The Clay county people showed considerable sympathy for the strangers during this winter, and permitted them to make their home with them. For three years the Saints were there, hoping all the time to return to Jackson county and using all lawful means--from trials in a justice's court to an appeal to the President of the United States--to gain their homes and rights. All efforts seemed to be useless. Governor Dunklin was as weak as a child, and more trouble seemed to be growing. The Clay county people thought that the Saints could never go back and that if they did not go away somewhere at once, civil war would arise. In those days feeling was very bitter between slave holders and those who did not hold slaves. The Saints were not slave holders, and they were coming into Missouri very fast. The Missourians held slaves and were very jealous of the strangers. Then their religion, though the purest and best in the world, held them from the sympathy of their neighbors. It did look as though war might begin between the Saints and their enemies, for though our people would have made no attack, they would have defended their wives and children to the death. On the 29th of June, 1836, the citizens of Clay county held a meeting and adopted resolutions asking the Saints to leave. They did it in a gentle manner, saying that they had no right to command the Saints to go, but asked it for the good of all. They suggested that our people move to Wisconsin or some other place where they could be by themselves, but they did not expect them to set out before they had sold their property without loss. They offered to help them find a place and appointed a committee to raise funds to aid the poor. They also promised to use their influence in causing persecution to cease. A number of prominent men carried these resolutions to the Saints, and two days later the leading Elders met and acted on them. They agreed to leave, but declared that they were innocent of any lawlessness or crime whatever. They thanked the people of Clay for their kindness in the past and for their offer of help, and in accepting the resolutions asking them to leave, they offered their act as a covenant of peace between the two people forever. What could show more gratitude? Clay county had been kind to them, though no kinder than one Christian should be to another. But the Saints--they were leaving their homes and moving into the barren wilderness to repay that kindness.