TEXT: The first stroke of a “w” is inked, but the rest of the letter is missing.  

On 8 November 1833, Orson Hyde penned a letter to the editors of the Boonville Herald, stating, “I am two days from Independence, the seat of war.” Commenting on the letter featured here, Oliver Cowdery, editor of The Evening and the Morning Star, declared, “We have received several communications from the seat of war.” Phelps’s use of the term “seat of war” here is not a description of the current state of affairs in Jackson County in February 1834 but rather of his perception of Jackson County when he last resided in the region, before mid-November 1833. (“The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Dec. 1833, 118, emphasis in original.)  

The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.

According to Jackson County land records, William Everett owned land as early as January 1832 on the Jackson County side of the Missouri River approximately three to five miles north of Independence. Everett operated a ferry that docked at Liberty landing, located a few miles downriver and about five miles south of Liberty, Missouri. (Jackson Co., MO, Land and Property Records, 1832–1867, “Record of Original Entries to Lands in Jackson County Missouri,” microfilm 1,019,781, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL; see also McLellin, Journal, 28 Feb. 1833; Letter to Edward Partridge, 5 Dec. 1833; Letter from William W. Phelps, 6–7 Nov. 1833.)  

U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.

McLellin, William E. Journal, Apr.–June 1836. William E. McLellin, Papers, 1831–1836, 1877–1878. CHL. MS 13538, box 1, fd. 6. Also available as Jan Shipps and John W. Welch, eds., The Journals of William E. McLellin, 1831–1836 (Provo, UT: BYU Studies; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

Flournoy was one of the original settlers in Independence in 1826. His brother Jones sold land to Edward Partridge in December 1831 and later participated in the assault on Partridge in July 1833. Flournoy’s tavern was vacant at this time. Phelps’s description of the abandoned tavern as a blockhouse (a small military fort) was probably an exaggeration. (Wilcox, Jackson County Pioneers, 152–153; Jones H. Flournoy and Clara Flournoy to Edward Partridge, Deed, Jackson Co., MO, 19 Dec. 1831, CHL; see also Parkin, “History of the Latter-day Saints in Clay County,” 100, 103–104.)  

Wilcox, Pearl. Jackson County Pioneers. Independence, MO: By the author, 1975.

Flournoy, Jones H., and Clara Hickman Flournoy. Deed to Edward Partridge, Jackson Co., MO, 19 Dec. 1831. CHL. MS 14294.

Parkin, Max H. “A History of the Latter-day Saints in Clay County, Missouri, from 1833 to 1837.” PhD diss., Brigham Young University, 1976.

The Upper Missouri Enquirer reported that Judge John F. Ryland, Amos Rees, and Robert W. Wells concluded “that it was entirely unnecessarry to investigate this subject on the part of the State, as the jury were equally concerned in the outrages committed it was therefore not likely that any bills would be found and consequently no good could possibly result from any further investigation of the subject.” The Evening and the Morning Star stated, “It could not reasonably be expected, that after binding themselves to violate the law they would now act according to it, and find bills against their own accomplices in those deeds of murder and violence.” (“Mormon Difficulties,” Missouri Intelligencer and Boon’s Lick Advertiser [Columbia], 8 Mar. 1834, [1]; “The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Mar. 1834, 139.)  

Missouri Intelligencer and Boon’s Lick Advertiser. Franklin, MO, 1819–1827; Fayette, MO, 1827–1830; Columbia, MO, 1830–1835.

The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.

In 401 BC, Xenophon, an Athenian who had accompanied Cyrus the Younger on an expedition against Artaxerxes II in Persia, successfully led the retreat of his army (known as the Ten Thousand) from the Euphrates River to the Black Sea after Cyrus was killed in battle and after another commander, Clearchus, had been executed under the guise of a peace conference. (See Rouse, March Up Country, vi–xi, 1–108.)  

Rouse, W. H. D., trans. The March Up Country: A Translation of Xenophon’s Anabasis. 1st American ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1958.

Though Phelps suggested that all hope of attaining redress had ended, the Mormon exiles continued to seek justice in the civil courts, first in Jackson County and then in 1835 in Ray County. ([Edward Partridge], “A History, of the Persecution,” Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, 1:50.)  

Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.

Abigail Calkins Leonard, a witness of the attack on her husband, said that the group “threw him into the air, and brought him, with all their might, at full length upon the ground. When he fell, one of them sprang upon his breast, and stamping with all his might, broke two of his ribs.” Describing the attack further, Leonard claimed, they stripped “his clothes all from him excepting his pantaloons, then five or six attacked him with whips & gun sticks, and whipped him untill he could not stand but fell to the ground. . . . I then called to Mrs Brace who resided in the same house with us to come out and help me carry my husband into the house. When carried in he was very much lacerated and bruised, and unable to lie upon a bed and was also unable to work for a number of months also at the same time and place Mr Josiah Sumner was taken from the house, and came in very bloody and bruised from whipping.” (Abigail Calkins Leonard, Affidavit, Hancock Co., IL, 11 Mar. 1840, Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845, CHL; Tullidge, Women of Mormondom, 166; Porter and Romig, “Prairie Branch, Jackson County, Missouri,” 22.)  

Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845. CHL. MS 2703.

Tullidge, Edward W. The Women of Mormondom. New York: Tullidge and Crandall, 1877.

Porter, Larry C., and Ronald E. Romig. “The Prairie Branch, Jackson County, Missouri: Emergence, Flourishing, and Demise, 1831–1834.” Mormon Historical Studies 8 (Spring/Fall 2007): 1–36.

Phelps declared that the mob, by 1 May 1834, had burned “nearly all” of the Mormons’ buildings in Jackson County. John Corrill corroborated this statement, saying that by 14 June 1834, “for fear that we would return and enjoy our dwellings again, they set fire to, and burned them down.” (“The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, May 1834, 160; “The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, June 1834, 168.)  

The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.