The Haun’s Mill massacre took the lives of 17 Mormons (including two children: Charley Merrick, age 9, and Sardius Smith, age 10) and a sympathetic non-Mormon, and wounded 13 more, including a woman and a child. Three of their attackers were wounded, but none killed.

A St. Louis newspaper, the Bulletin, carried news of the massacre in its November 9 issue. In a longer article about the Mormon War, that paper wrote:

It is stated that about the time of the surrender, a company of men (200 in number) fell upon a body of the Mormons, in Splawn’s ((I think the first report must have reached the newspaper in handwritten form, with such an elaborate capital-H that the editor or typesetter could interpret it this way. This spelling was repeated in other news accounts tracing their source to that first report. The “w” in “Splawns” reinforces the modern opinion that the owner of the mill on Shoal Creek may have usually spelled his name as Jacob Hawn rather than Haun. In general, I prefer to continue using the traditional Mormon spelling because I know how fluid was the spelling of names in the 19th century and think it is pretentious to insist on one spelling as being “more correct” than another, and because I see no point in separating accounts of these events in bibliographies and during electronic searches. But I acknowledge the alternate spelling to spare your telling me about it. )) settlement, on Shoal Creek, about 20 miles from Far West. The Mormons, it is said, were 36 in number, and the story runs that all but four were put to death. Some of the names of the killed, as reported, are David Evans from Ohio, Jacob Fox from Pennsylvania, Thomas McBride and his father, Mr. Daly, M. Merrill and his son-in-law and Mr. White, all from Ohio.

Another St. Louis paper, the Gazette, waited until November 22 to write about it:

FURTHER FROM THE MORMONS. The accounts of a bloody butchery of thirty-two Mormons, on Splawns Creek, is fully confirmed. Two children were killed, we presume, by accident. Considerable plunder – such as beds, hats &c., were [taken] from the slaughtered. Not one of the assailants was killed or hurt.

And yet a third St. Louis newspaper, the Republican, largest and most prestigious newspaper in the city, editorialized:

We are sorry to say that our own information corroborates the details. For the honor of the State, we could have wished, that such savage enormities had not attended a controversy in itself disgraceful enough. We understand, that the company engaged in the attack at Splawns creek, was not attached to any division of the army, but was fighting on its own hook. The men were principally from Chariton county, and amongst the number was at least one member of the Legislature. The enemy had approached within eighty yards of the Mormons before they were apprized of their approach. The Mormons had their families with them, and to preserve their lives, the men separated from them and took refuge in a blacksmith’s shop. Here they were murdered! It is said, that the Mormons had arms, but it is a little singular that they should have used them so ineffectually as not to have touched one of their assailants. The latter, in some instances, placed their guns between the logs of the house, and deliberately fired at the victims within. – These reports are founded upon statements of persons engaged in the attack; and, bad as they are, are not likely to be overcharged. Will the actors in the tragedy be suffered, by the Courts of that District, to go unpunished?

These papers all record terrible details without really conveying the sense of horror that we generally feel. For that, we turn to the Boston Atlas, which printed this “letter from a Gentleman at the West to his friend in Boston” months after the massacre:

Dear Sir:—You ask me for information concerning the Mormon trouble in Missouri. In giving it, I shall be compelled to state particulars, that will stagger your belief; and I shall be betrayed into a warmth of expression, which may be construed into the signs of partizan bitterness, but which will be in truth only the language of honest indignation. The series of wrongs and outrages perpetrated on the Mormons, and the closing acts of injustice, by which those wrongs and outrages were suffered to escape, not only unpunished but triumphant, form the elements of a PERSECUTION, which in vain seeks a parallel in the history of our country.—For examples of similar outrages on the rights of justice and humanity, I am compelled to resort to barbarous nations and dark ages, which alone furnish precedents to excuse the conduct of the people of Missouri.

