History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 3
by Jr. Joseph Smith · English · Gutenberg #47707 · 1,361,049 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 3
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 3
Author: Jr. Joseph Smith
Creator: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Editor: B. H. Roberts
Release date: December 19, 2014 [eBook #47707]
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, VOLUME 3 ***
Produced by the Mormon Texts Project (MormonTextsProject.org)
HISTORY
OF THE
CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST
OF
LATTER-DAY SAINTS
PERIOD I.
History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet.
By Himself.
Volume III.
An Introduction and Notes
By
B. H. Roberts.
Published by the Church.
Deseret News.
Salt Lake City, Utah.
1905.
{III}
Table of Contents.
Volume III.
Introduction.
Enlightenment a Factor in Determining Responsibility for Conduct.
The People of Missouri and the Saints.
The Question of Slavery.
Political Fears.
The Saints and the Indians.
The Unwisdom of the Saints.
The Real Cause of the Missouri Persecutions.
Retribution.
CHAPTER I.
The Prophet Joseph's Departure from Kirtland and Arrival in Missouri.
Flight of the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon from Kirtland.
Brigham Young to the Prophet's Rescue.
The Bitterness of the Prophet's Enemies.
The Prophet's Arrival in Missouri.
Trial of the Far West Presidency of the Church.
Minutes of Proceedings in Other Settlements than Far West.
High Council Meeting at Far West.
The Prophet's Reception in Zion.
The Political Motto of the Church of Latter-day Saints.
The Prophet's Answers to Questions on Scripture.
The Prophet's Letter to the Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints in Kirtland.
CHAPTER II.
Excommunication of Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer--The Work in
England.
Arrival of Sidney Rigdon at Far West.
Minutes of a General Conference of the Church at Far West.
Minutes of the first Quarterly Conference at Far West.
Demand on John Whitmer for the Church Records.
Charges Against Oliver Cowdery.
Trial of Oliver Cowdery.
Elder Cowdery's Letter.
Charges Against David Whitmer.
Charges Against Lyman E. Johnson.
The Work in England-Conference {IV} in Preston.
Farewell Meetings with the Saints.
A Prophecy.
American Slanders Reach England.
CHAPTER III.
Readjustment and Settlement of Affairs at Far West.
Revelation Given at Far West.
Revelation Given to Brigham Young at Far West.
Revelation Given at Far West Making Known the Will of God Concerning
the Building up of that Place, and of the Lord's House.
Minutes of the High Council.
Sundry Employments of the Prophet.
The Prophet's Discourse on the Evils of Hasty Judgment.
Arrival of Elder Parley P. Pratt at Far West.
Death of Jas. G. Marsh.
The Prophet's Answer to Sundry Questions.
Elder Rigdon's Political Address.
Trial of William E. M'Lellin and Dr. McCord.
Remuneration of the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon for Temporal Labors in
the Church.
CHAPTER IV.
Selection of Lands in Caldwell and Daviess Counties for
Settlement-Adam-Ondi-Ahman.
The Prophet Leaves Far West to Locate Settlements.
The Prophet and Party Reach "Tower Hill."
Adam-ondi-Ahman.
Council Called to Determine Location of Settlements.
American Antiquities Discovered.
Varied Movements of the Prophet's Company.
Birth of Alexander Hale Smith.
The Prophet's Return to Adam-ondi-Ahman.
Minutes of the Meeting which Organized the Stake of Zion called
Adam-ondi-Ahman.
Description of Adam-ondi-Ahman.
CHAPTER V.
Independence Day at Far West--Sundry Events and Revelations--Epistle of
David W. Patten.
Celebration of Independence Day at Far West.
The Officers.
The Procession.
The Oration.
A Word from Elders Kimball and Hyde.
Letter of Don C. Smith to the Prophet.
Missing Revelations.
Revelation, Given at Far West, July 8, 1838.
Revelation, Given July 8, 1838, Making Known the {V} Disposition of the
Properties Tithed as Named in the Preceding Revelation.
Revelation Given to William Marks, Newel K. Whitney, Oliver Granger and
Others, at Far West, July 8, 1838.
Revelation given at Far West, July 8, 1838, in Answer to the Question,
Show unto us Thy Will, O Lord, Concerning the Twelve.
Minutes of a Meeting of the Twelve.
The Disposition of Public Church Properties.
Arrival of Saints from Canada.
Publication of the _Elder's Journal_.
The Epistle of Elder David W. Patten.
CHAPTER VI.
The Beginning of Trouble in Caldwell and Daviess Counties.
The Prophet Rests.
Reproof of Canadian Brethren.
A Citizen's Meeting at Far West.
Judge Morin's Friendly Warning.
Peniston's Harangue.
"Dick" Welding's Row.
John L. Butter's Speech.
Gathering of the Mob.
Reports of Gallatin Trouble Reach Far West.
Departure of the Prophet from Gallatin.
The Prophet commends the Brethren for Standing for their Rights.
Interview with Adam Black.
Adam Black's Agreement.
Interview with Citizens of Mill Port.
Treatise of Peace of Little Avail.
Peniston's Affidavit.
Reflections of the Prophet.
Inquiry at Far West Concerning Gallatin Affairs.
Resolutions.
Chased by a Mob.
The Prophet's Interview with the Sheriff of Daviess County.
Organization of Agriculture Companies.
Affidavit of Adam Black.
Comment on Adam Black.
Proclamation of Governor Boggs.
Conduct of John Corrill Reproved.
CHAPTER VII.
Increasing Difficulties Between the Saints and the Mobs of Daviess and
Caldwell Counties.
The Prophet Leaves Far West to Found a City of Zion.
Excitement Among the Missourians.
The Prophet's Review of the Wrongs of the Saints.
Site for City Selected.
Rumors of Mobs Gathering.
An Appeal to Gen. Atchison.
Consultation with General Atchison.
The Prophet and Sidney Rigdon Study Law.
The Prophet and Lyman Wight to Submit to Trial.
The Prophet's Affidavit on the Adam Black Incident.
Judge King at Far West.
{VI} Start for the Place of Trial.
The Trial at Raglin's.
The Prophet and Lyman Wight Bound Over.
A Committee of Inquiry from Chariton County.
Rumors of an Attack upon "Diahman."
Capture of Arms Intended for the Mob.
The Mob Take Prisoners.
Allred's Prisoners.
Advice from Judge King.
Judge King's Apparent Double Dealing.
Petition from Ray County.
The Trial of Allred's Prisoners.
The Citizens of Daviess County to the Governor.
Atchison Orders out the Militia.
CHAPTER VIII.
Mob Movements in Caldwell, Daviess and Carroll Counties--Arrival of
Kirtland Camp at Far West.
Trouble at De Witt Begins.
Dryden's Report to the Governor.
Doniphan's Report to Atchison.
The Prophet's Comment.
Atchison's Report to the Governor.
Marching Orders to the Militia.
Movements of the Militia.
Excerpts of Atchison's Letter of the Governor.
Petition of the Saints of De Witt to Governor Boggs.
General Park's Report to Governor Boggs.
Agreement to Buy Out the Mob.
Extract of a Letter from General Atchison to Governor Boggs.
Mob Activities Shifter to De Witt.
Arrival of Kirtland Camp at Far West.
CHAPTER IX.
The Organization and Journey of Kirtland Camp.
Meeting of the Seventies.
The Report of the Presidents.
To Move in a Body Not Thought Practicable.
The Subject Discussed.
Foster's Vision.
"God Wills It."
Meeting of the 13th of March.
Presidents _pro tem_ appointed.
Power of Nominating Officers Vested in First Council.
The Constitution.
The Movement Commended.
Hyrum Smith on Previous Movements.
Hyrum Smith Commends the Seventies.
Advantage of a Large Company.
Caution as to the Word of Wisdom.
Practical Steps.
Views of Oliver Granger _et al_.
Admonitions.
Sundry Meetings and the Object of Them.
Difficulties Encountered.
Assembling of the Camp.
Solemn Reflections.
The Start.
Number in Camp.
Sorrow at Parting.
First Experiences.
A Renewal of Covenants.
{VII} Incidents of a Day.
Additional Camp Regulations.
The First Deserter.
The First Death.
Nature of the Country Traversed.
Difficulties by the Way.
Descriptions of Country.
Sorrow for the "Deluded" Saints.
Preparations for the Sabbath.
Public Worship.
Some Left by the Way Rejoined the Camp.
Prominent Elders Arrested.
On the Headwaters of the Sciota and Sandusky.
Instructions to Overseers.
Reproofs Administered.
The Council Relieved of Guard Duty.
Threats of Arrest Made.
A Case of Healing.
Scarcity of Food.
A Day of Rest.
Camp at the Farm of the Governor of Ohio.
Camp Labors.
Admonitions.
Through Springfield.
Astonishment Created by the Camp.
Abram Bond Disfellowshiped.
John E. Page's Company.
Prayer for Rain.
Rain.
Some Leave the Camp.
A Reproof.
Elder Page Exhorts the Camp.
Work on the Turnpike.
Renewed Diligence.
An Assistant Council Appointed.
CHAPTER X.
The Journey of Kirtland Camp (Continued).
Preaching of Joseph Young.
An Increase of Interest in the Camp.
Exhortations.
Death of Horses.
A Burial.
More Employment.
Showers.
Charles Thompson Corrected.
Spirit of Union Manifested.
Jonas Putnam Commended.
Expulsion from the Camp.
Further Investigation of Camp Members.
Expulsion from the Camp.
Religious Service.
Births in Camp.
Turnpike Contract Finished.
Arrangements for Renewal of the Journey.
Gathering of the Absent.
Preparation for the Journey.
The Camp Resumes its Journey.
On the Indiana Line.
Camp Enters the State of Indiana.
Course of the Journey.
A Sunday Journey.
Death of Bathsheba Willey.
Warning and Exhortation.
Arrival at Terra Haute.
In Illinois.
Serious Difficulties Considered.
Dissatisfaction in Camp.
Increased Sickness.
Camp Passes Through Springfield.
More Departures from the Camp.
First Tidings from Far West.
A Missouri Storm.
Bad Roads.
Re-organization of the Camp.
Proposition to Disband the Camp.
Proposition Rejected.
Arrival on Grand River.
{VIII}
CHAPTER XI.
Expulsion of the Saints From De Witt, Carroll County, Missouri.
Vexatious Persecution of Willard Richards.
Mob Movements at De Witt.
Scattering Fire Brands.
Letter of General Lucas to Governor Boggs.
The Prophet's Comment.
Conference at Far West.
News of Mob Violence from De Witt.
The Prophet's Hopes of Peace Disappointed.
The Prophet Arrives at De Witt.
Continuance of Far West Conference.
John Taylor Sustained as an Apostle.
England.
De Witt.
Communication of Clark to Atchison on Affairs at De Witt.
The Mobs' Appeal to Howard County for Help.
General Clark's Endorsement of the Mob.
The Governor's Answer to the Saints.
House Burning and Robbing.
Mob Leaders Made Commanders of Militia.
Hardships of the Saints.
Proposals for the Departure of the Saints.
A Sad Journey.
CHAPTER XII.
Movements of the Mob Upon De Witt--Battle of Crooked
River--Exterminating Order of Governor Boggs.
Plan of the Mob to Dispossess of the Saints.
Plans of Doniphan to Protect the Saints.
State of Affairs in England.
Organization for Defense.
Mob Depredations at "Diahman."
Affairs at Millport.
Park's Order to Wight to Disperse the Mob.
Stratagem of the Mob.
Beginning of William Clayton's Ministry.
Vindication of the Prophet's Business course in Kirtland.
A Card.
Crimes of the Mob Charged to the Saints.
Departure of Orson Hyde from Far West.
Return of the Prophet to Far West.
The Saints Flock into Far West.
Inflamatory Letters to the Governor.
The Mail Robbed.
The Course of King and Black.
The Apostasy of Thomas B. Marsh.
Communication of Woods and Dickson to Governor Boggs.
The Prophet's Statement of the Buncombe Affair.
Raid on the Pinkham Residence.
Crooked River Battle.
List of Casualties--Death of Patten and O'Banion.
The Prophet's Reflections on the Death of David W. Patten.
E. M. Ryland's Letter to Messrs. Reese and Williams.
Governor Boggs Order to {IX} General John B. Clark.
Letter of Horace Kingsbury and John W. Howden on the Business Integrity
of the Prophet and his Agents in Kirtland.
Funeral of David W. Patten.
Governor Boggs' Exterminating Order.
Excitement in Upper Missouri.
The Appeal of Atchison and Lucas to Governor Boggs, Asking his Presence
at the "Seat of War."
CHAPTER XIII.
Mob Movements About Far West--Treachery of Colonel Hinkle--Sorrowful
Scenes.
The Prophet's Comments on Governor Boggs.
General Clark.
Doctor Sampson Avard.
Avard's "Danites."
Avard's Manner of Proceeding.
Avard's Instructions to his Captains.
Revolt of Avard's Officers.
Avard's Teachings Rejected.
Avard Excommunicated.
Distinction in Organization Pointed Out.
Gathering of the Mob at Richmond.
Gen. Clark's Movements.
Joseph Young's Narrative of the Massacre at Haun's Mills.
Additional Events of the Massacre.
Atchison Withdraws from "Militia."
Arrival of more Mob Militia.
Preparations for a Battle.
Col. Hinkle's Treachery.
Reinforcement of the Mob.
Betrayal of the Prophet _et al_.
The Prophet and Companions Sentenced to be Shot.
Robbings by the "Militia."
Excerpt from Governor Boggs' Communication to General Lucas.
Citizens of Far West Disarmed.
High-Handed Procedure of the Mob.
Avard's Treachery.
Report of General S. D. Lucas to Governor Boggs.
CHAPTER XIV.
Rivalry Among the Militia Generals for Possession of the
Prisoners--"Trial" at Richmond.
Rival Efforts for Possession of the Prisoners.
The Prophet's Interview with a Lady.
Arrival of the Prisoners in Independence.
Overwhelming Numbers of Mob Militia.
Severity in the Treatment of Prisoners Modified.
Fifty-sex Additional Prisoners.
General Clark's Harangue to the Brethren.
Progress of Affairs at "Diahman."
The Prophet and his Fellow Prisoners sent to Richmond.
Prisoners not Sufficiently Protected by Guard.
Meeting of the Prophet and Gen. Clark.
The Prisoners Chained.
{X} Form of Permit.
General Clark Desires to try the Prophet by Court Martial.
General Clark's Report to Governor Boggs.
Hardships Inflicted on the "Diahman" Saints.
Casualties of the Mobbing.
List of the Prisoners.
The Villainy of Avard.
List of Witnesses Against the Saints.
Permit.
Treatment of Witness for the Defense.
Some Prisoners Discharged.
Misconception of the Church Organization.
Ashby's Report of Haun's Mills Massacre.
Prisoners Discharged and Retained.
Legal Advice to Cease Defense.
Mr. Arthur, Esq., to the Representatives from Clay County.
Attested Copy of Mittimus Under Which Joseph Smith Jun., and Others,
Were Sent from Judge King to the Jailer of Liberty Prison, in Clay
County, Missouri.
In Liberty Prison.
Course of Wm. E. M'Lellin and Burr Riggs.
CHAPTER XV.
The Case of the Saints Presented to the Missouri Legislature--The
Prophet's Communication to the Saints From Liberty Prison.
Report of Governor Boggs to the Legislature.
Memorial of a Committee to the State Legislature of Missouri in Behalf
of the Citizens of Caldwell County.
Minutes of a High Council Held at Far West, Thursday, December 13, 1838.
The Prophet's Letters to the Church.
CHAPTER XVI.
Case of the "Mormons" Before the Missouri Legislature--Close of the
Year 1838.
Varied Reports as to the Intentions of the Saints.
Interview Between David H. Redfield and Governor Boggs.
The Turner Committee Report to the Missouri Legislature.
The Debate on the Petition.
Nature of the Testimony.
Minutes of the High Council at Far West.
Return of Don Carlos Smith and George A. Smith.
Redfield's Report.
Action of Missouri Legislature.
State Appropriation of $2,000.
Course of the Minority in the Legislature.
Course of the State Press.
{XI}
CHAPTER XVII.
Preparations for Leaving Missouri--Action of the State Legislature.
Reflections on the Opening Year.
Anson Call Beaten.
Storm in England.
Missouri State Senate Resolutions on Mormon Difficulties.
Other Provisions of the Bill.
Proposition to Help the Poor.
The Prophet's Petition to the Missouri Legislation.
Postscript to the Petition.
Minutes of a Public Meeting at Far West.
Minutes of the Second Meeting at Far West.
List of Names Subscribed to the Foregoing.
Activity of the Committee on Removal.
Investigation Ordered.
Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee on Removal.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Exiled Saints at Quincy--Proposition to Settle at Commerce.
Minutes of a Conference of the Church held at Quincy.
Application for Assistance.
Persecution of Brigham Young.
Petition to Help the Smith Family from Missouri.
Arrangements for Paying the Debts of the Saints.
The Governor's Order to Return the Arms Belonging to the Saints.
Labors in the Interests of the Poor.
Committee Resolutions.
Action of the Democratic Committee of Quincy.
Determination of the Prisoners to Escape.
Sidney Rigdon's Departure from Prison.
Importunities for the Release of the Prisoners.
Meeting of Elder Israel Barlow and Isaac Galland.
Minutes of the Meeting of the Democratic Association of Quincy.
Report.
Document "A."
Statement of Sidney Rigdon.
Minutes of the Adjourned Meeting of the Democratic Association of
Quincy.
CHAPTER XIX.
Letters to the Prophet--Affairs in England--Petitions.
Edward Partridge's Letter to Joseph Smith, Jun., and Others Confined in
Liberty Jail, Missouri.
Letter from Don Carlos Smith to Joseph Smith, Jun., and Others Confined
in Liberty Jail, Missouri.
Letter from William Smith to Joseph and Hyrum.
{XII} Minutes of a Meeting of the Committee on Removal.
Minutes of the Adjourned Meeting of the Democratic Association of
Quincy.
Condition of Affairs in England.
Charges of Elder Halsal Against Elder Willard Richards.
The Cause of Elder Richards' Troubles.
The Petition of the Prophet _et al_. to Judge Thompkins _et al_.
CHAPTER XX.
Sundry Movements in the interest of the Exiled Saints--The Prophet's
Letters from Liberty Prison.
Minutes of the Conference at Quincy, Illinois.
Departure of Mrs. Pratt.
Action of the Committee of Removal.
Letter of the Prophet to Mrs. Norman Bull.
The Mission of Kimball and Turley to Governor Boggs.
The Faulty Mittimus.
The Prophet's Epistle to the Church, Written in Liberty Prison.
CHAPTER XXI.
Stirring Scenes About Far West--The Epistle of the Prophet and his
Fellow Prisoners.
Judge King's Anger.
Plot Against the Prophet's Life.
The Truth of a Revelation Questioned.
Turley's Defense of the Prophet.
Colloquy Between Turley and John Whitmer.
Land Sales and the Clothing of Prisoners.
The Prisoners Hurried into Daviess County.
Peremptory Orders Considered.
Action of the Committee.
Arrival of Stephen Markham in Gallatin.
Judge Morin Favors the Prophet's Escape.
The Examination of Prisoners.
Letter of Sidney Rigdon to the Prophet, Rigdon's Plan for the
Impeachment of Missouri.
Letter of Alanson Ripley to the Prophet.
Letter of Don Carlos Smith to His Brother, Hyrum Smith.
Letter of Agnes Smith to Hyrum and Joseph Smith.
Attempt upon the Life of Stephen Markham.
A "True Bill" Found Against the Prisoners.
Meeting of the Committee on Removal.
Sale of Jackson County Lands.
Vision of the Prophet for Markham's Safety.
Escape of Markham.
Jacob Stolling's Communication to the Prophet.
The Prophet's Comments.
Isaac Galland's Communications to the Quincy Argus.
Letters of Robert Lucas, Governor of the Territory of Iowa, Respecting
the Manner in which the Saints Might Hope to be Received and Treated in
Iowa.
{XIII} Activity of the Committee on Removal.
The Prophet and Fellow Prisoners Start for Boone County.
Letter of Elias Higbee to Joseph Smith, Junior, and Fellow Prisoners.
