History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 6Smith, Joseph, Jr.
History
History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Volume 6
Smith, Joseph, Jr.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Smith, Joseph, Jr., 1805-1844
The name of this individual is, no doubt, familiar to most of our
readers. He has obtained some celebrity in the world also, not for
his reputed virtue, but for his supposed crimes.
It will be recollected that he is the person who was basely and
falsely implicated, along with Joseph Smith, as the reputed [would
be] murderer of ex-Governor Boggs, while Mr. Smith was charged with
being accessory before the fact. A vexatious lawsuit was instituted
against Joseph Smith, wherein he was charged with the above-named
crime; and finally, after many attempts of the governor of Missouri
to get him into his power, was acquitted by the United States Court
for the district of Illinois,
Stories of murder and blood were circulated from Maine to Missouri;
they were iterated and reiterated by the newspapers of the whole
Union, and painted in the most glowing colors that human ingenuity
could invent. Mr. Rockwell was branded as a murderer, and Joseph
Smith as accessory before the fact, without any other evidence
than a story fabricated by some of our generous politicians,
engendered in falsehood by hearts as dark as Erebus for religious
and political effect.
This demagoguery and political corruption has caused an innocent
man to be immolated in a Missouri dungeon for upwards of eight
months, without the slightest evidence of his guilt, or even the
most remote evidence of crime leading to his committal. He was
taken without process, and committed to jail upon mere supposition,
and finally acquitted without any shadow of proof having been
adduced from beginning to end. This is the way that Missouri treats
free-born American citizens, and they can obtain no redress.
Mr. Rockwell arrived here on Monday night, and has given us some
of the details of his history since he was first taken in Missouri
to the present time; and we can assure our readers that it will "a
tale unfold" relative to that state, which even many of those who
have been driven therefrom will find it difficult to believe that
there did exist such monsters in human shape.
_Thursday, 28.--_At home. Elder Orson Hyde returned {145} from Adams
county, having obtained quite a number of signatures to the Memorial to
Congress, and made an affidavit of what he learned in Warsaw concerning
the mob.
_Affidavit of Orson Hyde--Disclosing Plan to Drive the Saints_.
STATE OF ILLINOIS,
CITY OF NAUVOO. ss.
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