Instead, he turned around and started to walk away. He wanted to cast his vote, but he knew he would be trapped if he went into the small house and tried to vote unarmed. William Peniston had jumped off his whiskey barrel and fled up a nearby hill.Ī man from the crowd approached John and said the Saints could vote now. Wounded men lay motionless on the ground. 10Ĭatching his breath, John looked out across the town square. They knocked down anyone who rushed at them, ending the fight after two minutes. His friends fought back as well, improvising weapons from sticks and rocks. He clubbed the men attacking the Saints, measuring each swing to knock his opponents down, not kill them. “Oh yes, you Danites,” he cried out, “here is a job for us!” Spotting a pile of fence rails, he grabbed a thick piece of oak and rushed to the fight. The Saints were outnumbered four to one, but John was determined to protect his fellow Saints and their leaders. Men on both sides grabbed clubs and pulled out knives and whips. A third Saint grabbed a piece of lumber from a nearby woodpile and clubbed the attacker across the head. Another Saint leapt to his defense, but the crowd knocked him back. Suddenly, a man in the crowd tried to punch one of the Latter-day Saints. He was over six feet tall and powerfully built, but he had come to Gallatin to vote, not fight. “I headed a mob to drive you out of Clay County,” he boasted, turning to John and the other Saints, “and would not prevent you from being mobbed now.” 7 6 They did not belong in the county, he said, and had no right to take part in the election. William warned the voters that the Saints would steal their property and overwhelm their vote. Most of the men were already angry with them, and many had been drinking whiskey since the polls opened. It would not take much for William to turn the crowd against him and his friends. “The Mormon leaders are a set of horse thieves, liars, and counterfeiters,” William bellowed to the men gathered nearby. William had tried to court the Saints’ vote earlier that year, but when he learned that most of them favored the other candidate, he lashed out against them. 5Īs John approached the polling place, William Peniston, a candidate for state representative, climbed on top of a whiskey barrel to make a speech. To avoid problems, John and his friends planned to vote together and return home quickly. The Saints could now influence the county vote, and that angered many other settlers. After Joseph had established a stake in Adam-ondi-Ahman, the settlement blossomed and more than two hundred houses had been built. Attitudes in Daviess County had never favored the Saints. John joined a small group of Saints standing apart from the main group. 3 As men filed in to cast their votes, campaigners mingled with the crowd outside. A polling place had been set up in a small house on the edge of the square. When John arrived at the town square, he found it teeming with men from around the county. 2įounded just a year earlier, Gallatin was little more than a cluster of houses and saloons. He was a captain in the local militia and a Danite. He and his wife, Caroline, had moved to a small settlement near Adam-ondi-Ahman that summer. John had been a Latter-day Saint for a few years. That morning, John Butler rode to the town of Gallatin, the seat of Daviess County government, to vote. August 6, 1838, was Election Day in Missouri.