“This is what I’ve come to. There are certain things I know with absolute certainty. I know that Joseph Smith saw the Father and the Son that day in 1820. I know that angels have come to him and restored the keys of the priesthood. I believe that Joseph still serves as God’s prophet and his servant. I listened to him in that Relief Society meeting a few days ago. Oh, Benjamin, I wish you could have been there. He spoke with such power. He spoke like a prophet. We all felt it. It was as if we were on fire there for a time.”
She took a quick breath, then with quiet resoluteness completed her thought. “The rest I don’t understand. But I suppose that doesn’t matter. I have decided that I will hang on to what I
do
understand and to what I
do
know. The rest is just going to have to work itself out.”
Lilburn W. Boggs, who served as governor of the state of Missouri from 1836 to 1840, was a Jackson County resident. He had been lieutenant governor when trouble broke out in the western part of the county between the old settlers and the new Mormon emigrants. Though he had deliberately kept a low profile during the hostilities, he had worked vigorously behind the scenes, encouraging the mob spirit, stoking the fires of hatred.
In 1836, he succeeded Daniel Dunklin as governor just in time to see the same conflict start all over again. When the Mormon War broke out in the fall of 1838, the Saints found they had an implacable enemy in the governor’s mansion in Jefferson City. He called out the militia and sent them north in strength. When wildly exaggerated reports of casualties in a skirmish between the Mormon forces and his own militia reached his ears, he issued the infamous order to his generals: “The Mormons must be driven from the state or exterminated.” In less than a week, Haun’s Mill had entered into the tragic history of the Latter-day Saints. Within a fortnight, Far West had been sacked, the Mormon leaders were in prison, and the shattered survivors were making plans for a spring exodus.
Some would say Boggs had done himself proud. Others suggested that he had carved himself a niche in the netherworld and was in for prolonged and exquisite torment there. If the prospect worried him, he gave little sign of it. No longer governor, and immersed in a bitterly contested race for a state senate seat, it is very unlikely that Boggs had the Mormons on his mind at all in the spring of 1842.
May sixth, 1842, had been a warm day in western Missouri. Clear and cloudless, it gave hint of the coming heat of summer. But it was evening now and many homes had their windows open to invite in the cooler air. At the Boggs home it was no different. The last of the light had gone and Boggs sat in a chair by his reading table. The lamp on the table cast his shadow on the window curtains in back of him. A slight breeze stirred them from time to time. In another room in the house, he could hear his young son moving around doing this or that.
His back was to the window and he never saw the dark form that suddenly appeared behind the sheer material. The form crouched down, peering over the sill into the lighted room. And then the curtain parted. The black snout of a pistol slipped through the opening. There was a moment’s hesitation, then a shattering blast. The pistol was loaded with buckshot. Most of the shot sprayed wildly in the room, but three pieces of it caught Lilburn W. Boggs in the head. He slammed forward, the book he was reading crashing downward onto the table. Then his chair slowly twisted as he groaned and toppled sidewards to the floor.
A moment later, a young boy ran into the room to find his father in a pool of blood and the curtains stirring in the evening breeze.
“Look,” Emily cried, “there’s Papa!” She started jumping up and down. “Papa! Papa!”
If Nathan heard, he gave no sign. Nor did Derek and Matthew, who rode beside him. But then, they were over a hundred yards away and there were some three or four thousand spectators lining the gentle slopes of the bluff overlooking the parade ground of the Nauvoo Legion. There were literally hundreds of children craning their necks to see their fathers, uncles, and brothers and shouting out when they finally spied them.
“Oh my!” Mary Ann said. “Isn’t this grand?”
“Where’s Grandpa?” Savannah said, tugging at her mother’s dress. “I wanna see Grandpa.”
Caroline handed Charles to Olivia, then picked her up. Savannah had turned five in March and was getting pretty big for Caroline to lift. Carl, seeing her struggle, came over. He already had Sarah, who was a year and a half younger than Savannah, astride one shoulder. He took Savannah and put her up on the other, so they were facing each other across his head. “Look,” he said, pointing. “See up front there?”