The Prophet's Reason for Escaping from the Officers of the Law.
Elder Kimball's Warning to the Committee.
Attack on Theodore Turley.
The Mob's Assault on Elder Kimball.
The Mob Loots Far West.
The Loss of Records, Accounts, etc.
Flight of the Saints _via_ Missouri River.
Assistance for the Poor.
Narrative of Amanda Smith Respecting the Massacre at Haun's Mills.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Prophet's Account of His Experiences in Missouri--Fulfillment of a
Prophetic Revelation--Complete Exodus of the Saints From Missouri.
The Prophet and Companions Continue their Flight.
The Leading Characters in the Persecution of the Saints.
Part of Governor Boggs in the Persecutions.
Treatment of the Prophet by the Missouri Mob.
Calm Assurance of the Prophet Respecting his own Safety.
Deportment of the Saints.
Sure Reward of the Faithful Saints.
The Saints not to Marvel at Persecution.
The Crime of Missouri to be Viewed in the Light of the Civilized Age in
which it was Committed.
The Appeal of the Prophet to the People of the United States.
Pursuit of Elder Markham.
Letters of Governor Lucas of Iowa to Elder Rigdon.
Letter of Governor Lucas to President Martin Van Buren Respecting the
Latter-day Saints.
Letter of Governor Lucas to the Governor of Ohio Introducing President
Rigdon.
Letter of W. W. Phelps to John P. Greene.
Parley P. Pratt _et al_. Before the Grand Jury at Richmond.
The Twelve _en route_ for Far West.
Minutes of Council Meeting Held at Quincy, Illinois.
Seeking a New Location.
Minutes of the Meeting of the Twelve Apostles at Far West, April 26,
1839.
The Revelation of April 8, 1838, Fulfilled.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Settlement in Commerce, Illinois.
Seeking a New Location.
Elder Taylor's Warning to the People of Quincy Against Impostors.
Land Purchases.
The English Saints Warned Against Isaac Russell.
Isaac Russell's Letter to the {XIV} Saints in England.
Russell's Efforts Counteracted
Minutes of a General Conference of the Church Held near Quincy,
Illinois, May 4th, 5th, and 6th, 1839.
Certificate of Appointment.
Minutes of the 5th.
Minutes of the 6th.
John P. Greene's Letter of Appointment.
Letter of Recommendation to Elder John P. Greene from Certain Citizens
of Quincy.
Sidney Rigdon's Letter of Introduction to the President of the United
States.
The Prophet Settles at Commerce.
Sidney Rigdon's General Letter of Introduction.
Letter of Recommendation to Oliver Granger from the First Presidency.
Letter of R. B. Thompson to the First Presidency Complaining of the
Conduct of Lyman Wight.
Letter of Elder Parley P. Pratt to Judge Austin A. King.
Letter of the First Presidency to the Quincy _Whig_ Disclaiming the
Attitude of Lyman Wight.
CHAPTER XXIV.
Adventures of the Prisoners Remaining in Missouri--The Prophet's
Narrative of Personal Experiences in Missouri.
Rabbi Landau's Letter to His Son.
The Prophet's Letter to W. W. Phelps.
Indictment of Parley P. Pratt _et al_.
An Adventure by the Way.
The Prophet's Letter to E. W. Harris.
Letter of the Prophet and Emma Smith to Judge Cleveland.
The Prophet's Letter to Bishop Whitney, Asking Him to Settle at
Commerce.
The Twelve to go to England.
Cruel Treatment of Parley P. Pratt and Companions.
Answer of the First Presidency to R. B. Thompson on the Lyman Wight
Affair.
Case of William Smith.
Parley P. Pratt and Fellow Prisoners Arrive at Columbia.
The Prophet and Vinson Knight's Letter to Mark Bigler.
The Prophet's Letter to Lyman Wight, on the Matter of R. B. Thompson's
Complaint.
Letter of Appointment to Stephen Markham.
Parley P. Pratt _et al_. Seek a Trial.
The Prophet's Narration of his Personal Experiences in Missouri,
1838-9, which he calls "A Bill of Damages Against the State of Missouri
on Account of the Suffering and Losses Sustained Therein."
Hyrum Smith's Statement of Sufferings and Damages Sustained in
Missouri, and in Being Driven Therefrom.
CHAPTER XXV.
Commerce--The Prophet's History--Doctrinal Development.
First House built by the Saints at Commerce.
{XV} Description of Commerce.
Letter of Edward Partridge to the Prophet.
Excitement at Columbia Prison, Mo.
Visit of the Prophet with William Smith.
Visit with Don Carlos Smith.
Ministry of the Prophet.
Purchase of Lands in Iowa.
Return of the Prophet to Commerce.
The Prophet's Answer to Jacob Stollings.
Restoration of Orson Hyde.
The Prophet's Instructions on Various Doctrines.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Prophet's Ministry in the Vicinity of Commerce--Address to the
Twelve.
The Prophet Testifies to the Book of Mormon.
The Missouri Prisoners.
Founding of Zarahemla.
The Prophet with the Twelve and Seventy.
The Prophet's Address to the Twelve.
Mercy and Forgiveness.
Humility and Brotherhood of the Twelve.
Avard's Vain Glory.
Be Honest, Sober, Vigilant.
Beware of Treason.
The Sign of Apostasy.
The Prophet on Priesthood.
Adam and the Presidency of the Priesthood.
Eternity of the Priesthood.
Adam's Place in the Order of Worthies.
The Spirit of Man Eternal.
The Nature of the Priesthood.
The Restoration of the Priesthood.
Adam in the Valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman.
Labors of the Patriarchs and Moses.
Angels to have Part in the Work.
The Kingdom of Heaven.
Future Deliverance of the Saints.
Importance of Revelation.
A Vision and Prophecy.
The Mission of Elijah.
Blessings for the Saints in Stakes of Zion.
Haste to Build up Zion.
Peace in Zion and Her Stakes.
The Prophet's Vision of Judgement.
Vision.
Angels.
Powers of the Devil.
The Gift of Tongues.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Baptism of Isaac Galland--Epistle of the Twelve to the Church.
Baptism of Isaac Galland.
Epistle of the Twelve to the Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, to the Churches Scattered Abroad and to all the
Saints.
{XVI} CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Escape of Parley P. Pratt and his Fellow Prisoners from
Missouri--The Close of an Epoch.
Parley P. Pratt's Account of His Escape from Missouri.
Appendix to Volume III.
Affidavits of Hyrum Smith _et al_. on affairs in Missouri, 1831-39;
Officially subscribed to before the municipal court of Nauvoo the first
day of July, 1843.
Explanatory Note.
The Testimony of Hyrum Smith.
Testimony of Parley P. Pratt.
Testimony of George W. Pitkin.
Testimony of Brigham Young.
Testimony of Lyman Wight.
Testimony of Sidney Rigdon.
{XVII} Introduction to Volume III.
_Enlightenment a Factor in Determining Responsibility for Conduct_.
Volume Three concludes, for the present, the history of the Church in
Missouri. I think it proper, therefore, that here should be considered
the causes of the Missouri persecutions, which resulted in the
expulsion of the entire Church from that state.
There have been, of course, more extensive persecutions than those
inflicted on the Saints in Missouri; but I doubt if there has ever been
a persecution more cruel or terror-laden in its character. Viewed from
the standpoint of its net results there were some fifty people, men,
women, and children, killed outright; about as many more were wounded
or cruelly beaten, and many more perished indirectly because of the
exposure to which they were subjected through the winters of 1833-4 and
1838-9.
In round numbers it is estimated that between twelve and fifteen
thousand people, citizens of the United States, after being
dispossessed of their lands, were forcibly driven from the state.
It is known that they paid to the United States government for land
alone, three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars, which, at the
minimum price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, would give them
land holdings of over two hundred and fifty thousand acres, which
represented for that day very large interests. [1]
To this list of results must be added the more horrible one of several
cases of ravishment at Far West; and also, after barely escaping
from the sentence of death pronounced by a court martial, the cruel
imprisonment through weary months of a number of Church leaders.
In passing judgment upon such matters as these account must be taken of
the age and country in which they occurred; likewise the pretensions
to right views of life, and devotion to freedom on the part of the
perpetrators of the injustice. Undoubtedly a heavier debt is incurred
to history, to humanity and to God, when the parties who resort to such
acts of mob violence and injustice live in an enlightened age, and
where the free institutions of their country guarantee both the freedom
and security of its citizens.
{XVIII} If in the jungle a man meets a tiger and is torn to pieces, no
one thinks of holding the tiger to any moral accountability. Perhaps
the hunt will be formed to destroy the beast, but that is merely to be
rid of a dangerous animal, and prevent the repetition of the deed. If
another meets a cruel death among savages in heathen lands, while some
moral responsibility would hold against them, according to their degree
of enlightenment, yet the fact that it was an act of savages would be
held to reduce the degree of moral turpitude. And likewise even in
civilized states, in localities to which the vicious may gravitate,
when acts of violence are committed there, some allowance may be, and
generally is, made for the ignorance and general brutality of the
particular neighborhood.
By this process of reasoning I think it will appear quite clear that
moral responsibility, both on the part of individuals and communities
or nations, increases in proportion to their enlightenment. If,
therefore, this principle be kept in view, the persecution of the
Latter-day Saints by the people of Missouri was a very heinous offense.
True it may be said that the worst acts of cruelty were perpetrated
by low, brutish men among the mob or in the militia--for these
bodies were convertible from one to the other on shortest possible
notice, and wholly as the exigencies of the enemies of the Saints
demanded--but these were led and abetted by quite a different order
of men: by lawyers, members of the state legislature, by county and
district judges, by physicians, by professed ministers of the gospel,
by merchants, by leading politicians, by captains, majors, colonels,
and generals--of several grades--of the militia, by many other high
officials of the state including the Governor and Lieutenant Governor,
and finally by the action of the state legislature which appropriated
two hundred thousand dollars to defray the expenses incurred by the
mob-militia in carrying out the Governor's order, exterminating the
Saints from the state. These facts are made apparent in the pages of
this and the two preceding volumes of the HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. The
facts cannot be questioned. They are written out most circumstantially
in the Prophet's story. Times, places, and names are given of the
incidents related, and the more important of these may be corroborated
by histories of these events other than our own.
The persecutions then of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri, and their
final expulsion from that state, were crimes against the enlightenment
of the age and of the state where the acts occurred; a crime against
the constitutions and institutions both of the state of Missouri and
of the United States; as also a crime against the Christian religion.
All this we have in mind when speaking of the severity and cruelty of
these compared with other persecutions. The state of Missouri was {XIX}
guilty of a greater crime when it persecuted the Latter-day Saints than
states were which in the barbarous times of the dark ages persecuted
their people; though when estimated in net results there may have been
more murders and robberies, greater destruction of property, and more
wide-spread suffering in the latter than in the former.
It is in the light of the principle here laid down that I propose to
review the causes of the persecutions of the Latter-day Saints in
Missouri.
_The People of Missouri and the Saints_.
The people of the state of Missouri, and especially those living in
western and upper Missouri, in the early decades of the nineteenth
century, were chiefly from the states of the South--from Kentucky,
Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas. This is not stated as a matter
of reproach, for among the American people there have been no better
or nobler citizens of the Republic than the people of the states
enumerated. I merely make the statement in order to present a fact, and
because other facts grow out of it. To say that Missouri was settled by
emigrants from the states of the South carries with it the explanation
why Missouri was one of the slave states, and her people attached
to the social and industrial methods of life attendant upon that
circumstance. That is to say, they looked with contempt upon manual
labor; regarding it as menial and proper only for slaves to perform.
With that idea is closely related another; namely, that white people
who from circumstances were compelled to perform manual labor, or who
followed it from principle, in the eyes of the people of the South were
of an inferior class; contemptuously characterized by some as "white
trash," and by others, inclined to be more polite, as "poor whites."
Freedom from manual labor gave to those of active dispositions in such
communities an opportunity to follow the more desirable vocations
of professional life; the law, medicine, the Christian ministry,
merchandising and general business; or leisure for political or
military activities; or the pursuit of pleasure, fishing, hunting,
horse racing, and social life generally. These conditions naturally
resulted in pride, often in arrogance, and a desperate sort of courage,
which held honor high and weakness and cowardice in contempt; also
something of intolerance for those disposed to set themselves against
such an order of things.
The reader will recognize, of course, that I have so far in mind
only the better element of the population, the least of the evils
and some of the advantages resulting from such industrial and social
conditions. There were, however, quite different and more serious
results than any {XX} yet noted arising from this system of society.
While those disposed to activity and inclined to honorable pursuits
might enjoy certain advantages from the system, on the other hand, it
fostered man's natural inclination to idleness and love of ease that
comes of idleness; and fostered jealousy and bitterness against those
more industrious and successful. In such a class the system led to
ignorance, irreligion, and criminal tendencies; constituting them a
dangerous element in the community. It was doubtless this class the
Prophet Joseph had in mind when he said soon after his first arrival in
western Missouri: "Our reflections were great, coming as we had from
a highly cultivated state of society in the East, and standing now
upon the confines or western limits of the United States, and looking
into the vast wilderness of those that sat in darkness. How natural it
was to observe the degradation, leanness of intellect, ferocity and
jealousy of a people that were nearly a century behind the times, and
to feel for those who roamed about without the benefit of civilization,
refinement, or religion!"
Many of the positions in the higher walks of life, in western Missouri,
were sought by the unworthy, the corruptible and the vicious--men
who sought all the advantages of the southern ideals of life without
possessing the refining virtues which for generations in the older
states of the south made some of the evils of the social system that
obtained there at least tolerable. Such were the Brazeales, the
Wilsons, the Hunters, the Kavanaughs, the Likens, the Loveladys, the
McCartys, the McCoys, the Pixleys, the Simsons, the Silvers, the
Westons, the Gilliams, the Birches, the Blacks, the Bogarts, the
Clarks, the Liveseys, and the Penistons.
Another circumstance which influenced somewhat the character of western
Missouri's population in the early decades of the nineteenth century,
was the fact that these sections of the state constituted part of the
frontiers of the United States, and here had gravitated a more or less
lawless class which sought the security of proximity to the boundary
lines of the United States, from whose confines they could make their
escape in the event of being hard pressed for violations of law in the
older states whence they had come, or in their new habitat. Such were
the Lovels, the Hawkins, the Heatherleys and many others.
The Latter-day Saints who settled in Missouri from 1831 to 1839 had
come for the most part from the New England States and New York.
There were, therefore, marked differences in character between
them and the old settlers of Missouri; differences of ideas as to
industrial and social life; of moral and religious life. The Saints
were descendants chiefly of the Puritans, and both by inheritance
and training had fallen heirs to the Puritan's strict views of
industry, religion and morality. The Puritans taught that all labor
was honorable, and industry a duty. {XXI} Religion occupied a large
share of their attention--entered in fact into all the affairs of
life--though its duties meant largely a regular attendance upon church
service; a strict observance of the proprieties while there; a rigid
observance throughout of the Sabbath day. Neither work nor amusements
were tolerated on that day. In the olden time among some of their
forefathers it had been unlawful to sit in Boston Common on the Sabbath
or to walk in the streets of Boston, except to church. Once a man was
publicly whipped for shooting a fowl on Sunday. A woman was threatened
with banishment for smiling in church. A person absent from church for
more than one Sunday was in danger of being fined, whipped, or set
in the stocks. Swearing was prohibited in nearly all the New England
colonies, and a split stick was sometimes placed on the swearer's
tongue. [2]
Both food and dress were plain, and the latter, in some instances, was
regulated by law. Amusements were few. Dancing and card-playing were
forbidden, and there was little music. The state sought to take entire
charge of the individual, and supposed that tendency toward immorality
could be stemmed by legislation. In early Connecticut no one under
twenty was allowed to use tobacco, and none to use it more than once
a day. The laws were severe and the penalties cruel. The stocks and
whipping-post and pillory were in frequent requisition to correct moral
delinquents. An offender might be made to stand on a stool in church
with the name of his misdemeanor displayed on his breast. Among the
common punishments were cropping or boring the ears and branding with a
hot iron. [3]
Of course in later years there was a general relaxation from these
severities, and many of these customs and laws, by the time our
generation of Saints came on the scene, were obsolete. Still, the moral
and spiritual atmosphere in which the Saints and their fathers had been
reared was austere in its moral character, and stood in marked contrast
to the moral atmosphere of the South, where, in respect of such things
as church attendance, religious observances, personal liberty in
eating, drinking and amusements, there was wider freedom.
In the sparsely settled country of western Missouri, the descendants
of the old cavaliers and their following, who settled the South, and
the descendants of the Puritans, who settled the North, were to meet:
and very naturally one may see in these antagonistic elements--aside
from the cause of antagonism which will be found in the newly revealed
religion of the Latter-day Saints--natural causes of irritation between
them founded in the differences of character, and their respective
conceptions of industrial, moral, and religious duties. That the old
settlers {XXII} in Missouri, even those friendly disposed towards the
Saints, recognized the incompatibility of the two classes is evident
from the public utterances of a mass meeting held at Liberty, in Clay
county, when the Saints were urged to seek anew locality where they
could live by themselves. "They are eastern men," said the address,
"whose manners, habits, customs, and even dialect, are essentially
different from our own. We earnestly urge them to seek some other
abiding place, where the manners, the habits, and customs of the people
will be more consonant with their own." [4]
This difference of character between the Saints and the old settlers I
account one of the causes of the Missouri persecutions.
_The Question of Slavery_.
The question of slavery in Missouri was a delicate one. It will perhaps
be remembered that it was the application of the territory of Missouri
for admission into the Union, 1818-19, that brought the question
of slavery into one of its acute stages before the country; and
inaugurated a long series of debates in the National Congress on the
subject. It was upon the admission of Missouri into the Union in 1821
that the great Compromise which bears the state's name settled, not the
question of slavery itself, but, for the time, the agitation of it.
That Compromise consisted finally in this: that while Missouri herself
was admitted with a clause in her constitution permitting slavery, and
also prohibiting free people of color from immigrating into the state,
slavery was forever to be prohibited in all territory of the United
States north of the line thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north
latitude (the southern boundary line of the state of Missouri); and
Missouri was required "by a solemn, public act" of her legislature,
to declare that the clause in her constitution relating to the
immigration of free negroes into the state, should never be construed
to authorize the passage of any law by which any citizen of either of
the states in this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any
of the privileges and immunities to which he is entitled under the
Constitution of the United States.
These historical facts are referred to here that the reader may be
reminded that slavery was a delicate question in Missouri; that her
people were super-sensitive about it since she was the first territory
upon which the National Congress sought to impose the prohibition of
slavery as a condition precedent to her admission into the Union,
which, up to that time, had been a matter left to the people of the
territory seeking admission to determine for themselves. Of course this
attempt at {XXIII} restriction of slavery was made by northern members
of the national Congress. [5] All the sentiment for the restriction
of slavery was in the North. In 1831 the sentiment for the positive
abolition of slavery had made such progress in Massachusetts, that
William Lloyd Garrison established in Boston "_The Liberator_," a paper
which advocated "the immediate and unconditional emancipation of every
slave in the United States." As a result of this agitation anti-slavery
societies were formed and active measures taken to advocate these
opinions by means of lectures and pamphlets. These extreme measures
against slavery did not meet with the approval of all or even the
majority of the people of New England, much less with the approval
of the people of other northern states. Still this agitation arose
and was chiefly supported in New England. It will not be difficult to
understand, therefore, that any considerable number of people from
that section of the Union immigrating into a slave state would arouse
suspicion; especially when that immigration was into a slave state upon
which, when as a territory she had made application for admission into
the Union, prohibition of slavery was sought to be enforced by the
northern members of the National Congress. Nor will it be sufficient
to dispel this suspicion to aver that these particular immigrants from
New England, and other northern states are not abolitionists; that
they take no part with, and do not share the fanatical sentiments of,
the abolitionists; that their objects and purposes are of an entirely
different and larger character.
