Volume III: Table of Contents

	 Introduction
	 Chapter I:         The Prophet Joseph's Departure from Kirtland and
                    Arrival in Missouri.
	 Chapter II:        Excommunication of Oliver Cowdery and David
                    Whitmer--The Work in England.
	 Chapter III:       Readjustment and Settlement of Affairs at Far
                    West.
	 Chapter IV:        Selection of Lands in Caldwell and Daviess
                    Counties for Settlement--Adam-Ondi-Ahman.
	 Chapter V:         Independence Day at Far West--Sundry Events and
                    Revelations--Epistle of David W. Patten.
	 Chapter VI:        The Beginning of Trouble in Caldwell and Daviess
                    Counties.
	 Chapter VII:       Increasing Difficulties Between the Saints and
                    the Mobs of Daviess and Caldwell Counties.
	 Chapter VIII: Mob Movements in Caldwell, Daviess and Carroll
               Counties--Arrival of Kirtland Camp at Far West.
	 Chapter IX:        The Organization and Journey of Kirtland Camp.

	 Chapter X:         The Journey of Kirtland Camp (Continued).
	 Chapter XI:        Expulsion of the Saints from De Witt, Carroll
                    County, Missouri.
	 Chapter XII:       Movements of the Mob Upon De Witt--Battle of
                    Crooked River--Exterminating Order of Governor
                    Boggs.
	 Chapter XIII: Mob Movements About Far West--Treachery of
               Colonel Hinckle--Sorrowful Scenes.
	 Chapter XIV:       Rivalry Among the Militia Generals for Possession
                    of the Prisoners--"Trial" at Richmond.
	 Chapter XV:        The Case of the Saints Presented to the Missouri
                    Legislature--The Prophet's Communication to the
                    Saints from Liberty Prison.
	 Chapter XVI:       Case of the "Mormons" Before the Missouri
                    Legislature--Close of the Year 1838.
	 Chapter XVII: Preparations for Leaving Missouri--Action of the
               State Legislature.
	 Chapter XVIII:     The Exiled Saints Gather at Quincy--Proposition
                    to Settle at Commerce.
	 Chapter XIX:       Letters to the Prophet--Affairs in
                    England--Petitions.

	 Chapter XX:        Sundry Movements in the Interest of the Exiled
                    Saints--The Prophet's Letters from Liberty
                    Prison.
	 Chapter XXI:       Stirring Scenes about Far West--The Epistle of
                    the Prophet and His Fellow Prisoners.
	 Chapter XXII: The Prophet's Account of His Experiences in
               Missouri--Fulfillment of a Prophetic
               Revelation--Complete Exodus of the Saints from
               Missouri.
	 Chapter XXIII:     Settlement in Commerce, Illinois.
	 Chapter XXIV: Adventures of the Prisoners Remaining in
               Missouri--The Prophet's Narrative of Personal
               Experiences in Missouri.
	 Chapter XXV:       Commerce--The Prophet's History--Doctrinal
                    Development.
	 Chapter XXVI: The Prophet's Ministry in the Vicinity of
               Commerce--Address to the Twelve.
	 Chapter XXVII:     Baptism of Isaac Galland--Epistle of the Twelve
                    to the Church.
	 Chapter XXVIII:    The Escape of Parley P. Pratt and His Fellow
                    Prisoners from Missouri--The Close of an Epoch.

	 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.


                       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.

	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.

	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
anal 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 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,
merchandizing 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 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. 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.

	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.

	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 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 a new 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."

	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
restriction of slavery was made by northern members of the national
Congress. 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
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,"--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 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."

	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 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." 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."

	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 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 of 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. 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 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.

	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 bolding 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 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 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--"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
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?

	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;" 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."

	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."

	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
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."

	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
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."

	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."

	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."

	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:

     	"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."

	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; 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, 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 judgement 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."

	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.'"

	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."

	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
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.

	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
fullness 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."

	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, 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 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." 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."
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 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."

	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 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." 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 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."

	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."

	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!"


	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 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 mercantile 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. 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. The excavation for a temple 120 by 80
feet had been made, and a large commodious schoolhouse had been erected on
the public square. The town of Adam-Ondi-Ahman was also making rapid
progress.

	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 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 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
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."

	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 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."

	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."

	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."

	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."

	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 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, 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."

	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!" 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 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 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 worshipers 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
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."

	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.

	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 be 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.

	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 Sanhedrin,
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 seton 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 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."

	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." 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
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."

	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.

	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.

	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 of the fact and reality of the rebellion is abundant. 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."

	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."

	"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."

	"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought 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 came
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."

	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 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.
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 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; as 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 fullness 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
fullness 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 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