Knowing that Rebecca and Jennifer Jo were both due to have their babies within the month, Carl and the older boys had come first thing this morning and set up a row of chairs. He had chosen carefully so that no one could get in front of them. Now Mary Ann, Rebecca, Jennifer Jo, Lydia, Caroline, and Melissa all had places to sit. Rebecca lifted her hand, pointing in the same direction. “See the band, Savannah? Where the music’s coming from? That’s the front. That’s where Grandpa is.”
The Nauvoo Legion band was at the north end of the field, standing in formation, playing a rousing military march. They were surprisingly good and filled the air with a festive mood.
“You can’t see him, Savannah,” Mary Ann said, “but he’s on Brother Joseph’s staff. They’re all there on the north side.”
“Look behind the band,” Rebecca suggested. “There’s General Smith. See him? On the beautiful black horse.”
“I see him!” Sarah cried. “I see Brother Joseph.”
Young Joshua, standing just beside Carl, was pointing now too. “And that’s Sister Emma on the horse right beside him.”
“Well,” Carl said, looking up at his niece, “Grandpa Steed is right in there somewhere.”
“Who are
those
people?” Emily asked, pointing at the lines of men on the opposite end of the field from the band. And then she saw something else. “Are those guns?”
“Those are cannons,” young Joshua said with a sniff.
“That’s the artillery company on that end,” Carl explained. “They are the ones who shoot the cannons, Emily.”
The Legion had lined up on the parade field to form a long, hollow rectangle. The north end was for the dignitaries. Joseph, his small band of lifeguards, as they were called, his staff, and the officers’ wives were gathered there along with the visiting guests. Directly in front of Joseph was the Nauvoo Legion band. In front of them, General John C. Bennett and his officers faced the rest of the troops. Bennett, as second in command, would be in charge of the parade and the sham battle.
Down the west side, over a hundred men on horseback were lined up in two rows facing into the rectangle. This was the Second Cohort of Cavalry. Facing them directly across the rectangle were two similar lines of horsemen. This was the First Cohort. The companies of infantry for both cohorts were massed in neatly aligned bodies behind the cavalry. The rectangle was closed on the south by the artillery company, with the three small cannon the state had recently sent them.
At this time in the history of the United States, state and local militia were the country’s answer to the call to have a standing army. The federal army of full-time soldiers was less than ten thousand strong. But across the face of America there were nearly two million men in state and county militias. Most states required that all able-bodied white males between the ages of eighteen and forty or forty-five give at least six months of full-time service in the militia and then remain in the reserves. Preachers, Quakers, and others with acceptable reasons were exempt, but all others accepted service as a matter of course. In the Nauvoo Legion, nonmembers of the Church were not required to serve; thus Carl and Joshua were the only adult male Steeds not currently in the service.
There were no standard uniforms. Each of the enlisted men wore what they wore at home—homespun trousers, cotton shirts, boots, and various styles and colors of hats. Even the officers were not required to be in uniform, though most of them chose to be. But
uniform
was a misleading term, for there was no set costume and their dress ranged from the simple to the wildly flamboyant and spanned the rainbow in color.
Weapons were just as varied, if present at all. The state had also sent the Legion some two hundred rifles, and these were scattered among the two cohorts. Beyond that there weren’t many others. The Missouri militia had disarmed the Mormons back in Far West, and money was too scarce for most to have replaced them. There were a few pistols and numerous swords. Some of the infantry carried old muskets, others long pikes with steel tips. A few even carried sticks on their shoulders so they could drill as though with real weapons.
But with all of that, they were still a stirring sight, Carl thought. There were now twenty-six companies in the Legion, about two thousand men. And to see the infantry lined up in formation and in front of them the lines of cavalry, over two hundred strong—as Mary Ann said, it was indeed grand.
“Are they really going to fight each other, Papa?” Sarah asked, running her fingers through Carl’s hair.
“No, honey. They’re going to have what they call a ‘sham battle.’ That means they act like they are fighting so they can practice their drills and moves. They’ll be drawing their swords and shooting off their guns, but only in the air. No one’s going to be trying to hurt anyone else.”
