This brings me to the close of the story of the Missouri Persecutions. We have seen a people start out under the direction of the Lord to build up the City of Zion to his holy name; but because of their disobedience and failure to observe strictly those conditions upon which the Lord had promised them success in accomplishing so great a work, they were driven entirely from that county and state where that city is to be founded. We have seen a proud, sovereign state of the great American Union, with a constitution that guaranteed the largest possible religious and civil liberty to its citizens, ignore both the spirit and letter of that constitution. We have seen its officers shamefully violate the laws passed in pursuance of it; and from the chief executive down enter into plots to destroy the saints of God, or drive them from the State; in accomplishing which, they were guilty of the most cruel barbarity. It is no palliation of their offense to say that the saints had not strictly kept the commandments of God. Their offenses were against the laws of God rather than the laws of man; delinquencies that fell not under the power of the State to correct. So far as the State of Missouri was concerned, she was not justified in trampling on her own constitution and laws, and permitting not only her people but the officers of the State to commit outrages against an innocent people that would put savages to the blush of shame. I impeach the State of Missouri before the Bar of Nineteenth Century Civilization; and affirm that in the five years between 1833 and 1838, she permitted and became a party to acts of robbery, violence and blood which are a disgrace to the age and its boasted spirit of progress and toleration. I charge that Missouri was guilty of crimes the perpetration of which forbids the claim that in the United States of America, and in this enlightened century, there has been an abandonment of the barbarities of past ages. Before the great Bar of History, I impeach the State of Missouri. In the years from 1833 to 1838 there were committed within her borders and against an unoffending, and law-abiding people, acts of shameful robbery, arson, mob-violence; willful, wanton slaughter of men, women and children; worst of all, rape upon virtuous wives and maidens; and, at the last, illegal banishment of some twelve thousand people from the State. For these crimes, repeatedly committed and numerous, no offender was ever brought to punishment by the State. On the contrary the machinery of its government was employed and its officers exerted themselves to further oppress the innocent sufferers; so that instead of being a means for their protection, the government was made an engine for their oppression; and its legislature turning a deaf ear to the story of their wrongs, made liberal appropriations from the State treasury to defray the expenses of those who committed the outrages against them and drove them from the State.