Nauvoo Legion

The Nauvoo Legion was the armed militia associated with Nauvoo and, later, Mormon military organization in Utah. Under Joseph Smith, it gave material force to the city’s exceptional self-government: its disciplined ranks could be mobilized not only for defense but also in support of the prophet’s political authority. Its later activity in Utah shows the Legion’s continuing place in a community where church leadership, civil power, and military command often overlapped.

Origins and authority in Nauvoo

Nauvoo’s position rested on an unusually expansive charter passed by the Illinois General Assembly in December 1840. Granted when Illinois hoped to attract settlers and sympathy for the Mormons remained high after their expulsion from Missouri, the charter gave the city sovereign rights and powers unusual in Illinois and the country as a whole. In practice, it helped make Nauvoo an autonomous theocratic center under Joseph Smith’s leadership.

The Legion was the armed expression of that authority. Joseph, who had himself been anointed King, Priest, and Ruler over Israel on Earth, commanded a well-armed and rigorously disciplined force. The book estimates that its ranks amounted to nearly half the size of the entire United States Army at the time. Joseph also sought to enlarge his military reach beyond the Legion, petitioning Congress for authority to form a force of one hundred thousand men under his personal control. Congress did not grant that request; the Legion remained the substantial military institution already at his disposal.

The destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor

The Legion became a direct instrument in the confrontation over the Nauvoo Expositor. On June 7, 1844, William Law used his own printing press to publish the paper’s only edition, which attacked Joseph’s political power, financial dealings, and secret practice of plural marriage. Joseph feared that the publication threatened his control of the church. As mayor, he secured an order declaring the paper a public nuisance and directing the destruction of its press and printed copies.

On the evening of June 10, more than two hundred armed Legion members entered the Expositor offices. Led by Hyrum Smith and John Taylor under orders from the Legion’s commander, Joseph Smith, they broke down the door, smashed the press, scattered its type, and burned the wreckage. The publishers sought legal redress, but Joseph’s control over Nauvoo’s courts and government meant that those involved in the destruction, including Joseph, were exonerated. William Law, fearing for his life, had already fled; his Reformed Mormon Church subsequently disappeared.

The episode exposed the tension at the heart of Nauvoo’s political arrangement. To Joseph’s supporters, the city’s institutions defended a community that had repeatedly faced hostility. To non-Mormon residents of Hancock County, the Legion’s intervention against a newspaper confirmed fears that Joseph had become a tyrant and that Nauvoo’s exceptional autonomy threatened the region’s peace. The force’s capacity to protect the city thus also made it a visible instrument of the very authority that outsiders opposed.

Martial law and the crisis of 1844

Hostility escalated after the press was destroyed. On June 18, Joseph declared martial law and mobilized the five-thousand-man Nauvoo Legion, anticipating retaliation from non-Mormons. Illinois governor Thomas Ford demanded that Joseph, Hyrum, John Taylor, and others responsible for the destruction surrender in Carthage to face charges. Ford promised to guarantee Joseph’s safety but warned that refusing to submit could bring out the state militia and expose Nauvoo to destruction.

Joseph feared that surrender to non-Mormon authorities would leave him vulnerable to attack during the legal proceedings. On June 23, he and Hyrum crossed the Mississippi River with their bodyguard, Porter Rockwell, and fled into Iowa, intending to make for the Rocky Mountains. The Legion had been mobilized to defend the city, but the crisis also revealed the limits of military protection: Joseph’s own response was flight, followed by his return after a letter from Emma and appeals from the Saints. The confrontation set the armed force within a broader struggle over whether Nauvoo’s leaders would answer to state law or rely on the city’s own institutions.

Continued militia role in Utah

The Legion’s military role continued after the Mormon community established itself in Utah. By 1857, Brigham Young had been stockpiling arms and drilling the Legion for much of a year in anticipation of federal troops. When Porter Rockwell and Smoot brought news of the approaching army on Pioneer Day, Brigham announced it to a gathering of about twenty-five hundred people. He declared that the Saints’ commonwealth would no longer be known as Utah but as Deseret, and the Legion’s preparations accelerated.

The Legion also supplied military leadership for the southern settlements. On August 3, 1857, George A. Smith, a Legion general, set out from Salt Lake City for southern Utah, where he urged settlements to prepare for holy war. Later that month he visited Jacob Hamblin and met with Paiutes on the Santa Clara River, using John D. Lee as interpreter. Brigham’s letter to Hamblin said the Indians would have to help the Mormons or the United States would kill both groups. These efforts joined the Legion’s military organization to the leadership’s attempt to rally local communities and Native allies against the anticipated federal invasion.

The Mountain Meadows campaign

The Legion’s local commanders and militiamen were involved in the events around the Fancher emigrant party. According to Lee, Isaac Haight, who was mayor of Cedar City, LDS stake president, and commander of the local Legion battalion, ordered him to gather Paiute leaders, arm their warriors, and ambush the emigrants. Lee said Haight described the order as the will of those in authority. On September 5, Lee went toward Mountain Meadows with a large contingent of Saints and Paiutes; the party arrived the following day and watched the emigrants camp near a spring.

Before dawn on September 7, Mormon participants and Paiutes approached the camp and took cover. Some of the Mormon men had painted their faces to resemble Indians. The emigrants resisted the surprise attack, circling their wagons and digging in. The attackers were repulsed, Paiute fighters were killed or wounded, and the surviving Paiutes threatened to withdraw. Lee later acknowledged that the plan had failed and that the attackers were in a difficult position.

As the standoff continued, Haight sought guidance from his superior, William Dame, commander of the southern Utah militias. Dame told him that further instructions from Salt Lake City were unnecessary and that the emigrants must be killed. Major John Higbee brought that directive to Lee with more than fifty militiamen from Cedar City. With the Paiute force diminished and the siege unresolved, the Saints turned to deception: on September 11, William Bateman approached under a white flag, offering to escort the emigrants to safety if they surrendered their weapons. Lee then approached to arrange the surrender. The Legion’s role in this campaign was not confined to its existence as a standing militia; local command relationships and armed members made it part of the chain through which orders and collective action reached the field.

Significance

Across Nauvoo and Utah, the Nauvoo Legion occupied the contested boundary between communal defense and coercive power. In Nauvoo, it helped uphold an autonomous civic order and physically enforced the city government’s decision to destroy a hostile newspaper. In Utah, it was drilled and armed in anticipation of federal intervention, while its officers and local units became involved in the southern campaign against the Fancher party. The recurring pattern is one of military capacity bound closely to religious and political authority: the Legion could be described as a defense of the Saints, yet its deployments also helped extend leaders’ decisions into public life and armed action.