Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon
Krakauer, 2003, Excerpts
The Missouri hostilities continued to plague Joseph and his
followers long after they had been driven from that state. Sheriffs from
Missouri came to Illinois on at least two occasions bearing writs for Joseph’s
arrest. In May 1841 a sheriff’s posse managed to surprise the prophet outside
Nauvoo, arrested him, and had almost hauled him across the border into Missouri
before Joseph managed to finagle his release with a writ of habeas corpus. It was
a very close scrape, and the harassment provoked Joseph’s ire. During a public
speech soon after his 1841 arrest, he vented his anger by prophesying that
retired governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs – the Saints’ despised nemesis –
would “die by violent hands within one year.”
On the evening of May 6, 1842, Boggs was reading a newspaper
in the study of his Independence home when a gunman lurking outside shot him
four times through a window. Two balls hit Boggs in the neck; the other pierced
his skull and lodged in the left lobe of his brain. Somehow he recovered from
these severe brain injuries. The would-be-killer Rockwell was Mormon. Although
Joseph may not have ordered Rockwell to shoot Boggs, it was commonly understood
by the faithful that it was a Saints’ sacred duty to assist in the fulfilling
of prophecies when the opportunity arose.
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