Negotiations were now renewed, and the citizens of Nauvoo, seeing that the State authorities rendered them no assistance, but permitted even their own authority to be braved by a lawless mob, and knowing that they would eventually be overpowered, accepted the following terms of settlement, in order to stop the further effusion of blood:-- 1. The city of Nauvoo will surrender. The force of Colonel Brockman to enter and take possession of the city tomorrow, the seventeenth of September, at three o'clock p. m. 2. The arms to be delivered to the Quincy committee, to be returned on the crossing of the river. 3. The Quincy committee pledge themselves to use their influence for the protection of persons and property from all violence, and the officers of the camp and the men pledge themselves to protect all persons and property from violence. 4. The sick and helpless to be protected and treated with humanity. 5. The Mormon population of the city to leave the State or disperse as soon as they can cross the river. 6. Five men, including the Trustees of The Church, and five clerks, with their families (Wm. Pickett not one of the number) to be permitted to remain in the city, for the disposition of property, free from all molestation and personal violence. 7. Hostilities to cease immediately, and ten men of the Quincy committee to enter the city, in the execution of their duty as soon as they think proper. These terms of capitulation were signed on the part of the citizens of Nauvoo, by Almon W. Babbitt, Joseph L. Heywood and John S. Fullmer; and on the part of the mob by Thomas S. Brockman and John Carlin; and by Andrew Johnson on behalf of the Quincy committee. The rest of my story is soon told. There was a hasty flight of the "Mormon" population and a number of the new citizens who had assisted in the defense of Nauvoo. They left their homes without being able to carry with them anything for their comfort. The sick, aged and infirm, together with the youth, without regard to sex or condition, shared the same fate; they had to lie out on the Mississippi bottoms where many perished through exposure, and beyond all doubt, all would have famished from hunger, had not their camp been filled with innumerable flocks of quail, so tame that women and children caught hundreds of them in their hands, and thus was the cry of hunger relieved, by what would generally be regarded as a miraculous occurrence. [6]