Maxwell Institute Podcast

Everything changed for Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints in a few short months in 1838. 5000 Saints gathered in the burgeoning city of Far West, Missouri to celebrate the 4th of July. Confident and secure in their main settlement, Sidney Rigdon declared that if a mob came again, it would be a “war of extermination.” His words proved prophetic–the Missourians would remember that language. Governor Lilburn Boggs signed Executive Order number 44 the 27th of October declaring that “the Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state.” After the Hawn’s Mill Massacre and the siege at Far West, 66 Latter-day Saint men were arrested. Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Sidney Rigdon, as well as Caleb Baldwin, Lyman Wight and Alexander McRae were eventually jailed in the Clay County Jail at Liberty, Missouri for “crimes of high treason”–an offense that did not provide the possibility of bail. BH Roberts would later call the jail a “prison temple,” yet it was a squalid, dirty, and d