In 1831, shortly after the establishment of the Missouri colony, Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were violently attacked by a mob and tarred and feathered. Among the mob, screaming that Joseph should be castrated, were members of the Johnson family, who had earlier that year offered Joseph and Emma Smith the hospitality of their farm after the Smiths' first arrival in Kirtland. It is likely that the reason members of the Johnson family had turned so violently against Smith was because of their fury over his secret polygamous marriage to their daughter and young sister Nancy Marinda Johnson.

During this time period, Joseph received and published over 40 revelations to the Saints, including his and Rigdon's "vision of the glories," describing the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial kingdoms. This was Smith's first "theological" revelation, in which he elaborates what has become the typically Mormon understanding of the after-life and ultimate destiny of humanity. Other theological innovations would follow. Many of these revelations also served to consolidate Joseph's position as supreme authority of the church and to rein in certain Saints who were challenging his authority by claiming to receive revelations of their own.

For the next two years, the Mormon settlements in Ohio and Missouri steadily grew and seemed to prosper as Mormon missionaries continued to win converts.

In Missouri, however, there was growing tension between the old settlers and the Mormons. Most of the Mormons migrating to Independence were northerners and did not own slaves, very different culturally from the slave-owning southerners who were their neighbors. Furthermore, the Mormons all tended to live together in tightly knit communities where they predominated numerically, and where they practiced a form of religious communalism. Because of Joseph Smith's tendency to view the political and spiritual realms as united, Mormons also tended to vote as a bloc. Finally, they seemed to be arriving in the state in ever growing numbers, and they had a tendency to speak of themselves as the sole possessors of the truth, and as God's chosen people and the true inheritors of America. This frightened the old Missourians, who came to believe that the Saints would soon outnumber them, take over the government, and destroy their way of life.