The answer to all this was given in a public document drawn up to voice
the sentiment of a great mass meeting of the people of Clay county--a
people, be it remembered, who at the time (1836) were not unfriendly
towards the Saints, but a people who a few years before had received
the Saints into their homes, and given them shelter when they were
exiles from Jackson county, and who, at the time of the utterance I
am about to quote was published, were in a covenant of peace with the
Saints, and the Saints in a covenant of peace with them--I say the
answer to all disclaimers on the part of the Saints respecting their
not being abolitionists was found in this public utterance: "They
are eastern men, whose manners, habits, customs and even dialect are
essentially different from our own. They are non-slaveholders, and
opposed to slavery, which in this peculiar period, when abolitionism
has reared its deformed and haggard visage in our land, is well
calculated to excite deep and abiding prejudices in any community where
slavery is tolerated and protected."
I call attention to these facts that the student of the history of the
Church may appreciate the weight of influence they would have in {XXIV}
creating popular sentiment against the Saints; a matter which hitherto,
if I may be permitted to say so, has not been fully appreciated. One
can readily see what a potent factor this sentiment against New England
and other northern states people would be in the hands of political
demagogues and sectarian priests seeking to exterminate what they
would respectively consider an undesirable element in politics and a
religious rival. That both political demagogues and sectarian priests
made the most of the opportunity which hostile sentiment in Missouri
against abolition and abolitionists afforded, abundantly appears in the
pages of the first volume of the Church History. That sentiment was
appealed to from the first; indeed in the very first manifesto of the
mob--known as "The Secret Constitution," [6]--issued against the Saints
in Missouri, it was a prominent feature. This was at Independence, in
July, 1833. In that "Manifesto" the following passage occurs: "More
than a year since, it was ascertained that they [the Saints] had been
tampering with our slaves, and endeavoring to sow dissensions and raise
seditions amongst them. Of this their Mormon leaders were informed, and
they said they would deal with any of their members who should again in
like case offend. But how specious are appearances. In a late number of
the _Star_, published in Independence by the leaders of the sect, there
is an article inviting free negroes and mulattoes from other states to
become Mormons, and remove and settle among us. This exhibits them in
still more odious colors. It manifests a desire on the part of their
society, to inflict on our society an injury that they know would be to
us entirely insupportable, and one of the surest means of driving us
from the country; for it would require none of the supernatural gifts
that they pretend to, to see that the introduction of such a caste
amongst us would corrupt our blacks, and instigate them to bloodshed."
The article on "Free People of Color" referred to appeared in the
_Evening and Morning Star_ for July. The charge of sowing dissensions
and inspiring seditions among the slaves, and inviting free negroes to
settle in Missouri, had no foundation in truth. Concerning such people
the Missouri laws provided that: If any negro or mulatto came into
the state of Missouri, without a certificate from a court of record
in some one of the United States, evidencing that he was a citizen of
such state, on complaint before any justice of the peace, such negro
or mulatto could be commanded by the justice to leave the state; and
if the colored person so ordered did not leave the state within thirty
days, on complaint of any citizen, such person could be again brought
before the justice who might commit him to the common jail of the
county, until {XXV} the convening of the circuit court, when it became
the duty of the judge of the circuit court to inquire into the cause of
commitment; and if it was found that the negro or mulatto had remained
in the state contrary to the provisions of this statute, the court was
authorized to sentence such person to receive ten lashes on his or her
bare back, and then order him or her to depart from the state; if the
person so treated should still refuse to go, then the same proceedings
were to be repeated and punishment inflicted as often as was necessary
until such person departed.
And further: If any person brought into the state of Missouri a free
negro or mulatto, without the aforesaid certificate of citizenship,
for every such negro or mulatto the person offending was liable to a
forfeit of five hundred dollars; to be recovered by action of debt in
the name of the state.
The editor of the _Star_ commenting upon this law said: "Slaves are
real estate in this and other states, and wisdom would dictate great
care among the branches of the Church of Christ on this subject. So
long as we have no special rule in the Church as to people of color,
let prudence guide; and while they, as well as we, are in the hands of
a merciful God, we say: shun every appearance of evil."
Publishing this law and the above comment was construed by the old
settlers to be an invitation to free people of color to settle in
Jackson county! Whereupon an extra was published to the July number of
the _Star_ on the sixteenth of the month, which said: "The intention in
publishing the article, "Free People of Color," was not only to stop
free people of color from immigrating to Missouri, but to prevent them
from being admitted as members of the Church. * * * * * To be short, we
are opposed to having free people of color admitted into the State." [7]
But in the face of all this the Missourians still claimed that the
article was merely published to give directions and cautions to be
observed by "colored brethren," to enable them upon their arrival
in Missouri, to "claim and exercise the rights of citizenship."
"Contemporaneous with the appearance of this article"--the above
article in the {XXVI} _Star_--continued the charge published in the
_Western Monitor_--"was the expectation among the brethren, that a
considerable number of this degraded caste were only waiting this
information before they should set out on their journey." [8] And
this base falsehood was used to inflame the minds of the old settlers
against the Saints.
I do not refer to this question of slavery in connection with the
persecution of the Saints in Missouri in order to set it down as one
of the causes of that persecution; because, as a matter of fact, the
views of the Saints, and especially of the leading Elders of the Church
on that question were such that they could never be truthfully charged
with being a menace to that institution. The Prophet Joseph himself,
at the time of the Jackson county troubles and subsequently, held very
conservative views on the subject of slavery, surprisingly conservative
views when his own temperament and environment are taken into account,
of which fact any one may convince himself by reading his paper on the
subject of abolition in Volume II of the Church History, pages 436-40.
Finally, it was given by the inspiration of God to the Prophet first to
utter the most statesman-like word upon this vexed question of slavery,
and had the nation and people of the United States but given heed to
his recommendations it would have settled the question in harmony with
the convictions of the people of the North, and without injustice to
the South. Here follows his statesman-like word, published throughout
the United States in 1844--eleven years before Ralph Waldo Emerson made
substantially the same recommendation, and for which the philosopher
received no end of praise:--
"Petition, also, ye goodly inhabitants of the slave states, your
legislators to abolish slavery by the year 1850, or now, and save
the abolitionist from reproach and ruin, and infamy and shame. Pray
Congress to pay every man a reasonable price for his slaves out of the
surplus revenue arising from the sale of the public lands, and from the
deduction of pay from the members of Congress. Break off the shackles
from the poor black man, and hire him to labor like other human beings;
for an hour of virtuous liberty is worth a whole eternity of bondage."
[9]
But now to return to the course of the Missourians in misrepresenting
the views of the Saints on the subject of slavery. Notwithstanding
the explicit denials through the "_Evening and Morning Star_," that
the article on "Free People of Color" was intended to invite such a
class into the state; and the further declaration that the Saints were
opposed to such persons coming into the state; as also the fact that
it is {XXVII} doubtful if there were any free negroes who were members
of the Church--notwithstanding all this, their enemies continued to
misrepresent them, and their views on the subject of slavery. They saw
in the fact that many of them were from New England, where abolition
sentiment was rife, their opportunity to charge them with abolition
sentiments and intention to interfere with slavery, with every prospect
of having it quite generally believed--hence the charge was made and
became a pretext if not a cause of acts of aggression upon the Saints,
and as such is a factor that must be taken account of in these pages.
_Political Fears_.
I know of no circumstances which developed what the political faith of
the Saints really was during their sojourn in the state of Missouri;
and doubt if any data exists from which it could be determined whether
a majority of them were Whigs or Republican-Democrats, as the party now
designated as the Democratic party was then called. In fact, politics,
local or national, concerned the Saints but very little during their
stay in Missouri. Their minds were occupied by quite other, and I may
say, larger and higher things; and their activities were concerned
with other issues than those political. They were concerned about the
redemption of Zion, her establishment, the proclamation of the Gospel,
the salvation of men, the preparation of the earth for the incoming
of that Kingdom whose King is the Lord. Their mission encompassed the
whole world, it was not confined to the state of Missouri and her petty
political affairs; nor even to the political affairs of the United
States, important as they were. "Mormonism" was a world-movement, not
merely a national one. It concerned itself with the deeper and broader
subject of religion, rather than with the principles and methods of
the administration of government, state or national. Still, in common
with other people of the county, state and nation of which they were
citizens, they possessed civil and political rights and privileges,
accompanied as such rights and privileges always are in a republic
with certain duties both to the state and themselves, among which the
exercise of the elective franchise. As this made them a power in the
community, their actual and prospective influence in the affairs of the
counties where they resided, and in the state, was a matter of frequent
discussion among the old settlers in Missouri. I do not know that it
was ever charged that they were Whigs, and that by acting with that
party in Missouri they could wrest the control of the state from the
Republican-Democratic party then in power; though that they were Whigs
might have been inferred from the fact of their being chiefly from New
England and other northern states; yet this was not charged. {XXVIII}
There was repeatedly expressed, however, a fear of their political
power. In the document issued by the mob meeting at Independence on the
20th of July, 1833, it is said: "When we reflect on the extensive field
in which the sect is operating, and that there exists in every country
a leaven of superstition that embraces with avidity, notions the most
extravagant and unheard of, and that whatever can be gleaned by them
from the purlieus of vice and the abodes of ignorance, is to be cast
like a waif into our social circle, it requires no gift of prophecy to
tell that the day is not far distant when the civil government of the
county will be in their hands; when the sheriff, the justices, and the
county judges will be Mormons, or persons wishing to court their favor
from motives of interest or ambition."
It was an effort to prevent members of the Church from voting at an
election at Gallatin, Daviess county, in August, 1838, which led
to the commencement of those acts of hostility against the Saints
which ended ultimately in their expulsion from that state. There was
no political offense even charged against the Saints; only that if
permitted to exercise the franchise they would in time obtain control
of the counties where they resided, so rapidly were they increasing
in numbers; and the old settlers would lose the offices; and as these
old settlers were dear lovers of office, it was political jealousy
born of fear which prompted in part the acts of aggression against the
Saints. When such jealousy is awakened, pretexts for the justification
of its existence are not difficult to find, and in this instance the
old settlers in Missouri relied upon the false charges of ignorance,
superstition, and general unworthiness of the Saints to be considered
good citizens of the state. The charge was not that they were all of
one political faith; or that they voted solidly; or that they were
under the political dictation of their religious leaders; or that
religious influence was dragged into political affairs. None of these
charges were made: it was simply a fear that the old settlers would
lose the offices, and the new settlers, the Saints, being in the
majority, would hold them. How much justification there was for this
"fear" may not be determined, since it was based upon no accomplished
fact, but regarded as the natural outcome of the operation of the
political system obtaining in the United States; namely, the right of
the majority to choose the public officers; and if the Saints happened
to be in the majority it was regarded as likely that they would elect
their friends to office, among whom, at least, would have been some
members of their own faith. How the matter would have terminated in the
event of the Saints having been permitted to remain in Missouri--what
would have been the political alignment of {XXIX} the members of the
Church I mean, no one can say. The only political utterance made by any
Church leader was that given out by the Prophet Joseph soon after his
arrival in Missouri, and called at the time "_The Political Motto of
the Church_." I quote it:
"_The Constitution of our country formed by the Fathers of Liberty;
peace and good order in society; love to God, and good will to man.
All good and wholesome laws; virtue and truth above all things, and
Aristarchy_ [a government by good men] _live for ever: but woe to
tyrants, mobs, aristocracy, anarchy and toryism, and all those who
invent or seek out unrighteous or evasive law suits, under the pretext
and color of law or office, either religious or political. Exalt the
standard of Democracy! Down with that of priestcraft, and let all the
people say Amen! That the blood of the fathers may not cry from the
ground against us. Sacred is the memory of that blood which bought for
us our liberty_."
This surely is sufficiently non-partisan, cosmopolitan and patriotic.
Is it not of the essence of Americanism? And under such sentiments
would not every member of the Church be able to perform his political
duty in either of the great American parties then existing or
afterwards to arise?
It is not necessary to pursue this subject further. It is enough to say
that the political fears of the old settlers of Missouri, though based
upon conjecture as to what could or might happen, were real fears, and
became one of the causes of the Missouri persecutions.
_The Saints and the Indians_.
The interest of the Saints in the American Indians grows out of the
knowledge they have of their forefathers, revealed through the Book
of Mormon. From the historical parts of that book they learned the
origin of these Indians; that they are of the house of Israel: from
the prophetic parts of the book they learn of their future, that it
is to be glorious; that fallen as their fortunes now are, they will
not always remain so; extinction is not their fate, but before many
generations shall pass away they will become a white and a delightsome
people, favored of God, and prominent in bringing to pass His purposes
in the land of Zion--the two Americas. It was a mission to the
Lamanites or Indians which first brought several of the Elders of the
Church of Christ to western Missouri. When the people of Missouri
learned in what esteem the Saints held the forefathers of the Indians,
and also the Indians themselves, both on account of their forefathers
and the promises of God to them, it was but reasonable that they should
conclude there was--as indeed there is--a strong sympathy on the part
of the Saints towards the Indians; and there was great reason to
believe that this sympathy might become mutual.
{XXX} It was in this substratum of truth that the false accusations
against the Saints were founded to the effect that they were seeking
to enter into an alliance with the Indian tribes of the west for the
purpose of driving the old settlers from their possessions in western
Missouri, in order that the Saints with the Indians might possess the
land to the exclusion of the "Gentiles."
To appreciate the seriousness of this charge, it should be remembered
that the Indian tribes formerly residing east of the Mississippi,
about this time--during President Jackson's two presidential terms,
1829-1837--were being transplanted into the country immediately west of
Missouri, so that there were great numbers of these people--amounting
to many thousands--being massed just beyond the boundaries of the
state. Many of the tribes were in no amiable mood either. In some
instances the terms of the treaties by which they accepted lands in
the Indian territory west of Missouri, for lands that constituted
their old homes in the East and South, were forced upon them after--to
them--disastrous wars; so that it might well be suspected that they
would be ready to follow any leader who would hold out promise of
regaining their lost possessions, or who would give them the hope of
revenge upon their despoilers.
Let these facts be considered and given their due weight, and the
reader will not find it difficult to perceive what a potent factor
against the Saints this charge of holding communication with the
Indians for the purpose of dispossessing the people of western Missouri
of their homes would be; and, as in the case of the slavery question,
their enemies were not slow to see the advantage, and made the most
of it. It was not until the agitation for the removal of the Saints
from Clay county began, however, 1836, that this charge of holding
communication with the Indians for the purposes already set forth, was
publicly made. Then in the document adopted at the mass meeting setting
forth the several reasons of the old settlers for asking the Saints to
remove from Clay county, this passage occurs:
"In addition to all this, they are charged, as they have hitherto been,
with keeping up a constant communication with our Indian tribes on
the frontiers; with declaring, even from the pulpit, that the Indians
are a part of God's chosen people, and are destined by heaven to
inherit this land, in common with themselves. We do not vouch for the
correctness of these statements; but whether they are true or false,
their effect has been the same in exciting the community. In times of
greater tranquility, such ridiculous remarks might well be regarded as
the offspring of frenzied fanaticism; but at this time, our defenseless
situation on the frontier, the bloody disasters of our fellow citizens
in Florida and other parts of the South, all tend to make a portion of
our {XXXI} citizens regard such sentiments with horror, if not alarm.
These and many other causes have combined to raise a prejudice against
them, and a feeling of hostility, that the first spark may, and we
deeply fear will, ignite into all the horrors and desolations of a
civil war, the worst evil that can befall any country."
Governor Dunklin, shortly after this, in answer to appeals made to him
by the Saints for protection, by the execution of the law, on this
charge of holding communication with the Indians, said: "Your neighbors
accuse your people with holding illicit communication with the Indians,
and of being opposed to slavery. You deny. Whether the charge or the
denial is true, I cannot tell. The fact exists, and your neighbors seem
to believe it true; and whether true or false, the consequences will be
the same (if your opponents are not merely gasconnading), unless you
can, by your conduct and arguments, convince them of your innocence. If
you cannot do this, all I can say to you is that in this Republic the
_vox populi_ is the _vox Dei_."
Of course this false accusation was emphatically denied by the Saints.
In a public meeting held by the members of the Church to draw up a
reply to the request of the people of Clay county, that the Saints
remove from that county, they said: "We deny holding any communication
with the Indians, and mean to hold ourselves as ready to defend our
country against their barbarous ravages as any other people. We believe
that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments
in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable
rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion
are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished
accordingly."
In a communication signed by the Prophet Joseph and several other
presiding officers of the Church, and addressed to the leading men of
Clay county, referring to the Indian charge, this was said: "Another
charge of great magnitude is brought against our friends in the west,
that of keeping up a constant communication with the Indian tribes on
the frontier; with declaring, even from the pulpit, that the Indians
are a part of God's chosen people, and are destined by heaven to
inherit this land, in common with themselves. We know of nothing under
the present aspect of our Indian relations calculated to arouse the
fears of the people of the Upper Missouri more than a combination of
influences of this nature; and we cannot look upon it as being other
than one of the most subtle purposes of those whose feelings are
embittered against our friends, to turn the eye of suspicion upon them
from every man who is acquainted with the barbarous cruelty of rude
savages. Since a rumor was afloat that the western Indians were showing
signs of war, we have received frequent private {XXXII} letters from
our friends, who have not only expressed fears for their own safety, in
case the Indians should break out, but a decided determination to be
among the first to repel any invasion and defend the frontier from all
hostilities. We mention the last fact because it was wholly uncalled
for on our part, and came previous to any excitement on the part of the
people of Clay county against our friends, and must definitely show
that this charge is untrue."
But all these denials went for nothing. As remarked by Governor
Dunklin, whether the denial or the charge was true, people at a
distance, at least, might not tell; quite generally, however,
the charge was believed, and helped to swell the volume of
prejudice--already too great--against the Saints. Indeed, so potent
a factor was this charge of holding illicit communication with the
Indians, in arousing prejudice against the Saints, that it was used
against them with great effect after their settlement in Utah. It was
one of the charges made against them at the time the general government
of the United States was induced by their enemies to send out an army
to suppress a rebellion in Utah that had no existence except in the
hate-frenzied minds of the detractors of the Saints.
"It is charged," said Stephen A. Douglas in a speech at Springfield,
Illinois, on the 12th of June, 1857 [10]--"It is charged * * * * that
the Mormon government, with Brigham Young at its head, is now forming
alliances with Indian tribes in Utah and adjoining territories,
stimulating the Indians to acts of hostility, and organizing bands of
his own followers, under the name of Danites or destroying angels, to
prosecute a system of robbery and murders upon American citizens who
support the authority of the United States, and denounce the infamous
and disgusting practices and institutions of the Mormon government."
The army came only to find the foregoing with other charges that had
induced the general government to send it to Utah, untrue. But this is
digression.
Mormon communication with the American Indians for the purpose of
despoiling the Gentiles and taking possession of their lands can never
be set down as one of the causes of the Missouri persecution; for such
communication never took place--the charge of it was untrue. It was,
however, one of a number of pretexts, and became a factor in creating
public prejudice, which alone made possible the expulsion of the Saints
from Missouri.
_The Unwisdom of the Saints_.
I come now to one of the most delicate subdivisions of this {XXXIII}
Introduction; namely, the unwisdom of the Saints. To appreciate this
as a factor in the Missouri persecutions one needs to take into
account not only human nature, but also human nature under the stress
of religious impulse and influence. First, however, as to the facts
involved.
To the Saints of those times had been given a dispensation of the
Gospel--a new revelation of it. They had been blessed with the spirit
of faith to receive it. To them it was made known that God had again
spoken from heaven; He had again conferred divine authority upon men
to act in His name--many of the brethren, the majority of the male
membership of the Church in fact, held that divine authority, the
priesthood of God; the terms of man's salvation were restated; the
spiritual powers and gifts of the Gospel were guaranteed anew and
plenteously enjoyed by the Saints. To them was made known the truth of
a new volume of scripture, the Book of Mormon. The knowledge imparted
by that book was in itself, and especially to them, wonderful. From it
they learned that the ancient inhabitants of the American continents,
the ruins of whose civilization challenged the curiosity of men and
excited their wonder, were of the house of Israel; the American Indians
were their fallen descendants and, of course, also of the house of
Israel and heirs to the general promises made to that people, to say
nothing of special promises made to them as direct descendants of the
house of the patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob. Messiah in his resurrected
and glorified state had visited America and its inhabitants shortly
after His resurrection at Jerusalem, and established the Christian
institution,--a Christian ministry, and a Christian Church, followed
by a veritable golden age of peace, prosperity, and righteousness; and
although the descendants of that ancient God-favored people were now
fallen from the high estate of their fathers, yet were the promises and
prophecies great concerning them. God would again visit them by His
grace, they should be redeemed from their ignorance and barbarism, and
they should yet be important factors in establishing a "New Jerusalem,"
the Zion of God on this land of America, given to the descendants of
the ancient patriarch Joseph, whose descendants principally the Indians
are. The Saints had been even so far favored as to have the place for
the chief city of refuge and safety pointed out to them by revelation;
as also the site of its temple--Independence, Missouri; and they were
required by the commandments of God to bear witness to the world of
these things. In view of all this--the fact that they were made at
once the depository and witnesses of these great revelations, is it
not likely that they would regard themselves as a people peculiarly
favored of God? And is it matter of astonishment if some among them,
not possessed of the soundest judgment, should run into an excess of
zeal and give expression to unwise, as also to unwarranted conclusions?
