Emotions are addictive like heroin, and withdrawal is always painful and hard.

Emotions are like a sharp knife, they are great if you have the handle, but not so fun when you hold the blade.

Emotions are like a horse, they are fun to ride, but not so fun when, out of control, they carry you where you don’t want to go.

OK. Your turn. . .

 

I got this as an anonymous email, that I then edited and added to.

Growing up in Missouri

1. You’ve never met any celebrities.

2. Everyone you know has been on a “Float Trip,”

3. “Vacation” means driving to Silver Dollar City, Worlds of Fun, or Six Flags.

4. You’ve seen all the biggest bands, ten years AFTER they were popular.

5. You measure distance in minutes rather than miles. For example,
“Webb City’s only 20 minutes away.”

6. Down south to you means Arkansas.

7. You know several people who have hit a deer.

8. You think Missouri should be spelled with an “ah” at the end.

9. Your school classes were canceled because of cold.

10. Your school classes were canceled because of heat.

11. You instinctively ask someone you’ve just met, “What High School did you go to?”

12. You’ve had to switch from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day.

13. You think ethanol makes your truck “run a lot better.”

14. You know what’s knee-high by the Fourth of July.

15. The Fourth of July is a major Holiday for you.

16. You’ve seen people wear bib overalls at funerals.

17. You can find a car running in the parking lot at a store, with no one in it, anytime the store’s open.

18. You know in your heart that Mizzou can beat Nebraska in football.

19. You end your sentences with an unnecessary preposition.
Example: “Where’s my coat at?”

20. All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, a vegetable, or a grain.

21. You install security lights on your house and garage but leave both unlocked.

22. You think of the major four food groups as beef, pork, beer, and Jell-O salad with marshmallows.

23. You carry jumper cables in your car and know that everyone else should.

24. You went to skating parties as a kid.

25. You design your kid’s Halloween costume to fit over a heavy coat.

26. The local paper covers national and international headlines on one page, but requires six pages for sports.

27. You think I-44 is spelled and pronounced “farty-far.” (St. Louis only.)

28. You’ll pay for your kids to go to college, unless they want to go to KU.

29. You think “deer season” is a National Holiday.

30. You know that Concordia is halfway between Kansas City and Columbia, and Columbia is halfway between St. Louis and Kansas City, and that the Warrenton Outlet Mall is halfway between Columbia and St.Louis.

31. You can’t think of anything better than sitting on the porch in the middle of a cool summer thunderstorm.

32. You know which leaves make good toilet paper.

33. You’ve said, “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

34. You know all four seasons: Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer and Football.

35. You know the sound of a hoot owl, the sound of a woodpecker, and the sound of the local train passing through.

36. You know that Harry S Truman, Walt Disney, and Mark Twain are all from Missouri.

37. You struggled with World Geography in school because you thought Cuba, Versailles, Waterloo, California, Nevada, Houston, Louisiana, Springfield, and Mexico were all cities in Missouri. (And they are!)

38. You think a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.

39. You know what a “hook echo” is.

40. You had real candied kettle korn, before Orville discovered it.

41. You have a BBQ grill of some kind.

42. You know your weatherman’s name, and have discussed him/her with friends.

43. You know what “HOME OF THE THROWED ROLL” means.

44. “The woods” to you means a wild overgrown brushy place, usually only a block or so away.

45. You have brought excess garden green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, or zucchini to work and left them in the lunch room for coworkers, or one of your coworkers has done this for you.

46. You actually get this, and forward this to all your Missouri friends.

 

Most people don’t know it, but about 25 years before the Civil War began in Kansas City (Missouri was a slave state), there was another war fought in the same area, called The Mormon War.   Long before Quantril’s Raider’s, Jayhawkers, John Brown, and Jesse James were kicking up dust on night raids, burning down houses and shooting people, their fathers had experience doing the very same things in the same general area.  The fathers of those who started the Civil War, also started a war, it just wasn’t quite as big as the Civil War later became.

THE CRUSADE OF THE ZION’S CAMP MILITIA

Back in 1833, The Mormons, who had settled in Independence, Missouri, (Kansas City’s Eastern suburb) were expelled from Jackson County.  The Mormons were mostly abolitionists from northern states, and England, while most of those already settled in the Jackson County area were southerners and slave owners.  The two didn’t mix very well.  The Mormons were eventually threatened by local vigilantes and fled their lands and property for safety.  Most settled north, across the Missouri river, in Clay County. 

Reportedly, the Missouri Attorney General responded to pleas by the Mormons to have their abandoned lands restored, by suggesting to the Mormons that making such an order would be useless and futile unless the Mormons had sufficient militia to protect both men and property that might resettle there.

