I am Ryan McKnight.

I'm Kara Santa Maria.

I am Christopher Smith.

Hi, I'm Andrew Torres.

This is Naked Mormonism.

The Serial Mormon History Podcast. The Navu Expositor was no more.

The city of Navu's usual tranquility was broken, never to be restored.

With the force of Joseph Smith as mayor, prophet president, and lieutenant general of the Navu Legion, pushing the city council to declare the expositor of public nuisance, the city marshal John P. Green had carried out Joe's orders to destroy the printing office.

Major General of the Navu Legion, Jonathan Dunham, had also called out a few hundred members of the

city militia to keep the peace with orders to arrest anybody who opposed the destruction of the

press. This was essentially a declaration of martial law in the city for the night. And according to

reports from media outside the city of

Navu, those arrest orders were indeed executed, although it's tough to know how many people

were actually arrested because that night a riot broke out in the chaos and the Legion could

barely keep a handle on the city. According to Quillium Claypen's entry in Joe's Journal for

that day, quote,

The posse consisting of some hundred returned with the marshal in front of the mansion,

and I gave them a short address, told them that they had done right,

that they had executed my orders required of me by the city council,

and that I would never submit to have

another libelous publication established in the city, that I cared not how many papers were in the

city if they would print the truth, but would submit to no libels or slanders from them.

...