The first business of the meeting was the appointment of a committee to prepare an address stating the grievances of the people with somewhat greater fulness than the manifesto above quoted. Like the latter, it conceded at the start that there was no law under which the object in view could be obtained. It characterized the Mormons as but little above the negroes as regards property or education; charged them with having exerted a "corrupting influence" on the slaves;* asserted that even the more intelligent boasted daily to the Gentiles that the Mormons would appropriate their lands for an inheritance, and that their newspaper organ taught them that the lands were to be taken by the sword. Noting the rapid increase in the immigration of members of the new church, the address, looking to a near day when they would be in a majority in the county, asked: "What would be the state of our lives and property in the hands of jurors and witnesses who do not blush to declare, and would not upon occasion hesitate to swear, that they have wrought miracles, and have been the subjects of miraculous and supernatural cures, have conversed with God and his angels, and possess and exercise the gifts of divination and of unknown tongues, and are fired with the prospect of obtaining inheritances without money and without price, may be better imagined than described." That this apprehension was not without grounds will be seen when we come to the administration of justice in Nauvoo and in Salt Lake City. * The Mormons never hesitated to change their position on the slavery question. An elder's address, published in the Evening and Morning Star of July, 1833, said: "As to slaves, we have nothing to say. In connection with the wonderful events of this age, much is doing toward abolishing slavery and colonizing the blacks in Africa." Three years later, in April, 1836 the Messenger and Advocate published a strong proslavery article, denying the right of the people of the North to interfere with the institution, and picturing the happy condition of the slaves. Orson Hyde, in the Frontier Guardian in 1850 (quoted in the Millennial Star, Vol. XIII, p. 63), said: "When a man in the Southern states embraces our faith and is the owner of slaves, the church says to him, 'If your slaves wish to remain with you, and to go with you, put them not away; but if they choose to leave you, and are not satisfied to remain with you, it is for you to sell them or to let them go free, as your own conscience may direct you. The church on this point assumes not the responsibility to direct.'" Horace Greeley quoted Brigham Young as saying to him in Salt Lake City, "We consider slavery of divine institution and not to be abolished until the curse pronounced on Ham shall have been removed from his descendants" ("Overland journey," p. 211). The address closed with these demands:-- "That no Mormon shall in future move and settle in this county.