The Missouri PersecutionsRoberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
History
The Missouri Persecutions
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saints -- Missouri -- History -- 19th century
As soon as the camp was reorganized at Salt River, Parley P. Pratt
and Orson Hyde were sent as delegates to wait upon Governor Dunklin,
at Jefferson City, and request him to call out a sufficient military
force to reinstate the saints in the possession of their homes. In the
interview the governor frankly admitted the justice of the demand,
but expressed fears that if he should so proceed, it would excite
civil war, and deluge the whole country with blood. He advised these
delegates to counsel their people, for the sake of peace, to sell the
lands from which they had been driven. To this the delegates refused to
consent, saying:
We will hold no terms with land pirates and murderers. If we are not
permitted to live on the lands we have purchased of the United States,
and be protected in our rights and persons, they will at least make a
good burying ground in which to lay our bones; and we shall hold on to
our possessions in Jackson County, for this purpose at least.
The governor could not and did not blame them; but he trembled for the
country, and dared not carry out what he admitted to be the plain,
imperative duties of his office.
Elders Pratt and Hyde rejoined the camp not far from the line of Ray
County. As soon as they arrived, the Prophet Joseph, his brother Hyrum,
Lyman Wight, and some others repaired to a grove, and heard their
report.
"After hearing our report," says Parley P. Pratt, "the President
(Joseph Smith) called on the God of our fathers to witness the justice
of our cause, and the sincerity of our vows, which we engaged to
fulfill whether in this life or in the life to come. For, as God lives,
truth, justice, and innocence shall triumph; and iniquity shall not
reign."
As the brethren approached Richmond, threats were made that they should
not pass through the town, and rumor had it that a force of men was
in waiting to intercept them. Daylight of the nineteenth of June saw
them, in spite of the threats, quietly passing through the streets of
the sleeping town. When they broke camp in the morning, they designed
reaching Clay County that day; but they met with so many reverses in
the day's march, such as wagons breaking down, wheels running off,
etc., that they failed to accomplish it. Early in the evening they went
into camp between two forks of Fishing River.
A plan had been laid for the complete destruction of "Joe Smith's
army," as Zion's Camp was called by the Missourians; and now the time
for its\ execution had arrived. A mob of two hundred men had been
raised in Jackson County, which was to cross the Missouri into Clay
County, about the mouth of Fishing River, where a man named Williams
kept a ferry. This mob was to be joined at the fords of Fishing River
by a party of sixty from Richmond; and still by another mob, seventy in
number, from Clay County. Indeed, it looked as if Zion's Camp was to be
annihilated forthwith.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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