and state judges, the governor, and even the President of the
United States, were appealed to in turn for redress. The
national executive, Andrew Jackson, while expressing sympathy for
the persecuted people, deplored his lack of power to interfere
with the administration or non-administration of state laws; the
national officials could do nothing; the state officials would do
naught.

But the expulsion from Jackson County was but a prelude to the
tragedy soon to follow. A single scene of the bloody drama is
known as the Haun's Mill massacre. A small settlement had been
founded by "Mormon" families on Shoal Creek, and here on the 30th
of October, 1838, a company of two hundred and forty fell upon
the hapless settlers and butchered a score. No respect was paid
to age or sex; grey heads, and infant lips that scarcely had
learned to lisp a word, vigorous manhood and immature youth,
mother and maiden, fared alike in the scene of carnage, and their
bodies were thrown into an old well.

In October, 1838, the Governor of Missouri, the same Lilburn W.
Boggs, issued his infamous exterminating order, and called upon
the militia of the state to execute it. The language of this
document, signed by the executive of a sovereign state of the
Union, declared that the "Mormons" must be driven from the state
or exterminated. Be it said to the honor of some of the officers
entrusted with the terrible commission, that when they learned
its true significance they resigned their authority rather than
have anything to do with what they designated a cold-blooded
butchery. But tools were not wanting, as indeed they never have
been, for murder and its kindred outrages. What the heart of man