ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES TO THE MORMONS ARISING FROM THE ENLISTMENT OF THE BATTALION. The "call" for the Mormon Battalion was not an unfriendly act on the part of the United States' government towards the Mormon people. A representative of the Church, as we have seen, had appealed most earnestly to the executive of the nation for aid in the western emigrations of that people; and when it was decided by the administration to "accept" the services of such a force of volunteers, the Mormon leaders received the decision as an answer to their appeal for aid. =A Sacrifice Nevertheless.=--But notwithstanding the government service was asked for by the representative of the Mormon people, and the granting of it was regarded by the Mormon leaders at the time as a great advantage to their people, it brought to the volunteers and to the people generally much of sacrifice. For one thing the opportunity to avail themselves of their tendered service to the government came at an unexpected and a most inconvenient time. As explained afterwards by Col. Kane, "The young and those who could best have been spared, were then away from the main body, either with pioneer companies in the van, or, their faith unannounced, seeking work and food about the northwest settlements, to support them till the return of the season for commencing emigration. The force was therefore to be recruited from among the fathers of families, and others whose presence it was most desirable to retain."[21:a] Practically five hundred wagons were left without teamsters, and as many families were left without their natural protectors and providers. The families of the Battalion, with the families of their friends, in whose care they must leave their loved ones, and upon whom they must depend for succor, were then scattered in a string of camps for some hundreds of miles between Nauvoo and Council Bluffs, with no certain abiding place designated, and no immediate prospect of being permanently settled. To volunteer for a "war-march" of two thousand miles, much of which was desert, under such circumstances, was doubly hard. Moreover the Mormon people, from their then point of view, had little to be grateful for to the government of the United States. Their appeals from what to them was the injustice of Missouri and Illinois had met with but cold reception at Washington. They did not and could not be expected to understand, much less sympathize with, the refinements employed by the national legislators in drawing nice distinctions about the division of sovereignty between the states and the general government. They were self-conscious of wrongs inflicted upon their community in the two states in which they had settled--Missouri and Illinois. They had appealed to the general government for a redress of those grievances without avail; and now they were asked by their leaders to go into the service of that government which might mean the sacrifice of life, and surely meant the abandonment