well. You’re a thousand miles away from any other help from someone else. They try to tamp down difficulties if they can. What you find with Dewitt is just how egregious this is. The governor’s going to have a militia general march his troops to Dewitt to try to stop this violence. Well, that general will write back and say, I can’t stop this. When I try to order my troops to intervene, they go join the mob. When I ask them what are their grievances against the Mormons, why are they doing this? What’s the compromise that we can affect? Their answer is, they’ve done nothing to us. We just don’t want them living here. Well, that’s pretty hard to negotiate. It’s one thing to say like, Hey, you guys are taking more water rights than I thought we would.

                                           00:24:03             Let’s talk about, but when the answer is we don’t want you to exist. I mean, that’s a tough negotiating position. I guess, I guess we won’t, I mean, what are you supposed to say? The residents of Dewitt will write to Joseph Smith and say, well, what do we do? They’re threatening to shoot a cannon into our town. Joseph says, we can’t have people get killed. So, he just tells the Saints and Dewitt to evacuate, leave all their stuff, and leave all their land and move to Far West. When historians try to place there–where does the Mormon war in Missouri start? And the Mormon war is this conflict in 1838 that’s going to eventually lead to the Hans Mill massacre, to the extermination order, and to the imprisonment of Joseph, Hiram, and and others in Richmond and then Liberty Jail. This is the lead up to those events in counties, like Daviess County, where there’s a significant Latter-day Saint population that is moving in.

                                           00:25:15             Now, this is where Adam-ondi-Ahman is. If you’re a local politician, well, when the first several dozen Latter-day Saints show up, it’s very politically advantageous for you to simply become a vociferous anti-Mormon. To say, what are we doing letting these Mormon into our county? They shouldn’t be here. And that’s going to give you a lot of credibility. The problem with staking out an anti-Mormon position as a politician is if more and more Latter-day Saints keep moving to the place where you live, well they’re probably not going to vote for you. For some crazy reason, they’re not going to be voting for you if your entire political life is based upon hating them. So in Daviess County, things are becoming much, much more tense because as dozens and dozens and dozens more Latter-day Saints move there, all of the existing politicians, like Adam Black for instance. Adam Black is one of the people who factors prominently in the violence in the Mormon war.

                                           00:26:24             Well, he, in 1836, is already trying to run and lobby on an argument of keeping all Mormons out of Daviess County. Unsurprisingly, when Latter-day Saints moved to Daviess County, who’s someone they don’t like, well Black, because he hates us and is trying to keep us from the county. And it really comes to a head with the 1838 elections. Election day was very different back then than it is now. Most places had polling places set up in the county seat. So, look, if you think elections are difficult and expensive to run today, imagine back then where you don’t even have tax money really coming in very much for these local governments. How are you going to have polls all over the state? In most places, they don’t. In most places, everybody has to travel to the county seat of the county that they live in to cast a vote, obviously in person on each election day.

                                           00:27:31             That means that when election day comes around, every person living in the county is all going to the county seat. It turns election day–It sometimes can be almost like a fair like atmosphere. Because if you’re somebody hawking straw hats, you know when you’re gonna have a lot of customers. Think of your county fair now, but only this is on election day. You have everybody coming together to vote. There is oftentimes quite the distribution of hard liquors at these things and it becomes a kind of festive atmosphere because everybody’s getting together. They have to, in order to vote. The fact that everyone’s getting together means that there’s also a lot more opportunities for things to go south, because there’s a lot of people and a lot of personalities involved. In Gallatin, which is the county seat of Daviesss County, one of the men who’s running for a state office is a man by the name of William Peniston.

                                           00:28:39             Now Peniston, he has been vociferously anti-Mormon in his rhetoric, and he’s a whig politician. Most Latter-day Saints in Missouri, were Democrats. Now, if you’re a leader of the Democratic Party in Missouri, that sounds great. I’m excited that you’re here. Okay, come on in. But if you’re from the other political party, well, not only do I have a problem with these Latter-day Saints because they are Latter-day Saints, I also have a problem with these Latter-day Saints because they’re voting wrong. Now, again, this is a dark time in American history. Back then, people used to hate each other just for belonging to the wrong political party or voting the wrong way as someone perceived it. Today, it doesn’t happen. Today, no one ever hates anyone just on the basis of who they voted for. But back then, boy, you could have all kinds of hatred espoused simply because someone belonged to the wrong political party or voted for the wrong person for president.

                                           00:29:44             As the Latter-day Saints are moving in to Daviess County, this whig politician, William Peniston, he’s crunching the numbers because everybody’s getting together. They’re all coming together for these votes, and he can see in the distance this large Mormon contingent coming from Adam-ondi-Ahman and he’s well aware that if they go to that polling place that they’re not gonna vote for him. Not only is he an overt anti-Mormon, he’s also a whig and they’re Democrats, so he does the tried and true thing that you can do in American politics, when you think that you’re going to lose the election. That is, try to suppress votes. What he does is he tries to create a mob right there at the polling place. He gets on top of a cannon outside of the polling place. I have no idea why there’s a cannon outside of the polling place, but there is one he gets on top of a cannon.

                                           00:30:48             What a subtle reminder to the Latter-day Saints, especially if they’re in Dewitt. See this cannon?

Hank Smith:                      00:30:52             Remind you of anything?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:30:54             Yeah. Hmm, interesting. He gets on top of this cannon and he begins to harangue the local Missourians around him. Now, of course, some of these Missourians are Democrats. They probably do wanna see the Latter-day Saints vote because they don’t want Peniston to win, but there’s something. Partisan politics are very stark in the 1830s and the 1840s. I know that everyone today will say things like, we have never been more politically divided as a country. I’m like, well, we did have a Civil War. I don’t know if you–I get it that when you’re going through it, it feels like it’s the most divided it’s ever been, but also, we did have a Civil War. It always feels like it’s the worst ever, but it was very stark in the 1830s as well.

                                           00:31:48             I mean, there’s a reason why newspapers were called the Richmond Whig and the Illinois Democrat because they weren’t even trying to hide their partisanship. They were simply saying, anyone who believes opposite of me is terrible, and everything that I put in this paper is going to attack the other party, and that’s all they do. They constantly attack the other party. As powerful as partisan party politics were in the 1830s. There was one thing that bridged that partisan gap in Missouri, and that was hatred of Latter-day Saints. Peniston gets up on that cannon as the Latter-day Saints are trying to come forward to where the polling place is, and he begins to harangue the crowd. You’re not gonna let these Mormons vote, are you? These Mormons aren’t even supposed to live in our county. They’re supposed to live in Caldwell County. What are they doing here?

                                           00:32:49             Then there’s obviously one more thing that in the South, in the 1830s that is greater than partisan politics and even greater than anti-Mormon hatred, that is racial hatred. Peniston uses bigoted racist language to try to inspire violence against the Latter-day Saints, and he does so, and I’m sure he’s also passive aggressively, although not terribly passive aggressively reminding people why the saints were driven out of Jackson County in the first place because they were meddling with slaves so-called. They were inviting free black members of the church to join their church and to move to Missouri. So, he gets up on that cannon and he says, these Mormons have no more a right to vote than any of our expletive N words is what he says. Using this as a terminology not just of slaves, I mean, even if you are a free person of color, you don’t have the right to vote.

                                           00:34:08             He uses this racialized, racist language as a means of trying to inspire the violence. That actually does the trick. Essentially, the same way we don’t let our slaves vote. The same way we don’t let free blacks vote. We are not gonna let Mormons vote in our state. That does the trick. Immediately, a band of ruffian mob forms, and they try to prevent, physically, the Latter-day Saint men from going to the polling place, like grabbing them, pulling them back. The Latter-day Saints, for their part, felt that they had a right to vote because they were Americans, and so the, again…

Hank Smith:                      00:34:53             Wait, wait, wait.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:34:55             There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of bold–the Latter-day Saints just keep pushing these bold narratives that as an American, that they have a right to vote. They have a right to buy land. They have a right to live on the land that they buy.

                                           00:35:10             Frankly, it’s a surprise that the Latter-day Saints weren’t violently attacked earlier. But the Latter-day Saints try to push past the mob to go vote. Anyway, people start swinging fists and people start tearing up fence rails and people start clubbing each other and a brawl ensues. This is often considered the beginning of the Mormon War in Missouri. It’s the beginning point of this violence. Now, again, this is the 19th century. Often the first reports that come out are always ridiculously wrong. Again, doesn’t happen today that the first reports you get from something are wrong, but back then, both members of the Missouri government as well as Missouri residents and Latter-day Saints, the initial reports they get are that this is a bloody catastrophe. Joseph gets an initial report that dozens of Latter-day Saints were murdered trying to vote. The state of Missouri and residents of Daviess County, they’re getting reports that, oh, yeah, there we were just minding our own business. You know, I was just talking about philosophy and quoting Seneca to my fellow Missourian, and then the Mormon showed up and just started killing everybody. It’s crazy. It was, it’s crazy. They just showed up and started killing everybody.