{XXXIV} Moreover, the Lord had spoken of the future glory of Zion--of
the city, the location of which the Elders were to testify; also of the
glory of the temple, with its future cloud by day and pillar of fire by
night; of the future union of this New-World Zion with the ancient Zion
of Enoch, where the Lord will make His abode, "and for the space of a
thousand years shall the earth rest;" [11] also of his covenant with
them concerning Zion, both as pertaining to time and eternity, wherein
He said: "I have made the earth rich; and behold it is my footstool,
wherefore, again I will stand upon it; and I hold forth, and deign to
give unto you greater riches, even a land of promise, a land flowing
with milk and honey, upon which there shall be no curse when the Lord
cometh: and I will give it unto you for the land of your inheritance,
if you seek it with all your hearts. And this shall be my covenant with
you, you shall have it for the land of your inheritance, and for the
inheritance of your children forever, while the earth shall stand, and
you shall possess it again in eternity, no more to pass away." [12]
The Lord said again concerning Zion: "Wherefore I, the Lord, have said,
gather ye out from the eastern lands, assemble yourselves together ye
elders of my Church; go ye forth into the western countries, call upon
the inhabitants to repent, and inasmuch as they do repent, build up
churches unto me; and with one heart and with one mind, gather up your
riches that ye may purchase an inheritance which shall hereafter be
appointed unto you, and it shall be called the New Jerusalem, a land of
peace, a city of refuge, a place of safety for the Saints of the Most
High God; and the glory of the Lord shall be there, insomuch that the
wicked will not come unto it, and it shall be called Zion. And it shall
come to pass, among the wicked, that every man that will not take his
sword against his neighbor, must needs flee unto Zion for safety. And
there shall be gathered unto it out of every nation under heaven; and
it shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another.
And it shall be said among the wicked, Let us not go up to battle
against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible; wherefore we
cannot stand." [13]
These promises to the Saints respecting Zion; these descriptions given
to them of her future sanctified and glorified state; their connection
with a work so exalted and far-reaching, was apt to fire their minds
with a zeal not always tempered with wisdom. It was in vain that
limitations of time and conditions were placed upon these general
descriptions of the future greatness and glory of the city of God; nor
could they understand that their own relationship to these great things
{XXXV} was merely to lay the foundation of them, to locate the site of
the future city and temple, and then bear witness of it to the world.
Yet that their work in connection with the founding of Zion was chiefly
this, is clearly to be seen in the revelations of God to them.
The immediate and triumphant establishment of Zion, though expected by
many of the Saints, was nowhere contemplated in the revelations of God
to the Church. That hope of immediate establishment and glorification
of Zion was the result of faulty deductions from the revelations of
God; but the Lord was not blind respecting the events about to take
place on the land of Zion, nor did He hold out any false hope to His
people had they but read His revelations aright. A few days before the
first conference held by the Elders on the land of Zion, the Lord said
to them through His Prophet:
"Hearken, O ye elders of my Church, and give ear to my word, and learn
of me what I will concerning you, and also concerning this land unto
which I have sent you: For verily I say unto you, blessed is he that
keepeth my commandments, whether in life or in death; and he that is
faithful in tribulation, the reward of the same is greater in the
kingdom of heaven. Ye cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the
present time, the design of your God concerning those things which
shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow _after much
tribulation. For after much tribulation comes the blessings_. Wherefore
the day Cometh that ye shall be crowned with much glory; the hour is
not yet, but is nigh at hand. Remember this, which I tell you before,
that you may lay it to heart, and receive that which shall follow.
Behold, verily I say unto you, for this cause I have sent you that
you might be obedient, and that your hearts might be prepared to bear
testimony of the things which are to come; and also that you might be
honored of laying the foundation, and of bearing record of the land
upon which the Zion of God shall stand; * * * * and that the testimony
might go forth from Zion, yea, from the mouth of the city of the
heritage of God. * * * * And now, verily, I say, concerning the residue
of the elders of my Church, _the time has not yet come, for many
years_, for them to receive their inheritance in this land, except they
desire it through the prayer of faith, only as it shall be appointed
unto them of the Lord. For, behold, they shall push the people together
from the ends of the earth." [14]
These statements, when rightly considered, dispel all notion of
the immediate establishment of Zion. The Lord distinctly warns His
servants against any such supposition. He predicts "tribulation" before
the glory shall come. It is only after "much tribulation" that the
blessings are {XXXVI} promised. He reminds them that He has "told them
before" of this, and asks them "to lay it to heart," and gives them to
understand that it will be "_many years_" before some of the Elders of
His Church will receive their inheritance in the goodly land.
The Lord still further foreshadowed the trouble which afterwards
overtook His people by urging them to make arrangements for the
purchase of the whole region that had been designated as the center
place of Zion. "For, behold, verily I say unto you, the Lord willeth
that the disciples, and the children of men should open their hearts,
even to purchase this whole region of country, as soon as time will
permit. Behold, here is wisdom. Let them do this lest they receive none
inheritance, save it be by the shedding of blood." [15]
In this same month of August the Lord again said: "Behold, the land
of Zion, I, the Lord, hold it in mine own hands; nevertheless, I, the
Lord, render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's: wherefore, I,
the Lord, will that you should purchase the lands that you may have
advantage of the world, that you may have claim on the world, that
they may not be stirred up unto anger; for Satan putteth it into their
hearts to anger against you, and to the shedding of blood; wherefore
the land of Zion shall not be obtained but by purchase or by blood,
otherwise there is none inheritance for you. And if by purchase behold
you are blessed; and if by blood, _as you are forbidden to shed blood,
lo, your enemies are upon you, and ye shall be scourged from city to
city, and from synagogue to synagogue, and but few shall stand to
receive an inheritance_." [16]
About a month after this word, the Lord said: "Behold the Lord
requireth the heart and a willing mind; and the willing and obedient
shall eat the good of the land of Zion in these last days; and the
rebellious shall be cut off out of the land of Zion, and shall be sent
away, and shall not inherit the land; for, verily, I say that the
rebellious are not of the blood of Ephraim, wherefore they shall be
plucked out." [17]
All this makes it very clear that while great things were promised
concerning the establishment of Zion and the glory that is to be hers,
yet all was predicated upon the faithfulness of the Saints in keeping
the commandments of the Lord--in purchasing the lands that constituted
the center place of Zion, and living upon them in all righteousness.
This they failed to do. In a revelation given in November, 1831, a
few months after the land had been dedicated unto the Lord for the
gathering of His people, He thus complained of those who had assembled
in western Missouri:
{XXXVII} "And the inhabitants of Zion shall also observe the Sabbath
day to keep it holy. And the inhabitants of Zion also shall remember
their labors, inasmuch as they are appointed to labor, in all
faithfulness; for the idler shall be had in remembrance before the
Lord. Now, I, the Lord, am not well pleased with the inhabitants of
Zion, for there are idlers among them; and their children are also
growing up in wickedness; they also seek not earnestly the riches of
eternity, but their eyes are full of greediness. These things ought
not to be, and must be done away from among them: wherefore let my
servant, Oliver Cowdery carry these sayings unto the land of Zion. And
a commandment I give unto them, that he that observeth not his prayers
before the Lord in the season thereof, let him be had in remembrance
before the judge of my people. These sayings are true and faithful;
wherefore transgress them not, neither take therefrom." [18]
In addition to these evils there were jealousies and bickerings among
some of the brethren in Zion, and also between some of the Elders in
Zion, and leading Elders in Kirtland. In the spring of 1832 the Prophet
visited the Saints in Jackson county, and there were reconciliations
among the brethren, and forgiveness of sins obtained from the Lord;
[19] but shortly after the Prophet's departure for Kirtland these ill
feelings broke out again with renewed bitterness; carelessness as
to keeping the commandments of God characterized the conduct of the
Saints in Zion, and there arose some confusion also in the government
of the Church there, owing to conflicting claims of authority between
traveling Elders and the standing ministry in the branches of the
Church. This led to the following reproof from the Lord in a revelation
given on the 22nd and 23rd of September, 1832:
"And your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief,
and because you have treated lightly the things you have received,
which vanity and unbelief hath brought the whole Church under
condemnation. And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion,
even all: and they shall remain under this condemnation until they
repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon, and the
former commandments which I have given them, [20] not only to say, but
to do according to that which I have written, that they may bring forth
fruit meet for their Father's kingdom, _otherwise there remaineth a
scourge and a judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion_: for
shall the children of the kingdom pollute my holy land? Verily, I say
unto you, Nay." [21]
When this revelation, given early in January, 1833, was sent to the
Elders in Zion, it was accompanied also by a letter from the Prophet
sharply reproving the brethren and Saints in Zion, in which the
following passage occurs:
"Let me say unto you, seek to purify yourselves, and also the
inhabitants of Zion, lest the Lord's anger be kindled to fierceness.
_Repent repent, it is the voice of God to Zion_; and strange as it may
appear, yet it is true, mankind will persist in self-justification
until all their iniquity is exposed, and their character past being
redeemed, and that which is treasured up in their hearts be exposed
to the gaze of mankind. I say to you (and what I say to you, I say to
all), hear the warning voice of God, _lest Zion fall, and the Lord
swear in His wrath, 'The inhabitants of Zion shall not enter into my
rest_.'" [22]
Hyrum Smith and Orson Hyde were appointed by a Council of the High
Priests in Kirtland at this time, to write a letter of reproof and
warning to the brethren in Zion. In this communication the conduct of
the Saints in Zion was reviewed in great plainness. The whole spirit of
the communication may be judged by the following paragraph:
"We feel more like weeping over Zion than rejoicing over her, _for we
know that the judgments of God hang over her, and will fall upon her
except she repent_, and purify herself before the Lord, and put away
from her every foul spirit. We now say to Zion, this once, in the
name of the Lord, Repent! repent! awake! awake! put on thy beautiful
garments, before you are made to feel the chastening rod of Him whose
anger is kindled against you. Let not Satan tempt you to think we want
to make you bow to us, to domineer over you, for God knows this is not
the case; our eyes are watered with tears, and our hearts are poured
out to God in prayer for you, that He will spare you, and turn away His
anger from you. * * * Therefore, with the feelings of inexpressible
anxiety for your welfare, we say again Repent, repent, _or Zion must
suffer, for the scourge and judgment must come upon her_." [23]
All this reproof and warning, however, only produced a partial
repentance, and in July following acts of violence began to be
perpetrated upon the Saints by the old settlers of Missouri, and in the
month of November, under circumstances of great cruelty, all the Saints
were driven from Jackson county, and later more than two hundred of
their homes, together with their public improvements, were destroyed.
When the Lord revealed to the Prophet Joseph why this affliction had
befallen the people, He said: "Verily I say unto you concerning your
{XXXIX} brethren who have been afflicted, and persecuted, and cast
out from the land of their inheritance, I, the Lord, have suffered
the affliction to come upon them wherewith they have been afflicted,
in consequence of their transgressions; yet I will own them, and they
shall be mine in that day when I shall come to make up my jewels.
Therefore, they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham,
who was commanded to offer up his only son; for all those who will
not endure chastening, but deny me, cannot be sanctified. Behold, I
say unto you, there were jarrings, and contentions, and envyings,
and strifes and lustful and covetous desires among them; therefore,
by these things they polluted their inheritances. They were slow to
hearken unto the voice of the Lord their God, therefore the Lord their
God is slow to hearken unto their prayers, to answer them in the day
of their trouble. In the day of their peace they esteemed lightly my
counsel; but in the day of their trouble, of necessity they feel after
me. Verily I say unto you, notwithstanding their sins my bowels are
filled with compassion towards them; I will not utterly cast them off;
and in the day of wrath I will remember mercy." [24]
From this it is very clear that the reason why the Saints were
prevailed against by their enemies and driven from the center place of
Zion, was because of their failure to live up to the high requirements
made of them by the Lord. In subsequent efforts to redeem Zion, by
attempting to return the exiles to Jackson county, the Saints in all
parts of the land again failed to respond with sufficient promptness
and fulness to the requirements of the Lord, for He commanded them
again to consecrate money to purchase lands in Jackson county and in
the counties round about, saying to the Church: "There is even now
already in store a sufficient, yea even abundance, to redeem Zion,
and establish her waste places, no more to be thrown down, were the
churches who call themselves after my name willing to hearken to my
voice." [25]
The Lord also commanded them to gather up their forces and to go in
sufficient strength to possess the land, and maintain their inheritance
against their enemies. This, however, they failed to do. Instead of
raising five hundred men, as they were commanded to do, [26] they
started from Kirtland in "Zion's Camp" with a company of only about
one hundred and thirty men, and twenty baggage wagons. This number
was increased by additions _en route_ to one hundred and eighty-two
men, but even this number fell far short of the strength required to
accomplish the purpose for which the camp was organized. In the matter
of {XL} raising money for the purchase of lands the failure was more
conspicuous than in raising men to take possession of them, and hence
this effort to redeem Zion failed.
Here let me pause in pointing out the unwisdom of the Saints, to make
an explanation, lest there should be a misunderstanding of what is thus
far set down respecting their transgressions, by reason of which they
were prevailed against by their enemies. These transgressions, be it
understood, were no violations of the laws of the land, nor did they
consist in any acts of aggression or of trespass upon their Missouri
neighbors. The old settlers of Missouri themselves are our witnesses
here; for in all their procedure in this Jackson county persecution
there is no accusation made against the Saints of violations of the
law. On the contrary, in their public utterances against the Saints and
in justification of their own course, the old settlers declare--after
expressing their determination to rid their society of the Saints,
peacefully if they could, but forcibly if they must--"_that the arm of
the civil law does not afford us a guarantee, or at least a sufficient
one, against the evils which are now inflicted upon us, and seem to
be increasing by the said religious sect_." [27] A more emphatic
acknowledgement that the alleged offenses of the Saints were not
cognizable by the laws, that the Saints had not violated the laws of
the land, could not be made.
In their second manifesto the mob said: "_The evil is one that no one
could have foreseen, and is therefore unprovided for by the laws;
and the delays incident to legislation would put the mischief beyond
remedy_." [28] Another admission that amounts to a declaration, that
the Saints, whatever the nature of the complaints made against them
were, had not violated any of the laws of the state, that their
offending was not cognizable by the laws of the land.
The transgressions and sinfulness referred to in the revelations and
letters of reproof and warning quoted, and for which transgressions
the Saints were left in the hands of their enemies, were sins against
each other and the Lord--unbelief in the word of God, hardness of heart
towards each other, rejection of the servants of God, fault-finding,
bickerings, jealousies, covetousness, pride, idleness, boastfulness,
levity of thought and conduct, disregard of the scriptures, especially
of the Book of Mormon, neglecting to instruct their children in sacred
things and to bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord; all
of which were displeasing to the Lord, contrary to His commandments,
and a violation of the conditions upon which He had promised to redeem
Zion and preserve His people from their enemies. "Ye call {XLI} upon my
name for revelations;" said the Lord to the Elders in Zion, "and I give
them unto you; and inasmuch as ye keep not my sayings, which I give
unto you, ye become transgressors, and justice and judgment are the
penalty which is affixed to my law. * * * I, the Lord, am bound when ye
do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." [29]
This, then, was the nature of their offenses; they sinned against
the Lord in the particulars named; they sinned against each other in
the manner described; they did not trespass against their non-Mormon
neighbors, nor break the laws of the land; but they failed to live
in accordance with the high moral and spiritual law of the Gospel;
they failed to meet the conditions on which God was pledged to their
maintenance upon the land of Zion, and hence were left in the hands of
their enemies.
At the commencement of this subdivision of the Introduction I called
attention to the great things which God had revealed to the Saints, the
greatness of the dispensation committed unto them, accompanied by the
promise to establish Zion and give unto the Saints the land thereof
as an everlasting inheritance. It would be marvelous indeed, and past
all human experience, if these great things did not turn the heads of
some of the weak-minded, and make them vain-glorious and boastful. I
doubt not for a moment that many vain and foolish things were said by
such characters in the presence of, and perhaps directly to, the old
settlers of Jackson county, about the Saints taking possession of the
land, and the wicked being driven away. There was doubtless enough of
this kind of talk to give color to what the Missourians charged on this
head, viz., "They [the Saints] declare openly that their God hath given
them this county of land, and that sooner or later they must and will
take possession of our lands for an inheritance."
The Missourians made much of, and attached a sinister meaning to
the following expression in one of the revelations to the Saints:
"_The land of Zion shall not be obtained but by purchase or by
blood, otherwise there is none inheritance for you_." [30] This the
Missourians pretended to regard as a threat to take possession of
their land by armed conquest. Had they read the context of the passage
they would have known how entirely groundless were their fears, if
indeed they had any fears, for I am convinced that all their expressed
apprehensions on this head were mere pretense. The passage and its
context are: "Wherefore the land of Zion shall not be obtained but by
purchase or by blood, otherwise there is none inheritance for you. _And
if by purchase, behold you {XLII} are blessed; and if by blood, as you
are forbidden to shed blood, lo, your enemies are upon you, and ye
shall be scourged from city to city, and from synagogue to synagogue
and but few shall stand to receive an inheritance_." [31]
Clearly this is a warning to the Saints, not a threat to the
Missourians. If the Saints obtained the land by purchase they were
blessed. If by blood--since the Saints were forbidden to shed blood,
lo their enemies would be upon them and they would be driven from
city to city--not the Missourians, but the Saints. In consequence of
the agitation of this matter by the foolish, the following passage
occurred in _The Evening and Morning Star_ for July, 1833, addressed
to the churches scattered abroad: "To suppose that we can come up here
and take possession of this land by the shedding of blood, would be
setting at nought the law of the glorious Gospel, and also the word
of our great Redeemer. And to suppose that we can take possession of
this country without making regular purchases of the same according to
the laws of our nation, would be reproaching this great Republic, in
which the most of us were born, and under whose auspices we all have
protection." [32]
Of this the Missourians said that whether they were to be dispossessed
of their lands "by the hand of the destroying angel, the judgments of
God, or the arm of power, they [the Saints] are not fully agreed among
themselves. Some recent remarks in the _Evening and Morning Star_,
their organ in this place, by their tendency to moderate such hopes,
and repress such desires, show plainly that many of this deluded and
infatuated people have been taught to believe that our lands were to be
won from us by the sword!" [33]
Thus the very efforts of the Church to correct the misconceptions and
silence the utterances of the over-zealous and foolish members, were
made to contribute as proof that the Saints contemplated the very armed
conquest of the land which they disclaimed. History, however, will do
the Saints justice, and it will say, and now says, that neither their
general principles, nor the special commandments under which they
moved into the land of Zion, nor any act of theirs warranted the least
suspicion that they at any time contemplated taking possession of the
land by force, or in any other manner whatsoever except by purchase
and possession under the laws of the state of Missouri and the United
States. And while history will do them this justice it will at the
same time say that the "fears" of the Missourians on this head were
simulated; that to the foolish boasts of a few ignorant persons they
attached an undue importance because it happened to give a coloring to
their pretended fears in the eyes of those at a distance who had no
{XLIII} opportunity to learn the truth, and tended to prejudice the
public mind against the Saints, and thus served the purpose of their
enemies.
