History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

98
THE STORY OF MORMONISM.
And the gentiles did tremble, as they saw so rapidly
increasing their unwelcome neighbors, whose compact
organization gave them a strength disproportionate
to their numbers. Since there was no law to stop their
coming, they determined to face the issue without law. 34
In April the people held consultations as to the
best way of disposing of the Mormons; and again
about the middle of July three hundred persons met
at Independence to form a plan for driving them out.
A declaration, in substance as follows, was drawn up
and signed by nearly all present. The citizens of Jackson
county fear the effect upon society of a pretended
religious sect, fanatics or knaves, settling among them,
and mean to get rid of them at any hazard, and for
the following reasons: They blasphemously pretend
to personal intercourse with the deity, to revelations,
miracles, healing the sick, casting out devils, and other
delusions ; they are the dregs of society, held together
by the acts of designing leaders, and are idle and
vicious. They are poor. They tamper with the
slaves and free negroes. They declare the Indian region
to be theirs by heavenly inheritance.
In answer, Parley P. Pratt asks if their supernatural
pretensions are more extravagant than those of the
old and new testament; if it is anywhere written
that there shall be no more spiritual manifestations as
of old ; does the word of God or the law of man make
poverty a crime? and have they not paid for all the land
they occupy? They are no more dregs than their
neighbors, and the charge of fraternizing with the
blacks is not true; neither is that of vice or crime, as
secular power into their hands, everything will be performed by immediate
revelations from God. We shall then have Pope Joseph the First and his
hierarchy.' Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, 145.
3t 'So early as April 1S32, the saints were made to feel themselves unwelcome
sojourners in Jackson co. Stones and brickbats were thrown through
the windows of their houses, and they were otherwise annoyed and insulted.
Meetings were held during that year and the early part of 1833, at which
resolutions were sometimes passed, and sometimes the assembly indulged in
a fight among its members; but nothing more serious resulted. Stoning
houses, however, was resumed in the early summer of the last-mentioned year.
Times and Seasons, i. 17; vi. 851.
'