IN what is properly a companion volume to this--"The Missouri Persecutions"--I have told how the Latter-day Saints were driven from Missouri under a threat of extermination from the executive of that State, Lilburn W. Boggs. When fleeing from Missouri, where they had suffered so much from mob violence, and from the State government officials, the Mormon exiles crossed the Mississippi into the State of Illinois, at the point near where the city of Quincy is located--in fact, at the Quincy Ferry. Their destitute condition, together with the injustice they had suffered in Missouri--the spectacle of a people in free America being driven from their homes and exiled from one of the States of the American Union because of religious beliefs--aroused the indignation and excited the sympathy of the people of Quincy and vicinity. A kind reception was given to the exiles by the people of this section of Illinois, one very similar to that given to many of the same people by the inhabitants of Clay County, when a cruel persecution had driven some twelve hundred of them from their homes in Jackson County, Missouri, five years before. [1] The Democratic Association of Quincy was especially active in the interests of the exiles. In the month of February a meeting was called by this association to inquire into the situation of the Mormon exiles. At this first meeting all that was done was to pass a resolution, to the effect that the people called Latter-day Saints were in a situation requiring the aid of the people of Quincy. A committee of eight was appointed to call a general meeting of both citizens and Mormons, and to receive a statement from the latter of their condition, with a view to relieving their necessities. The committee was instructed to get the Congregational church in which to hold the next meeting, but the directors having in charge that building would not allow it to be used for that purpose. I speak of this to show the kind of charity existing in the breasts of some pretended followers of Him who taught that charity was the crowning virtue. Failing to secure the church, the second meeting was held in the courthouse. At this meeting the special committee appointed at the first meeting reported its labors. The committee had received statements from Sidney Rigdon and others in relation to the expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri, and suggested a series of resolutions setting forth that the exiled strangers were entitled to the sympathy and aid of the people of Quincy; That a numerous committee, composed of individuals from every part of the town, be appointed to allay the prejudices of the misguided citizens of Quincy, and explain that it was not the design of the exiled Saints to lower the wages of the laboring classes, but to secure something to save them from starvation;