History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

THE SAINTS MUST GO. 133
most of the remainder being set free a week later on
giving bail. Lucas 40 then retires with his troops,
leaving the country to be ravaged by armed squads
that burn houses, insult women, and drive off stock
ad libitum} 1 The faint pretext of justice on the part
of the state, attending forced sales and forced settlements,
might as well have been dispensed with, as
it was but a cloak to cover official iniquity. 42
bers who had desolated our society, nor would he receive testimony except
against us. . .The judge in open court, while addressing a witness, proclaimed
that if the members of the church remained on their lands to put in another
crop they should be destroyed indiscriminately, and their bones be left to
bleach on the plains without a burial... Mr Doniphan, attorney for the
defence, and since famed as a general in the Mexican war, finally advised the
prisoners to offer no defence; "for," said he, "though a legion of angels from
the opening heavens should declare your innocence, the court and populace
have decreed your destruction.". . .Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon,
Lyman Wight, Caleb Baldwin, and Alexander McRay were committed
to the jail of Clay co. on charge of treason; and Morris Phelps, Lyman Gibbs,
Darwin Chase, Norman Shearer, and myself were committed to the jail of
Richmond, Ray co., for the alleged crime of murder, said to be committed in
the act of dispersing the bandit Jiogart and his gang.' Id., 230-3.
40 Ingloriously conspicuous in the Missouri persecutions were generals
Clark, Wilson, and Lucas, Colonel Price, Captain Bogart, and Cornelius Gilliam,
'whose zeal in the cause of oppression and injustice, ' says Smith, 'was
unequalled, and whose delight has been to x-ob, murder, and spread devastation
among the saints. . .All the threats, murders, and robberies which these
officers have been guilty of are entirely ignored by the executive of the state,
who to hide his own iniquity must of course shield and protect those whom
he employed to carry into effect his murderous purposes.' Times and Sea-
sons, i. 7.
41 Pages of evidence, both Mormon and anti-Mormon, might be given, and
can indeed at any time be produced, to prove the commission of innumerable
wrongs and revolting atrocities on the part of the people of Missouri, while
abetted therein by state forces, commanded by state officers, and all under
guidance of the state governor.
42 There is abundance of testimony from disinterested sources, even from
the opposers of Mormonism themselves, to prove the persecution on the part
of the people of Missouri unjust and outrageous. I will quote only three from
many similar comments that have been made on this subject, and all, be it remembered,
emanating from the open and avowed enemies of this religion.
Says Prof. Turner of Illinois college: 'Who began the quarrel? Was it
the Mormons? Is it not notorious, on the contairy, that they were hunted
like wild beasts, from county to county, before they made any desperate resistance?
Did they ever, as a body, refuse obedience to the laws, when
called upon to do so, until driven to desperation by repeated threats and
assaults from the mob ? Did the state ever make one decent effort to defend
them as fellow-citizens in their rights, or to redress their wrongs ? Let the
conduct of its governors, attorneys, and the fate of their final petitions answer.
Have any who plundered and openly massacred the Mormons ever
been brought to the punishment due to their crimes? Let the boasting murderers
of begging and helpless infancy answer. Has the state ever remunerated
even those known to be innocent, for the loss of either their property or
their arms? Did either the pulpit or the pi-ess through the state raise a note
of remonstrance or alarm? Let the clergymen who abetted and the editors