                                           00:36:46             The narrative coming out of both sides, or at least the first things that they’re hearing, is that first of all, dozens of people are dead. Second of all, that the other side indiscriminately started killing people, and so all of a sudden both sides are ratcheted up. Now, look, there’s a lot of things that are hard to verify in the 19th century. I get it. It’s hard. We don’t have documents. One of the easiest things to verify is whether or not someone’s dead. It’s actually pretty simple. You go there and if the person’s dead, well, then you know that they’re dead, and if they’re not dead, then it becomes pretty difficult to argue that people were murdered because they’re not dead. Oh, yeah, they killed a bunch of people. Okay, name one of them. I’m sure they did, and that’s where you’re left with, because once you’re saying someone’s dead, it is a very verifiable thing. Saying someone got punched, well, okay, let’s find the person who got punched–Saying, someone’s dead is, that’s pretty stark. Either Bill is dead or Bill isn’t dead. We can find that out pretty quickly. Joseph, for his part, he leads the Caldwell County militia members of the church up to Daviess County to go get the bodies back of the people that they think were murdered. On their way there, they find out, they get reports, oh, actually dozens of people are wounded. Some people are severely hurt, but no one actually is dead. It was a brawl. It was violent, but no one’s actually dead.

John Bytheway:               00:38:23             On either side?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:38:25             On either side. No one’s actually dead. There’s lots of people who are beat up. They were at the wrong side of a sporting event at this point. There was a frack in the crowd, but no one’s actually dead. Joseph with his group stops at Adam Black’s house because he’s the Justice of the Peace. He’s gonna be the person determining what charges are gonna be filed. Joseph says, look, we know you’re on record saying how much you hate Mormons. You don’t want Mormons living in the county. I just want to know from you that as you prosecute this, that you’re going to do it fairly. Of course, Adam Black, you know, is, you know, puts his hand to his forehead. Dear me, my dear sir, how could you possibly? I’m insulted that you would even think that I would allow anything other than the rule of law.

                                           00:39:28             Oh, oh, I’m almost faint because of it. He makes all kinds of protestations that, of course he would only follow the rule of law, and then as soon as Joseph Smith leaves, he sends out to a local anti-Mormon judge an affidavit essentially saying that the Mormons came to my house and threatened that they were gonna kill me. We have no Latter-day Saint reference to that at all, but he sends this essentially false report that the Latter-day Saints came to his house and told them they were gonna kill him, which again, further stirs up rhetoric in Daviess County. A mob begins to collect in Daviess County with the stated intention that they’re going to invade Caldwell County and they’re gonna destroy the Mormons. At this point, the governor, what is he supposed to do? Dewitt has taught him, I can’t actually order the militia to defend the Mormons because they won’t actually do it.

Hank Smith:                      00:40:34             They’ll fight.

                                           00:40:35             They’ll just go join them. We’re not gonna help the Mormons. The governor actually tells Joseph and the residents of Caldwell County, look, you have your county militia. If people come to you, you need to defend yourself. You need to look to your own defense. We’re not gonna be able to do it. What do you do now if you’re Joseph Smith and you’re receiving report after report after report that the Daviess County residents, along with supporting people from other counties around are massing weapons and ammunition and planning an invasion of the county? Do you just sit there and wait for them to come and kill you? Well, what do you do? So, they make a pretty fateful decision that they can’t just sit around and wait, that if they do, they’ll allow their enemies to become so powerful that they’ll come and kill them.

                                           00:41:32             They make a preemptive strike. They take an expedition into Gallatin, into Daviess County. They don’t kill anybody. They don’t shoot anybody. They don’t attack anybody, but they go to where the mob has been assembling all of their weapons and food for their expedition and they destroy it and they loot some of it. They take it back. They feel like, yeah, all we’re doing is taking back goods that you’ve already stolen from us and your other mob things. But so that ratchets up the rhetoric even more, because look at how lawless these Mormons are? Yeah, I guess. Yeah, lawless because they’re preventing people from coming to attack them, and again, no one’s died yet. With reports like that, you then have things like on the southern border of Caldwell County, you have Clay County. In Clay County, you have their militia activated. They’re led by a man by the name of Samuel Bogart. Samuel Bogart takes his militia and he actually crosses the border into Southern Caldwell County and begins attacking Latter-day Saint settlements. They take several men hostage.

John Bytheway:               00:42:47             Wow.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:42:47             When Joseph and the folks in Far West hear about these violent attacks and these kidnappings in southern Caldwell County, they assume incorrectly. They assume that it must be a mob that’s doing it because they’re acting like a mob. They’re burning fields and they’re kidnapping people and they assume, well, this mob’s attacking settlements in Caldwell County. We need to go stop them. What they don’t know is that it’s not a mob, that it’s actually the official Missouri state militia for Clay County and that Samuel Bogart is officially mustard as a militia leader, but he’s just acting like a mob. The leader of the Caldwell County Militia is David W. Patten. David W. Patten, also the head of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He leads the Latter-day Saints out to go find this mob that’s burning everything and attacking and kidnapping Latter-day Saints. They don’t know that it’s the Missouri State militia.

                                           00:44:04             It’s acting like a mob. They think it’s a mob. It’s doing things in Caldwell County, so it couldn’t possibly be another militia from another county because…

John Bytheway:               00:44:13             They wouldn’t cross the county line.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        00:44:14             Yeah, why would they be there? But it’s actually the militia. David W. Patten takes the Caldwell County militia and they catch up to this mob at Crooked River. This is where the battle of Crooked River takes place. Again, the Latter-day Saints think they’re dealing with a lawless mob. David W. Patten is quite courageous, perhaps not the greatest of tacticians. When they catch up to them, it’s near sunset. What that means is the Latter-day Saints have to cross the river to the encampment on the other side where this other, where they think the mob is encamped, but it means that the sun is right behind them as they’re crossing the river, which means they are perfectly silhouetted against the sky, their bodies in a firing line, essentially.

                                           00:45:05             It’s not probably the most tactically-sound attack that’s made, but it is very ostentatious, so ostentatious that the militia and Bogart, they are completely unprepared for, and the Latter-day Saints come charging down and across the river and they drive, what they think is the mob from the field. There are several people killed on both sides, including David Patten and Simeon Carter. Jared Carter’s brother, Simeon Carter is killed there as well. There are several members of the militia as well. The Latter-Day Saints, again, think they’re doing exactly what the governor told them to do. You’re gonna have to defend yourself with your county militia, so they defend themselves with their county militia. Again, the problem is Bogart is a liar, hard to believe, and the Latter-day Saints actually get back some of their captive–I mean, they get their kidnapped people back.

                                           00:46:10             They have all kinds of validation that this really was appropriate. These men were kidnapped and being held. Bogart tells the governor, he’s got a lot of explaining to do at this point, because not only is he operating in Caldwell County when he is not supposed to, he just lost. The worst thing you could do as a militia commander is be on the losing side. That’s how you get deposed as a commander. So, his report to the governor is, there we were minding our own business and out of nowhere these Mormons came in and just started shooting and killing everybody, and he grossly inflates the number of people that are dead. I mean, at this point, the governor could have done an investigation. Governor Boggs could have said, okay, Bogart, I have your report here. I’m gonna send a couple of my men to actually investigate and find out what exactly you were doing, why you were where you were when they attacked, and chief among them I’m gonna find out whether or not there really are dozens of people dead. Because, once again, it’s very simple to find out if dozens of people are dead.

                                           00:47:32             It’s the easiest thing in the world to determine. Here are the men that are members of your rolls, how many of them are dead? If the answer is two of them and not dozens of them, then that’s different than what you said. The governor could have investigated, and he doesn’t. He instead immediately responds by proclaiming the Latter-Day Saints as enemies of the state, and by issuing the infamous Extermination Order. After the Battle of Crooked River and these inflated reports, you get this very fateful letter that is sent by Governor Boggs to his generals: “Sir Since the order of this morning to you, directing you to cause four hundred mounted men to be raised within your division, I have received by Amos Reese, Esq., of Ray county, and Wiley C. Williams, Esq., one of my aids, information of the most appalling character, which entirely changes the face of things, and places the Mormons in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this state.”

