I impeach the State of Missouri before the Bar of American Constitutions and Institutions; and charge that in the crimes permitted and by her officers perpetrated against the Latter-day Saints in the five years between 1833 and 1838, she both deserted and violated the principles of government upon which the State is founded. By failing--nay, worse, by refusing at first to protect by the majesty and righteous execution of her laws, and next by becoming an assailant and robber of the unoffending Latter-day Saints, she denied to them and deprived them of the right to property, the right to pursue happiness, the right to be free the right to worship God after the dictates of their own consciences. And by denying to them and depriving them of these rights, Missouri violated the fundamental principles of American government, and outraged American institutions. Lastly, I charge Missouri's historians, both those who have written the history of the counties in which the outrages I have detailed occurred, as well as the historians of the State at large, with having glazed over these deeds of infamy. They have either withheld or misrepresented the facts, and have descended so low as to become apologists for the State and the officers that could perpetrate and become a party to such acts of injustice, rapine and murder. The statements of fact in these pages are irrefutable and easy of verification. They can neither be successfully denied, gainsaid, nor explained away; nor can the impeachment of the State of Missouri before the Bar of History, Civilization or of American Institutions. The otherwise grand State of Missouri is stained with dishonor; because of her treatment of the Latter-day Saints on her escutcheon is to be seen the blotch of innocent blood unavenged. In undertaking the task of writing this history, the one thought above all others in my mind has been the desire to present to the youth of the Latter-day Saints, many of whose fathers passed through these trying scenes, with a circumstantial account of them that they might know how much was endured by their fathers for the truth's sake; that they might learn to prize it, not only for what it is in itself, but also to prize it to some degree for what it cost the fathers. But at the close of my task I find myself convinced that it is equally important that the people of Missouri and of the United States should have the plain facts presented to them, that they may not unwittingly, as the general tendency now is, become in a manner parties to the crime by approving what was done in that period, and thus fall under the displeasure of God, whose words are equally strong against those who shed the blood of the saints and the prophets, and those who applaud such crimes. APPENDICES. APPENDIX I. "MORMONS" IN JACKSON COUNTY. (_Taken from the "History of Jackson County, Missouri," published by Union Historical Co., Kansas City, Missouri,_ 1881, _pp._ 250 _to_ 269, _inclusive._)