In this work, Kinney examines how the violent expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri changed the history of America and the West. Illustrations. Maps.

In the summer and fall of 1838, animosity between Mormons and their neighbors in western Missouri erupted into an armed conflict known as the Mormon War. The conflict continued until early November, when the outnumbered Mormons surrendered and agreed to leave the state. In this major new interpretation of those events, LeSueur argues that while a number of prejudices and fears stimulated the opposition of Missourians to their Mormon neighbors, Mormon militancy contributed greatly to the animosity between them. Prejudice and poor judgment characterized leaders on both sides of the struggle. In addition, LeSueur views the conflict as an expression of attitudes and beliefs that have fostered a vigilante tradition in the United States. The willingness of both Missourians and Mormons to adopt extralegal measures to protect and enforce community values led to the breakdown of civil control and to open warfare in northwestern Missouri.

Using the concept of "classical republicanism" in his analysis, Kenneth Winn argues against the common view that the Mormon religion was an exceptional phenomenon representing a countercultural ideology fundamentally subversive to American society. Rather, he maintains, both the Saints and their enemies affirmed republican principles, but in radically different ways. Winn identifies the 1830 founding of the Mormon church as a religious protest against the pervasive disorder plaguing antebellum America, attracting people who saw the libertarianism, religious pluralism, and market capitalism of Jacksonian America as threats to the Republic. While non-Mormons shared the perception that the Union was in danger, many saw the Mormons as one of the chief threats. General fear of Joseph Smith and his followers led to verbal and physical attacks on the Saints, which reinforced the Mormons' conviction that America had descended into anarchy. By 1846, violent opposition had driven Mormons to the uninhabited Great Salt Lake Basin.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began settling in Missouri in 1831. The original place of settlement was Jackson County, on the western border of the state. As early as 1832 trouble arose between the Mormons and their Missouri neighbors. In 1833 mobs drove the Mormons from Jackson County and into the neighboring counties of Clay and Ray and further north into what eventually became Caldwell and Davies Counties. The Mormons again built communities and planted crops. By 1836, mobs again began to molest the Mormon communities. The Mormons living in the counties of Ray and Clay were again forced to flee their homes and joined other members of the Church living in Caldwell and Davies Counties. The respite, however, was short lived as persecution and mob violence came to a head in the summer and fall of 1838. Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders were placed in Liberty Jail while the body of the Church was forced to flee the state to Iowa Territory and the State of Illinois. As early as 1839 members of the Church who had been forced to flee Missouri began preparing affidavits and petitioning for compensation for their losses and suffering at the hands of the Missourians.

Wilford Woodruff, Fourth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is an autobiography by Wilford Woodruff, who was an American religious leader of great importance in the Mormon church.

Many Mormon dreams flourished in Missouri. So did many Mormon nightmares. The Missouri period--especially from the summer of 1838 when Joseph took over vigorous, personal direction of this new Zion until the spring of 1839 when he escaped after five months of imprisonment¿represents a moment of intense crisis in Mormon history. Representing the greatest extremes of devotion and violence, commitment and intolerance, physical suffering and terror--mobbings, battles, massacres, and political ¿knockdowns¿--it shadowed the Mormon psyche for a century. In the lush Missouri landscape of the Mormon imagination where Adam and Eve had walked out of the garden and where Adam would return to preside over his posterity, the towering religious creativity of Joseph Smith and clash of religious stereotypes created a swift and traumatic frontier drama that changed the Church.