                                           00:49:15             “Your orders are, therefore, to hasten your operation with all possible speed. The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description.” Now, a couple of things about that. I always wonder why we have a tendency to kind of soft pedal this when we talk about what happened. In the movie, you know, it’s a very dramatic scene. It shows Wilburn Boggs at his desk and he says, the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and then he like looks out the window, very pregnant pause or if necessary, like looks back exterminated. Well, that’s not what his order says. His order doesn’t say they must be treated as enemies and if necessary exterminated. His order says the Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, if necessary. Driven from the state is option number two. It’s not option number one, and think about what this order is saying.

                                           00:50:26             If I go and I commit a crime, I’m indicted. A warrant is issued for my arrest, I am arrested, and then I’m brought before a judge and I’m charged with a specific crime. Gerrit thought that Dak Prescott would be a good fantasy football quarterback this year. He’s put on trial for that, but it’s specific and because of our constitution, it is not generalized. This is a statement that all Mormons, whether they were part of David W. Patten’s Group in Crooked River or not. The Mormons, anyone who belongs to the religion, any person must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated. We talk about the extermination order a lot, but we don’t stop to consider what it’s actually saying. There’s a hundred men among the Latter-day Saints that are involved in the election day brawl in Gallatin or in the battle of Crooked River.

                                           00:51:45             There’s probably upwards of 10,000 Latter-day Saints living in Missouri. All of them are guilty? All of them lose their right to trial? All of them lose their right to their property? They lose their right to their lives? All of them do? Imagine if someone were to make a similar argument today that a person living in the country, a group of them, let’s say, let’s say a hundred of them commit a horrible crime and someone orders the extermination of every member of that religion or group, even if you want to claim, which they don’t think it means this, but if they did, even if you wanted to claim, well, it just means forcibly removed from the state, taking away all of their property rights and all of their personal rights and eliminating every protection that’s given to you in the Bill of Rights, even if that’s what it is, it’s still the most egregious thing.

                                           00:52:51             It will serve as the basis for the violence that is going to take place and the justification for it. It’s debated whether or not the Livingston County militia is aware of this order by the time that they perpetrate the Hans Mill massacre. Certainly, some of their members say that they’re acting on the governor’s orders. They at least will claim, after the fact, that they’re doing it under orders. But that’s really neither here nor there. Whether they had read the order or not, the same number of Latter-day Saints are murdered. I told you, Caldwell County, not exactly super Farmville County, not exactly the best place, especially the eastern portion of the county, like I said, has got a lot of drainage issues. That’s where Hans Mill is. Hans Mill established right there along this creek. It is a settlement that is growing. It wasn’t founded by a Latter-day Saints, but it’s a growing small Latter-day Saint community. In the Livingston County militia–Far West is in extreme western Caldwell County.

                                           00:54:10             Hans Mill is in, it’s not extreme eastern, but it’s much more eastern Caldwell County. The county’s kind of like a rectangle, if you’re thinking about it this way. It’s pretty far away from far West, but it’s very close to the border of Livingston County. The next county over. The Livingston County militia with men mounted on horses, crosses the border into Caldwell County. They surround this isolated little settlement. And to just demonstrate how outside of what we consider to be the law, this movement is–I’ve heard obviously not terribly intelligent detractors, but I’ve heard detractors say things like, well, what happened at Hans Mill, I mean, it’s the Mormon’s fault because the militia came to try to arrest him and they just started shooting at him, and so what do you expect them to do? They want to portray Hans Mill as if it’s some kind of like Waco, Texas David Koresh thing, where there’s an attempt to serve some warrants and people are shot and that causes the whole thing.

                                           00:55:27             We don’t have any accounts that that’s what happened. All of our accounts from Hans Mill are that as the sun is about to go down, these hundreds of men on horses ride into the town and they begin shooting everyone. There’s no attempt to arrest anyone. Not only is there no attempt to arrest anyone, we have multiple accounts of men running out in front of the horses, waving their arms and saying, we surrender, we surrender. And those people being shot where they stand. This is not an attempt to arrest. This is not an attempt to serve warrants on people who they think were involved in the battle of Crooked River, which spoiler alert, none of them were. So, even if that’s what this was, was an attempt to get those people, none of them were part of that. And the best demonstration of just how horrific this is and just how indiscriminate the violence is, is the case of Amanda and Warren Smith.

                                           00:56:41             Amanda and Warren Smith don’t live in Hans Mill. Amanda and Warren Smith live in Ohio. After Joseph Smith receives the revelation that all of the faithful members are supposed to leave Ohio and move to Missouri. Amanda and Warren Smith, because they’re faithful, they begin setting their affairs in order, in order to go to Far West because that’s what the prophet commanded them to do. So, they go, they go, and it’s pretty slow going. Again, you have to remember, Far West is a thousand miles away from Kirtland. Not exactly over super easily traversed terrain either. This is super rural parts of Missouri, so it takes months for some people to get from Ohio to Missouri. Amanda Smith and her family have been making this weeks’ long journey trying to get to Far West. They just so happen to stop for the night in Hans Mill. They don’t live in Hans Mill.

                                           00:57:58             They stop there on their way to get to Far West, which is their ultimate destination. And in one of the most horrific tragedies of all early church history, it just so happens that the same night they stopped there in Hans Mill is the same night that the mob attacks. She will give several accounts of what happens, but she’s talking about the violence being enacted on them even before they get to Hans Mill. When they cross the border into Missouri, they’re already being harassed by Missourians saying that they’re going to kill them. As she writes, when we were traveling, minding our own business, we were stopped by a mob of men. They told us if we went one more step, they would kill us all. They took all of our guns from us, they robbed them, and they made us go back five miles on the road.

                                           00:59:08             I mean five miles. When you’re walking it, it’s a considerable amount of distance. They put a guard around us and they kept us there three days and then they let us go. So, her and her family were kidnapped by these lawless mobs. They were robbed by these lawless mobs, kidnapped for three days. What crime had Amanda and Warren Smith committed? They clearly had nothing to do with any of the violence that had happened in Missouri. They were walking through the state. This is the United States of America. This is not some kind of tyrannical communist regime where people can’t walk somewhere without papers.

                                           01:00:03             They are walking through the state. They are robbed. They are held hostage and kidnapped and forcibly, under guard, forced to stay somewhere for three days. Well, after they are allowed to start going again. She writes that we traveled 10 miles and came to a small town composed of one grist sawmill, eight or 10 houses, all belonging to the saints, our brothers, and there we stopped for the night. Amanda and Warren Smith have nothing to do with Hans Mill. They are happy to have a place to stay for the night. After this harrowing ordeal, which given their route of trajectory probably happened in Livingston County actually, because that would’ve been the county they were likely traveling through. A little before sunset, a mob of 300 armed men came upon us. Our men called for the women and children to run for the woods while they ran into an old blacksmith shop for they feared if we all ran together, they would rush upon us and kill us. Men, women and children.

                                           01:01:16             The mob fired on us before we even had time to start from our camp. Now, you’ll notice in her affidavit, she’s gonna continually say the mob. It’s not a mob. It’s literally the official Livingston County militia of the state of Missouri. This is the marshaled up, the actual militia of Livingston County.

Hank Smith:                      01:01:40             Protect the citizens, right?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:01:43             Yeah. They’re here to protect us. The citizens of the state. The mob fired on us before we had time to even start running from our camp. Our men took off their hats and they swung them in the air and cried, “Quarter”, meaning we surrender. Until they were all shot down. The mob paid no attention to their cries or to their entreaties, but fired indiscriminately. I took my little girls, my boys I could not find, and I ran for the woods, the mob encircled us on all sides except the bank of the creek.

                                           01:02:23             So I ran down the bank. So, if you remember, there’s a stream there. That’s where a Hans mill is. Once she realizes that they’re surrounded by these horsemen, she goes to the creek. I mean, again, the one place they have is getting across this creek that’s there. My boys I could not find. I ran for the woods, the mob, encircled us on all sides, accepting the bank of the creek. So, I ran down the bank and crossed the mill pond on a plank and ran up the hill on the other side into the bushes. The bullets whistled by me like hailstones, and they cut down the bushes on all sides of me. Now I want you to think about this. This is a woman holding hands of little girls running away and bullets are hitting the trees all around them. These poor excuses for human beings are attempting to shoot little girls and women as they are running away from them.

