When a state declared a religious people the enemy.

What the order was.

The Missouri Extermination Order, also known as Executive Order 44, was a directive from Governor Boggs to General John B. Clark. In it, Boggs stated that the Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace. The order was not a rumor, not a later embellishment, and not merely a hostile social attitude. It was an official state order preserved in the Missouri State Archives.

What led to it.

The order came in the final stage of the 1838 conflict in Missouri, after months of escalating tension, vigilante attacks, expulsions, and breakdowns in civil authority. Latter-day Saints had appealed for protection against mob violence, but those appeals largely went unanswered. After the clash at Crooked River, exaggerated reports spread through the press and across the state, and many Missourians came to believe the Saints were waging an offensive war. In that atmosphere, Boggs issued the order.

Why the order matters.

This order matters because it marked the point at which prejudice and public hostility were formalized through state authority. The persecution of Latter-day Saints in Missouri had already involved fear, dispossession, and violence, but Executive Order 44 made clear that the state itself was now prepared to act against them as a collective enemy.

That is why the order carries such enduring moral weight. It is one thing for a people to face mob hostility. It is another for a governor to direct the machinery of government against them.

What happened after it was issued.

After the order was received, General Samuel D. Lucas marched on Far West, the Church’s headquarters in Missouri. Lucas demanded that Latter-day Saints sign over their property to cover other residents’ losses and leave the state immediately. Joseph Smith was arrested, and Lucas even called for his execution before Alexander Doniphan refused the order as illegal. Under threat of force, the Saints were driven toward mass migration into Illinois.

What “extermination” meant in context.

The word “extermination” is one reason this document is so historically charged. The term at the time could include forced expulsion or removal, not only total physical destruction. Even so, the order was unmistakably severe: it authorized force against a religious people and helped produce their expulsion from Missouri. Whatever the term’s nineteenth-century range of meaning, the document remains a profound violation of civil and religious liberty.

What the order did not erase.

The order did not create all the suffering by itself, and it did not explain every act of violence in Missouri. The Hawn’s Mill massacre was carried out by vigilantes, not the state militia, and there is no evidence the attackers knew of the governor’s order at the time. That distinction matters. It keeps the history accurate. But it does not lessen the significance of the order itself. The state had still declared the Saints enemies and used the threat of force to help drive them from Missouri.

Was it challenged at the time?

Yes. The order was not universally accepted even in its own day. It met measurable criticism. A newspaper editorial condemned the use of the militia against the Saints as an infringement on religious and civil rights, and a Missouri legislator later called the order unconstitutional and vowed to challenge it. That matters because it shows that even in 1838, some recognized the injustice for what it was.

The rescission.

The order remained formally on the books until June 25, 1976, when Missouri Governor Christopher S. Bond rescinded it. In the rescission order, Bond stated that Boggs’s directive had clearly contravened rights to life, liberty, property, and religious freedom protected by the constitutions of the United States and Missouri. He also expressed deep regret, on behalf of all Missourians, for the injustice and undue suffering caused by the 1838 order.

Why this document still matters now.

The Missouri Extermination Order matters now because it reveals how persecution develops. A people are first misrepresented, then feared, then treated as a social threat, and finally denied ordinary protection. By the time formal injustice appears, much of the moral groundwork has already been laid.

This page is not here to sensationalize the past. It is here to help people recognize how dangerous it becomes when a minority faith is stripped of public sympathy and treated as a problem to be removed.