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Show separation of church and state and the free market economy. Philosophically repugnant, such group-oriented practices were seen to give the Mormons disproportinate power in both politics and commerce, where indidvuals were placed at an unfair advantage by competing against the church as a whole: Such everyday fears were not unfounded and proved to be the friction points which ignited the fires of persecution. In all the areas where they settled, local residents greeted the Latter-day Saints at first with suspicion, and later, with hostility. Persecution drove them first from their Independence settlements northward in 1835 to the Missouri counties along the Iowa border and then, in 1838, from Missouri entirely, as the group was forced back to the Mississippi River and Illinois. Here they were joined by the remaining Saints from Kirtland and they founded the town of Nauvoo. Nauvoo prospered for a time, but the problems plaguing them in Missouri resurfaced in Illinois and as Nauvoo grew (some 11,000 people by early 1840s), tensions increased. Smith was eventually arrested in 1844 and, while awaiting trial in Carthage, the prophet was murdered. The unfortunate events of this early period of Mormon history are recorded elsewhere in detail and are not the specific concern of this study. 30 It is enough perhaps to say that early Zion knew many 0\--.,o> homes- ~Missouri and Illinois under the leadership of Smith 1845, Utah with Brigham Young. an ~ after Theologically, Jackson County remained the center of the Gathering and today this area is still regarded by faithful Mormons as the future location of the New Jerusalem. After the exodus westward, however, the realities of the moment dictated the shifting of Zionist· , activities to Utah. 41 Here in the largely |