                                           01:03:34             One girl was wounded by my side, and this is not one of her little girls, but another little girl, and she fell over a log and her clothes happened to hang up on the log in the sight of the mob, and the mob supposing her clothes to be her body fired at that. As she’s going over this log, it tears off her clothes and so they keep shooting at the clothes. After it was all still, our people cut out 20 bullets from that log. That’s how many shots were fired at this little girl. I sat down to witness this awful scene. When they had done firing, they began to howl as one would’ve thought all the infernos had come up from the lower regions. They plundered the principle part of our goods. They took our horses and our wagons and they ran off howling like demons. After they had gone, I came down to witness and behold the awful scene. Oh, horrible, horrible. What a sight. My husband and one son, 10 years old, lay lifeless upon the ground and one son six years old, was wounded very badly. His hip shot off all to pieces and the ground covered with the dead and the dying. There were three little boys who crept under the blacksmith bellows to hide.

                                           01:05:11             One of them received three wounds. He lived three weeks and died. He was not mine, but the other two were, and one of them had his brains all shot out and the other, his hip shot to pieces. We know from the other account that her 10-year-old son Sardis was not dead. He was initially just wounded, and then the leader of the Livingston County militia of the state of Missouri, seeing him wounded on the ground, puts a gun to his head and reportedly says, knits make lice. If I let him live, he’ll just become another expletive Mormon and then murders him. Realize, my readers, for a moment, this scene, Amanda Smith continues, nothing but horror and distress. It was sunset. The dogs were filled with rage howling over their dead masters. The cattle caught the scene of the scent of innocent blood and bellowed and a dozen helpless widows, 30 or 40 now orphaned and fatherless children screaming and grieving for the loss of their husbands and fathers. The groans of the dying and the wounded. All of this was enough to melt the heart of anything but a Missouri mob. There were 15 dead and 10 wounded, and two more died. The next day there were no men left to bury the dead, so they were thrown into an old well, that was dry and covered with straw and dirt.

                                           01:07:01             The next day, the mob came back and told us that we must leave the state or they would kill us all. It was cold. They had taken all of our teams and all of our clothes. Our men were all dead and wounded. I told them they might kill me and my children. They sent word from time to time that if we did not leave the state, they would come and make a breakfast of us. We had to do our own milling and get our own wood. We had no men left to help us. I started on the 1st of February for the state of Illinois, without any money, mobbed all the way. I drew my own team. I slept out of doors. I had four small children and we suffered with hunger and cold and fatigue and for what?

                                           01:07:57             For our religion. We’re in a blessed land of liberty. Deny your faith or die was the cry. She goes on to mention some of the people that are in the mob because the point of this affidavit was to list off all of her property that was taken. She begins to list it off. Then she says, in short, my all. My whole damages are worth more than the state of Missouri is worth, and I believe that she’s correct in having her husband and her 10-year-old son murdered and her 6-year-old son essentially left for dead with his hip shut off. I mean the miraculous faith and story of the healing of her son I think has been well told, but she talked about the fact that many of the men were killed after they were already wounded. The mob went and shot the men over fear that they weren’t dead. I saw one of them afterwards and I said, what were they intending when they came here? He said that they intended to kill everything that breathes.

                                           01:09:14             I will leave to this honorable government to say what my damages should be. What would they have for their fathers and mothers and wives and children shot for? Now, Amanda Smith is one of my heroes of church history because think about the fact that the only reason she’s at Hans Mill is because she followed the prophet. She doesn’t live in Hans Mill. She lives in Ohio. They are at Hans Mill because a prophet received a revelation from the Lord commanding the faithful to move to Far West. So, they did. This faithful husband of hers, Warren, is murdered where he stands because he happened to be a Mormon and happened to be walking through the wrong part of Missouri on the wrong day, the wrong time. When Amanda Smith talks about this again, she says, I felt the loss of my husband, but not as I should have if he had apostatized.

                                           01:10:36             He died in the faith and in the hopes of a glorious resurrection. As for myself, I felt an unshaken confidence in God through it all. I had been personally acquainted with the prophet Joseph Smith for many years; had seen his walks and knew him to be a Prophet of God. That buoyed me up under every trial and privation. I would say to anyone listening, when you decide that you are going to take the evil report about the prophet Joseph Smith from some detractor, that you do so by rejecting Amanda Smith’s testimony because she is saying that she personally knew him and knew him to be a good man and knew him to be a prophet, and she lost her son and her husband in following him to be a prophet. She didn’t come away from that and say, I guess he’s not really a prophet anymore. She has a better testimony than any so-called insider who thinks they know about Joseph Smith.

                                           01:12:02             She’s someone who actually knew him and then suffer as a result of the violence against Latter-Day Saints. She will later give her testimony where she says, I have drank the dregs of the cup of sorrow and affliction, as well as partaken of the blessings of an all merciful God. I have drank from the fountain of life freely. I have seen the Lord’s power manifested in a great degree. I have seen the lame leap as in hearts and the eyes of the blind opened and as it were, the dead raised to life all in my own family. She goes on to talk about how she’s miraculously given birth to children without pain. She says, I have the greatest reason to rejoice and to thank my Heavenly Father and though I do thank and praise his holy name for his blessings to me, and I do pray. I do pray that I may ever be faithful unto the end, that I may with my posterity be crowned with eternal lives in the kingdom of our God, in the name of Jesus, amen.

                                           01:13:18             There’s a faith that I could only wish to emulate. She doesn’t believe because things work out. She believes because the Holy Spirit has told her that prophet is a true prophet and this is God’s kingdom. The fact that these horrible things happen to her, it’s not the deciding factor in her testimony. I mean, what a powerful statement to say. I felt the loss of my husband, but not the same way I would have if he had apostatized because she’s certain she’ll be with her husband again. And he died a faithful man following a prophet. That’s a tough thing to read. We could read accounts of the violence that takes place in Missouri all day long. I would become increasingly irrationally emotional, unfortunately. I think in part because when you study these people and you study their lives and you read all their statements and you fall, you start to feel connected to them. When you read, these horrific things happening to them, it becomes difficult.

John Bytheway:               01:14:33             Tell us what you’re reading from. Does she have an autobiography? Were these affidavits submitted to as they were asked to do?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:14:43             So she submits a couple of affidavits on what happened to her in Missouri. Then also gives a little bit of a life sketch. The latter thing that I read was from her life sketch that she gives later in life. Look, there’s power in reading what people actually have to say. It’s not simply that because I’m inarticulate that it doesn’t carry the same power to tell you what happened. It’s also the fact that hearing her testify in her own words, that the power of the Holy Spirit testifies to her testimony. And I think you can feel that when you read it. And it is not a cheaply purchased testimony. It is one that is dearly, dearly paid for and one that, I mean, frankly, it’s part of the reason why it’s hard for me when people are cavalier in their detraction of the church or these saints or of the gospel because our beliefs and our history are bought with a price.

                                           01:16:01             The faith that we have is bought, purchased by women like Amanda Smith, who through unimaginable horrors didn’t say, okay, that’s too much. If this was true, then this wouldn’t have happened. It’s interesting because, you know, the violence in Missouri is so terrible that John Corrill, he’s one of the early leaders of the church in Missouri. He will apostatize, but he doesn’t become one of these like super embittered apostates. He actually kind of explains it in the history that he writes that, look, these are good people. They just can’t possibly be right. If this was really God’s people, then there wouldn’t be this violence enacted on them constantly. They wouldn’t be treated that way. I always think that there’s that great Book of Mormon passage because of the exceedingly great length of the war. There’s some that have been hardened and there’s some that turned to God.

                                           01:17:10             But I think for application purposes today, for people listening today, please be hesitant and be careful with the legacy of faith that people like Amanda Smith have given to you. Because, while we all suffer and we all have trials and we all have questions, we all go through difficulties. I absolutely believe at one point you are gonna have to explain to someone like that why you decided to stop believing. Let’s just see whether or not your explanation carries a lot of weight, given the things that she suffered through. My guess is not. In the aftermath of Hans Mill, the horrific violence of Hans Mill. It’s horrifying as these reports come in to Joseph in Far West. At the same time, the militia is marching to Far West. Now that the governor’s declared an extermination order. Far West though is a much tougher nut to crack than Hans Mill, especially after Hans Mill.

                                           01:18:30             The Latter-day Saints are ready. We’re not gonna have you just ride in here and start murdering people and there are five, six, 7,000 people inside of Far West, which means that if the militia is going to attack, it is going to be a bloodbath because they’re not just going to let it happen after what happened in Hans Mill. This is where one of the greatest traitors of Latter-day Saint history that we unfortunately don’t know about. I mean, look, there’s some that are household names. I mean Doctor Philastus Hurlbut, you’re not gonna forget that. John C. Bennett, spoiler alert, we’ll talk about him at some point. I don’t know if I will. Someone will. But one of the greatest traitors in Latter-day Saint History is George Henkel. George Henkel is someone who decides that once they Mormons are declared to be enemies of the state, well that means I could be tried for treason?

