The fall of 1838 marked the first time the Latter-day Saints engaged in organized retaliation against their enemies.

The setting was Northern Missouri, and the situation was what is referred to as the Mormon War.

Here the Saints marched on some nearby settlements that were supporting and equipping their enemies

and conducted raids where they pillaged stores and torched buildings.

Things only escalated from there and eventually culminated in the infamous extermination order

of Missouri Governor Lilburn W. Boggs,

the Hans Mill Massacre, the imprisonment of Joseph Smith and other church leaders in Liberty

Jail, and the wholesale removal of Latter-day Saints from the state of Missouri in the winter of 1838.

Today on Church History Matters, Casey and I walk through the history of this tumultuous

time and discuss what the conflict of 1838 might teach us about the justified and unjustified

use of violence among Latter-day Saints and its consequences when we choose to engage.

I'm Scott Woodward and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into

our fourth episode in this series

on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint History. Now let's get into it.

Well, hi, Casey. Hi, Scott. How are you? Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah. Fantastic.

And, man, it feels like I say this a lot, but I've been dying to talk about what we're going to talk about today.

But that might be everything in church history.

Yeah, this is an intriguing series.

It's kind of a downer.

We're talking about peace and violence, but kind of emphasis on the violence, it seems like, so far, in the Latter-day Saint tradition. And it could seem like a downer,

and some of the stories are downright, sad, Casey. We're going to talk about some of those today.

But I think overall, this is an important topic. Is that fair to say? Maybe it's not the most

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