The Mormons were in truth a moral, orderly and sober population. They were industrious farmers, and ingenious mechanics. They were busy about their own affairs, and never inter-meddled in the concerns of their neighbors.—They were exceedingly peaceful and averse to strife, quarrels and violence. They had established schools, they encouraged education: and they all had the rudiments of learning, taught under our school system at the East. They had began to open fine farms, and put their lands in a high state of improvement. Many of them were surrounded by numerous comforts, and some with even the elegancies of life.

In all these respects their condition presented a broad contrast to that of their neighbors. Of these neighbors, many had been there for years—much longer in fact than the Mormons—and had made few advances upon the Indians they had displaced. Mud hovels—a “truck patch”—hunting and buck-skin breeches were their highest aspirations.

The Anti-Mormons (for I must distinguish this horde of demi-savages_) are exceedingly intolerant. They are refuse Kentuckians and Tennesseans, intermixed with Virginians of the same caste, in whom the vice of sectional price, which marks these people, and a prejudice against all others, especially those belonging to the free States, whom they indiscriminately brand as Yankees—is exaggerated to the highest pitch.

The worst error, committed by the otherwise cunning Smith and his coadjutors, was that of transplanting his followers to such a soil. A pacific, rather timid, and thrifty people, differing as the Mormons did from the out-skirt Missourians in manners, sentiments and modes of life, just served to stimulate the worst passions of the latter, and held out the prospect of an easy prey to their cupidity.

They were sagacious enough to know that their acts should have a “show of virtue,” and Mormons were a “mighty mean people.” They were “great fools.” They “tampered with the negroes,” which we know, in all slave States excites the most intense odium against the accused, without, in the nature of things, possibility of repelling the accusation, for a slave’s evidence is worthless. Finally, a fellow burnt his own corn crib and charged it on the Mormons. Bad men hate those whom they have injured.—There is, therefore, plenty of reason why the Anti-Mormons should have hated their rivals. Moreover the land sales were approaching, and it was expedient that they should be driven out before they could establish their rights to pre-emption

The massacre at Horne’s Mills ought to be rung through Christendom. A body of men commanded by a Senator, from Charlton county, went down to that mill and there fell upon their victims, precisely as the pirates of the Carribean fell upon theirs. The poor Mormons took refuge in a blacksmith’s shop, and were there murdered in detail. The attacking party leisurely and deliberately thrust their rifles between the logs of the building, and there as the Mormons were pent up like sheep in a fold, butchered them!—An old man McBride—said to have been a revolutionary soldier—begged for his life. It was denied him and he was put to death with the most savage violence. A mere child—only nine years old—was chased, supplicating his pursuers; exclaiming “I am an American boy.” But all would not answer. He was hunted to his place of refuge under the large bellows of the shop and his head blown into fragments, by means of a rifle deliberately aimed at it! It is said, too, that some of the more desperate and abandoned of the profligate villains, who joined in this foray, returned the next day, and danced over the well in which their victims had been entombed! Certain it is that they plundered those whom they had killed. And be it remembered that this party of assailants had no authority whatever even for mustering and marching; and, therefore, in the eye of law, are mere brigands, robbers and murderers.

You ask, if this can be true? I tell you—yes. It is true—awful, atrocious and abominable as it is, it is true. Yes, it is true—true in the nineteenth century—true in republican, in Christian America; true, while your good people of Boston—a part of the same people that committed these horrors, are sending the gospel of truth and love to far away India and the isles of the ocean.

And how do you think the great Senator-civilian, who led this onslaught, justifies it? “Why,” said he, “we were in a state of war! It wasopen war! Which party fired first, I don’t know. It did not matter. We came to fight; we had a fight; and they got whipped.” Yes, indeed, they got whipped. Thirty Mormons killed outright or dead of their wounds, and not a hair of a head touched on the other side. A fair fight! Very likely! Men pent up in a blacksmith’s shop and butchered like cattle! An old grey haired man hacked up and shot through! A child chased and his brains blown out! A fair fight! What ideas of regular war and legitimate battle—or rather, what notion of right, justice, or humanity must possess the head of a Senator (!) who can justify his acts, as this one does? It is really a pity that the Mormons did not make a fight of it. If they had done so, this senator might not now have been living to proclaim his own disgrace with his own lips, to all the intelligence and humanity of Christendom.