                                           01:19:39             I could be executed for being with these Mormons. So, he begins to have clandestine conversation with members of the Missouri militia promising them that he can deliver them Joseph and Hyrum Smith. If they, of course, grant him immunity. Of course, as a good loyal citizen, I can perform this great service. So George Henkel, who is meeting with these members of the militia. Now of course Joseph wants to do anything to stop the violence, especially with how horrific it is. I mean, remember, Joseph had the option of deciding that they were gonna be violent with Dewitt and instead said just evacuate. He had the option of using that Caldwell County Militia violently in Gallatin and yes, they go and destroy the arms and food of the mob, but they don’t kill anybody. He could have decided that he was going to really take matters in his own hands and start really violently resisting.

                                           01:20:53             But he is not looking for that. He’s looking for peace. Henkel lies to Joseph and tells him, Hey, I’ve talked to leaders of the militia and they want to have a peace conference. They saw how horrible everything that happened at Hans Mill. We want to get all the leaders together of the militia and of the Latter-day Saints and we’re gonna discuss how to stop there being any more violence. If you had to say what one of Joseph’s failings was, it’s hard to call it a failing, but from a historical perspective, once you know all the answers, like so as a historian it’s easy because you’re like, no, don’t trust him. He is terrible. Like I know because I’ve read his journal and he is a liar. It’s easy when you have all the information to be like, this is a terrible mistake. But Joseph, he loves other people so much that he tends to really trust them even when there should be some bells and alarms going off saying maybe don’t trust him all the way. Joseph could have had his alarms go up a little bit. When George Henkel is saying, Hey, I’ve been talking to a bunch of the leaders of the militia. I mean already there should have been like, Hmm…

John Bytheway:               01:22:08             Really have you?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:22:10             It’s an interesting position that you’ve taken. But he trusts George Henkel. He believes that he’s a good man and George Henkel says, I’ve been talking to the leaders of the militia. They want to have this peace conference. We’re all gonna go out unarmed. We’ll go out, they’ll come unarmed. We’ll meet down outside of Far West. We’ll settle this. And Joseph goes out to this peace conference and is immediately, along with Hyrum and Parley Pratt and other Latter-day Saint leaders, they’re all immediately arrested. And that’s when they infamously are ordered to be shot and Alexander Doniphan intervenes and belays the order and says that, yeah, I’ll hold anyone before an earthly tribunal. So help me, God.

John Bytheway:               01:22:55             Did George Henkel say something like, okay, here they are. Or?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:23:00             He doesn’t kiss him on the cheek. If you’re wondering, but they’re well aware. I mean, once he comes out, you know, it’s here’s the leaders and then they’re just immediately arrested. Joseph realizes then just what a betrayal this was. The worst part about this is isn’t that he’s been betrayed. The worst part is the whole point of going out there was to discuss things to stop more violence from happening. Well, now they’re left leaderless instead of if the mob’s coming in to kill and loot and burn the militia coming in, resisting that, well there’s no one there to order the resistance because all their leaders are arrested. And of course, you know Henkel, oh hey, no, no worries, everything’s fine. Joseph said, just let the militia come in. He just continues to lie. The men are arrested. They’re gonna kind of have a little bit of an odyssey actually in their Missouri incarceration because one of the problems now that the Missouri state militia is now plundering violently all of Far West, now that they’re just going to Mormon settlements and just taking whatever they want. How do we justify this violence? How do we justify the murders at Hans Mill? Well, we have to justify them by claiming that Joseph Smith was leading an open insurrection. Well, what happens if we put Joseph Smith on trial? And even though we’re the ones handpicking the jury, even though we’re the ones like stacking everything in our favor, what happens if he’s acquitted?

                                           01:24:50             If the entire justification of the war of murdering all these people, of stealing all this land, of enacting all this violence is that Joseph Smith has enacted treason against the state of of Missouri. What if he’s acquitted? Then that means all of the violence and all of the things that happened were not actually justifiable and the state of Missouri’s liable for all the lives they’ve destroyed. What it means is, the state of Missouri is actually really afraid to put Joseph on trial. He ends up getting arraigned in multiple different places, in part because they’re trying to see where they might have the strongest case against him. He gets arraigned in Clay County. He gets arraigned in Daviess County. He gets arraigned in Jackson County. He gets arraigned in all these different places because they’re not sure where they want to have the trial go forward because they got one shot at this. What happens if they lose, then it’s a disaster if they lose.

Hank Smith:                      01:26:09             And Gerrit couldn’t Latter-day Saints be called to testify?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:26:11             Yeah. So obviously, you have tons of witnesses. As much anti-Mormon hatred as there is in the country in the 1830s, the violence coming out of the Mormon war in Missouri is so bad and so hard to justify. I mean, look, Crooked River’s easy to sweep under the rug. Yeah, these bunch of crazy Mormons came and they attacked us and two of our men died and two of theirs died. Right? Crooked River is super easy to spin in the newspapers. Very difficult to spin Hans Mill. How many of the Livingston County militia were killed? Oh, zero of them. Okay. And how many women and men and children were wounded and killed in Hans Mill? It becomes an embarrassment. That’s much harder to justify even in the national press to the point where even someone as Mormon hating as Iber Howe is–again the editor of the Paynesville Telegraph, the person who wrote the first anti-Mormon book–even he is like, you can’t just murder people.

                                           01:27:27             Yeah, they’re diluted, they’re fanatics. You should do whatever you can. You can’t just kill them. What’s going on in Missouri is seen as an embarrassment because it’s beyond even the Missouri pale, even the pale for the United States of what’s allowed. Political violence, you know, rhetoric and action, sure, illegal detentions, rigging elections, all of those things. Fine, but boy, it becomes hard to justify murdering kids. It becomes a lot harder to figure out how we needed to shoot a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old. We just had to, if we didn’t shoot them, what would we ever do? And then unfortunately what happens in the aftermath of Joseph’s surrendering, is the Missouri militia goes on essentially a weeks long looting spree where they assault the Latter-day Saints. They burn some of their houses down. There are horrific violent assaults that take place and I can’t in this venue share those with you because they’re so horrific. But I can give you the link that you can put up to Hyrum Smith’s affidavit where Hyrum Smith explains the things that happened. If someone reads it, they will never again say the words, you know, there were faults on both sides. They won’t say it. They’ll read it and they will come away and say, I cannot believe that anyone could be so horrific. And this is part of what inspires Joseph Smith’s letters from Liberty Jail. Imagine you’re Joseph Smith.

                                           01:29:23             You are now incarcerated in this cell. The only thing you hear is all of the violence that’s being enacted on all of these people that you love. You can do nothing and it’s daily, day after day. The few letters and information you get is more information about just how violently the Latter-day Saints are being treated. Joseph hears these reports. We are talking murders, we are talking assaults, we’re talking sexual assaults. This is horrific, indiscriminate violence being perpetrated against the people that he loves. Joining in the fray are apostates like William McClellan, former member of the Quorum of the 12 apostles who goes to Emma’s house while Joseph is incarcerated and robs Emma’s house. You get the beginning of this and the well-known story that you’ve heard probably at church multiple times. This is when their first incarcerated in Richmond jail, their first in Richmond before they go to Liberty. In Richmond jail, they are all chained together, these prisoners, Parley Pratt’s among them.

                                           01:30:45             Then Parley Pratt will later write a letter to the church historian’s office explaining what happened at Richmond jail when they were arrested. This is part of his letter Parley Pratt wrote: “We were guarded night and day by about 10 men who stood over us with loaded pistols and hands. At night, we were all stretched on the floor in a row upon our backs, and tried to sleep, but the hard floor, the cold, and the inability to change our position because of our chains, and the noise of the guards effectually prevented sleep. In one of those tedious nights we had lain as if in sleep, till the hour of midnight has passed, and our ears and hearts had been pained, while we had listened for hours to the obscene jests, the horrid oaths, the dreadful blasphemies, and filthy language of our guards…” Colonel Price being at their head.

                                           01:31:39             This is the sterling Price of Civil War fame. And by fame, I mean infamy because he’s a terrible general in the Civil War and so couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. While we’d listened for hours to their obscene jests, our ears and our hearts were pained “as they recounted to each other their deeds of rapine, murder, robbery, etc., which they had committed among the “Mormons,” while at Far West, and vicinity. They even boasted of defiling by force, wives, daughters, and virgins, and of shooting or dashing out the brains of men, women, and children. I had listened till I became so disgusted, shocked, horrified, and so filled with the spirit of indignant justice, that I could scarcely refrain from rising upon my feet and rebuking the guards, but had said nothing to Joseph, or anyone else, although I lay next to him and knew he was awake.

