Scenes of mob violence were of almost daily occurrence; property was destroyed, men were tied up and beaten until blood streamed down their backs; the chastity of women was forcibly outraged; cattle and hogs were wantonly shot down; houses were ruthlessly burned in the presence of their owners; fields of grain destroyed--but this was not the worst--helpless women and children were brutally murdered together with defenseless old men, some of whom had fought in the continental army during the American Revolution. Elder Taylor, in relating these scenes some thirty years after they had occurred, refers to one who had been of the class last named:
"My mind wanders back upwardly of thirty years ago," he says, "when in the state of Missouri, Mr. McBride, a gray-haired, venerable veteran of the Revolution, with feeble frame and tottering steps, cried to a Missouri patriot: 'Spare my life, I am a revolutionary soldier, I fought for liberty, would you murder me? What is my offense, I believe in God and revelation?' This frenzied disciple of a misplaced faith said, 'Take that you God d--d Mormon,' and with the butt of his gun he dashed his brains out, and he lay quivering there, his white locks clotted with his own brains and gore, on the soil that he had heretofore shed his blood to redeem--a sacrifice at the shrine of liberty!"
Taking advantage of the disturbance at the election in Gallatin, some of the old settlers at Millport, in the same county, set fire to their log huts and then fled southward, spreading the report that the Mormons had burned their houses and driven them from their lands. At this rumor, false though it was, a wave of popular indignation passed through the state, which Governor Boggs took advantage of to issue an exterminating order, and called out the militia of the state to execute it.
Governor Boggs was the more ready to issue this infamous order, because he himself had imbibed a hatred of the Saints, and had been an active participant against them in the Jackson County troubles.
By this edict the Governor virtually converted the mobs that had been plundering the Saints into the state militia, and gave them full license to continue the war on the Saints, which they did in the most brutal manner.