The 1842 Attempted Assassination of Lilburn Boggs brought sudden violence to Independence, where a lone attacker, presumed to be a Mormon, shot Lilburn W. Boggs at a window and nearly killed him. Recalled against the arrival of Solomon Young and his small family in 1841, the attempt unsettles any impression that the naturally favored Blue River country was a place of peace.

Background

By the time Solomon Young and his small family arrived in 1841, earlier events in the region had become past history. The account places the attempted assassination a year later, setting the attack within a landscape whose apparent promise of quiet would prove misleading.

The Attempt

In 1842, a lone assassin crept to a window in Independence and shot Lilburn W. Boggs. The account says the attacker was presumably a Mormon and that Boggs was nearly killed; it does not establish the assailant’s identity more firmly.

Significance

The attack sharply contrasts the Blue River country’s natural advantages with its political and social unrest. The episode’s brief, violent intrusion gives force to the account’s broader point: a favored landscape was no guarantee of a peaceable community.