Mormons and Mobs Equally Guilty of Trampling Minority Rights?
LeSueur suggests that Mormons and mobsters were guilty of the same disrespect for constitutional law. After all, both groups sent troops illegally across county lines to drive out unpopular groups. But there is a huge difference between taking forceful action to defend constitutional rights and taking forceful action to deprive others of their constitutional rights. The mobs were motivated by a long-standing desire to expel or exterminate, while the Saints had long been struggling for self-defense, vainly seeking some whisper of protection from official legal sources. Richard L. Anderson deals with Stephen LeSueur’s allegation that Mormons trampled on minority rights in dealing with other Missourians in the same way the mobs trampled on Mormon rights: The Prophet was a constitutionalist, despite his peremptory image in exposures of Missouri Mormon dissenters and in the recent 1838 study [LeSueur’s book] borrowing their perspective. Since Boggs’ extermination orders expressed the contem
