The kindred and friends of the offenders, with certain lawyers and high priests, entered into a secret covenant to destroy the people who were in favor of law and justice, and to save the guilty judges from the just penalty of their misdeeds. This was, in fact, the re-establishment of the order of Gadianton. They proposed to assassinate the governor, set up a king to rule the country, and destroy its liberties. That same year they murdered the chief judge Lachoneus, the younger, as he sat in the judgment seat. The result was not what the plotters anticipated; for the people, being dissatisfied with the condition of affairs, divided into tribes, every man with his family uniting with his kindred and friends. This completely disorganized the government and deranged the plans of the conspirators. Some men had large families and many kindred and friends, and their tribes were correspondingly large. Each tribe appointed its chief, or leader, and it was his special duty to see that the laws they had adopted were properly carried out (B. C. 30). While these terrible social overturnings were taking place on this continent, how different were the events that were occurring in the midst of the house of Israel on the eastern continent! for it was in this year that Jesus, the Redeemer of the world, was baptized by John in Jordan, as Lehi, Nephi, and others of the ancient prophets had long before foretold; and it was in this year that he commenced his public ministry, and began to teach men the law of his gospel. There was but little to unite the Nephite tribes except their fear of the Gadianton robbers. This appears to have led to a confederacy for the purpose of defense. They agreed to keep peace with one another, and establish laws to prevent one tribe trespassing upon the rights of the others. The secret association that had slain the chief judge elected one Jacob to be their leader. Seeing that their enemies, the tribes of the people, were too numerous to contend with, he commanded his followers to flee into the northernmost parts of the land, where they could build up a kingdom to themselves. They carried out his plan, and their flight was too speedy to be intercepted. In the north they built a large city which they called Jacobugath.