Remember thy suffering saints, O our God, and thy servants will rejoice in thy name forever.

Doctrine and Covenants section 121 verse 6.

Hey listeners, this is Nick from Book of Mormon Central, and today's podcast addresses the question.

Why were the saints driven from Missouri in the fall of 1838?

Early members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints first began settling in Missouri

in the summer of 1831 after Joseph Smith received the revelation that the future city of Zion

was to be built in Jackson County.

Over the next eight years, the number of saints in the area consistently grew as more and more saints sought to settle near Zion. The saints' relationship with neighbors, not of their

faith, was tumultuous and rocky during that time, with hostilities reaching a breaking point

in the fall of 1838. The governor issued

an extermination order authorizing the militia to drive the saints from the state at gunpoint.

Joseph Smith and many other prominent church members were arrested on trumped-up and in some cases

outright false charges. The circumstances that contributed to these events are complicated and

multifaceted. They include the uniqueness of Mormon's faith, their apparent disposition for allying

with the Indians, their overall anti-slavery stance, and their rapidly growing political power

and resulting voting blocks, all of which were red flags for their neighbors.

Legal historian Jeffrey and Walker, however, argues that the timing of arrests and driving out of the Saints

strongly suggests that one of the main driving forces was the greed of some leading Missourians

who coveted the land settled by the Saints and wanted to prevent them from becoming property owners in Missouri.

The Saints were violently driven out of Jackson County in 1833 and temporarily found refuge in nearby Clay County as they sought for legal redress.

Eventually through the instrumentality of lawyer Alexander Donovan, two new counties

were formed in northern Missouri, Caldwell and Davies. The northern part of Caldwell was informally

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