Hancock County is the Illinois setting in which Nauvoo grew from a difficult riverbank settlement into a major Mormon city—and where Joseph Smith’s exercise of civic power provoked a crisis with consequences beyond the city limits. The county’s story in the book is closely tied to Nauvoo: its unusual charter, the suppression of a newspaper critical of Joseph, and the mounting confrontation between the Saints and their non-Mormon neighbors all converge there.

Riverbank Settlement and Rapid Growth

A month after escaping from jail in Missouri, Joseph Smith surveyed a bend in the Mississippi River and chose the site in Hancock County for the intended capital of God’s kingdom. It was a low promontory on the river’s east bank, largely uninhabited but poorly suited to settlement: the ground was a malarial swamp so wet that a person on foot struggled to cross it and ox teams could not pass. The owner’s willingness to sell acreage to the Saints on credit helped make the site usable despite those conditions.

Construction proceeded quickly. Within five years, more than fifteen thousand Saints lived in and around Nauvoo—about ten times the town’s present-day population as described in the book. Nauvoo became Illinois’s second-largest municipality and a city that rivaled Chicago. The speed and scale of that growth mattered to the county’s later political conflict: Nauvoo was not simply a settlement within Hancock County, but a concentrated community whose religious leadership also exercised local civic authority.

A Charter and an Unusual Concentration of Power

In December 1840, the Illinois General Assembly passed a charter granting Nauvoo unusually broad rights and powers. The state was seeking industrious settlers who could contribute to its economy, and sympathy for the Mormons remained strong after their expulsion from Missouri. Under the charter, Nauvoo acquired a degree of sovereign authority uncommon in Illinois and elsewhere in the country. Joseph stood at the head of this theocratic principality, combining religious leadership with political office.

The book contrasts Joseph’s stated belief in democracy and constitutional protections with his conviction that his divine appointment placed him beyond ordinary political restraint. He anticipated that the American public would eventually accept the righteousness of his faith and his authority as God’s messenger. His stated aim of replacing elected government with a government of God, however, alarmed Hancock County’s non-Mormon residents. They objected to the prospect of living under a ruler whose claims rested on revelation rather than election, and to the political influence of Saints who voted as a bloc in line with the prophet’s instructions.

The destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor sharpened those concerns. In the book’s account, the county’s namesake, John Hancock, was remembered as the first signer of the Declaration of Independence and as a populist suspicious of officials who abused power. That local inheritance gave particular force to residents’ objections to theocratic rule and to Joseph’s disregard for constitutional principles that did not serve the Saints’ religious liberty. The issue was therefore not only religious doctrine: it was also who could govern, and whether a newspaper could publicly challenge that authority.

The Nauvoo Expositor and County Opposition

On June 7, 1844, William Law used his wealth to establish a printing press and publish the first and only edition of the Nauvoo Expositor. He printed one thousand copies. The four-page paper attacked Joseph’s accumulation of political power, his disregard for the separation of church and state, and his financial dealings; its principal purpose was to expose the secret doctrine of polygamy. Its editors also said they planned to publish affidavits supporting their claims.

Many Nauvoo residents turned their anger toward the paper and its owners rather than toward Joseph. Concerned that the Expositor threatened his control of the church, Joseph called an emergency meeting of the city council. Acting as mayor, he characterized the paper as a danger to public peace and ordered the destruction of the press and copies of the newspaper. On the evening of June 10, more than two hundred armed members of the Nauvoo Legion broke into the newspaper’s offices, smashed the press, scattered its type, and burned the wreckage. Hyrum Smith and John Taylor led the operation under orders from Joseph, the Legion’s commander.

The publishers sought redress in local courts, but Joseph controlled Nauvoo’s courts as well as its other branches of government. Those involved in destroying the press, including Joseph, were exonerated. William Law, fearing for his life, fled Nauvoo, and the Reformed Mormon Church he had founded eventually disappeared. Inside the city, Joseph had prevailed over his immediate opponents; across Hancock County, however, the seizure and destruction of a newspaper confirmed existing fears about his power. The Saints and their non-Mormon neighbors had already been antagonistic for at least two years, and the incident made their conflict more urgent.

Escalation and Departure

The destruction of the Expositor brought Hancock County’s non-Mormon residents into open opposition. An editorial in nearby Warsaw called for armed resistance, treating the attack on the press as an assault on property rights that demanded retaliation. The hostility was no longer confined to disputes over Nauvoo’s governance: the book describes the county as anticipating violent reprisals and possible civil conflict.

On June 18, Joseph declared martial law and mobilized the five-thousand-member Nauvoo Legion. Thomas Ford, the governor of Illinois, demanded that Joseph and Hyrum Smith, John Taylor, and others implicated in the destruction of the press surrender for trial in Carthage, the Hancock County seat. Ford promised to protect Joseph if he submitted, while warning that refusal might lead to the city’s destruction and the deaths of its people. Joseph feared that non-Mormon authorities would move him between courts until an attacker found an opportunity to kill him.

On June 23, Joseph and Hyrum crossed the Mississippi River at night, rowed by their bodyguard Porter Rockwell, and fled into Iowa. Their stated plan was to make their way toward the Rocky Mountains. A day later, as they waited for horses, Joseph received a letter from Emma urging him to return to Nauvoo. The messenger also told him that some Saints believed he had abandoned them. The episode leaves Hancock County at a point of unresolved pressure: the county had become the arena for a conflict over religious authority, political power, and the limits of local rule, while Joseph’s departure and the appeal to return exposed the strain within his own community.