In 1834 Joseph Smith had a revelation from God calling for a ‘militia’ to be raised in Kirtland, Ohio, where the church headquarters was at the time.  This militia became known as “Zion’s Camp”  and the plan was for them to march to Missouri and “redeem Zion. “    About 200 men, women, and children, joined this militia and began marching on May 4th of 1834.   Within a month they had marched across the states of Indiana and Illinois, and had reached the Mississippi River.  During June they made a determined march across the state of Missouri.  As the Fourth of July approached, so did the Zion’s Camp militia.  News of their approach near the end of June caused concerns and panic in both Jackson and Clay counties.   While non-Mormons felt alarm, all attempts to negotiate a peaceful return of the Mormons to Independence and Jackson County failed.  Rather than try to take back their land by force, Joseph Smith chose to disband Zion’s Camp.  Many members of the militia were later diagnosed with cholera.  Many of the survivors, having proven themselves, were later appointed to places of greater church authority by Joseph Smith, and after his death, they were among the first to return to Independence where they formed The Church of Christ (Temple Lot).  

Mormon settlers continued to relocate to Missouri.  Many began buying land further north in Caldwell County, where they founded the town of Far West as their headquarters.  But many continued to settle in Clay County to the Southwest.  In 1836 A.W. Doniphan, of Clay County, pushed through a law in the Missouri legislature that essentially created a Mormon reservation by designating Caldwell County (not his home county of Clay County) specifically for Mormon settlement. 

TWO YEARS OF TRIBULATION

The short period of peaceful living in their designated county soon ended, for several different reasons. 

In 1837, there was a scandal at the church’s headquarters in Kirtland Ohio regarding the church’s quasi-bank, that led to a schism.  Church Leaders had failed in several attempts to get Ohio to allow them to charter a bank.  President Andrew Jackson’s hard money Democrats were in control there, and they refused all but one request to charter a bank the whole year.  So, church leaders formed a quasi-bank under a revised charter and issued stock as notes for the “Anti-Banking” quasi-bank.  It was very bad timing though. The worst possible, because once the quasi-bank opened in January of 1837, it was only four months before the entire nation was gripped by The Bank Panic of 1837, one of the most severe financial crisis in the nation’s history, which led into a 5 year depression.  The Mormon quasi-bank, fought to hang on but failed in November of the same year, which resulted in 17 lawsuits that named Joseph Smith in over $100,000 of unresolved debt.  Smith accused a fellow church leader, Warren Parrish, of embezzling $25,000.  The Mormon faithful raised $38,000 in bail money for Smith, and to settle those claims, only four of which, according to the church, actually went unsatisfied.     In October, Smith was fined in abstentia $1,000 for operating an illegal bank, and only one year and ten days from the day his quasi-bank began, Smith fled Ohio for Missouri, narrowly avoiding a group of armed men seeking to capture and hold him for trial.   The bank became a disheartening scandal, and Smith was blamed for much of it.  Fully half of the church’s Twelve Apostles accused Smith of improprieties.

Most of the church then also moved from the old Kirtland, Ohio headquarters, to Far West, Missouri, which became the new headquarters.  Hundreds of settlers from Kirtland and elsewhere began crowding into Caldwell County.  The church then settled new cities, that were outside of Caldwell County (DeWitt, in Carroll County, and Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess county.)   Many non-Mormon Missourians believed, rightly or wrongly, that the Mormon leaders had agreed to be restricted to Caldwell County.  Apparently not. 

THE DISSENTERS

In 1837, Martin Harris, one of the original Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon,  joined with dissenters, who were led by Warren Parrish, in an attempt to reform the Mormon church.   However Parrish went further than Harris wanted to go.  Parrish rejected the Book of Mormon in his dissent, while Harris continued to believe in it.  Harris, however, was very disturbed by Joseph Smith’s relationship with his teenage maid, Fanny Alger, and he called Smith’s quasi-bank “a swindle.”   Then, in March 1838, Martin Harris publicly denied that either he or the other two Witnesses to the Book of Mormon had ever actually seen or handled the golden plates—although, of course, he was not  present when Whitmer and Cowdery first claimed to have seen them.  When Harris recanted as a witness in 1838, it caused five powerful leaders, including three Apostles to leave the church.