                                           01:32:35             On a sudden he arose to his feet, and spoke in a voice of thunder, or as the roaring lion, uttering, as near as I can recollect, the following words: “SILENCE—Ye fiends of the infernal pit. In the name of Jesus Christ I rebuke you, and command you to be still; I will not live another minute, and hear such language. Cease such talk, or you or I die THIS MINUTE. He ceased to speak. He stood erect in terrible majesty. Chained, and without a weapon,–calm, unruffled and dignified as an angel, he looked down upon the quailing guards, whose weapons were lowed or dropped to the ground; whose knees smote together, and who, shrinking into a corner, or crouching at his feet, begged his pardon, and remained quiet till a change of guards. I have seen the ministers of justice, clothed in magisterial robes, and criminals arraigned before them, while life was suspended upon a breath, in the courts of England; I have witnessed a Congress in solemn session to give laws to nations; I have tried to conceive of kings, of royal courts, of thrones, and crowns; and of emperors assembled to decide the fate of kingdoms, but dignity and majesty have I seen but once, as it stood in chains at midnight, in a dungeon, in an obscure village of Missouri.” Your brother, Parley Pratt.

                                           01:34:12             You get a little bit of this from the very beginning. Part of what is weighing on Joseph is not his horrible conditions, which of course they are horrible. So, it’s not to say they’re fine. They’re not fine, but it’s this violence that he is constantly hearing. Just horrific violence. We all know Doctrine and Covenants section 121, 22 and 23. But those are all parts of a larger letter that Joseph Smith wrote to the saints. Two larger letters, you can go through and see which portions come from which. They’ve got a lot of time on their hands. By the time that this letter’s being written, it’s March. They’ve been incarcerated for months at this point. Again, not ever being brought to trial, being arraigned in different places, being treated terribly, hearing constantly these threats of violence being told every day that they’re gonna be executed, things like that.

                                           01:35:26             The whole letter’s gigantic. If we were to read the whole thing, the entire podcast would now be the followHIM Joseph Smith letter from Liberty Jail podcast because there’d be nothing left. It’s huge. Joseph says this, “…brethren, we are the more ready and willing to lay claim to your fellowship and love. For our circumstances are calculated to awaken our spirits to a sacred remembrance of everything, and we think that yours are also, and that nothing therefore can separate us from the love of God and fellowship one with another; and that every species of wickedness and cruelty practiced upon us will only tend to bind our hearts together and seal them together in love. We have no need to say to you that we are held in bonds without cause, neither is it needful that you say unto us, We are driven from our homes and smitten without cause.”

                                           01:36:37             We mutually understand that if the inhabitants of the state of Missouri had let the Saints alone, and had been as desirous of peace as they were, there would have been nothing but peace and quietude in the state unto this day; we should not have been in this hell, surrounded with demons, if not those who are damned, those who shall be damned. And where we are compelled to hear nothing but blasphemous oaths, and witness a scene of blasphemy, and drunkenness and hypocrisy, and debaucheries of every description. And again, the cries of orphans and widows would not have ascended up to God. The blood of innocent women and children, yea and of men also, would not have cried to God against them. It would not abstain the soil of Missouri, but oh! The unrelenting hand and inhumanity and murderous disposition of this people. It shocks all nature. It beggars and defies all description.

                                           01:37:31             It is a tale of woe; too lamentable a tale, too sorrowful, a tale. Too much to tell for the contemplation. It’s too much to think of for a moment. Too much for human beings. It can’t be found among the heathens. It can’t be found among the nations where kings and tyrants are enthroned. It can’t be found among the savages of the wilderness. Yay. I think it cannot be found among the wild and ferocious beasts of the forest. That a man should be mangled for sport. That a woman be robbed of all of their last morsel of substance and then to be violated, to be gratified the hellish desires of a mob and left to perish with their helpless offspring clinging around their necks. But this is not all. After a man is dead, he must be dug up from his grave and mangled the pieces for no other purpose than to gratify their spleen against the religion of God. They practice these things upon the saints who have done them no wrong, who are innocent, who are virtuous, who love the Lord their God, who are willing to forsake all things for Christ. These things are awful to relate, but they are true.

                                           01:38:56             It must needs be the defenses come, but woe to them by whom they come. Oh God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place? We tend to read these letters. Sometimes we’ll even describe them as if it is Joseph Smith having you know, his own little pity party. That Joseph is sitting there in agony because of just how short that prison cell is, just how cold it’s been all winter with no blankets because the mob has stolen the blankets. Just how terrible a condition it is, with no real clean straw to sleep on. Those things are all true, but that’s not why Joseph is saying, oh God, where art thou? In this time of horrific trial, Joseph is turned outward, not inward. He is thinking about the suffering of others, not the suffering of himself. Now the Lord, in his response, will certainly bring up much of the suffering that Joseph will be going through, but when you read the fullness of the letter, you find that what’s really motivating it is Joseph trying to figure out how could God let all of these horrible, horrible, horrible things happen to the people that he loves.

John Bytheway:               01:40:35             So you started the portion of one of the sections, oh God, where art thou, but that’s where our section starts.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:40:46             Mm-hmm.

John Bytheway:               01:40:46             And everything proceeding that was part of that original letter.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:40:50             All part of the same letter. Those are all the lines immediately preceding that statement.

John Bytheway:               01:40:55             Yeah. Which helps us see he was thinking of the saints everywhere.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:41:00             Yep. It also helps us understand why part of that portion ends with him saying, let thine anger be kindled against our enemies and in thy fury of thine heart with thy sword avenge us our wrongs. Remember thy suffering saints, oh our God. And thy servants will rejoice in thy name forever. It is because he’s hearing this continual just unending statements of the violence that’s being taken against the saints that he asked the question in the first place. And then there’s a huge portion of the letter in between at this point where he talks more about things, where he says, we received some letters last evening, one from Emma, and we have in the Voice of the Restoration, one of these letters from Emma that are just a balm of Gilead to Joseph’s soul to hear from his wife. Same with Mary Fielding who will be riding to Hyrum Smith.

                                           01:42:03             They receive these letters and it gives them some hope in knowing their families are safe and that they’re okay. Last evening—one from Emma, one from Don Carlos Smith, and one from Bishop Partridge—all breathing a kind and consoling spirit. We were much gratified with their contents. We had been a long time without information; and when we read those letters they were to our souls as the gentle air is refreshing. Our joy was mingled with grief because of the suffering of the poor and much injured saints. And we do not need to say to you that the floodgates of our hearts were hoisted and our eyes were a fountain of tears. But those who have not been enclosed in the walls of a prison without cause or provocation can have a little idea how sweet the voice of a friend is. One token of friendship from any source whatsoever awakens and calls into action every sympathetic feeling.

                                           01:43:09             It brings up in an instant, everything that has passed. It seizes the present with a vivacity of lightning. It grasps after the future with a fierceness of a tiger and it retrogrades from one thing to another until finally all enmity, malice and hatred and past differences and misunderstandings and mismanagements lies slain victims at the feet of hope. And when the heart is sufficiently contrite, then the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers, My son, peace be unto thy soul. Thine afflictions and thy adversity shall be but a small moment. It’s interesting that in reading the full letter, Joseph’s saying that part of what puts him in the proper mindset to receive this revelation is these kind words–receiving letters from those who are on the outside, that it allows for the inspiration.

John Bytheway:               01:44:28             Our listeners will recognize, oh God, where art thou? From verse one of 121. And then that question ends in verse six, and then you just filled everything between verse six, and is it verse seven where the answer comes, My son, peace be unto thy soul? Wow. I love the context and this is gut-wrenching stuff today. Holy cow.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:44:56             Yeah, it’s a heavy topic unfortunately. But as Joseph wrote, these things are hard to relate, but they are true. Doctrine and Covenants 123, as part of the second letter that Joseph writes, they are supposed to make an account of what happened. But it’s also the reason why when you read some of these accounts that you understand why Joseph says, in that letter, that the deeds that have been done would make the devil himself palsy. That it is so incredibly horrific that there’s no way to describe how terrible it is. There’s more portions of this that are excerpted out, that become part of the letter. A good portion of this, it actually comes from the second letter that Joseph writes. This one a couple of days later, most likely. But behold, there are many called but few are chosen. That’s one of the lines that we’ve always said.

