A GLANCE AT HISTORY.
The Prophet Joseph Smith was born at Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont, U. S. A., December 23, 1805, his father being a farmer. In the spring of the year 1820, when Joseph was a little over fourteen years of age, he became deeply interested in religious matters. He read the passage in James i: 5: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him." With full reliance upon that promise in the Divine Word, this humble lad prayed to God and received the heavenly manifestation. He continued faithful and was instructed by messengers from heaven, and received and brought forth the Book of Mormon. When these facts became known to the people in the vicinity of where he resided, he was made the object of false and slanderous reports, and severe persecutions. Many attempts were made to kill him, and every device was used to get the plates from him; but the Lord protected him, and people began to believe his testimony. In 1829, John the Baptist came and ordained him to the Aaronic Priesthood; in the same year the Apostles Peter, James and John ordained him to the Apostleship.
In obedience to the command of God, the Church of Jesus Christ was once more organized on the earth, with the promise from the Lord that it would never again be taken from among men; that it was restored preparatory to the ushering in of Christ's millennial reign on earth. Some of its members were ordained and sent out to preach. Those who received their testimony and were baptized were filled with the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, and the word was confirmed with signs following. The Church rapidly increased in membership, and branches were organized in many of the States. A Temple was erected in Kirtland, Ohio. The State of Missouri became the principal place for the gathering of the people; but because they would not join in the practices of the lawless element there, and were believers in an unpopular religion, an organized mob drove them from their habitations, contrary to law, justice and humanity, to wander on the bleak prairies, in wintry weather, till they left the tracks of their bleeding feet on the frozen ground. Men, women and children were subjected to the most fiendish outrages—starved, tortured, butchered. This was in a land that boasted of religious freedom and tolerance!
Finally, about twelve thousand who had escaped the exterminating order of Missouri's mob found a resting place in Illinois, and built up the beautiful city of Nauvoo. But the refuge was only temporary, for the bigot and the criminal united in a relentless and bloody warfare upon them. Less than six years after their expulsion from Missouri, their Prophet was assassinated in Carthage jail, while in the hands of the officers of the law, and under the pledged protection of the governor of the State, Thomas Ford. This was on June 27, 1844. Joseph Smith had committed no offense; he was guilty of no wrong. "The law cannot reach him, but powder and ball shall!" was the cry of his murderers. The blood of the martyred Prophet and his fellow-religionists still cries to God for vengeance!
The enemies of the Saints, however, were doomed to disappointment, for the death of the Prophet did not stop the work, or break up the Church organization. The leadership devolved on the Twelve Apostles, with Brigham Young as their President; even greater energy was displayed than before, and the Temple at Nauvoo was soon completed. Fiendish plots were laid, and barbarous plans adopted to blacken the character of the "Mormon" people, and make them appear abominable in the eyes of the public. Numerous atrocities were committed by the mobocrats, who falsely attributed them to the Saints, and thus aroused public indignation against them.
Hoping to secure immunity from these unjustifiable attacks, they consented to move from the State, the mob agreeing to allow them to remain in peace a given time, so the exodus could be accomplished. This agreement was soon disregarded by the persecutors, who were reckless, and impatient to despoil the Saints. When a portion of the latter had left Nauvoo, the remnant was attacked by an armed force, and driven into Iowa in a destitute condition. General Thomas L. Kane, of Philadelphia, who passed that way a few days afterward, related his experience in a lecture before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The following is an extract from his address: "Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings; bowed and cramped by cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poor-house, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick; they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger-cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shivers of fever were searching to the marrow. These were Mormons, famishing in Lee County, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of September, in the year of our Lord 1846. The city—it was Nauvoo, Illinois. The Mormons were the owners of that city, and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their plows, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread—these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their Temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of their dying."
Out into the trackless American wilds, into an Indian country, the "Mormons" wended their way, weary and destitute, for more than fifteen hundred miles, their pathway being marked by the graves of their dead. The history of their privations and sufferings is harrowing in the extreme. The lives of not less than a thousand of their number were sacrificed in the relentless persecutions connected with the exodus from Illinois. But God opened their way, and as a result of their unity, humility and faith through severe tribulations and deep sorrows, they were guided to a refuge in the valley of the Great Salt Lake. Three years later, in 1850, Congress created the Territory of Utah. Under the territorial form of government, the governor, secretary, judges, marshals, postmasters, election and other territorial officers, are appointed by the President of the United States.
In their new home, the Saints increased in numbers and were beginning to enjoy some of the comforts of life, as a reward of their toil, when, in 1857, the national government was induced, through the misrepresentations of some of its officials, to send an army against the "Mormons," who prepared for another exodus, and to defend themselves. But the time required in such an undertaking gave the government an opportunity to discover that it had been misled and to change its course. The record of the expedition, with its expenditure of twenty millions of dollars, stands as a monument of the folly of judging a matter hastily.
The current of popular opinion, however, had set in strongly against the Saints, and it is difficult to change it; but the majority of those with whom they are now in contact are not the lawless element of Missouri and Illinois, so that the violence of former times is no longer used against the body of the people where they are known. But the adverse feeling caused legislation hostile to them. They bowed to the law, content to leave the issue between those who raised their hands against them and the God of Israel, in whose justice, mercy and omnipotence they have perfect confidence. Their Church property was seized by the government—property which was the voluntary gift of Church members, for the support of the poor, the building of Temples, and similar purposes. But with a better understanding of the motives and lives of the Saints, the government recognized the great wrong done, and sought to right it. The forfeited property not wasted in litigation was restored, adverse legislation ceased, friendliness superseded an unjust, mistaken antagonism, and in 1896 Utah was admitted to statehood.