By 1838, Oliver Cowdery, a distant relative of Smith’s, and also one of the original Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, had become disenchanted with Smith.  Cowdery was the church’s original  “Second Elder” and Smith had a growing reliance on Sidney Rigdon as his primary advisor, instead of Cowdery.  Probably this resulted from Cowdery and Smith having had a number of festering disagreements, that included the bank scandal, a dispute over doctrinal differences on the role of faith and works, and what Cowdery, in writing to his brother, called Smith’s ”dirty, nasty, filthy affair” with the teenage maid who was living with the Smiths.  Cowdery also had made land purchases back when the Mormons were in Jackson County, and Cowdery refused to obey a church high council’s order not to sell lands on which he hoped to make a profit.  He declared that he would not be governed ” by any ecclesiastical authority” in his temporal affairs.  This led to his being excommunicated on April 12th, 1838.

David Whitmer, also one of the original Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and President of the Missouri church, also later criticized what he saw as the errors of Joseph Smith, including his introduction of plural marriage. “If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon, if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice,” wrote Whitmer,”then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens, and told me to ‘separate myself from among the Latter Day Saints….”

Just to recap,  Warren Parrish led a revolt in December 1837 one month after the bank failed.  Then in March 1838 Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses recanted, and caused five powerful leaders including three apostles to leave the church.  In April, the next month, Oliver Cowdery, another of the Three Witnesses was excommunicated from the church, and then two months later in June of 1838, the final of the Three Witnesses left the church also.

SECRET ‘DANITE’ DEATH SQUAD FORMED

In 1838, with the church seemingly dissolving in scandal and schisms as important people recanted or left the church or were excommunicated, many of the faithful dug in their heels and stood even more firmly behind Joseph Smith.  Pledging loyalty must have seemed more important than ever.  Within the mormon church a secret society was formed, known as “The Danites.”  This secret organization, headed by Sampson Avard, required an oath of all members that they should kill anyone who revealed their secrets or who fought against Joseph Smith, or the Mormon Church.

On June 17th, Sidney Rigdon preached the famous Salt Sermon, which the dissenters felt was an obvious threat.  Two days later their fears were confirmed when  80 prominent Mormons signed the Danite Manifesto, that advised the dissenters to “depart or a more fatal calamity shall befall you.”  On June 19th, the dissenters took their families and fled to neighboring counties, where their stories and complaints served to fan the growing anti-Mormon sentiments.

MORMON MILITIA CREATED

The Mormons, who had been driven from two previous states, had become convinced that the Missouri state government had no real interest in protecting them from established Missouri citizens, (or any name calling mobs, harassment, vandalism or even violence that the established citizenry might find compelled to engage in to adequately express themselves to their new, and largely unwelcome, neighbors).    Settled in their ‘designated’ county, the Mormons,  formed their own armed state-authorized militias.   On July 4th of 1938, their new militia paraded around the flagpole and Sidney Rigdon preached a sermon known as the Mormon “Declaration of Independence”  “from mobbers.”   Rigdon declared that if enemies came again to drive out the Mormons “it shall be between us and them a war of extermination; for we will follow them until the last drop of their blood is spilled; or else they will have to exterminate us, for we will carry the seat of war to their own houses and their own families, and one party or the other shall be utterly destroyed…”   

BIG ELECTION DAY BRAWL IN GALLATIN

By August of 1938 the Mormon population of their new settlement in Daviess county had swelled to the point that it rivaled the non-Mormon population.  There happened to be an election on August 6th, and both candidates visited the Mormons to court their vote.  One of the candidates perceived that the Mormons planned on voting together as a bloc for his opponent.   So, he later railed against them and conspired to prevent them from voting.  When about thirty Mormons arrived in Gallatin to vote, they were told that it had been declared that Mormons were not allowed to vote “no more than negroes.”   There ensued an argument and a large brawl ensued as others jumped into the fight.  Rumors were that there were casualties in the conflict, but none were ever confirmed.

THE SEIGE OF DEWITT

One of the reasons why Mormons may have settled outside of Caldwell County was that in the spring of 1838 a major land owner in Carroll County visited them and sold them his plots in the mostly vacant town of DeWitt, near the intersection of the Grand and Missouri rivers.  The unexpected Mormon invasion of Carroll County disturbed the anti-Mormon citizens there.  They met in Carrollton on July 30th and decided to put the issue on the August 6th ballot.  Only a handful of votes were cast for the Mormons, and a committee was sent to ask the Mormons to pack up and leave.  The church leaders in DeWitt refused. The next day another meeting was held and the citizens of Carroll County decided they would have to expel the Mormons by force.   About a hundred armed men captured a Mormon named Smith Humphrey on August 19th, for about two hours, and then sent him home with the message that the people of Carroll County were determined to drive the Mormons out.  The vigilantes harassed the Mormons in DeWitt throughout September.  Then on October 1st Smith Humphrey’s home and stables burned down as hundreds of armed vigilantes camped around DeWitt.   Only after a lengthy 11 day seige of the town, did the Mormon authorities agree to abandon DeWitt and move back to Caldwell County.

