page_title: Mormon Extermination Order
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Mormon Extermination Order / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Subject is John Bullock Clark, Senior, United States soldier and politician, 1831-1885
context_page_description: Missouri Executive Order 44, commonly known as the Mormon Extermination Order, was an executive order issued on October 27, 1838, by the Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs. The order was issued in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Mormons and a unit of the Missouri State Militia in northern Ray County, Missouri, during the 1838 Mormon War. Claiming that the Mormons had committed open and avowed defiance of the law and had made war upon the people of Missouri, Governor Boggs directed that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description". The Militia and other state authorities—General John B. Clark, among them—used the executive order to violently expel the Mormons from their lands in the state following their capitulation, which in turn led to their subsequent migration to Nauvoo, Illinois. The order was supported by most northwest Missouri citizens but was questioned or denounced by a few. However, no determination of the order's legality was ever made.
context_section_description: Although the Mormon leaders surrendered at Far West on November 1, Mormons (especially in outlying areas) continued to be subject to harassment and even forced ejection by citizens and Militia units.  The Mormons in Caldwell County, as part of their surrender agreement, signed over all of their property to pay the expenses of the campaign against them; although this act was later held unlawful, it became clear to them that departure from the state was the only option state officials were going to allow.
  Upon his arrival at Far West, General Clark delivered the following speech to the now-captive Mormons, in which he directly invoked Order 44:
  ...The order of the governor was to me, that you should be exterminated, and not allowed to remain in the state; and had not your leaders been given up, and the terms of this treaty  complied with, your families before this time would have been destroyed, and your houses in ashes.  There is a discretionary power vested in my hands, which concerning your circumstances I will exercise for a season...
  Though Clark had offered to allow the Mormons to remain in Missouri until the following spring, they decided to leave right away; according to one account, most had departed within ten days of Clark's speech.  Although Governor Boggs belatedly ordered a militia unit under Colonel Sterling Price (later to achieve fame as a Confederate Civil War general) to northern Missouri to stop ongoing depredations against the Mormons, he refused to repeal Order #44.  The Missouri legislature deferred discussion of an appeal by Mormon leaders to rescind the decree. Nearly all of the approximately 10,000 Mormons left Missouri by the spring of 1839, and would not begin to return to Missouri until approximately 25 years later.
  Governor Boggs himself was excoriated in Mormon portions of the Missouri press, as well as those of neighboring states, for his action in issuing this order. General David Atchison, a legislator and militia general from western Missouri who had refused to take part in operations, demanded that the Legislature formally state its opinion of Governor Boggs' order, for "he would not live in any state, where such authority was given".  Although his proposal and similar ones by others went down to defeat, Governor Boggs himself saw his once-promising political career destroyed to the point that, by the next election, his own party was reluctant to be associated with him.  After surviving an assassination attempt in 1842, Governor Boggs ultimately emigrated to California, where he died in relative obscurity in the Napa Valley in 1860.
caption: General John Bullock Clark, to whom Governor Boggs addressed the Order
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