Ohohohooo

Hey. Ex-Mormon here. Funny story, my ancestors were the ones named in that extermination order.

For context, this came after Mormons had been chased out of Kirtland, Ohio for scamming the local populace with a securities fraud case.

There was an urban legend that went around Mormon communities that the reason why Governor Kit Bond rescinded the order was because of a murder trial in rural Missouri, where two neighbors got into a disagreement. The killer supposedly got off scot-free because his neighbor was Mormon, and the Extermination Order was still in effect.

While the term extermination was used in the order, Boggs would claim later in his life that his main desire was to subdue the Mormons without bloodshed.[20] Historians Alexander L. Baugh and Steven LeSueur suggest the word ‘exterminate’ reflects the historical usage of the term, which more broadly encompassed the expulsion or removal of a group or population from an area.

While Governor Boggs’ intent in the order was to forcibly expel Mormons, the state militia still killed 17 people at the battle of Hahn’s Mill.

Congrats, Governor Boggs, you gave this nascent cult enough reason to fuel a couple centuries worth of victim narrative.

Here’s some extra context

The unfortunate lack of an ensuing investigation of the massacre was not because the law affirmed and upheld the killing of these Mormons, as some might infer. It was due to the fact that the whole situation of the Mormon War was out of control. Those non-Mormons who killed at Haun’s Mill, as well as the non-Mormons who engaged in the burning and looting of Mormon homes, were never tried and convicted; just as those Mormons who killed a State Militia soldier, and participated in burning and looting of non-Mormon homes, were never tried and convicted. LDS historian Stephen C. LeSueur affirmed, “No Mormons were convicted for crimes committed during the Mormon War” (The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 256). It is true that the terms of surrender presented to and accepted by the Mormon community placed an immense burden on them; however, the massacre at Haun’s Mill, as horrible as it was, does not support the assertion that it was legal to kill a Mormon in Missouri.

Add on top of that Joseph Smith Jr.'s stay in the local jail, his followers had plenty of reasons to turn Far West into a warzone. Understandably, no one was happy about this.