ARMED MORMONS PLUNDER AND BURN DAVIESS COUNTY; Gallatin sacked and burned.

Reportedly, a portion of the Carroll county men who drove the Mormons from DeWitt, were on their way to Daviess County, with an artillery piece, to drive the Mormons out of there also, presumably back into Caldwell County.  

On Sunday, October 14th, a small company of militia from Clay County arrived at Mormon church headquarters in Far West and the commander, although sympathetic to the Mormon plight, advised them that their Caldwell militia could not legally go into Carroll or Daviess County.   Ignoring this advice, a Mormon judge called out their militia anyway and  authorized Colonel George M Hinkle to defend Mormon settlements in neighboring Daviess County.  Meanwhile, outlying homes in Daviess County were being harassed, plundered and burned by a group of non-Mormon citizens from neighboring counties.

On October 16th if 1838, General David R Atchison sent a plea to Governor Boggs to help restore law and order in the area, but his plea was ignored. 

On October 18th, Joseph Smith, Colonel Hinkle and the Caldwell Mormon militia along with members of the Danite group invaded Daviess County and began to act like vigilantees themselves.   They marched in three groups to the towns of Gallatin, Millport, and Grindstone Fork.  Apparently, when the Mormon militias went to work “resisting” mob efforts, it was a pretty ugly sight.  Many “unauthorized’ and “improper” events took place.  Outnumbered by the Mormons, the Missourians fled into the cold to make their way to neighboring counties.  The Mormons plundered and burned the towns.  Only one store was left in the county seat of Gallatin.   For the next several weeks the Mormons completed gutted Daviess County, plundering and burning all the homes of any Missourians who lived in outlying farms.   Witnesses said you could stand at your door and see houses burning every night for two weeks.  The plundered goods were brought to the Mormon bishop’s storehouse.  Apparently the church felt it was just compensation for the many losses suffered by the Mormons.  However the plundering and burning troubled some of the remaining Mormon leaders like John Corrill, who wrote “the love of pillage grew upon them very fast, for they plundered every kind of property they could get a hold of.”   The President of the Twelve Apostles, Thomas Marsh, and fellow Apostle Orson Hyde, were so horrified by the events that they left the church and wrote affidavits accusing the Mormon Church of many bad things.  However, they later ‘repented’ and returned to the church. 

 THE BATTLE OF CROOKED RIVER

When Apostles Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde left the Mormon Church, they didn’t just leave quietly.  They went to Richmond in Ray County, and swore out affidavits about the Mormon plundering and the existence of the secret Danite society.  They also repeated a popular rumor that the Danites planned to attack and also burn the towns of Liberty in Clay County, and Richmond in Ray County.  Hearing their worst fears confirmed by former Mormon leaders, the Ray County Missourians began sending their families across the Missouri River for safety and called out their militia, commanded by Samuel Bogart.  The militia was authorized to patrol the area between Ray County and Caldwell County.  Instead the militia wandered into southern Caldwell County and forcibly disarmed several Mormons there.  Church Headquarters in Far West heard reports that a mob of armed vigilantes from Ray County had arrived and taken several Mormons prisoner.  They quickly formed an armed group to respond.

Captain, David W Patten, was one of the original Twelve Apostles of the church, who served along side Apostle Brigham Young as one of President Thomas Marsh’s Assistants.   Although Militia Colonel Hinkle was available, Joseph Smith chose Patten to lead the Mormon response.  Patten was renowned for his aggressive behavior during the attack on Daviess County, and affectionately became known as ”Captain-Fear-Not.”   Captain Patten and his Mormon militia pursued the band of Ray County Militia overnight to where they were camped at the Crooked River.  Bogart’s Militia held the high ground and would not yield it, so Patten and the Mormons charged them in three columns.  Bogart’s men were only armed with rifles,  not knives for close combat, and so Bogart’s militia retreated across the river and scattered.   In all, there were only three casualties, one of Bogart’s militia, and two of the Mormons.  But the Mormon casualties were significant.  Captain Patten was one of the dead, and so was Danite leader Gideon Carter.  Having come to believe that they were invincible in battle, and that angels would fight at their side if necessary, these casualties demoralized the Mormon camp.   Today, however, David Patten is one of the most celebrated martyrs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

 MISSOURI GOVERNOR DECLARES WAR ON MORMONS

News of the armed conflicts spread quickly and Governor Lilburn Boggs then signed an executive order, known as The Extermination Order, on October 27th of 1838 authorizing the Missouri State Militia to drive all Mormons from Missouri or exterminate them.  (The order was never rescinded until 1976, by then governor Christopher Bond.)

 

**NOT FINISHED YET***   Work in Progress.