It had been three years since the Latter-day Saints began to settle in Jackson County, Missouri,

the place that the Lord revealed would be Zion.

There were now more saints in Missouri than Ohio, and they made up a third of the county.

The Saints were from the North, and Missouri became a slave state 10 years earlier with a Missouri

compromise. Tension simmered as W.W. Phelps and a Protestant minister, Benton Pixley,

traded jabs, labeling each other false prophets.

In the same issue of the church newspaper,

W.W. Phelps printed an article entitled Free People of Color.

The article quoted the Missouri Code regarding proselytizing amongst enslaved people and formerly

enslaved people, free people of color, whose movements were curved in Missouri.

Though the article began to prevent any misunderstanding, misunderstanding was all that came

from the article. In the 1830s, the church was

considered too liberal and too welcoming to too many different peoples. The Missourians claimed

the saints were tampering with their slaves and inviting free blacks from other states to come

to Missouri. Phelps attempted to write an extra correction, but it could not extinguish

the spark. The article lit a fire under the Missourians, which exploded in the town square of

independence. Missouri citizens demanded the church stop its printing operation and closed the bishop's

doorhouse. Church members refused and things escalated as the

townspeople destroyed the church's printing press and ransacked Phelps home. Bishop Edward

Partridge and new convert Charles Allen were then tarred and feathered in the town square

when they would not deny the Book of Mormon. Two weeks later, Joseph Smith received the revelation in Section 98.

My name is Janice Johnson. I'm a Willis Center Research Associate at the Maxwell Institute,

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