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Under Joseph Smith's leadership, the Mormon community had moved with some regularity before settling in Nauvoo. Smith's first visions took place near Palmyra, New York, in 1820. The church itself was organized in Fayette, New York, on April 6, 1830. In 1831 the church's headquarters moved to Kirtland, Ohio. Soon after, groups of Latter-day Saints began to settle in Missouri, where Joseph Smith identified Jackson County as the "land of promise, and the place for the city of Zion." Kirtland was something of a Mormon gateway to the west, and its population never grew to more than a couple thousand. In Missouri, the church's rapid growth and communal land holdings threatened the local political powers. It was not long before numerous acts of anti-Mormonism (tar and featherings, homes and a newspaper office destroyed) led the Latter-day Saints to take up arms. The conflict grew into what is now known as the Mormon Wars. There was violence on both sides. When reports reached Governor Lilburn Boggs, he ordered that the Mormons "must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, if necessary, for the public good." In the winter of 1838-39, thousands took refuge across the Mississippi in Illinois, first in Quincy and then in Nauvoo. By 1846, they were on the road again. |