In like manner there may have been some talk among the same class of
people--the ignorant and over-zealous Church members--respecting the
Indians, and their future union with the Saints in redeeming the land
of Zion; a circumstance which led the good people of Clay county and
Governor Dunklin, to refer to the charge of the Saints holding illicit
communication with the Indians, designing to employ them in taking
possession of the land of Zion. Of this charge also history will and
does vindicate the Saints. It will, and does say, that they disclaimed
holding any such communication; that neither their general principles
nor any special commandment from God, and particularly that no action
of theirs warranted any suspicion on the subject, much less justified
the charge of such a diabolical purpose.
After the Saints withdrew from Clay county and at the suggestion
of her citizens--including some of the most influential men in
western Missouri, some of whom afterwards attained national
reputations--located in the sparsely settled counties of Caldwell and
Daviess, the situation became somewhat changed. For two years the work
of purchasing lands, locating settlements, opening farms, establishing
merchantile houses, and preparing for manufacturing and commercial
enterprises went steadily on. In Caldwell and adjoining counties, by
the autumn of 1838, the Saints had opened two thousand farms, and paid
to the general government three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars
for land, which at the minimum price for government land would give
them over two hundred and fifty thousand acres. [34] One hundred and
fifty houses had been erected in Far West; there were four dry goods
stores, three family groceries, half a dozen blacksmith's shops, and
two hotels. [35] The excavation for a temple 120 by 80 feet had been
made, and a large commodious schoolhouse had been erected on the public
square. [36] The town of Adam-Ondi-Ahman was also making rapid progress.
{XLIV} By this time the Prophet Joseph and other leading men of the
Church had left Kirtland and located with the Saints in Missouri,
and everything looked propitious for the permanent establishment of
the Saints in the borders of Zion. The Saints had now been driven
bodily from Jackson county; and their homes, store houses and printing
establishment had been destroyed. The courts of Missouri had proven
powerless to restore to them their homes, their lands and other
property. The executive of the state confessed himself powerless to
return them to their possessions in Jackson county, and maintain
them there against the wishes of the people of that county. Indeed,
Governor Dunklin had weakly given up the vindication of the outraged
laws of the state, as we have seen, saying that whether the charges
of their enemies or the denials by the Saints were true he could not
tell; their neighbors seemed to believe them true, and whether true or
false the consequences would be the same, unless the Saints by their
conduct and argument could convince the Missourians of their innocence.
"If you cannot do this," said the governor, "all I can say to you is
that in this Republic the _vox populi is the vox Dei_!" The Saints
at some considerable sacrifice had withdrawn from Clay county at the
request of her citizens, in the interests of peace, and had settled
in the new counties of Caldwell and Daviess, where settlers were few
and the country less desirable than in Jackson and Clay counties. In
doing these things they had repeatedly sacrificed their rights as
citizens, both of Missouri and of the United States. Smitten on the one
cheek--speaking figuratively--they had turned the other; sued at the
law for their coat, they had given their cloak also; compelled to go
one mile with their enemy, they had gone with him twain. After doing
all this for the sake of peace and the friendship of the Missourians,
when the Saints saw forming again those elements which threatened their
peace; when old enemies appeared upon the new scene of the Saints'
activities, and openly threatened their peace and boasted that they
would again prosper by despoiling them of their new possessions; when
they saw the red right hand of a relentless persecution arming again to
plague them, it is small wonder if righteous anger flushed their cheek,
made bright their eyes with indignation and led them instinctively to
form the resolution that they would submit no more to such acts of
despoliation, injustice and outrage.
It was this sense of outraged justice and humanity which led to the
deliverance of a very noted "Oration" by Sidney Rigdon at Far West, on
the Fourth of July, 1838, in the course of which there was expressed
a strong determination to no more submit quietly to mob violence, and
acts of pillage. At this distance of time from that occasion, and
balancing against the heated utterances of the speaker the subsequent
uses made of them to incite the public mind to that series of acts
which {XLV} culminated in the expulsion of the Saints from the state,
we say those utterances were untimely, extreme, and unwise. So indeed
they were. The speaker seems to have thrown discretion to the winds,
and in the fervor of his rhetoric made threats of retaliation on behalf
of the Saints, if assailed, that went beyond all bounds of reason and
humanity, and proved a very damaging as also a very potent factor
against the Saints in the subsequent movements of their enemies against
them.
But while this oratorical outburst against injustice was unwise, it
was a very natural thing. The marvel is not that it came at the time
it did, but that it did not come earlier, more vehemently, and that
some of the things it threatened were not effectively carried out.
What the Prophet thought, and how he felt respecting the repeated acts
of injustice heaped upon himself and the Saints in Missouri; how he
felt and what he proposed for the future is made clear in his journal
entry for September 1st, 1838; and, fortunately, is more temperately
expressed than in the oration of July the fourth. He said:
"There is great excitement at present among the Missourians, who are
seeking if possible an occasion against us. They are continually
chafing us, and provoking us to anger if possible, one sign of
threatening after another, but we do not fear them, for the Lord God,
the Eternal Father is our God, and Jesus the Mediator is our Savior,
and in the great I Am is our strength and confidence.
"We have been driven time after time, and that without cause; and
smitten again and again, and that without provocation; until we have
proved the world with kindness, and the world has proved us, that we
have no designs against any man or set of men, that we injure no man,
that we are peaceable with all men, minding our own business, and our
business only. We have suffered our rights and our liberties to be
taken from us; we have not avenged ourselves of those wrongs; we have
appealed to magistrates, to sheriffs, to judges, to government and to
the President of the United States, all in vain; yet we have yielded
peaceably to all these things. We have not complained at the great God,
we murmured not, but peaceably left all, and retired into the back
country, in the broad and wild prairies, in the barren and desolate
plains, and there commenced anew; we made the desolate places to bud
and blossom as the rose; and now the fiend-like race is disposed to
give us no rest. Their father the devil, is hourly calling upon them
to be up and doing, and they, like willing and obedient children, need
not the second admonition; but in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son
of the living God, we will endure it no longer, if the great God will
arm us with courage, with strength and with power, to resist them in
their persecutions. We will not act on the offensive, but always on the
defensive; our rights and our liberties shall not be taken from us, and
we {XLVI} peaceably submit to it as we have done heretofore, but we
will avenge ourselves of our enemies, inasmuch as they will not let us
alone."
No one can marvel at the conclusion here arrived at if he will but pay
attention to and give due weight to the enumerated wrongs which precede
it. It would be asking the Saints to be more than human if we say they
ought not to have indulged, much less to have expressed, such feelings
of resentment.
Meantime, however, we may not close our eyes to the fact that there
was unwisdom manifested on the part of a few of the Saints, which gave
advantage to their enemies, by affording pretexts for some of their
accusations. That unwisdom, as we have seen, consisted of boasting
as to what the Lord would do in the immediate future in giving them
possession of western Missouri as an inheritance; perhaps some unwise
allusions to the supposed part the Lamanites would take in the
establishment and redemption of Zion; and the vehement threats of
retaliation in the event of their being further assailed. These unwise
utterances, however, were made, for the most part, by the overzealous
and ignorant. Men who had no grasp of the real genius of the great
work whose foundations were then being laid; men who, in common with
men of like nature in all ages and in all great movements, have been
trouble-breeders; who, in their contemplation of ultimate results
to be achieved, overleaped the intervening space through which the
movement must pass, the difficulties it must encounter and overcome,
the experiences its adherents must gain, the great and varied labors
they must perform. They seem not to understand that great movements
require time for the achievement of their ends; that time with God is
one thing, with man quite another thing; that the thing which is "nigh
at hand" with the Lord may be to men afar off; and overlooking these
important facts leads such men into many errors of thought and action.
It was wholly reprehensible, unwarranted, and cowardly, however, on the
part of the Missourians to take advantage of the unwise utterances of
such characters and charge their sentiments and folly to the whole body
religious, that never entertained such sentiments nor contemplated the
actions such sentiments suggest. And this is to be said even of those
who were unwise enough to give the advantage here noted to the enemies
of the Saints, they at no time or place were ever guilty of attempting
in any manner to carry into effect by any action of their own the
unwise and unwarranted opinions they entertained and expressed. Their
boastings and vain speculations were in relation to what the Lord was
going to do, not what they themselves purposed doing. These utterances
were merely the effervescence of overwrought minds, of overzealous,
foolish, but well meaning and harmless people. Unhappily, however,
what they said gave the enemy an advantage that he was not slow to
avail {XLVII} himself of, and the unwisdom of some of the Saints is a
factor that must be reckoned with in dealing with the causes of the
persecutions of the Saints in Missouri.
_The Real Cause of the Missouri Persecutions_.
Having considered those facts and circumstances which may be regarded
as the minor causes and pretexts of the Missouri persecutions, let
us now come to the heart of the matter, to the real cause of the
persecution of the Saints.
It was against the Saints as a religious sect that the Missourians
first complained. It was "in consequence of a pretended religious
sect of people" that had settled, and was still settling in their
country, "styling themselves Mormons," that led the Missourians of
Jackson county to pretend to believe that an important crisis regarding
their civil society was at hand. "It is more than two years," they
said, "since the first of these fanatics, or knaves (for one or other
they undoubtedly are), made their first appearance amongst us, and
pretended as they did, and do now, to hold personal communication and
converse face to face with the Most High; to receive communications and
revelations direct from heaven; to heal the sick by laying on hands;
and, in short, to perform all the wonder-working miracles wrought by
the inspired apostles and prophets of old. We believed them deluded
fanatics, or weak and designing knaves, and that they and their
pretensions would soon pass away; but in this we were deceived. * * *
They openly blaspheme the Most High God, and cast contempt on His holy
religion, by pretending to receive revelations direct from heaven,
by pretending to speak unknown tongues by direct inspiration, and by
divers pretenses derogatory to God and religion, and to the utter
subversion of human reason." [37]
The foregoing is quoted from the first "Manifesto," or "Secret
Constitution" of the mob. Somewhat later, in a second manifesto issued
to the public in justification of their contemplated acts of violence
against the Saints, they say: "What would be the fate of our lives
and property, in the hands of jurors and witnesses, who do not blush
to declare, and would not upon occasion hesitate to swear, that they
have wrought miracles, and have been the subjects of miraculous and
supernatural cures, have conversed with God and His angels, and possess
and exercise the gifts of divination and of unknown tongues, and fired
with the prospect of obtaining inheritances without money and without
price--may be better imagined than described. * * * Of their pretended
revelations from heaven--their personal intercourse {XLVIII} with God
and His angels--the maladies they pretend to heal by the laying on
of hands--and the contemptible gibberish with which they habitually
profane the Sabbath, and which they dignify with the appellation of
unknown tongues, we have nothing to say: vengeance belongs to God
alone." [38]
Yet it was because the Saints entertained these religious beliefs
that the mob of Jackson county issuing this "manifesto," proceeded
to take "vengeance" into their own hands, and wreak it upon the
Saints. All their other accusations against them,--namely, idleness,
ignorance, inviting "free negroes" into the state, inciting the slaves
to insubordination to their masters, claiming Jackson county as their
inheritance to be obtained by force if not bloodshed, and poverty--all
these charges, except, perhaps the last (for some of the Saints were
very poor, though I have yet to learn that that is a crime), were
absolutely untrue. The Saints, however, did claim the existence of
spiritual power in their religion; that the channel of communication
between God and men by means of revelation, the visitation of angels,
and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, had been opened anew; that
gifts of the Gospel--tongues, interpretations, visions, inspired
dreams, healings--that all the spiritual powers and graces of the
Gospel, in fact, were manifested in the religion they had accepted. By
this religion, also, they were admonished to righteousness of life;
to the strict observance of the Sabbath; to respect for the name of
Deity; to temperance; to industry; to true speaking and true acting;
to patience--in a word, to godliness; all of which but to live was to
place themselves in marked contrast to those about them, and their
righteous lives were a great rebuke to the general dissolute conduct of
the Missourians. It was this effort at a godly walk and conversation,
and the religion which commanded it, that was offensive in the eyes of
the Missourians, and which led them to form their strong determination
to be rid of a people and a religion which made their own lives a
reproach.
That this was regarded as the chief, if not the sole cause of their
persecution, appears in the subsequent discussion of the Jackson county
difficulties, both _pro et con_. All other questions, all the minor
causes and pretexts were lost sight of in that discussion. Governor
Dunklin, in a communication to Colonel J. Thornton, in answer to a
letter written by that gentleman proposing a compromise between the
Saints and their enemies in Jackson county, recognizes what he calls
"the eccentricity of the religious opinions of the Mormons" as being
the cause of their persecution. "I am fully persuaded," he remarks,
"that the eccentricity of the religious opinions and practices of the
Mormons is at the bottom of the outrages committed against them."
{XLIX} In this important communication he no where considers anything
else as the cause of their persecution, but argues at length in favor
of their right to the entertainment of their religious views, eccentric
howsoever they might be, so long as they did not interfere with the
rights of others. "They have the right constitutionally guaranteed to
them," he remarks, "and it is indefeasible, to worship Joe Smith as a
man, an angel, or even as the only true and living God, and to call
their habitation Zion, the Holy Land, or even heaven itself. Indeed,
there is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that they have not a right to
adopt as their religion, so that in its exercise they do not interfere
with the rights of others." [39]
The people of Clay county when they called upon the Saints to peaceably
remove from their borders and seek a locality where they could form a
community that should be largely, if not exclusively, made up of their
own Church membership, indicated very clearly that it was the religion
of the Saints that was the chief cause of complaint against them. In a
document they published setting forth the reasons why they suggested
such removal, they said; "The religious tenets of this people are so
different from the present churches of the age, that they always have,
and always will, excite deep prejudices against them in any populous
country where they may locate. We, therefore, in a spirit of frank and
friendly kindness, do advise them to seek a home where they may obtain
large and separate bodies of land, and have a community of their own."
[40]
Again, after the surrender at Far West, when the Church leaders had
been betrayed into bondage; after the Saints had delivered up their
arms; after they had signed over their properties to defray the
expenses of the "war;" and when the whole body of the Church was making
hasty preparations to depart from the state, a number of the brethren
were assembled on the temple square at Far West, and in the course of a
long speech, which he read [41] to them, General John B. Clark said:
"I am sorry, gentlemen, to see so great a number of apparently
intelligent men found in the situation you are; and oh! that I could
invoke that Great Spirit, the Unknown God, to rest upon you, and make
you sufficiently intelligent to break that chain of superstition,
and liberate you from those fetters of fanaticism with which you are
bound--that you no longer worship a man! I would advise you to scatter
abroad, and never again organize yourselves with Bishops, Presidents,
{L} etc., lest you excite the jealousies of the people, and subject
yourselves to the same calamities that have now come upon you."
This to a people whose leaders had been betrayed into the hands of
their enemies; who themselves had been disarmed, though acting only
in defense of their homes and families; who had been compelled at
the muzzle of the musket to sign away their property to defray the
expenses of the militia mobs that had brought their calamities upon
them; who were then under an order of expulsion from the state and
making hurried preparations for their enforced departure--this to men
who had sacrificed or had been robbed of the most sacred rights of
American citizenship! And he who thus addressed the brethren impudently
told them in the very speech from which I quote, that he approved of
all that had been done to them! But the foregoing quotation is not
made in order to point out the mockery of the speech; or the mixture
of hypocrisy and blasphemy in it; or the utter contemptibility of him
who delivered it. I quote the passage merely to point out the fact
that it was hatred of their alleged "superstition" and "fanaticism,"
in other words the religion of the Saints that was the cause of their
persecution. The crimes against which the Saints are warned for the
future--under penalty of having their present troubles revisited upon
them--is gathering together in large bodies, and organizing themselves
with Bishops, Presidents, etc. In other words it was the religion of
the people and the organization which was both the depository of its
doctrines, and the instrumentality by which they were promulgated--the
Church--which was the object of the Missourians' animosity, the thing
they were determined to destroy.
Later, when the Prophet Joseph and other leading brethren were under
examination before Judge Austin A. King at Richmond, Ray county,
special inquiry was made as to the belief of the witnesses in the
declaration of the Prophet Daniel: "And in the days of these kings
shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be
destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it
shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall
stand for ever." [42]
The judge on being answered that the Saints believed the prophecy,
turned to the clerk and told him to write the answer down as it was "_a
strong point for treason_!" [43] I call it another evidence that it was
the religious beliefs of the Saints that constituted their offense.
True the Prophet and several other brethren were technically held
for trial on {LI} the charge of "treason, murder, arson, burglary,
robbery, larceny and perjury," but no one in Missouri ever seriously
believed the charges since they were wholly untrue or grew out of
those acts of self defense, and defense of their families against the
aggressions of mob violence--a course which all men have a right to
take in the protection of their own lives and the preservation of their
homes from the hand of the despoiler.
The meeting of discordant elements of society--New England people
and people from the Southern States, descendants of Puritans and
descendants of Cavaliers--may have been a cause of dislike, and, on
the part of the Missourians, a cause of irritation against the Saints;
the suspected existence of anti-slavery sentiments among the Saints
may have been to the Missourians a cause of distrust; the interest of
the Saints in the Indians and the beliefs of the former in the future
rehabilitation of the latter as a people favored of God, may have been,
under all the circumstances, a cause of uneasiness to the Missourians;
and the desire to plunder the Saints and to profit by dispossessing
them of their lands and homes might have been, and doubtless was, an
incentive to many of the mob who participated in the events which
culminated in the expulsion of the Saints from the state; but, at
bottom, I repeat, it was the destruction of the religion of the Saints,
and of the organization that taught its doctrines, and controlled its
membership in ecclesiastical affairs, that were the objectives of all
that agitation, violence and injustice, which make up the persecution
of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri. But how shall the truth of this
be established beyond reasonable doubt? Listen:--
The author of the "_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_" gives
the following pen-picture of conditions with reference to religious
toleration which obtained in the empire under the reign of the
Antonines, Adrian and Marcus Aurelius, second century, A. D, "The firm
edifice of Roman power was raised and preserved by the wisdom of ages.
The obedient provinces of Trajan and the Antonines were united by laws,
and adorned by arts. They might occasionally suffer from the partial
abuse of delegated authority; but the general principle of government
was wise, simple, and beneficent. They enjoyed the religion of their
ancestors, whilst in civil honors and advantages they were exalted, by
just degrees, to an equality with their conquerors. The policy of the
emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily
seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and the habits of the
superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship,
which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people
as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the
magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only
mutual indulgence, but even religious {LII} concord. The superstition
of the people was not embittered by any mixture of theological rancor;
nor was it confined by the chains of any speculative system. The devout
polytheist, though fondly attached to his national rites, admitted with
implicit faith the different religions of the earth. Fear, gratitude,
and curiosity, a dream or an omen, a singular disorder, or a distant
journey, perpetually disposed him to multiply the articles of his
belief, and to enlarge the list of his protectors. The thin texture
of the Pagan mythology was interwoven with various but not discordant
materials. As soon as it was allowed that sages and heroes, who had
lived or who had died for the benefit of their country, were exalted
to a state of power and immortality, it was universally confessed
that they deserved, if not the adoration, at least the reverence, of
all mankind. The deities of a thousand groves and a thousand streams
possessed in peace their local and respective influence: nor could
the Roman who deprecated the wrath of the Tiber, deride the Egyptian
who presented his offering to the beneficent genius of the Nile. The
visible powers of nature, the planets, and the elements, were the same
throughout the universe. The invisible governors of the moral world
were inevitably cast in a similar mould of fiction and allegory. Every
virtue, and even vice, acquired its divine representative; every art
and profession its patron, whose attributes, in the most distant ages
and countries, were uniformly derived from the character of their
peculiar votaries. A republic of gods of such opposite tempers and
interests required, in every system, the moderating hand of a supreme
magistrate, who, by the progress of knowledge and flattery, was
gradually invested with the sublime perfections of an eternal parent,
and an omnipotent monarch. Such was the mild spirit of antiquity,
that the nations were less attentive to the difference, than to the
resemblance, of their religious worship. The Greek, the Roman, and the
Barbarian, as they met before their respective altars, easily persuaded
themselves, that under various names, and with various ceremonies,
they adored the same deities. * * * * Rome, the capital of a great
monarchy, was incessantly filled with subjects and strangers from
every part of the world, who all introduced and enjoyed the favorite
superstitions of their native country. Every city in the empire was
justified in maintaining the purity of its ancient ceremonies; and
the Roman senate, using the common privilege, sometimes interposed to
check this inundation of foreign rites. The Egyptian superstition,
of all the most contemptible and abject, was frequently prohibited;
the temples of Serapis and Isis demolished, and their worshippers
banished from Rome and Italy. But the zeal of fanaticism prevailed
over the cold and feeble efforts of policy. The exiles returned, the
proselytes multiplied, the temples were restored with increasing {LIII}
splendor, and Isis and Serapis at length assumed their place among the
Roman deities. * * * * Rome gradually became the common temple of her
subjects; and the freedom of the city was bestowed on all the gods of
mankind." [44]
Some Christian editors of Gibbon's great work, in their annotations,
hold that the author of the "Decline and Fall" gives in the foregoing
a too favorable view of pagan religious toleration; but after giving
due weight to the instances of intolerance they cite in evidence of
their contention, and viewing them in connection with the extent of
the empire and the period of time covered by Gibbon's description, I
do not regard them as of sufficient importance to warrant any change
in the representation made by our author of conditions as to religious
toleration in the Roman empire at the time of which he writes.
