Anti-Mormon sentiments are nothing new to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 1836 their anti-slavery position put them at odds with Missouri. Joseph Smith was an abolitionist. His Presidential platform for The United States included this view.
Missouri mobs forced Mormons from their homes in Jackson County, in 1833, leaving them penniless. And although they found refuge in Clay County, Missouri, where the people were kind and helpful, three years later, that anti-slave question loomed. The South and Andrew Jackson were trying to squelch all petitions to end the slave trade. The citizens of Clay convened a public meeting in Liberty, Missouri, and came to the consensus, that Mormons must get out of town –they
“are eastern men, whose manners, habits, customs and even dialect, are essentially different from our own…Â they are non-slave holders, and opposed to slavery; which, in this peculiar period, when abolition has reared its deformed and haggard visage in our land, is well calculated to excite deep and abiding prejudices.” (Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 327, quote from Messenger and Advocate, 1836)
In June 1836, the Clay County Committee voted for the Mormons to leave. The citizens did not force them out by mob, but gave them time to sell their property, but leave they did. “The religious tenets of this people are so different from the present churches of the age, that they always have and always will, excite deep prejudices against them.”(ibid, p. 328)
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