1838 Mormon War - Extermination Order

Extermination Order

News of the battle quickly spread and contributed to an all-out panic in northwestern Missouri. Exaggerated initial reports indicated that nearly all of Bogart's company had been killed. Generals Atchison, Doniphon and Parks decided they needed to call out the militia to "prevent further violence." This is how it was explained in a letter to US Army Colonel R. B. Mason of Ft. Leavenworth:

"The citizens of Daviess, Coroll, and some other normal counties have raised mob after mob for the last two months for the purpose of driving a group of fanatics, (called mormons) from those counties and from the State. These things have at length goaded the mormons into a state of desperation that has now made them the aggressors instead of acting on the defensive."

While the state militia gathered, Missourian vigilante parties continued to act on their own, driving Latter Day Saints inward to Far West and Adam-ondi-Ahman.

Meanwhile, exaggerated reports from the Battle of Crooked River made their way to Missouri's governor, Lilburn Boggs. Boggs held strong preconceptions against the Latter Day Saints, dating from the time when both he and they had lived in Jackson County, and the governor believed the reports. Although he had refrained from stopping the illegal anti-Mormon siege of De Witt, he now mustered 2,500 state militia to put down what he perceived to be a Mormon insurrection against the state. Possibly playing on Rigdon's July 4 sermon that talked of a "war of extermination," Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the "Extermination Order," which stated that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace..." The Extermination Order was finally rescinded on June 25, 1976 by Governor Christopher Samuel "Kit" Bond.