Especially, since Gibbon himself in a foot note admits that "some
obscure traces of an intolerant spirit appears in the conduct of the
Egyptians," the case chiefly relied upon by his critics to disprove his
description of universal religious toleration in the empire; and in
the same note he refers to the Christians and the Jews as forming an
important exception; so important an exception indeed that he promises,
and subsequently gives, a distinct chapter to the discussion of the
subject. [45]
It is to Christianity as the chief exception to the Roman policy of
universal religious toleration that I wish now to direct attention. Let
it be borne in mind that the spirit of universal religious toleration
within the Roman empire claimed for the second century of our era,
largely obtained also in the first century. It was in this reign
of universal religious toleration that the Christian religion was
brought forth and developed. Christ was born in the eighteenth year
of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, in the Roman province of Palestine,
in which, also, His personal labors as religious teacher and reformer
were chiefly confined. In the villages of Galilee, and subsequently in
Samaria and Judea and in the ancient city of Jerusalem, He went about
doing good; speaking words of encouragement to the oppressed and the
poor; healing the sick; opening the eyes of the blind; cleansing the
lepers; teaching, as no one ever taught before, the fatherhood of God,
the brotherhood of men, and proclaiming Himself the Son of God and the
Redeemer of the world. He gathered about Him a few devout followers,
and from their number He established a priesthood and organized a
Church to perpetuate the gentle doctrines He Himself taught. Strangely
enough, notwithstanding the beauty and purity of His moral precepts,
and the gentleness of His own deportment, proclamation of His doctrines
everywhere incited hostility. The people of the village in which He was
reared rejected Him. {LIV} His own people, the Jews, were so hostile
that they at last clamored for His execution; and so deep was their
hatred that they were willing that responsibility for the shedding
of His blood should be upon their heads and upon the heads of their
children after them, if only the Roman authorities would sanction His
execution! He was finally crucified amid the rejoicings of His enemies.
After His resurrection He appeared among His disciples and commissioned
them to evangelize the world. As they went about this work they
encountered the same spirit of opposition that had met their Master.
Whippings, imprisonment, and martyrdom confronted them on every hand,
and when they extended their labors beyond the borders of Palestine,
notwithstanding the general religious tolerance that obtained in the
Roman empire, the Christians were everywhere spoken against, and their
ministers everywhere opposed and persecuted.
Passing by the persecutions inflicted upon the Christians by the
Jews--the whipping of Peter and John, under the order of the Jewish
Sanhedrim, the martyrdom of Stephen, the execution of Saint James,
the repeated mobbing and whippings of Paul--I call attention to the
first great pagan persecution under the cruel edict of the Emperor
Nero, in the second half of the first Christian century. The emperor
having set on fire the city of Rome in order that he might view a great
conflagration, and wishing to divert suspicion from himself, he first
accused and then tried to compel the Christians to confess the crime.
At this point I summon Tacitus, the renowned Roman annalist, to tell
the remainder of the story:
"With this view he inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men
who, under the vulgar appellation of Christians, were already branded
with deserved infamy. They derived their name and origin from Christ,
who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of
the procurator Pontius Pilate. For awhile this dire superstition was
checked, but it again burst forth, and not only spread itself over
Judea, the first seat of this mischievous sect, but was even introduced
into Rome, the common asylum, which receives and protects whatever
is impure, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those that were
seized discovered a great multitude of their accomplices, and they were
all convicted not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city,
as for their hatred of human kind. They died in torments, and their
torments were embittered by insults and derision. Some were nailed on
crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to the
fury of dogs; others, again, smeared over with combustible materials,
were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The
gardens of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was
accompanied with a horse race, and honored with the {LV} presence of
the emperor, who mingled with the populace in the dress and attitude
of a charioteer. The guilt of the Christians deserved indeed the
most exemplary punishments, but the public abhorrence was changed
into commiseration from the opinion that those unhappy wretches were
sacrificed, not so much to the public welfare as to the cruelty of a
jealous tyrant." [46]
This first great persecution of the Christians under the authority
of the Roman emperor, is sufficiently characteristic to describe the
other persecutions which were intermittingly perpetrated upon the
Christians through the two succeeding centuries. What seems to be the
most incongruous circumstance connected with these persecutions is,
that they occurred not only under such wretches as Nero and Domitian,
but under such virtuous emperors as Trajan, Adrian, Marcus Aurelius and
Diocletian. Intermittingly, then, through three troubled centuries, and
under circumstances of the utmost cruelty, persecution raged against
the Christians. As the highest authority on Roman history remarks: "If
the empire had been afflicted by any recent calamity, by a plague, a
famine, or an unsuccessful war; if the Tiber had, or the Nile had not
risen above its banks; if the earth had shaken, or if the temperate
order of the seasons had been interrupted, the superstitious pagans
were convinced that the crimes and impurities of the Christians, who
were spared by the excessive lenity of the government, had at length
provoked the divine justice." [47] And however virtuous the emperors
were, or however mild and equitable in character the governors of the
provinces, it is certain that they did not hesitate to appease the
rage of the people by sacrificing the obnoxious Christian victims. All
this at a time, too, when religious tolerance and in large measure
even religious freedom were enjoyed by those of all other religions
within the empire, and in fact we may say that the persecution of the
Christians was the only circumstance which broke in upon the religious
concord of the world. From the apologies of the early church fathers,
addressed to some of the emperors of the second and third centuries,
we find them making the most pathetic complaints to the effect, "that
the Christians who obeyed the dictates, and solicited the liberty of
conscience, were alone, among all the subjects of the Roman empire,
excluded from the common benefits of their auspicious government."
Why was this? Surely it did not arise from any vicious principle
inherent in the Christian religion itself. "If we seriously consider
the purity of the Christian religion," remarks Gibbon, in the
opening paragraph of his great treatise on the "_Conduct of the
Roman Government Toward the Christians_," "the sanctity of its moral
precepts, and the {LVI} innocence as well as the austere lives of
the greater number of those who, during the first ages, embraced the
faith of the gospel, we should naturally suppose that so benevolent
a doctrine would have been received with due reverence even by the
unbelieving world; that the learned and polite, however they might
deride the miracles, would have esteemed the virtues of the new sect;
and that the magistrates, instead of persecuting, would have protected
an order of men who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws,
though they declined the active cares of war and government. If, on the
other hand, we recollect the universal tolerance of polytheism, as it
was invariably maintained by the faith of the people, the incredulity
of philosophers, and the policy of the Roman senate and emperors,
we are at a loss to discover what new offense the Christians had
committed, what new provocation could exasperate the mild indifference
of antiquity, and what new motives could urge the Roman princes, who
beheld without concern a thousand forms of religion subsisting in
peace under their gentle sway, to inflict a severe punishment upon any
part of their subjects who had chosen for themselves a singular but an
inoffensive mode of faith and worship." [48]
What, then, I again ask, was the cause of the singular departure from
the enlightened policy of the empire in granting religious toleration
and even large religious freedom to its subjects? I am sure that
modern Christians will scarcely be satisfied with the various causes
assigned for this strange conduct on the part of the Roman emperors
who persecuted the Christians. These causes, or at least the principal
ones, are conceded by both infidel and Christian authorities to be:
First, the Christians were a sect and not a nation, and were open to
the charge that they had deserted the faith of their forefathers, a
thing inexplicable to the Roman mind. It could be claimed on the part
of the Christians, of course, that this was not true; that so far were
they from deserting the faith of their fathers, that their present
Christian faith was but the complement of their fathers' faith, the
fulfillment alike of its prophecies and symbols--in a word, the gospel
was the fulfillment of the law. This, however, was a refinement of
explanation to which the haughty Romans could not be expected to give
attention.
Second, the Christians condemned and abhorred the public religion of
the state, so closely connected with the affairs of the government,
and hence they were judged to be enemies of the state, a circumstance
which made them objects of detestation to those intrusted with the
administration of the laws.
{LVII} Third, the Christians in their worship employed no images, nor
temples, nor incense, nor sacrifices; neither did they represent their
God by any corporeal figure or symbol, therefore they were adjudged to
be atheists, and accordingly detested.
Fourth, the gloom and austere aspect of the Christians, and their
thorough abhorrence of the common business and pleasures of life,
their denunciation of war, together with their frequent predictions of
impending divine judgments, caused them to be regarded as the enemies
of mankind.
Fifth, the secrecy in which they conducted their religious services
(a policy first born of necessity, because of the fear of their
adversaries, and afterwards continued under the false notion that it
would render their sacred institutions more respectable) drew upon them
the suspicion that they only "concealed what they would have blushed to
disclose;" and this left them open to the misrepresentation and calumny
of their enemies, by which the fury of the multitude was aroused
against them.
Sixth, the severe simplicity of the Christian mode of worship,
employing as it did neither sacrifices nor an elaborate
priesthood--excited the animosity of the pagan priests and their
servitors, in exact proportion as the Christians became a menace
to their occupation; for it was painfully apparent to them that if
Christianity was successful there would be no need of the pagan
priesthood--its occupation would be gone.
All these alleged causes for the persecution of the Christians within
the Roman empire may be allowed, though some of them may be more
properly regarded as pretexts for, than causes of the persecution.
But back of all the assigned causes--which are at best but secondary
in their nature--one may see moving a force, the primary cause of the
persecution, of which the apprehensions of magistrates, the hatred of
the pagan priesthood, and the clamor of the multitude were but the
outward manifestations. That primary cause of the persecution of the
Christians is to be found in the bitter hatred of that dark spirit who
in heaven, before he fell from his high estate, was known under the
splendid appellation of "The Light Bearer," "Lucifer," "Son of the
Morning," as high in favor as in station, before his sin of rebellion
against the Father-God. [49]
Beyond the mere fact that he impiously did rebel in heaven against
God, and that he was impelled thereto by a vaulting ambition which
overleaped itself, the Hebrew scriptures give us little information
concerning Lucifer. No cause for the rebellion is assigned, though
evidence {LVIII} of the fact and reality of the rebellion is abundant.
[50] In some ancient scripture revealed to Joseph Smith, however, the
cause of that Lucifer-led rebellion is stated. It was immediately
connected with man's earth-life, and the means and conditions of his
salvation.
In order that the reader may appreciate the force of the truth to
be presented, it is necessary to remind him that the spirit of man
had an existence before he dwelt in his body of flesh and bones--a
self-conscious existence, in which he possessed all the faculties and
attributes that the spirit or mind of man now possesses; that the
time had come when the present earth-life became necessary to his
continued progress; that all that would take place in that earth-life
was known to God--the fall of man, the wickedness of the human race,
the redemption through the atonement of a sinless sacrifice--all was
known, and for all these events ample provisions were to be made; one
chosen to open the series of dispensations that should make up the
history of man's earth-life; one chosen to redeem man from his fallen
state. It was at this point that Lucifer came before the grand council
in heaven saying: Behold--here am I, send me, I will be Thy son, and I
will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely
_I will do it_; wherefore give me Thine honor. "But, behold," said
the Lord, "My Beloved Son, which was My Beloved and Chosen from the
beginning, said unto Me--Father, Thy will be done, and the glory be
Thine forever. Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against Me, and
sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given
him; and also that I should give unto him Mine own power; by the power
of Mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down; and he
became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive
and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as
would not hearken unto My voice." [51]
This discloses the reason of Lucifer's rebellion--opposition to the
plan of man's redemption--a counter plan that involved the destruction
of the agency of man. Then what?
"I beheld Satan," says Jesus, "as lightning fall from heaven." [52]
"And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own
habitation. He hath reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness,
unto the judgment of the great day." [53]
"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought {LIX}
against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed
not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and
his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying
in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of
our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren
is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And
they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their
testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore
rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters
of the earth, and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you,
having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."
[54]
Lucifer, then, becomes a factor to be reckoned with in the persecution
of the Saints. In heaven he opposed the gospel of Jesus Christ; cast
out into the earth will he not oppose it there? Herein lies the real
cause of the persecution of the Christians within the Roman empire.
So long as the inhabitants of the earth were content with the pagan
superstitions, wherein there was no power of God unto salvation; so
long as they were content with conflicting pagan philosophies, wherein
was no power of God unto salvation, it was a matter of indifference
to Lucifer whether they worshiped Jupiter Olympus, or Isis; Apollo,
or Minerva; or bowed at the philosopher's shrine of the Unknown
God--all were equally barren of saving power and left the kingdom of
Lucifer undiminished in its strength and numbers; left all nations
in his thraldom. But when the Christ and His apostles came preaching
repentance and the coming of the kingdom of heaven; making known the
origin of man and his relationship to Deity; making known the purpose
of God to redeem him from his fallen state; establishing His Church as
the depository of divine truth, and the instrumentality for conveying
to man divine instruction--then Lucifer saw cause for alarm, for it
was evident that the days of his dominion were numbered; his kingdom
must decline if Christianity prevailed; his sway over the kingdoms of
the earth must be broken if Christ was preached: and hence in all the
bitterness of hatred, with all the strength of his cunning, with all
the power of his resourcefulness, and using every instrumentality he
could command--corrupted human nature over which he had influence; the
apprehension of magistrates; the jealousy of pagan priesthoods--all
were employed to destroy that institution wrought out in the wisdom
of God to bring to pass the salvation of man; and hence the fire, the
{LX} sword and the rack; the lions, the dungeons,--in a word, the pagan
persecutions of the Saints of God; Lucifer and his hatred of the truth
the primary cause of all, all other causes and pretexts but secondary,
mere instrumentalities used by him to impede the progress of and
destroy, if possible, the truth, the gospel, wherein lies the power of
man's salvation.
It is said that history repeats itself; and this in matters of religion
as in other things. In the introduction to the first volume of the
Church History, the paganization of Christianity was discussed at
some length, and when the Lord would again prepare the way for the
incoming of the last dispensation of the Gospel--the dispensation of
the fullness of times--as part of that preparation, He established a
great republic in the New World, the chief corner stone of whose temple
of liberty was religious freedom. The Congress of the United States,
by express provision of the Constitution, is prohibited from making
any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof. [55] Similar guarantees of religious freedom
are provided for in the constitutions of all the states. The clause in
Missouri's constitution on the subject was as follows:
"All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty
God according to the dictates of their own consciences; that no man
can be compelled to erect, support or attend any place of worship,
or to maintain any minister of the gospel or teacher of religion;
that no human authority can control or interfere with the rights of
conscience; that no person can ever be hurt, molested or restrained in
his religious professions or sentiments, if he do not disturb others in
their religious worship: that no person, on account of his religious
opinions, can be rendered ineligible to any office of trust or profit
under this state; that no preference can ever be given by law to any
sect or mode of worship; and that no religious corporation can ever be
established in this state."
Under these guarantees of religious liberty, in both state and national
constitutions, infidels, Jews, and all sects of the Christian religion
lived in unbroken peace. In the colonial history of the country there
had been some intolerance and acts of violence practiced by the sects
of Christians on one another, but in the main, and especially since
the establishment of the republic of the United States, under its
present Constitution, there had been absolute religious freedom. But
now a strange thing occurred. A youth, yet in his early teens, startled
the neighborhood in which he resided with the announcement that he
had received a revelation from God: a new dispensation of the Gospel
of Christ had been committed to him; he is authorized to found again
the very {LXI} Church of Christ; men are to teach once more by divine
authority; and the world is to be made ready for the incoming of the
glorious kingdom, whose king shall be the resurrected, glorified
Christ; and peace and truth and righteousness are to abound. Strangely
enough, notwithstanding all the guarantees of religious freedom in the
state and national constitutions, this proclamation is resented by the
people, and those who advocate it are persecuted in various ways, until
at the last, as set forth in the three volumes of the Church History
now published, it culminated in the death and misery of many souls, and
the final expulsion of from twelve to fifteen thousand Saints from the
state of Missouri, under all the circumstances of cruelty detailed in
this history.
Why is this violence done to the principle of religious freedom, a
principle that is both the pride and boast of the American people?
Why are constitutions and institutions violated in efforts made
by the authorities of the sovereign state of Missouri to destroy
this religion and this Church of Christ? What is the cause of these
Missouri persecutions? In view of the principles already set forth
in these pages, the primary cause of these persecutions in Missouri
will not be difficult to find. In them, as in the Roman persecutions
of the Christians, the cunning and power of Lucifer will be apparent.
So long as only apostate forms of Christianity obtained; so long as
men adhered to mere forms of godliness and denied the power thereof,
so long Lucifer cared not with what devotion they clung to these
lifeless forms of religion. He laughed; his kingdom was undiminished;
the nations were held in his thraldom. But when the Prophet of the
dispensation of the fulness of times announced his revelation; when
God again stood revealed once more before a witness; when the divine
plan of life and salvation was again communicated to men through an
inspired prophet; when the Church of Christ in all its completeness
and power was restored to the earth, then it behoved Lucifer to look
to his dominions, to strengthen his forces, and to prepare for the
final conflict for possession of this world; for now God had taken
it in hand to complete His work of redeeming the earth, of saving
men, and overthrowing Lucifer and his power so far as this earth is
concerned; and hence when Joseph Smith announced his new revelation,
the incoming of the dispensation of the fulness of times, Lucifer with
all the cunning and power at his command, and setting in motion every
force--the fears and jealousies of men, misrepresentation and calumny,
hatred of righteousness and truth, in a word, every force that he could
summons, every pretext that he could suggest to men of evil disposed
minds was employed to destroy the inauguration of that work which was
to subdue his power, conquer his dominions, and render men free from
his influence. Lucifer's bitterness, then, his hatred, his cunning, his
{LXII} devisements were the cause of the Missouri persecutions. All
else was secondary, pretext, his instrumentalities, nothing more.
_Retribution_.
But what of Missouri? Missouri, who had violated her constitution
which guaranteed religious freedom to all who came within her borders!
Missouri, whose officers from the Governor down entered into a
wicked conspiracy, contrary to all law and righteousness, and drove
the Saints from the state! Missouri, who had violated not only her
own constitution by becoming a party to a religious persecution,
but had also violated the spirit of our times, and outraged the
civilization of the nineteenth century--what of Missouri? Did she
pay any penalty for her wrong-doing? Are states such entities as may
be held to an accounting for breaches of public faith and public
morals--constitutional immoralities? Is there within the state a public
conscience to which an appeal can be made; and in the event of the
public conscience being outraged is there retribution?
I answer these questions in the affirmative; and hold that Missouri
paid dearly for the violations of her guarantees of religious freedom,
and her lawlessness and her cruelties practiced towards the Latter-day
Saints.
I have already referred to the relationship which the state of Missouri
sustained to the great question of slavery. By the political compromise
which bore her name, Missouri became a "cape of slavery thrust into
free territory." Except for the state of Missouri alone, her southern
boundary line was to mark the furthermost point northward beyond which
slavery must not be extended into the territory of the United States.
In 1854, however, the Missouri compromise was practically overthrown by
the introduction into Congress of the "Kansas-Nebraska Act," by Stephen
A. Douglas, United States senator from Illinois. This act provided for
the organization of two new territories from the Louisiana purchase,
west of Missouri and Iowa. The act proposed that the new territories
should be open to slavery, if their inhabitants desired it. This left
the question of slavery in the status it occupied previous to the
Missouri Compromise, and left the people in the prospective states to
determine for themselves whether slavery should or should not prevail
in their state. This opened again the slavery question, and there was
begun that agitation which finally resulted in the great American Civil
War.