                                           01:46:03             If Joseph wasn’t a prophet for any other reason, I mean, right. He is a prophet for knowing exactly human character, doesn’t he? And it’s funny because we always still seem surprised when someone exercises unrighteous dominion. And yet Joseph says, it’s the nature of almost all men. Like, you should actually be stunned if you ever see someone have power and not use it unrighteously. because it’s the nature to use it unrighteously. Anyway, in the second letter, I’ll give you a little bit of context there. Again, it’s so long I can’t read everything, so I’m sure someone’s like, oh, why don’t you read this part? Well, because it’s, there’s a lot. Among the rest of the general affairs that we have transacted in their honorable counsel, they’ve taken cognizance of the testimony of those who were murdered at Hans Mill and those who are martyred with David W. Patten. He was killed at the Battle of Crooked River. And elsewhere and have passed some decisions per adventure in favor of the saints and those who are called to suffer without cause.

                                           01:47:06             These decisions will be made in their time and they will take into consideration all those things that offend. We have a fervent desire that in your general conferences, that everything should be discussed with a great deal of care and propriety, lest you grieve the Holy Spirit, which shall be poured out at all times upon your heads. When you are exercised with those principles of righteousness that are agreeable to the mind of God and are properly affected, one toward another, and are careful by all means, to remember those who are in bondage and in heaviness and in deep affliction for your sakes. And if there are any among you who aspire after their own aggrandizement and seek after their own opulence, while their brethren are groaning in poverty and under sore trials and temptations, and they cannot be benefited by the intercession of the Holy Spirit, which maketh intercession for us daily by day and night with groanings that cannot be uttered.

                                           01:48:14             We ought at all times to be very careful that such high mindedness never have place in our hearts, but condescend to men of lowest state and with all long suffering bear their infirmities of the weak. Behold, many are called, but few are chosen, and why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world. So, you get the context of that. What follows all of that? Why are they not chosen? You actually go directly into; the ends of the earth shall inquire after thy name. Those two portions coming together. Then you have this lead in to Doctrine and Covenants section 123. That’s also a portion of this second letter, in between those two parts. Now brethren, I would suggest for the consideration of the conference–because he’s writing to this church conference–of it’s being careful and wisely understood, the council or conferences that our brethren scattered abroad who understand the spirit of the gathering, that they fall into the places of refuge and safety that God shall open unto them between Kirtland and Far West. They already know that there are many that have gone to Quincy at this point.

                                           01:49:35             Those that are from the east and are from the west and from the far country and countries. Let them fall in somewhere between those two boundaries in the most safe and quiet places they can find. And let this be the present understanding until God shall open a more effectual door for us, for further consideration. I mean they, we know that they’re gonna end up in Nauvoo. They don’t know that they’re going to end up in Nauvoo. So this is gather somewhere in between, somewhere in between Kirtland and Far West. Find somewhere safe and God’s gonna open things up.

Hank Smith:                      01:50:11             There’s nowhere to go.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:50:11             Exactly. Yeah. Don’t go to Missouri, I’ll tell you that. Let’s take a flyer on Missouri. Until God shall open a more effectual door for further consideration. We again, further suggest for the consideration in counsel of the Council that there be no organizations of large bodies upon common stock principles in property or large companies or firms until the Lord shall signify in a proper manner as it opens the dreadful field for avaricious and the indolent, and corrupt-hearted to prey upon the innocent, and virtuous, and honest.

                                           01:50:47             We have reason to believe that many things were introduced among the saints before God had signified the times and notwithstanding the principles and plans may have been good yet aspiring men, or in other words, men who had not the substance of godliness about them perhaps undertook to handle edged tools. Children, you know, are fond of tools, while they are not yet able to use them. So, he is using this example that, look, a kid wants to play with a sharp knife. The fact they want to play with a sharp knife is–they shouldn’t. He’s talking about some of the apostates that apostatize in Missouri, some of the people that are purchasing property for the church in their name with church funds, but then are using the fact that it’s in their name to maintain the property. So, you can see why Joseph sees this as a problem.

                                           01:51:53             Your humble servant or servants intend to henceforth, disapprobate everything that is not in accordance with the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and is not of a bold and frank and upright nature. They will not hold their peace, as in times past, when they see iniquity beginning to rear its head for fear of traitors or the consequences that shall flow by reproving those who creep in unawares, that they might get something to destroy the flock. Joseph here is kind of admitting some of this is my fault and it’s my fault because I saw people doing things that weren’t right and I was too afraid to say something. Look, nobody is more compassionate than Joseph. That’s actually the problem. He’s actually saying, the problem is I let people preach false doctrines. I let people act in ways they shouldn’t because I was afraid if I reproved them that they would apostatize.

                                           01:53:00             Why is he afraid of that? Because that’s literally what happened. He tells David and John Whitmer not to sell any of the property in Missouri. They sell it anyway, and apostasy. I think he’s saying I should have intervened sooner when people first started speaking out against the church. Instead, I didn’t want to because I didn’t wanna upset anybody. I’m not telling any of your listeners to call up their nearest no longer active uncle and reprove them to hell because they’re not. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is Joseph learns by sad experience that as difficult as it is to confront someone who is slandering the church or teaching false doctrine or acting in a way that undercuts the testimony of others not dealing with it, actually causes a bigger problem. Part of the reason why people are excommunicated for apostasy isn’t just because the church is desperate–it’s because people who are preaching false things undermine the faith of the other sheep, the other parts of the flock.

                                           01:54:30             It’s not about that person. Frankly, you can privately hold just about any opinion you want and be a member of the church. You can in your mind be like, Nope, they never should have changed that to 18 years old for missionary age. Nope, that was wrong. These guys are just so immature. There’s no possible way they shouldn’t have done it. You can think that in your mind all day long. If you start an internet site called WhyMenShouldBe23beforetheygoonmissions.com and you start standing up in every meeting saying the prophets have been deceived into lowering the mission age to 18. I know. I’ve researched it. They should be 23. Well, you are not holding a private position anymore. How do I know that your position isn’t personal? Because I know it. That’s how I know. The great way of knowing whether or not you’re holding your beliefs to yourself is whether or not I know about them. Because, if I know about them, they’re no longer personal beliefs because somehow, I know.

                                           01:55:45             I mean, look, everybody has different opinions about things. There are certainly things that I think in my mind, I wonder if someday X or I wonder if we’ll ever understand Y, but God has ordained that only prophets receive revelation for the church. Which means regardless of how much book learning I think I have, however wonderfully informed on a topic I think I might be. However greatly intelligent I put myself up, only a prophet has the ability to declare doctrine for the church, not self-designated experts. I have no keys. I have no power. I’m absolutely a believer. I absolutely believe these things and also no one should ever follow literally anything I ever say, if it ever in any way conflicts with what a prophet of God has to say because they are the only ones who can declare doctrine. I can tell you what happened in the past. Only they can tell you what’s going to happen in the future. I can tell you a letter someone wrote in the past, only they hold the keys that will enable people to be exalted and to become like God. I think in Liberty Jail; Joseph Smith learns many things. One of the things he learns is that as a prophet, he’s going to have to be more willing to be more courageous in calling out the false teachings and the false doctrines that he has, in some ways, allowed.

John Bytheway:               01:57:46             You sure blessed me today, oh my goodness. So much more going on than, in his mind, than it’s hard that I have to be sitting in this dark prison. It’s everybody, loved ones, the saints who have believed him and followed him, David W. Patten. Laid down their lives. Oh man, they are suffering. The helplessness and the, this doesn’t make any sense. Why are we here? Thank you for the backstories of that. That was hard to hear. It’s humbling. All of it has been. I think everyone listening will go, whoa, we have different trials today. Tell us, eventually, okay, they’re there. It’s winter, 1838, 39. Was it about five months? Then how, what finally happens? When did they actually have liberty out of Liberty Jail?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:58:43             They’ve attempted to escape several times. For some crazy reason, as they’re being held without trial illegally, they believe that their incarceration is also illegal, and so they’re like, what?

John Bytheway:               01:58:55             There those Latter-day Saints go again.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:58:56             So let me get this straight. You’re gonna illegally incarcerate me. I mean, look, in America, we have a writ of Habeas Corpus for a reason, because our founding fathers, what happened under the British was that the British would simply arrest people and leave them in jail forever and never actually bring them to trial. If I bring them to trial again, they might be acquitted, so I’ll just leave them in jail. Then whatcha gonna do? Well, they’re in jail and they’re under jail, his Majesty’s authority. One of the early aspects of American fundamental rights was this idea to this right, to a speedy trial, a right to face your accusers, which what would happen in the early days before the revolution? I mean, the British would have you arrested. Oh, we’ve heard you’re a traitor. Conspiring with some people. Who says that? Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      01:59:53             We don’t know.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:59:54             You’re not entitled to know that.