“You’d better hold your ears when it happens,” Mary Ann teased them. “It’s going to be very loud.”
Had Carl been closer to the parade ground, down near the south end of the First Cohort, he might not have been so quick in reassuring his daughter. In the second row of horses, right on the far south end of the line, Robert Foster and the two Higbee brothers sat side by side. They each had a rifle in hand and wore a scabbard with a sword. Unlike most of the other men who were laughing and talking with great animation while they waited for things to begin, these three were grim and tight-lipped.
“Here he comes,” Foster said, jerking his head toward the front end of the parade ground. Major General John C. Bennett was cantering down the line of the First Cohort, as if on an informal inspection.
General Wilson Law, commander of the First Cohort, saw him coming and stood in his stirrups, raising his sword high. “Ten-
shun!
” he yelled loudly. Instantly the men straightened. Those with rifles brought them up in front of them, held at the vertical in salute. Those with swords did the same. All the others raised their hands to their foreheads in salute.
Bennett raised his sword in salute, keeping his horse moving at a steady pace all the way down the line. When he reached the end, he wheeled around. “Very good, General Law,” he shouted. “Are your men ready?”
“Yes, sir!” came the answering shout.
Bennett brought his horse around the end of the two rows of horsemen. As he came by Foster he gave him a hard questioning look. “Are you men ready?” he barked up the line. Others shouted out “Yes!” Foster merely nodded, fingering his rifle. “Good,” Bennett grunted, and put spurs to his horse, running it along behind the First Cohort and joining General Smith at the north end.
“General Smith, sir!” he cried as he trotted up to where Joseph and his staff were waiting.
“Yes, General Bennett.”
“The troops are ready for your command, sir.”
“Good. Let us proceed.”
“Sir? May I make a suggestion?”
Joseph had turned to watch as Emma moved away to join the other officers’ wives, who would watch the battle from a safer distance. Some of his lifeguards rode with her and stayed by her side. He turned back. “Yes, General. What is it?”
“May I suggest that you take command of the First Cohort of Cavalry, sir. That way you can be right in the midst of the men to see how they do.”
Benjamin was no longer of age to be in a militia, but he still served on Joseph’s personal staff in the Legion. He was on foot, just two horses away from Joseph. He jerked up at Bennett’s last words. That would put Joseph right in the middle of the melee. It was not unheard of that, in spite of the most careful precautions, people got hurt in these sham battles. Two thousand men firing off guns into the air, men engaged in mock sword fights, infantry jabbing here and there at make-believe opponents with their bayonets—Benjamin didn’t like the idea of that at all. He wondered if he should speak.
But Hyrum had also stiffened in his saddle. Brigham and Heber and others of the Twelve were looking concerned. Hyrum kneed his horse and moved over right next to Joseph. He leaned over and there was a quick whispered exchange.
When Joseph straightened, he looked at Bennett. Any humor had gone out of his eyes now. “Thank you, General, but I think it best if we observe from this vantage point.”
Momentary anger flickered in the mayor’s eyes, but he forced a quick smile. “Then may I make another suggestion, sir. What if you took up station on the far end of the First Cohort, to the rear of them? That way you would not be in the thick of the fray but would still be in a much better position to observe.”
“There is not room there for me and all of my staff,” Joseph responded.
“Then leave your staff here,” came the quick response. “I will personally escort you there and stay with you.”
Now Captain Rockwood, commander of the lifeguards, was motioning for Joseph’s attention. “Let me confer with my staff on the matter,” Joseph said to Bennett. He reined his horse around, and he and Hyrum rode over to Rockwood.
“Don’t do it, Joseph!” Hyrum said in a terse whisper. “He’s up to something.”
“Rockwood?”
The captain shook his head. “Foster and the Higbee boys are down on that end, General. I think you’re better off to stay right here. Once things start popping, there’s no way to keep it under control.”
Now William Smith, Joseph’s brother, leaned in. He had been close enough to hear what they were saying. “Do you really think someone would try to harm Joseph with all these people around?” he asked dubiously.
Rockwood didn’t back down an inch. “One ‘stray’ bullet and who would know?”