We, as a people, have labored and are still laboring under great injustice from the hands of a neighboring state. The Latter-day Saints have had their property destroyed, and their houses made desolate by the hands of the Missourians; murders have been committed with impunity, and many, in consequence of oppression, barbarism, and cruelty, have slept the sleep of death. They [the Saints] have been obliged to flee from their possessions into a distant land, in the chilling frosts of winter, robbed, spoiled, desolate, houseless, and homeless, without any just pretext {40} or shadow of law, without having violated the laws of that state, or the United States; and have had to wander as exiles in a strange land, without as yet being able to obtain any redress for their grievances. We have hitherto adopted every legal measure. First, we petitioned the State of Missouri, but in vain. We have memorialized Congress, but they have turned a deaf ear to our supplication, and referred us again to the State and _justice_ of Missouri. Doubtless many of the members of that honorable body were not sufficiently informed of the enormity and extent of the crimes of our persecutors, nor of the indelible stain which our national escutcheon has received through their inhuman daring. They have been allowed to revel in blood and luxuriate in the miseries of the oppressed, and no man has laid it to heart. The fact is that gentlemen of respectability and refinement, who live in a civilized society, find it difficult to believe that such enormities could be practiced in a Republican government. But our wrong cannot slumber. Such tyranny and oppression must not be passed over in silence. Our injuries, though past, are not forgotten by us; they still rankle in our bosoms, and the blood of the innocent yet cries for justice; and as American citizens we have appealed and shall still continue to appeal to the legally-constituted authorities of the land for redress, in the hopes that justice, which has long slumbered, may be aroused in our defense; that the spirit which burned in the bosoms of the patriots of '76 may fire the souls of their descendants; and though slow, that their indignation may yet be aroused at the injustice of the oppressor; and that they may yet mete out justice to our adversaries, and step forward in the defense of the innocent.