"Nor is it less legal for an insulted individual or community to resist oppression. For this reason, until the blood of Joseph and Hyrum Smith has been atoned for by hanging, shooting or slaying in some manner every person engaged in that cowardly, mean assassination, no Latter-Day Saint should give himself up to the law; for the presumption is that they wilt murder him in the same manner.... Neither should civil process come into Nauvoo till the United States by a vigorous course, causes the State of Missouri and the State of Illinois to redress every man that has suffered the loss of lands, goods or anything else by expulsion. ... If any man is bound to maintain the law, it is for the benefit he may derive from it.... Well, our charter is repealed; the murderers of the Smiths are running at large, and if the Mormons should wish to imitate their forefathers and fulfil the Scriptures by making it 'hard to kick against the pricks' by wearing cast steel pikes about four or five inches long in their boots and shoes to kick with, WHAT'S THE HARM?" Such utterances, which found imitation in the addresses of the leaders, and were echoed in the columns of Pratt's Prophet in New York, made it easy for their hostile neighbors to believe that the Mormons considered themselves beyond the reach of any law but their own. Some daring murders committed across the river in Iowa in the spring of 1845 afforded confirmation to the non-Mormons of their belief in church-instigated crimes of this character, and in the existence and activity of the Danite organization. The Mormon authorities had denied that there were organized Danites at Nauvoo, but the weight of testimony is against the denial. Gregg, a resident of the locality when the Mormons dwelt there, gives a fair idea of the accepted view of the Danites at that time:-- "They were bound together with oaths of the most solemn character, and the punishment of traitors to the order was death. John A. Murrell's Band of Pirates, who flourished at one time near Jackson, Tennessee, and up and down the Mississippi River above New Orleans, was never so terrible as the Danite Band, for the latter was a powerful organization, and was above the law. The band made threats, and they were not idle threats. They went about on horseback, under cover of darkness, disguised in long white robes with red girdles. Their faces were covered with masks to conceal their identity."* * "History of Hancock County." See also "Sketches and Anecdotes of the Old Settlers," p. 34. Phineas Wilcox, a young man of good reputation, went to Nauvoo on September 16, 1845, to get some wheat ground, and while there disappeared completely. The inquiry made concerning him led his friends to believe that he was suspected of being a Gentile spy, and was quietly put out of the way.* * See Lee's "Mormonism Unveiled," pp. 158-159, for accounts of methods of disposing of objectionable persons at Nauvoo.