As soon as it became apparent that the people of new territories were
to determine for themselves the question of slavery, very naturally
each party began a struggle for possession of the new territory
according as its sentiments or interests dictated. The struggle began
by the {LXIII} abolition party of the north organizing "Emigrant Aid
Societies," and sending emigrants of their own faith into Kansas. The
slave holders of Missouri also sent settlers representing their faith
and interests into the new territory in the hope of bringing it into
the Union as a slave state. This brought on a border warfare in which
the settlements of western Missouri and eastern Kansas alternately
suffered from the raids and counter raids of the respective parties
through some six years before the outbreak of the Civil War. As to
which were the more lawless or cruel, the fanatical abolitionists or
the pro-slavery party, the "jayhawkers," as the organized bands of
ruffians of the former party were called, or the "bushwhackers," as
the similarly organized bands of the pro-slavery men were called, is
not a question necessary for me to discuss here. Both held the laws
in contempt, and vied with each other in committing atrocities. The
western counties of Missouri, where the Latter-day Saints had suffered
so cruelly at the hands of people of those counties some eighteen or
twenty years before, were in this border warfare laid desolate, and all
the hardships the Missourians had inflicted upon the Saints were now
visited upon their heads, only more abundantly.
Speaking of the situation in Missouri in 1861, the out-going Governor,
Robert M. Stewart, in his address to the legislature, and referring to
Missouri and her right to be heard on the slavery question, said:
"Missouri has a right to speak on this subject, because she has
suffered. Bounded on three sides by free territory, her border
counties have been the frequent scenes of kidnapping and violence,
and this state has probably lost as much, in the last two years, in
the abduction of slaves, as all the rest of the Southern States. _At
this moment several of the western counties are desolated, and almost
depopulated, from fear of a bandit horde, who have been committing
depredations--arson, theft, and foul murder--upon the adjacent border_"
[56]
Brigadier-General Daniel M. Frost, who had been employed in repressing
lawlessness in the western counties of Missouri, in reporting
conditions prevailing there in November, 1860, said:
"The deserted and charred remains of once happy homes, combined with
the general terror that prevailed amongst the citizens who still clung
to their possessions, gave but too certain proof of the persecution to
which they had all been subjected, and which they would again have to
endure, with renewed violence, so soon as armed protection should be
withdrawn." [note] "In view of this condition of affairs," continues
the historian of Missouri I am quoting, "and in order to carry out
fully Governor Stewart's order to repel invasions and restore peace to
the border, General Frost determined to leave a considerable force in
{LXIV} the threatened district. Accordingly, a battalion of volunteers,
consisting of three companies of rangers and one of artillery, was
enlisted, and Lieutenant-Colonel John S. Bowen, who afterwards rose to
high rank in the Confederate service, was chosen to the command." [57]
"With the organization of this force, and perhaps owing also, in some
degree, to the inclemency of the season, 'jayhawking,' as such, came to
an end, though the thing itself, during the first two or three years of
the Civil War, and, in fact, as long as there was anything left on the
Missouri side of the border worth taking, flourished more vigorously
than ever. The old jayhawking leaders, however, now came with United
States commissions in their pockets and at the head of regularly
enlisted troops, in which guise they carried on a system of robbery and
murder that left a good portion of the frontier south of the Missouri
river as perfect a waste as Germany was at the end of the Thirty Years'
War." [58]
While this description confines the scenes of violence and rapine to
the border counties south of the Missouri river,--it included Jackson
county, however, which was one of the heaviest sufferers both in
this border warfare and subsequently during the Civil War--still,
the counties north of that stream also suffered from lawlessness and
violence.
At the outbreak of the Civil War Missouri was peculiarly situated. She
was surrounded on three sides by free states. The great majority of
her own people were for the Union, but her government, with Clairborne
Jackson as the state executive, was in sympathy with the South. As
the extreme Southern States one after another seceded from the Union,
Missouri was confronted with the question: What position she ought to
assume in the impending conflict. The question was referred to a state
convention in which appeared no secessionists. Indeed, the people of
Missouri in this election by a majority of eighty thousand decided
against secession. The convention, in setting forth the attitude of the
state on the subject, said that Missouri's position was, "Evidently
that of a state whose interests are bound up in the maintenance of
the Union, and whose kind feelings and strong sympathies are with the
people of the Southern States, with whom we are connected by ties of
friendship and blood. We want the peace and harmony of the country
restored, and we want them with us. To go with them as they are now * *
* * is to ruin ourselves without doing them any good." [59]
While this doubtless voiced the sentiment of a great majority of {LXV}
Missouri's people, the government of the state and many thousands
of its inhabitants sympathized with the South. The general assembly
of the state authorized the raising and equipment of large military
forces held subject, of course, to the orders of the governor, under
the pretense of being prepared to repel invasion from any quarter
whatsoever, and enable the state to maintain a neutral attitude.
The governor refused to raise Missouri's quota of four regiments
under President Lincoln's first call for seventy-five thousand men
to suppress the rebellion, on the ground that these regiments were
intended to form "part of the President's army, to make war upon
the people of the seceded states." This he declared to be illegal,
unconstitutional, and therefore could not be complied with. This
precipitated a conflict between the state and national forces that
resulted in a civil war within the state since some of her citizens
sided with the general government and some with the state.
On the 20th of April, 1861, the state militia under the governor's
orders captured the Federal arsenal at Liberty, Clay county, and in
the nineteen months following that event "over three hundred battles
and skirmishes were fought within the limits of the state," and it is
assumed that in the last two years of the war, there were half as many
more; "and it may be said of them," continues our historian, "that they
were relatively more destructive of life, as by this time the contest
had degenerated into a disgraceful internecine struggle." [60]
In the fall of 1864, General Sterling Price penetrated the state at
the head of twelve thousand men; captured Lexington, in Ray county,
and Independence, in Jackson county, and thence made his escape
into Arkansas. "In the course of this raid he marched 1,434 miles,
fought forty-three battles and skirmishes, and according to his own
calculation destroyed upwards of 'ten million dollars' worth of
property,' a fair share of which belonged to his own friends." [61]
In August, 1863, the celebrated Military Order No. 11 was issued from
Kansas City, by General Thomas Ewing, by which "all persons living
in Cass, Jackson, and Bates counties, Missouri, and in that part of
Vernon included in this district, except those living within one mile
of the limits of Independence, Hickman's Mills, Pleasant Hill, and
Harrisonville, and except those in that part of Kaw township, Jackson
county, north of Brush creek and west of the Big Blue, embracing
Kansas City and Westport, are hereby ordered to remove from their
present places of residence within fifteen days from the date hereof.
{LXVI} Those who, within that time, establish their loyalty to the
satisfaction of the commanding officer of the military station nearest
their present place of residence, will receive from him certificates
stating the fact of their loyalty, and the names of the witnesses
by whom it can be shown. All who receive such certificates will be
permitted to remove to any military station in this district, or to any
part of the state of Kansas, except the counties on the eastern borders
of the state. All others shall remove out of this district. Officers
commanding companies and detachments serving in the counties named will
see that this paragraph is promptly obeyed." [62]
The admonition in the last clause to commanding officers was rigidly
followed; and within the district named scenes of violence and cruelty
were appalling. This order with its cruel execution has been more
severely criticized than any other act during the entire Civil War.
The justification for it has been urged on the ground that Jackson
county afforded a field of operations for Confederates; that here the
bushwhacking marauders recruited their forces, and found the means of
support; that the policy was necessary on the ground of putting an end
to that kind of warfare. On the other hand, it is contended that "tried
by any known standard," the people in that section of Missouri were as
loyal to the Union as were their neighbors in Kansas. "They had voted
against secession; they had not only, thus far, kept their quota in the
Union army full, and that without draft or bounty, but they continued
to do so; and if they did not protect themselves against the outrages
alike of Confederate bushwhackers and Union jayhawkers, it was because
early in the war they had been disarmed by Federal authority and were
consequently without the means of defense." [63]
By the execution of the order, however, the people in the districts
named "were driven from their homes, their dwellings burned, their
farms laid waste, and the great bulk of their movable property handed
over, without let or hindrance, to the Kansas 'jayhawkers.' It was
a brutal order, ruthlessly enforced, but so far from expelling or
exterminating the guerrillas, it simply handed the whole district over
to them." "Indeed," continues Lucien Carr, "we are assured by one who
was on the ground, that from this time until the end of the war, no one
wearing the Federal uniform dared risk his life within the devatasted
region. The only people whom the enforcement of the order did injure
were some thousands of those whom it was Ewing's duty to protect." [64]
{LXVII} Whether justified or not by the attitude of the Jackson county
people in the Civil War, the execution of Order No. 11 certainly was
but a reenactment, though upon a larger scale, of those scenes which
the inhabitants of that section of the country thirty years before had
perpetrated upon the Latter-day Saints in expelling them from Jackson
county. The awful scenes then enacted inspired the now celebrated
painting by G. C. Bingham, bearing the title "Civil War," and dedicated
by the artist "to all who cherish the principles of civil liberty."
Connected with the scenes of civil strife in Missouri, is a prophecy
uttered by Joseph Smith many years before they began, and recently
published in a very able paper by Elder Junius F. Wells, in the
November number of the _Improvement Era_ for 1902. Elder Wells, it
appears, had the pleasure of an interview with the Hon. Leonidas M.
Lawson, of New York city, formerly a resident of Clay county, Missouri,
and a brother-in-law of General Alexander W. Doniphan, whose name so
frequently occurs in our pages, dealing with events in the history of
the Church while in Missouri.
In the course of the interview, which took place at the University
Club, New York city, Mr. Lawson referred to an incident connected
with a visit to General Doniphan in 1863. General Doniphan, it will
be remembered by those acquainted with his history, took no part in
the Civil War beyond that of a sorrowful spectator. On the occasion of
Mr. Lawson's visit to him, just referred to, they rode through Jackson
county together, and in a letter to Elder Wells, under date of February
7, 1902, Mr. Lawson relates the following incident, which is part of a
biographical sketch of General Doniphan, prepared by Mr. Lawson:
"In the year 1863, I visited General A. W. Doniphan at his home in
Liberty, Clay county, Missouri. This was soon after the devastation of
Jackson county, Missouri, under what is known as 'Order No. 11.' This
devastation was complete. Farms were everywhere destroyed, and the
farmhouses were burned. During this visit General Doniphan related the
following historical facts and personal incidents:
"About the year 1831-2, the Mormons settled in Jackson county. Mo.,
under the leadership of Joseph Smith. The people of Jackson county
became dissatisfied with their presence, and forced them to leave;
and they crossed the Missouri river and settled in the counties of De
Kalb, Caldwell and Ray. They founded the town of Far West, and began
to prepare the foundation of a temple. It was here that the troubles
arose which culminated in the expulsion of the Mormons from the state
of Missouri according to the command of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs. This
was known in Missouri annals as the Mormon War. There were many among
those who obeyed the order of the governor, in the state militia, who
believed that the movement against the Mormons {LXVIII} was unjust
and cruel, and that the excitement was kept up by those who coveted
the homes, the barns and the fields of the Mormon people. The latter,
during their residence in the state of Missouri, paid, in entry fees
for the land they claimed, to the United States government land office,
more than $300,000, which, for that period represented a tremendous
interest. During their sojourn in Missouri the Mormons did not practice
or teach polygamy, so that question did not enter into it.
"Following the early excitement, Joseph Smith was indicted for treason
against the state of Missouri, and General Doniphan was one of the
counsel employed to defend him, he having shown a friendly interest in
Smith, whom he considered very badly treated. Joseph Smith was placed
in prison in Liberty, Missouri, to await his trial. This place was the
residence of General Doniphan. His partner in the practice of law was
James H. Baldwin.
"On one occasion General Doniphan caused the sheriff of the county to
bring Joseph Smith from the prison to his law office, for the purpose
of consultation about his defense. During Smith's presence in the
office, a citizen of Jackson county, Missouri, came in for the purpose
of paying a fee which was due by him to the firm of Doniphan and
Baldwin, and offered in payment a tract of land in Jackson county.
"Doniphan told him that his partner, Mr. Baldwin, was absent at the
moment, but as soon as he had an opportunity he would consult him and
decide about the matter. When the Jackson county man retired, Joseph
Smith, who had overheard the conversation, addressed General Doniphan
about as follows:
"'_Doniphan, I advise you not to take that Jackson county land in
payment of the debt, God's wrath hangs over Jackson county. God's
people have been ruthlessly driven from it, and you will live to see
the day when it will be visited by fire and sword. The Lord of Hosts
will sweep it with the besom of destruction. The fields and farms and
houses will be destroyed, and only the chimneys will be left to mark
the desolation_.'"
"General Doniphan said to me that the devastation of Jackson county
forcibly reminded him of this remarkable prediction of the Mormon
prophet." (signed) L. M. Lawson.
"There is a prediction of the Prophet Joseph," remarks Elder Wells, in
commenting upon Mr. Lawson's story, "not before put into print, and
history has recorded its complete fulfillment."
That a just retribution overtook the entire state, as well as the
inhabitants of Jackson county, and other western counties, I think must
be conceded by all who are familiar with the events of her history in
the Civil War. That which she did to an inoffensive people was done
to her inhabitants, especially to those living within the districts
formerly occupied by the Latter-day Saints; only the measure meted out
to {LXIX} the Missourians was heaped up, pressed down, and made to run
over.
The Missourians had complained that the Latter-day Saints were eastern
men, whose manners, habits, customs, and even dialect were different
from their own; [65] but the Missourians lived to see great throngs
of those same eastern men flock into an adjoining territory and
infest their border, so that the settlers of western Missouri became
accustomed to, and learned to endure the strange manners, customs and
dialect so different from their own.
The Missourians complained of the rapidity with which the Saints were
gathering into the state to establish their Zion; but the Missourians
lived to see hordes of the detested easterners gather into their region
of country by continuous streams of emigrant trains, sent there by
"Emigrant Aid Companies" of New England.
The Missourians falsely charged that the coming of "Zion's Camp" into
western Missouri to aid their brethren to repossess their homes in
Jackson county, was an armed invasion of the state; but the Missourians
lived to see formidable hosts of eastern and northern men gather upon
their frontiers and frequently invade the state. "The character of
much of this emigration may be gathered," says one historian, "from
the fact that the Kansas Emigration Societies, Leagues and Committees
* * * _sent out men only_;" and that in some of their bands Sharp's
rifles were more numerous than agricultural implements. [66] Of course
the "Blue Lodges" of Missouri were organized largely on the same
principle as the "Emigrant Aid Companies" of New England, and adopted
practically the same methods, expecting to add Kansas to the list of
slave states. But "certainly," remarks Lucien Carr, "if a company of
so-called northern emigrants, in which there were two hundred and
twenty-five men and only five women, whose wagons contained no visible
furniture, agricultural implements or mechanical tools, but abounded
in all the requisite articles for camping and campaigning purposes,
were considered as _bona fide_ settlers and permitted to vote, there
could not have been a sufficient reason for ruling out any band of
Missourians who ever crossed the border and declared their intention of
remaining, even though they left the next day." [67]
Among the men sent to the borders of Missouri by the "Emigrant Aid
Companies" of New England were some of the most desperate adventurers;
and the Missourians who had pretended to be alarmed at the coming of
"Zion's Camp," and feigned to regard it as an armed invasion {LXX}
of the state, saw their state repeatedly invaded--especially Jackson
county--by the bands of Union "jayhawkers" organized from among these
desperate eastern and northern men, who ruthlessly laid waste their
homes and farms.
The Missourians had falsely charged the Saints with abolition madness,
with tampering with their slaves, with inviting free negroes into the
state to corrupt their blacks, whose very presence would render their
institution of slave labor insecure; but they lived to see their system
of slave labor abolished by the setting free of some one hundred and
fifteen thousand slaves, valued at $40,000,000, eight thousand of whom
were "martialed and disciplined for war" in the Federal armies, and
many of them marched to war against their former masters.
Governor Dunklin and his advisors in the government of Missouri claimed
that there was no warrant of authority under the laws and constitution
of the state for calling out a permanent military force to protect
the Saints in the peaceful possession of their homes until the civil
authority proved itself competent to keep the peace and protect the
citizens in the enjoyment of their guaranteed rights; but the people
in the western part of Missouri saw the time come when they themselves
prayed for the same protection; and Governor Stewart, unlike Governor
Dunklin, approved the appointment of a battalion of volunteers
consisting of three companies of rangers and one of artillery, all
of which were placed under command of Lieutenant-Colonel John L.
Bowen, to do the very thing the Saints had prayed might be done in
their case. [68] But even this provision for their protection did not
avail; for their old jayhawking enemies soon reappeared under new
conditions--which will be stated in the next paragraph--under which
they renewed their incursions of rapine and murder.
The state authorities of Missouri converted the mobs which had
plundered the Saints, burned their homes and laid waste their lands,
into the state militia, which gave the former mob a legal status, under
which guise they plundered the Saints, compelled them to sign away
their property and agree to leave the state. To resist this mob-militia
was to be guilty of treason; but the people of western Missouri lived
to see a like policy pursued towards them. They suffered much in
Jackson and other western counties in the border war, previous to the
opening of the Civil War, from the inroads of abolition "jayhawkers" in
the interest of anti-slavery. For a time this was in part suppressed
by the state militia under General Frost and by the permanent force
stationed on the border under Lieutenant-Colonel Bowen. But later,
and when the Civil War broke out, these old "jayhawking" leaders "now
came with United States commissions in their pockets, and at the head
of regularly enlisted troops, in which guise they carried on a {LXXI}
system of robbery and murder that left a good portion of the frontier
south of the Missouri river as perfect a waste as Germany was at the
end of the Thirty Years' War." [69]
Such wretches as Generals Lane and Jennison, though Union officers,
and denounced alike by Governor Robinson of Kansas--of course a strong
Union man--and General Halleck, [70] commander-in-chief of the western
armies of the Union, were permitted to disgrace alike the Union cause
and our human nature by their unspeakable atrocities. But they were
retained in office, nevertheless. It was the outrages committed by
these men and their commands, and the Kansas "Red Legs" that led to the
equally savage reprisals on the people of Kansas. In revenge for what
western Missouri had suffered, outlawed Missourians sacked Lawrence,
Kansas, a Union city, massacred one hundred and eighty-three of its
inhabitants, and left it in flames. In justification of their act
of savagery, they declared: "Jennison has laid waste our homes, and
the 'Red Legs' have perpetrated unheard of crimes. Houses have been
plundered and burned, defenseless men shot down, and women outraged.
We are here for revenge--and we have got it." [71] How nearly this
language of the Missourians--and there can be no question that it
describes what had been done in Missouri by Lane, Jennison, and their
commands, and the Kansas "Red Legs" [72]--follows the complaint justly
made by the Latter-day Saints years before against the Missourians! But
thank God, there is recorded against the Saints no such horrible deeds
of reprisal.
The Missourians falsely charged that the Saints held illicit
communication with the Indian tribes then assembled near the frontiers
of the state, and pretended to an alarm that their state might be
invaded by the savages, prompted thereto by "Mormon" fanaticism; but
these same Missourians lived to see cause for real fear of such an
invasion when the Governor of an adjoining state--Arkansas--authorize
Brigadier General Albert Pike to raise two mounted regiments of
Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians to actually invade the state. These
regiments of savages were engaged in the battle of Pea Ridge, on the
southwest {LXXII} borders of Missouri. General Pike, who led them in
that battle, dressed himself in gaudy, savage costume, and wore a
large plume on his head--_a la Niel Gilliam_ at Far West--to please
the Indians. It is also charged that before the battle of Pea Ridge,
he maddened his Indians with liquor "that they might allow the savage
nature of their race to have unchecked development. In their fury they
respected none of the usages of civilized warfare, but scalped the
helpless wounded, and committed atrocities too horrible to mention."
[73] The "fear" expressed by the Missourians respecting the alleged
illicit communication of the Saints with the Indians was mere feigning,
but with this example before them, and knowing that there were many
thousands of Indians on their frontiers that might be similarly induced
to take up arms, their former feigned fears became real ones.
