Warsaw Dragoons

The Warsaw Dragoons were an anti-Mormon militia group from Warsaw whose return to Carthage on June 27, 1844, made them central participants in the attack on Carthage Jail that killed Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith. In the book’s account, their actions expose the gap between the formal presence of guards and the actual protection afforded to the prisoners.

Identity and Context

The Dragoons were approximately 125 militiamen from the intensely anti-Mormon town of Warsaw. Earlier, in deference to the governor’s orders, they had left Carthage, but had not gone far. They regrouped and returned at the end of the day, disguising themselves by rubbing gunpowder on their faces. The account identifies them as the force that came back to town and stormed the jail, rather than as a unit with a broader organizational history or described internal structure.

The Attack on Carthage Jail

On the afternoon of June 27, Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were in their quarters with John Taylor and Willard Richards when the Dragoons assembled outside. Only seven members of the Carthage Greys were guarding the jail. They fired muskets at the attackers, but their weapons had been loaded with blanks as part of a prearranged plan. After this ineffective display, the guards stepped aside, and the Dragoons entered, firing indiscriminately. The book notes that two shots came close to striking the jailer’s wife.

The attackers pressed upstairs toward the bedroom where the prisoners were staying. Joseph and Hyrum used weapons that had been smuggled to them; Taylor and Richards tried to hold the doorway with walking sticks. During the assault, Hyrum was killed. Joseph fired all six rounds of his revolver, wounding at least one of the Dragoons, before the attackers forced the bedroom door open and the gunfire continued. Joseph was then shot as he attempted to escape through a window and fell outside. A member of the Carthage Greys who witnessed the fall reported that the mob continued to shoot him on the ground; another militiaman then confirmed his death to the crowd.

Role and Significance

The Dragoons’ return transformed an ostensibly guarded jail into the site of a successful attack. The contrast between their armed force and the Carthage Greys’ blanks, followed by the guards’ withdrawal, makes the failure of protection a defining feature of the episode. The book also situates Joseph Smith’s death within a longer history of remembered persecution: later, church leaders invoked his killing by a mob in Hancock County as part of the Saints’ account of past suffering. The Dragoons’ place in that history is as participants in the attack that made the prophet’s death one of the events recalled in that collective narrative.