Hank Smith:                      01:59:55             Yeah.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        01:59:55             Well, I mean, you’re throwing me in jail for the rest of my life over it? Yeah. Well, I mean, but isn’t there a reason? Yeah, there’s a reason. We have a report that you’re–but that you didn’t get to actually face your accuser. Built into the Bill of Rights is this idea that you have a right to a speedy trial and that you have the right, that you are arraigned and that your trial is brought forward. Today, we have a jurisprudence that is so much more developed that we often do see people being arrested than on the basis of their defense attorneys wanting more time to prepare for trial; trials sometimes don’t occur until years after someone’s actually arrested, but it’s not because the government refuses to start the trial. It’s usually on the basis of the defense wanting more time to prepare, and in general, judges are going to grant that because you got one shot at this, and if you’re guilty, that’s it. You’re done.

                                           02:01:00             In the 19th century in America trials were much more rapid. I mean, you do not have the same kind of developed American jurisprudence. You can even look at the trials that Joseph Smith’s involved in. When he’s put on trial. It’s not, okay, we’ll take several months and then we’re gonna recess for a few more months. No, it’s like, yeah, tried and here you are. We’re gonna charge you for disturbing the peace by preaching the Book of Mormon. Now you’re on trial for disturbing the peace for preaching the Book of Mormon. The defense is now. Even Carthage jail. Right? I mean, they’re arraigned on the charge of destroying the press on riot, and they’re immediately released on bond for a future trial date. Things happen quickly. But, here you are five and a half months in Missouri. You haven’t even started any trial.

                                           02:01:46             Although Hyrum Smith will say that the grand jury that is impaneled in Daviess County, that the grand jury are participants in the Hans Mill massacre. So, that the people deciding whether or not they are guilty, are actually the people who perpetrated the massacre themselves. Then, because you have to wear a lot of hats in early Frontier America. The grand jurors would get up from the grand jury box and then go pick up their gun and guard them for the rest of the night because they were actually the prison guards as well. It’s a completely fair trial. Where the people deciding whether or not you’re guilty are also the guards of the trial, who are also the people who perpetrated the massacre at Hans Mill. As Hyrum says in his affidavit. And the only excuse they made was that the governor had ordered them to do it.

                                           02:02:47             Missouri’s still in this position where if they’re brought to trial, they might still be acquitted. Because there’s no evidence that Joseph Smith made war on the state of Missouri. The further we dig into it, the more we’re gonna find that that militia, that the Crooked River battle was actually operating illegally in Caldwell County and arresting people illegally. The more evidence comes to fore, the more it’s going to seem, especially in the court of public opinion, that this is all a sham. This is all a sham. So, Missouri’s at a tight spot. If we send them to trial, not only is it going to be a very public trial, because the whole nation knows about this, a lot of really bad information’s gonna come out about what Missourians have done. Every Mormon on the stand is gonna talk about what’s happened to them. All these affidavits are gonna be collected of what’s happened to them.

                                           02:03:46             We’re gonna look terrible. Even if we get a conviction, we’re gonna look terrible. Second of all, what if we don’t get a conviction? We have literally stolen hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars of property from the saints. The justification that we made is we’ve appropriated all of their land to pay for the war that they started. What happens if Joseph acquitted? Then, I guess they didn’t start the war, and all the land we stole we’re now liable for. Not to mention, all the murders that have taken place. Not one of those members of the Livingston County Militia ever has to sit one day in a court explaining why they murdered children. If we go to trial, they might be acquitted. The problem though is if we release them and we drop the charges, well then, we’re saying there’s no evidence that they committed a crime, and on the basis of that crime, we had dozens of people murdered and millions of dollars of property destroyed or stolen.

                                           02:05:00             If we drop the charges and release them, we’re admitting that all of this violence was done without any justification. I think they settle on a deliberate plan. Hey, look, these guys have already tried to escape a few times. What if we just let them escape? Then we get to retain the moral high ground. Hey, we would’ve convicted them if we ever started the trial, which we didn’t, even though we were six months into it, and we were never planning on starting the trial, but, but if we would have, we would’ve convicted. They probably wouldn’t have made that argument. I’m making that argument for them, but had we put them on trial, we would’ve convicted them, and if you drop the charges, then of course you are completely liable. If we let them escape, we get to pretend that they are guilty and that we would have convicted them as being guilty, but without the embarrassment of the trial that would’ve made us look terrible.

                                           02:06:08             So, their guards apparently are instructed to turn the other direction as they scamper off through the woods and look, having been told that they’re gonna be executed every day for six months, they’re not willing to just wait around and let’s just see how this plays out. So, they leave. That’ll be the basis for Missouri later claiming, oh, Joseph Smith’s a fugitive from justice, saying the words Missouri and Justice together is probably the greatest contradiction ever stated in a single sentence from the 1830s. Then they’ll get back, he’ll join with the saints. They’ll purchase that plot in Commerce, and then they will eventually begin to build up Nauvoo.

Hank Smith:                      02:06:54             Which is what we’re gonna talk about next time.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        02:06:57             There we go.

Hank Smith:                      02:06:58             I think we’re looking at Relief Society and baptisms for the dead.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        02:07:03             Oh, those are gonna be awesome.

John Bytheway:               02:07:05             Hank, as you mentioned at the beginning, ending with not just let us do all things that lie in our power, but what’s the word I’m leaving out? Let us.

Hank Smith:                      02:07:14             Let us cheerfully. I like that.

John Bytheway:               02:07:15             In that setting? He said that? In that setting, is incredible.

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        02:07:24             Yeah. Brigham Young actually, he made a similar comment talking about the Liberty jail incarceration, that Joseph was still happy. That he was still, I mean, it was difficult, but he was not morose. Native, cheery temperament. Joseph is certainly someone who practices what he preaches about trying to be positive. Even in horrible situations.

John Bytheway:               02:07:55             His belief in God never wavered and got him through it all, don’t you think?

Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat:        02:08:01             I think absolutely. It was something that he’d experienced before. I mean, we talked about this with the early Missouri violence. When he asked God, why is this happening? When is this going to stop? The answer he got was be still and know that I’m God. He got a similar answer five years later when it wasn’t just Saints going through it from afar, but him and his own family going through it as well. What he got was simply that he needed to have faith. That is one of the most difficult things to do to go through a suffering scene yet to circle back around. You look at Amanda Smith and what she went through is absolutely horrific. Yet, at the same time, she maintained her faith and her belief, even though she had every justification to say, that’s it. I’m out. When Brigham’s talking about this later, he says that he accompanied Joseph Smith to Far West from Indiana and he says, was Joseph a military officer?

                                           02:09:13             No. A civil officer? No. A politician? No. Was he a man that meddled with anyone’s business in the world besides his own and tried to save the children of men by sharing the gospel? A proper citizen, a man that observed law and order as much as any man that ever lived. His character is as well known to me as mine is to any other man in this congregation. He’s speaking in the 1860s. So, there’s a lot of people who are members now who didn’t ever actually personally know Joseph. I mean, they’re 20 years removed from Joseph’s murder, so he is trying to tell them that he knew Joseph. He says, did he ever give wrong counsel? Never. Did he ever do an evil thing or anything that was wrong? If he did, no man ever lived that was more willing to repent and confess of it than Joseph was.

                                           02:10:01             He had his weaknesses like all other men did, but to give counsel or to perform an act worthy of condemnation, I am at the defiance of Earth and hell to prove anything against Joseph Smith in his religious character. This persecution has been related to you. You’ve heard a good deal of talk. I can inform this congregation what it was that got him from jail. It was the faith of the saints and the power of God that was upon them. No person ever saw Joseph with cast down countenance. The spirit of his mission on him all the day long was always full of cheerfulness and always had a word of comfort to speak to his friends. I speak this because these people are not acquainted with those circumstances. Joseph was in jail because he was a lover of truth and a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and received revelation from heaven. He received the priesthood and keys thereof because he’d established the kingdom of God on earth. The Lord had called him to step forth in this benighted generation, to plant the stand of liberty and freedom in every son and daughter of Adam and to set up the standard of Zion and to call upon the nations to come unto Christ and be saved. That’s a pretty good testimony.

Hank Smith:                      02:11:26             Oh boy. Wow.

John Bytheway:               02:11:27             Beautiful way to bring this to a close. Somebody who actually knew him and knew him well. This has been amazing. I think a lot of people maybe have heard the name Amanda Smith before, Amanda Barnes Smith and have heard that story of the miraculous healing of her boy’s hip. But boy, more backstory today makes her even more of a hero to me. Yeah, amazing. We’re gonna be back and we’re gonna be back with Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. Thank you so much for sharing this time with us today. It’s been wonderful being with all of you. Join us again soon for another episode of followHIM.