The Missourians instead of demanding the execution of the law in
support of the liberties of the Saints, expressed the fear that the
presence of the Saints would give rise to "Civil War," in which none
could be neutrals, since their homes must be the theatre on which
it would be fought, [74] so they drove the Saints away; but the
Missourians lived to see the outbreak of a civil war in their state
that was one of the most appalling men ever witnessed; and Missouri,
when all things are considered, and especially western Missouri,
suffered more than any other state of the Union. In other states the
war lasted at most but four years; but counting her western border
warfare in the struggle for Kansas, the war was waged in western
Missouri from 1855 to 1865, ten years: and for many years after the
close of the Civil War, a guerrilla warfare was intermittently carried
on by bands of outlaws harbored in western Missouri--especially
in Jackson, Ray, Caldwell and Clay counties--that terrorized the
community and shocked the world by the daring and atrocity of their
crimes--including bank robberies in open day, express train wrecking
and robberies, and murders. Not until 1881 was this effectually stopped
by the betrayal and murder of the outlaw chief of these bands.
Missouri sent into the Union Armies one hundred and nine thousand of
her sons, including eight thousand negroes. About thirty thousand
enlisted in the confederate army. According to official reports
the percentage of troops to population in the western states and
territories was 13.6 per cent, and in the New England states 12 per
cent; whilst in Missouri, if there be added to her quota sent to the
northern army the thirty thousand sent to the confederate army, her
percentage was fourteen per cent, _or sixty per cent of those who were
subject to military duty_. Of the deaths among these enlisted men, only
approximate {LXXIII} estimates may be made, since of the mortality
among the Confederates no official records were kept. But of those
who entered the Union service, thirteen thousand eight hundred and
eighty-five deaths are officially reported. The rate of mortality in
the Confederate forces, owing to the greater hardships they endured,
and the lack of medical attendants to care for the wounded, was much
higher, and is generally estimated at twelve thousand, (most of whom
were from western Missouri), which added to the deaths of those in the
Union army would aggregate the loss among the troops from Missouri to
twenty-five thousand eight hundred and eighty-five. "This estimate,"
says Lucien Carr, "does not cover those who were killed in the
skirmishes that took place between the home guards and the guerrillas;
nor does it include those who were not in either army, but who were
shot down by "bushwhackers" and "bushwhacking" Federal soldiers. Of
these latter there is no record, though there were but few sections of
the state in which such scenes were not more or less frequent. Assuming
the deaths from these two sources to have been 1,200, and summing up
the results, it will be found that the number of Missourians who were
killed in the war and died from disease during their term of service
amounted to not less than 27,000 men." [75]
The loss in treasure was in full proportion to the loss in blood. The
state expended $7,000,000 in fitting out and maintaining her Union
troops in the field. [76] She lost $40,000,000 in slave property; and
four years after the close of the war--two of which, 1867-8, were
remarkably prosperous--the taxable wealth of the state was $46,000,000
less than it was in 1860. "In many portions of the state," says the
historian to whom I am indebted for so many of the facts relating
to Missouri in these pages, "especially in the southern and western
borders, whole counties had been devastated. The houses were burned,
the fences destroyed, and the farms laid waste. Much of the live stock
of the state had disappeared; and everywhere, even in those sections
that were comparatively quiet and peaceful, the quantity of land in
cultivation was much less than it had been at the outbreak of the war.
Added to these sources of decline, and in some measure a cause of
them, was the considerable emigration from the state which now took
place, and particularly from those regions that lay in the pathway
of the armies, or from those neighborhoods that were given over to
the "bushwhackers." The amount of loss from these different sources
cannot be accurately gauged, but some idea may be formed of it, and of
the unsettled condition of affairs, from the fact that only 41 out of
the 113 counties in the state {LXXIV} receipted for the tax books for
1861; and in these counties, only $250,000 out of the $600,000 charged
against them were collected." [77]
This only in a general way indicates the losses in property sustained
by the state during the period under consideration, but it assists one
to understand somewhat the enormity of those losses.
It is in no spirit of gloating exultation that these facts in
Missouri's history are referred to here. It gives no gratification to
the writer to recount the woes of Missouri, and his hope is that it
will give none to the reader. These facts of history are set down only
because they are valuable for the lesson they teach. It may be that
visible retribution does not always follow in the wake of state or
national wrong-doing; but it is well that it should sometimes do so,
lest men should come to think that Eternal Justice sleeps, or may be
thwarted, or, what would be worst of all, that she does not exist. I
say it is well, therefore, that sometimes visible retribution should
follow state and national as well as individual transgressions, that
the truth of the great principle that "as men sow, so shall they reap,"
may be vindicated. Missouri in her treatment of the Latter-day Saints
during the years 1833-9, sowed the wind; in the disastrous events which
overtook her during the years 1855-65, she reaped the whirlwind. Let
us hope that in those events Justice was fully vindicated so far as
the state of Missouri is concerned; and that the lessons of her sad
experience may not be lost to the world. May the awful and visible
retribution visited upon Missouri teach all states and nations that
when they feel power they must not forget Justice; may it teach all
peoples that states and nations in their corporate capacity are such
entities as may be held accountable before God and the world for their
actions; that righteousness exalteth a nation, while injustice is
a reproach to any people. May the retribution that was so palpably
visited upon the state of Missouri satisfy and encourage the Latter-day
Saints; not that I would see them rejoice in the suffering of the
wicked; but rejoice rather in the evidence that Justice slumbereth not;
that their wrongs are not hidden from the All-seeing eye of God; that
they are within the circle of His love; that they cannot be unjustly
assailed with impunity, however humble and weak they may be. From all
these considerations may they be established in peace, hope, confidence
and charity; knowing that God is their friend; that His arm is strong
to protect; or, if in the course of God's economy in the management of
the affairs of the world it must needs be that for a time they suffer
at the hands of oppressors, that He will avenge them of their enemies;
and amply reward them for their sufferings in His cause.
Footnotes.
1. See "American Commonwealths," Missouri, (Houghton, Mifflin &
company, 1888), p. 181.
2. "History of the United States," (Morris) p. 132.
3. Ibid, pp. 135-7
4. History of the Church, Vol. II, p. 450.
5. Mr. Tallmadge, a representative from the state of New York, offered
the restricting provision.
6. History of the Church, vol. 1, p. 374, et seq.
7. In making the statement that it was the intention of the _Star_
article not only to stop "free people of color" immigrating to
Missouri, but also to "prevent them from being admitted as members of
the church," the editor of the _Star_, of course went too far; if not
in his second article, explaining the scope and meaning of the first,
then in the first article; for he had no authority to seek to prevent
"free people of color" from being admitted members of the Church. But
as a matter of fact there were very few if any "free people of color"
in the Church at that time. The "fears" of the Missourians on that head
were sheer fabrications of evil disposed minds.
8. _Western Monitor_ for the 2nd of August, 1833.
9. Joseph Smith's "Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of
the United States," _Mill Star_, Vol. XXII. p. 743.
10. The speech appears in the _Missouri Republican_ of June 18th, 1857.
11. Pearl of Great Price, pp. 44, 45, 1902 edition.
12. Doc. & Cov. Sec. 38.
13. Doc. & Cov. Sec. 45.
14. Doc. & Cov. Sec. 58.
15. Doc. and Cov., Sec. 58, verses 52-3
16. Doc. and Cov., Sec. 63, verses 25-31.
17. Doc. and Cov., Sec. 64, verses 34-36.
18. Doc. and Cov., sec. 68, verses 29-34.
19. See "History of the Church," Vol. I, ch. 19.
20. Including of course, and I may say especially including, the
commandment to purchase the lands of Jackson county.
21. Doc. and Cov., sec. 84, verses 54-59.
22. History of the Church, Vol. I p. 316.
23. _Ibid_, pp. 317-21.
24. Doc. and Cov., sec.101, verses 1-9.
25. Ibid, verse 75.
26. Ibid, sec. 103.
27. First Manifesto of Mob, History of the Church, Vol. 1, p. 374.
28. History of the Church, Vol. I. p. 396.
29. Doc. and Cov., sec. 83.
30. Doc. and Cov., sec. 63.
31. Doc. and Cov., sec. 63: 29-31.
32. Evening and Morning Star, p. 220.
33. "History of the Church," Vol. I, p. 396.
34. These estimates are by the late President George A. Smith, Church
Historian, and hence are entirely reliable. They are quoted by Lucien
Carr in his History of Missouri, "American Commonwealths," p. 181,
and are also to be found in an Historical Address by George A. Smith,
Journal of Discourses, Vol. XIII, pp. 103, _et seq_.
35. "History of Caldwell county" (National Historical Company, 1886) p.
121.
36. "In the fall of 1836, a large and comfortable schoolhouse was
built and here courts were held after the location of the county seat
until its removal to Kingston. The Mormons very early gave attention
to educational matters. There were many teachers among them and
schoolhouses and were among their first buildings. The schoolhouse in
Far West was used as a Church, as a town hall and as a court house,
as well as for a schoolhouse. It first stood in the southwest quarter
of town, but upon the establishment of the county seat it was removed
to the center of the square," ("History of Caldwell County," p.
121.--National Historical Company, 1886).
37. "History of the Church," Vol., I, pp. 375-6.
38. "History of the Church," Vol. I, p. 397.
39. "History of the Church," Vol. II, p. 85.
40. "History of the Church," Vol. II p. 450.
41. "History of Caldwell and Livingston Counties," compiled by the St.
Louis National and Historical Company, 1886, p. 140.
42. Daniel 2:44
43. Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, p. 230, also History of the
Church, Vol. III p. 212.
44. "Decline and Fall o the Roman Empire," Vol. I, Chapter II.
45. This is Chapter XVI of the "Decline and Fall."
46. Tacitus Annal., lib. XV, ch. 44.
47. "Decline and Fall," Vol. I, ch. 15.
48. "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," ch. 16.
49. Isaiah 14:12-15. Doc. and Cov., sec. 76: 25-9.
50. See Luke 10:17, 18. John 8:44, Rev. 12. In the light of these
references consider also Isaiah 14:12-5, and Doc. and Cov. section
76:25-9.
51. Pearl of Great Price, chapter 4:1-4.
52. Luke 10:18.
53. Jude 1:6.
54. Rev:7-12.
55. First Amendment, Constitution of the United States.
56. "The Fight for Missouri," (Snead) p. 14.
57. "American Commonwealths, Missouri," p. 258.
58. "American Commonwealths, Missouri," p. 259.
59. "American Commonwealths, Missouri," (Carr) p. 288.
60. "American Commonwealths, Missouri," p. 342.
61. History of Missouri, Carr, p. 360. General Price was the Colonel
Sterling Price, who held the Prophet Joseph in custody at Richmond in
1838, who shackled the brethren and whose scurrilous guards were so
severely rebuked by the Prophet.--History of the Church, Vol. III, p.
208, Note.
62. "History of Caldwell and Livingston Counties." p. 51.
63. "American Commonwealths, Missouri." p. 351.
64. Ibid. p. 351.
65. Minutes of Citizen Meeting, Liberty, Clay county, Church History
Vol. III, p. 450.
66. History of Missouri, Carr, p. 343, Note.
67. History of Missouri, Carr, 245.
68. History of Missouri, Carr, p. 158.
69. History of Missouri, Carr, p. 259.
70. General Halleck when he learned that the "jayhawking" leader,
Lane, had been promoted to the command of a bridge, declared that
such an appointment was "offering a premium for rascality and robbing
generally;" and that it would "take twenty thousand men to counteract
its effect in the state." History of Missouri, Carr, p. 348.
71. Spring's Kansas, p. 287.
72. These were bands of Kansas robbers, whose custom it was at
intervals to dash into Missouri, seize horses and cattle--not omitting
other and worse crimes on occasion--then to repair with their booty to
Lawrence, where it was defiantly sold at auction. History of Missouri,
Carr, p. 348.
73. History of the United States, Lossing, p. 592--_note_.
74. History of the Church, Vol. II, p. 450-1.
75. History of Missouri, Carr, p. 358.
76. It is but proper, however, to say that the state was afterwards
reimbursed for this amount by the general government.
77. History of Missouri, Carr, p. 359.
{1}
CHAPTER I.
The Prophet Joseph's Departure From Kirtland And Arrival In Missouri.
[Sidenote: Flight of the Prophet and Sidney Rigdon from Kirtland.]
_January, 1838_.--A new year dawned upon the Church in Kirtland in all
the bitterness of the spirit of apostate mobocracy; which continued to
rage and grow hotter and hotter, until Elder Rigdon and myself were
obliged to flee from its deadly influence, as did the Apostles and
Prophets of old, and as Jesus said, "when they persecute you in one
city, flee to another." On the evening of the 12th of January, about
ten o'clock, we left Kirtland, on horseback, to escape mob violence,
which was about to burst upon us under the color of legal process to
cover the hellish designs of our enemies, and to save themselves from
the just judgment of the law.
{2} We continued our travels during the night, and at eight o'clock on
the morning of the 13th, arrived among the brothren in Norton Township,
Medina county, Ohio, a distance of sixty miles from Kirtland. Here
we tarried about thirty-six hours, when our families arrived; and on
the 16th we pursued our journey with our families, in covered wagons
towards the city of Far West, in Missouri. We passed through Dayton and
Eaton, in Ohio, and Dublin, Indiana; in the latter place we tarried
nine days, and refreshed ourselves.
[Sidenote: Brigham Young to the Prophet's Rescue.]
About January 16, 1838, being destitute of money to pursue my journey,
I said to Brother Brigham Young: "You are one of the Twelve who have
charge of the kingdom in all the world; I believe I shall throw myself
upon you, and look to you for counsel in this case." Brother Young
thought I was not earnest, but I told him I was. Brother Brigham then
said, "If you will take my counsel it will be that you rest yourself,
and be assured you shall have money in plenty to pursue your journey."
There was a brother living in the place who had tried for some time
to sell his farm but could not; he asked counsel of Brother Young
concerning his property; Brother Young told him that if he would do
right, and obey counsel, he should have an opportunity to sell. In
about three days Brother Tomlinson came to Brother Brigham and said
he had an offer for his place; Brother Brigham told him that this was
the manifestation of the hand of the Lord to deliver Brother Joseph
Smith from his present necessities. Brother Brigham's promise was soon
verified, and I got three hundred dollars from Brother Tomlinson, which
enabled me to pursue my journey. [1]
[Sidenote: The Bitterness of the Prophet's Enemies.]
The weather was extremely cold, we were obliged to secrete ourselves
in our wagons, sometimes, to elude the {3} grasp of our pursuers,
who continued their pursuit of us more than two hundred miles from
Kirtland, armed with pistols and guns, seeking our lives. They
frequently crossed our track, twice they were in the houses where
we stopped, once we tarried all night in the same house with them,
with only a partition between us and them; and heard their oaths and
imprecations, and threats concerning us, if they could catch us; and
late in the evening they came in to our room and examined us, but
decided we were not the men. At other times we passed them in the
streets, and gazed upon them, and they on us, but they knew us not. One
Lyons was one of our pursuers.
[Sidenote: The Prophet's Arrival in Missouri.]
I parted with Brother Rigdon at Dublin, and traveling different routes
we met at Terre Haute, where, after resting, we separated again, and I
pursued my journey, crossing the Mississippi river at Quincy, Illinois.
Trial of the Far West Presidency of the Church.
_Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee of the whole Church
in Zion, in General Assembly, at the following places, to-wit:
At Far West, February 5, 1838; Carter's Settlement on the 6th;
Durphy's Settlement, on the 7th; Curtis' Dwelling-house on the
8th; and Haun's Mills on the 9th. Thomas B. Marsh, Moderator, John
Cleminson, Clerk_.
After prayer, the Moderator stated the object of the meeting,
giving a relation of the recent organization of the Church here and
in Kirtland. He also read a certain revelation given in Kirtland,
September 3, 1837, which made known that John Whitmer and W. W.
Phelps, were in transgression, and if they repented not, they
should be removed out of their places; [2] also read a certain
clause contained in the appeal published in the old _Star_, on the
183rd page as follows:
"And to sell our lands would amount to a denial of our faith, as
that is the place where the Zion of God shall stand, according to
our faith and belief in the revelations of God."
Elder John Murdock then took the stand and showed to the
congregation, why the High Council proceeded thus was that the
Church {4} might have a voice in the matter; and that he considered
it perfectly legal according to the instructions of President
Joseph Smith, Jun.
Elder George M. Hinkle then set forth the way in which the
Presidency of Far West had been labored with, that a committee of
three, of whom he was one, had labored with them. He then read a
written document, containing a number of accusations against the
three presidents. He spoke many things against them, setting forth
in a plain and energetic manner the iniquity of Elders Phelps and
Whitmer, in using the monies which were loaned to the Church.
Also David Whitmer's wrong-doing in persisting in the use of tea,
coffee, and tobacco.
Bishop Partridge then arose and endeavored to rectify some mistakes
of minor importance, made by Elder Hinkle; also the Bishop spoke
against the proceedings of the meeting, as being hasty and illegal,
for he thought they ought to be had before the Common Council, and
said that he could not lift his hand against the Presidency at
present. He then read a letter from President Joseph Smith, Jun.
A letter from William Smith was then read by Thomas B. Marsh, who
made some comments on the same, and also on the letter read by
Bishop Partridge.
Elder George Morey, who was one of the committee sent to labor with
the Missouri Presidency, spoke, setting forth in a very energetic
manner, the proceedings of that Presidency, as being iniquitous.
Elder Thomas Grover, also, being one of the committee, spoke
against the conduct of the Presidency, and of Oliver Cowdery, on
their visit to labor with them.
Elder David W. Patten spoke with much zeal against the Presidency,
and in favor of Joseph Smith, Jun., and that the wolves alluded to,
in his letter, were the dissenters in Kirtland.
Elder Lyman Wight stated that he considered all other accusations
of minor importance compared to Brothers Phelps and Whitmer selling
their lands in Jackson county; that they had set an example which
all the Saints were liable to follow. He said that it was a hellish
principle on which they had acted, and that they had flatly denied
the faith in so doing.
Elder Elias Higbee sanctioned what had been done by the Council,
speaking against the Presidency.
Elder Murdock stated that sufficient had been said to substantiate
the accusations against them.
Elder Solomon Hancock pleaded in favor of the Presidency, stating
that he could not raise his hand against them.
Elder John Corrill then spoke against the proceedings of the High
Council and labored hard to show that the meeting was illegal,
and that {5} the Presidency ought to be arraigned before a proper
tribunal, which he considered to be a Bishop and Twelve High
Priests. He labored in favor of the Presidency, and said that he
should not raise his hands against them at present, although he did
not uphold the Presidents in their iniquity.
Simeon Carter spoke against the meeting as being hasty.
Elder Groves followed Brother Carter in like observations.
Elder Patten again took the stand in vindication of the cause of
the meeting.
Elder Morley spoke against the Presidency, at the same time
pleading mercy.
Titus Billings said he could not vote until they had a hearing in
the Common Council. [3]
Elder Marsh said that the meeting was according to the direction of
Brother Joseph, he therefore considered it legal.
Elder Moses Martin spoke in favor of the legality of the meeting,
and against the conduct of the Presidency, with great energy,
alleging that the present corruptions of the Church here, were
owing to the wickedness and mismanagement of her leaders.
The Moderator then called the vote in favor of the Missouri
Presidency; the negative was then called, and the vote against
David Whitmer, John Whitmer, and William W. Phelps was unanimous,
excepting eight or ten, and this minority only wished them to
continue in office a little longer, or until Joseph Smith, Jun.,
arrived.
Thomas B. Marsh, Moderator,
John Cleminson, Clerk.
_Minutes of Proceedings in Other Settlements than Far West_.
In Simeon Carter's settlement the Saints assembled on the 6th
instant, when they unanimously rejected the three above-named
Presidents. On {6} the 7th, the Saints assembled at Edmond
Durphy's, agreeable to appointment, where the above-named
Presidents were unanimously rejected; also on the 8th at Nahum
Curtis' dwelling-house, they were unanimously rejected by the
assembly; also at Haun's Mills, on the 9th, the Saints unanimously
rejected them.
At a m
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/47707