Posted by:
East Coast Exmo
(
)
Date: December 28, 2017 01:14PM
The early move from New York to Kirtland, Ohio was about getting near Sidney Rigdon's base of followers. No persecution involved.
The move to Missouri was drawn out in time. That was the frontier of the US at that era, and Joseph wanted to put his community there to get federal contracts for dealing with the Indians and, apparently, he wanted to have some personal dealing with the Indian ladies as well. The failure of Smith's ponzi scheme, the Kirtland Safety "Anti-Banking" Society, forced Smith and other church leaders to leave Ohio suddenly, and the church then made its move to Missouri. Again no persecution involved, just some criminals fleeing the area by night.
The Missourians were welcoming to the Mormons and set aside a county for them to settle in. However, the Mormons started settling in other counties as well and voting as a block. This led to disagreements with the Missourians and ultimately the 1938 Missouri war. Sidney Rigdon and Joseph had threatened to exterminate the Missourians and take over the whole area for Mormon use. After a brawl on election day, the Mormons started using armed gangs to intimidate the Missourians and eventually looted and burned the county seat of Gallatin and the town of Millport, along with other settlements. The Mormons were perpetrating a violent rebellion. After the president of the Quorum of the Twelve, Thomas Marsh, and his fellow apostle, Orson Hyde, reported the Mormon atrocities and the existence of the Danites to the Missouri authorities, and after a group of Mormons attacked a cadre of Missouri state militia that was guarding a county border, Governor Boggs issued Missouri Executive Order 44, which was intended to quell the rebellion and throw the Mormons out of the state.
Far from persecuting the Mormons, the Missourians just wanted to keep the Mormons from harming them. The Mormons, including Joseph Smith and the other leaders, were permitted to leave the state, and went to settle in Illinois, where they established the town of Nauvoo. The Illinoisans were welcoming and believed the Mormons' tales of "persecution". But Joseph Smith and his buddies got up to their old tricks again, including counterfeiting, fraud, an attempt to assassinate the (by then) former governor of Missouri Boggs, the formation of a secret in-group practicing plural marriage, etc. This culminated with the defection of first presidency member William Law, who set up a newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor, to expose the misdeeds of Smith and the Mormon church. After a single issue was published, Smith had the press destroyed, which led to the his being imprisoned at Carthage jail and being killed by a mob there.
The Mormons weren't persecuted for their beliefs. If anything, their neighbors were quite tolerant of their weird ways. Things only got heated when the Mormons committed crimes against their neighbors, and against their own.