The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901Linn, William Alexander
History
The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901
Linn, William Alexander
Latter Day Saints -- History; Utah -- History
"We were sworn to cherish constant enmity toward the United States
Government for not avenging the death of Smith, or righting the
persecutions of the Saints; to do all that we could toward destroying,
tearing down or overturning that government; to endeavor to baffle its
designs and frustrate its intentions; to renounce all allegiance and
refuse all submission. If unable to do anything ourselves toward the
accomplishment of these objects, to teach it to our children from the
nursery, impress it upon them from the death bed, entail it upon them as
a legacy." *
* Hyde's "Mormonism," p. 97.
In the suit of Charlotte Arthur against Brigham Young's estate, to
recover a lot in Salt Lake City which she alleged that Young had
unlawfully taken possession of, her verified complaint (filed July
11, 1874) alleged that the endowment oath contained the following
declaration:--"To obey him, the Lord's anointed, in all his orders,
spiritual and temporal, and the priesthood or either of them, and all
church authorities in like manner; that this obligation is superior to
all the laws of the United States, and all earthly laws; that enmity
should be cherished against the government of the United States; that
the blood of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and Apostles slain in this
generation shall be avenged."
As soon as the agreement to leave the state was made, the Mormons tried
hard to sell or lease the Temple, but in vain; and when the last Mormon
departed, the structure was left to the mercy of the Hancock County
"posse." Colonel Kane, in his description of his visit to Nauvoo soon
after the evacuation, says that the militia had defiled and defaced such
features as the shrines and the baptismal font, the apartment containing
the latter being rendered "too noisome to abide in."
Had the building been permitted to stand, it would have been to Nauvoo
something on which the town could have looked as its most remarkable
feature. But early on the morning of November 19, 1848, the structure
was found to be on fire, evidently the work of an incendiary, and what
the flames could eat up was soon destroyed. The Nauvoo Patriot deplored
the destruction of "a work of art at once the most elegant in its
construction, and the most renowned in its celebrity, of any in the
whole West."
When the Icarians, a band of French Socialists, settled in Nauvoo, they
undertook, in 1850, to rebuild the edifice for use as their halls of
reunion and schools. After they had expended on this work a good deal
of time and labor, the city was visited by a cyclone on May 27 of that
year, which left standing only a part of the west wall. Out of the stone
the Icarians then built a school house, but nothing original now remains
on the site except the old well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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