History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

EVACUATION OF THE CITY. 231
On the 17th of September the remnant of the
Mormons crossed the Mississippi, and on the same
day the gentiles took possession of Nauvoo. 31
It was indeed a singular spectacle, as I have said,
this upon the western border of the world's great
republic in the autumn of 1846. A whole cityful,
with other settlements, and thousands of thrifty agri-
hallooing; they took several to the river and baptized them, swearing, throwing
them backward, then on to their faces, saying: "The commandments must
be fulfilled, and God damn you.'" Hist. B. Young, MS., 345.
31 The best narrative, and indeed the only one that enters circumstantially
into all the details of the expulsion from Nauvoo, is contained in the Assassination
of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the Prophet and the Patriarch of the Church
of Latter-day Saints. Also a Condensed History of the Expulsion of the Saints
from Nauvoo by Elder John S . Fullmer (of Utah, U. S. A.), Pastoi of the Manchester,
Liverpool, and Preston Conferences. Liverpool and London, 1855. The
work is written from a Mormon standpoint, but including as it does copies of
the despatches of Illinois officers and officials, of the stipulations between the
belligerents, and of some comments made by the Quincy Whig, appears in
the main reliable. The author's comments on the gentiles are sufficiently
bitter, and his description of the fight at Nauvoo and the valor of the saints
militant must of course be taken with due allowance. For instance: 'Seeing
our men take possession of some vacant buildings on the line of their approach,
they took a position on an elevated spot of ground, and opened a
heavy cannonade at a distance of something less than half a mile. This was
returned with great spirit on our part from guns made of steam shafts that
carried six-pound balls. Many were the balls that we picked up as they
came rolling and bounding among us, and we sent them back with as much
spirit and precision as they were first sent.' p. 37. Col Kane says: 'A vindictive
war was waged upon them, from which the weakest fled in scattered
parties, leaving the rest to make a reluctant and almost ludicrously unavailing
defence.' The Mormons, 54. In the General Epistle of the Twelve,
Dec. 23, 1847, in Snow's Voice of Joseph, 14-15, we read: 'In September
1846 an infuriated mob, clad in all the horrors of war, fell on the saints who
had still remained in Nauvoo for want of means to remove, murdered some,
and drove the remainder across the Mississippi into Iowa, where, destitute of
houses, tents, food, clothing, or money, they received temporary assistance
from some benevolent souls in Quincy, St Louis, and other places, whose
names will ever be remembered with gratitude. Their property in Hancock
co., Illinois, was little or no better than confiscated; many of their houses
were burned by the mob, and they were obliged to leave most of those that
remained without sale; and those who bargained sold almost for a song; for
the influence of their enemies was to cause such a diminution in the value of
property that for a handsome estate was seldom realized enough to remove
the family comfortably away; and thousands have since been wandering to
and fro, destitute, afflicted, and distressed for the common necessaries of life,
or unable to endure, have sickened and died by hundreds; while the temple
of the Lord is left solitary in the midst of our enemies, an enduring monument
of the diligence and integrity of the saints.' Mention of the expulsion
from Nauvoo is of course made in most of the books published on Mormonism,
but in none of them, except perhaps in one or two of the most rabid
anti-Mormon works, which I have not thought it worth while to notice, is
the conduct of the Illinois mob defended.