After Missouri, they rebuilt. Then they were driven out again.
After being forced from Missouri, Latter-day Saints found refuge for a time in Illinois and built Nauvoo into a thriving city on the Mississippi. For a brief period, it represented safety, rebuilding, and the hope that a persecuted people might finally live in peace. But that peace did not last. Rising tensions, mob violence, political hostility, and the collapse of public protection led to another expulsion.
The second displacement, in sequence.
Missouri Expulsion
Nauvoo Rebuilding
Carthage
Winter Departure
September 1846 Removal
What changed after Missouri.
When the Saints arrived in Illinois in 1839, the contrast with Missouri was striking. They were initially welcomed, aided by sympathetic communities such as Quincy, and able to gather again in a single place. From that refuge, they built Nauvoo into a major settlement and renewed their hopes for stability after the winter suffering of the Missouri expulsion.
But Missouri changed the Saints themselves. They had already learned how quickly public sentiment could turn, how unreliable civil protection could become, and how vulnerable a minority faith community was when neighbors, militias, and political authorities stopped seeing them as worthy of equal protection. Nauvoo was therefore never just a new city. It was a second attempt to belong after being violently uprooted.
Nauvoo as refuge and rebuilding.
In Nauvoo, the Saints did what displaced people often do when given a narrow space of peace: they rebuilt. They established homes, created civic institutions, resumed religious life, and worked to make the city a place where families could recover from the trauma of Missouri. The city became the principal gathering place of the Saints in Illinois and, for a time, a symbol of resilience after expulsion.
That makes what followed even more important to remember. Nauvoo was not a temporary camp or an improvised shelter. It was a real attempt to plant roots again. The eventual loss of Nauvoo was therefore not simply a logistical move west. It was the destruction of a second home.
Rising tensions.
Conflict in Illinois did not erupt all at once. It grew over time through local suspicion, political rivalry, dissent from within and without the Church, and renewed fear among surrounding communities. After the Saints found peace for a time in Nauvoo, conflict arose again as non–Latter-day Saints and dissenters renewed their attacks.
By 1845, the pressure had become unmistakable. The Illinois legislature repealed the Nauvoo charter on January 29, 1845, repeated attempts to obtain a substitute charter failed, and Church leaders began actively planning for a move west. In September 1845, Brigham Young and Willard Richards publicly stated the Saints’ intention to leave Illinois if peace could be restored long enough to sell property and prepare the poor to go.
Violence and instability.
The instability in Illinois was not merely rhetorical or political. It was violent. In 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered by a mob at Carthage Jail despite the governor’s promise of protection. Their deaths were part of the renewed attack on the Saints in Illinois, and anti-Mormon vigilantes continued attacking Mormon farms around Nauvoo in an effort to expel the Saints.
The atmosphere worsened through 1845 and 1846. The Saints worked under threat, with hostile neighbors pressing for their departure and legal protections weakening around them. Even as they tried to complete the Nauvoo Temple and prepare ordinances before leaving, they did so under harassment and intense pressure.
Leaving Nauvoo.
Church leaders had originally planned a large, organized spring exodus in 1846. But rising hostilities in fall 1845 forced a truce that required Church members to begin leaving during the winter. Between February 4 and March 1, 1846, about 400 wagons carried around 2,000 Saints across the Mississippi River into Iowa, with thousands more following during the spring and summer.
This matters because it shows that the departure from Nauvoo was not simply a chosen migration on ideal terms. It was an early departure under pressure. And it was incomplete. Many of the poor, elderly, and vulnerable remained behind, hoping to follow later. As summer wore on, tensions climaxed again. In September 1846, several hundred armed men attacked the remaining Saints and other defenders of the city.
A second expulsion.
This is why Nauvoo should be remembered as a second expulsion, not merely the starting point of the pioneer trek. Church history materials explicitly identify the Saints as having been expelled from the state of Illinois in 1846. The same broad pattern seen in Missouri reappeared in altered form: hostility deepened, legal protection weakened, violence escalated, and the Saints were pushed out again.
For many Saints, the journey west was therefore not one long pioneer adventure beginning from stable ground. It was the continuation of a refugee experience.
How repeated expulsion shaped the people.
Repeated expulsion changed the Saints’ relationship to place, protection, and public trust. Because of the murder of Joseph Smith and the Saints’ subsequent expulsion from Nauvoo, many believed they could no longer rely on American rule of law for protection. That is an enormous historical statement. It reveals how deeply repeated displacement had altered their sense of belonging in the nation around them.
It also shaped their communal character. Repeated expulsion required planning for the poor, covenanting not to leave the vulnerable behind, building while preparing to lose what was built, and carrying sacred identity through instability.
Why this still matters.
Nauvoo and the Illinois expulsion still matter because they correct a common simplification. The Saints were not only persecuted once and then left to build in peace. They were driven from Missouri, rebuilt in Illinois, lost their prophet to mob violence, and were then pressured and forced out again. This repeated pattern reveals how fragile safety can be for a people whom the public has learned to fear or resent.
Second expulsions are clarifying. They show that the first injustice was not a fluke. When a people rebuild after persecution and are then displaced again, the pattern becomes harder to dismiss as local misunderstanding.
Document Highlight — Where to start in the archive
Visitors who want to explore this history more deeply should begin with the Nauvoo departure materials, the repeal of the Nauvoo charter, and records connected to the violence and legal breakdown of 1844–1846.
- Departure from Nauvoo — 1846 overview
- Repeal of the Nauvoo Charter — January 29, 1845
- Records of vigilante violence and expulsion from Illinois
Remember the refuge. Remember the loss. Remember that it happened twice.
Explore the records, trace the departure from Nauvoo, and see why the Illinois expulsion must be remembered as part of the larger story of repeated displacement against Latter-day Saints in America.