From first to last—but especially in the outset of the troubles—the Governor of the State was guilty of the most unpardonable remissness and partiality. He was formerly of Jackson county, & came into office with strong prejudices against the Mormons. At the time of the difficulty in Carroll, the Mormons sent and besought his interposition. He refused it, on the pretext of expense; but in a few weeks afterwards, ordered out against the Mormons, an army large enough to have prostrated ten times the force supposed to be arrayed against.

By the vanities of their enemies and their own imprudence, (for just retaliation was in their case imprudence) the Mormons were prostrated. Some sought safety in flight—some turned what property they had left into the means of removal. Others were too poor to go, and were compelled to stay and suffer.

All suffered and all lost. But the pre-emptors suffered for not one of them dared, at the appointed time, present himself, to make good his rights. The earnings of years were thus in one moment wrested from them by violence and fraud. The American citizen is not protected by American laws; but he is driven from his lands and his home by men, whom the law cannot or will not reach, and whom the Legislature of the State justify and applaud.

The General Assembly of Missouri refused investigation of the origin and history of this unexampled Persecution. They knew better than to do it. Impartial investigation would have implicated the State and many of its legislators too deeply. It was a series of enormities that would not bear the light; and they, therefore—so far as they could do it—have quenched it in darkness.

But still there remained the sordid disposition for pay. The general officers called out in such extraordinary numbers, had a claim upon the treasury. With many of them it was a sheer speculation. Though in many cases they went unattended to the field ludicrous accounts for extra servants, horses, &c., claiming full brigadier and major generals’ pay, as if in the actual service of the United States. The demands, it is true, were regular; but showing a very unpatriotic desire to make money out of the State. The Legislature finally, without inquiry, voted $200,000, but provided that the pirates should be paid first. Even $200,000 will not meet the regular demands—and these celebrated general and generalissimos will be knocking at the door of the next Gen. Assembly for pay; reminding one of Patrick Henry’s speech in Hooks’ case, where the plaintiff was supposed to be patrolling the patriot camp with cries of “Beef!” “Beef!” I sincerely hope that they will in vain cry “Pay!” “Pay!”—until they are willing to confine their demands within decent bounds.

And now do not suppose—let no man North of the Potomac suppose—that the faith and fanaticism of the Mormons had any influence worth naming, in exciting this persecution.

No—it was the cause I have already intimated, to which this affair may be traced. And let me assure you that any body of men like the Mormons, in all respects, but their religion, would in the same situation have shared their fate. I wish you to understand it as my deliberate opinion that, at this moment any body of people accustomed only to the manners and sentiments of the inhabitants of the free States, and rather pacific and yielding in their dispositions, however industrious, thrifty and intelligent—would, if they attempted a settlement on choice lands in Missouri, fare as have the Mormons.

Why conceal the truth? Let me tell you that a body of farmers and Mechanics from Essex, Middlesex or Norfolk—now be transplanted to the abandoned localities of the Mormons—would in five years from the date be driven out by fire and sword, precisely as the Mormons have, and the General Assembly of Missouri would justify it. Do you ask me how the Germans continue to stay in Missouri? I will tell you. They have taken the worst soils in the State—soils which nobody else will take. This is the true answer. The Germans are more disliked than the Yankees; and if they should once presume to interfere with the Kentucky prerogative to occupy the best lands—Woe to the poor Germans—unless indeed they will fight harder than the Mormons.

Yes, let it be understood that there are portions of the public domain of the United States, which are not common to the people of all the States. The question is now settled. The lettered yeomanry of the free States have met the unlettered yeomanry of the slave States; and by the latter have been vanquished, scattered and despoiled.

The game tried so successfully against the Indians, has been played off against the whites. And those whites are Yankees, who cannot claim the enjoyment of a common right, in the face of certain other “fellow citizens,” because they are too conscientious, or too tender or too timid. But they must succumb like the Indians.