Then follows an account of the arrests of the Prophet and the manner in which he was released from the officers as already briefly stated in this chapter; he dwells at some length on the events of the last arrest made near Dixon, detailing the cruelty and brutality of the officers. He then concludes:
"Why Governor Ford should lend his assistance in a vexatious prosecution of this kind we are at a loss to determine. He possesses a discretionary power in such cases, and has a right to use his judgment, as the chief magistrate of this state; and knowing, as he does, that the whole proceedings connected with this affair are illegal, we think that in justice he ought to have leaned to the side of the oppressed and innocent, particularly when the persecuted and prosecuted were citizens of his own state who had a right to his sympathies and to be shielded by his paternal care, as the father of this state. Does not his excellency know, and do not all the citizens of the state know, that the Mormons have been robbed, pillaged and plundered in Missouri without any redress? That the Mormons en masse were exterminated from that state without any legal pretext whatever? How, then, could they have any legal claim upon Joseph Smith or any Mormon? Have the Mormons ever obtained any redress for injuries received in Missouri? No. Is there any prospect of their receiving any remuneration for their loss, or redress for their grievances? No. When a demand was make upon the governor of Missouri, by Governor Carlin of this state for the persons who kidnapped several Mormons, were they given up by that state? No. Why then should our executive feel so tenacious in fulfilling all the nice punctillios of law, when the very state that is making these demands has robbed, murdered and exterminated by wholesale, without law, and is merely making use of it at present as a cat's paw to destroy the innocent and murder those that they have already persecuted nearly to the death.
"It is impossible that the State of Missouri should do justice with her coffers groaning with the spoils of the oppressed, and her hands yet reeking with the blood of the innocent. Shall she yet gorge her bloody maw with other victims? Shall Joseph Smith be given into her hands illegally? Never! No, never!! No, NEVER!!!"
He afterwards published in the Neighbor full details of this exparte trial with the affidavits of the several witnesses given in extenso. Those affidavits make up an indictment against the State of Missouri which brings the hot blush of shame to the cheek of every lover of his country's institutions. In their treatment of the Latter-day Saints the leading officials of Missouri were guilty not only of high-handed oppression, but of such high crimes and misdemeanors as would have hung them had they met the just penalty of their misdeeds. But as those who suffered were members of an unpopular Church, the atrocious and bloody deeds of that state were passed by and no one felt called upon to demand justice in behalf of the oppressed; and those powers that were appealed to for redress of grievances—the President and congress of the United States—claimed to have no power to interfere. Mobocracy had triumphed in Missouri, and there was no power in the government to call Missouri to an account for her wrong doing.
At the time of the Prophet's arrest at Dixon there was an exciting political campaign in progress in that part of Illinois where Nauvoo was located, for representative to congress, and also for county officers. Two parties were in the field, Whigs and Democrats; each anxious to obtain the Mormon vote. The Democrats accused the Whigs of being the instigators of this last arrest of Joseph Smith, at that particular juncture, that Governor Ford, a Democrat, might be compelled to issue a warrant for his arrest and thus influence the Saints against the Democrats; and in proof of this referred to the fact that John C. Bennett, at whose instance, doubtless, this last warrant for the arrest of the Prophet was gotten up in Missouri, was the special pet of what was called the "Whig junto" in Springfield; that a special session of the circuit court was called in Daviess County, Missouri, in order to have the warrant act at the proper juncture; that Cyrus Walker, the Whig candidate for Congress, was within six miles of Dixon when the Prophet was arrested; that he refused to act as council for him only on the condition that he pledged him his vote (that pledge Walker was pleased to consider as binding to his interest the entire Mormon vote); that on this pledge being given he cancelled all his appointments to speak in that part of the state and repaired to Nauvoo where the validity of the arrest and warrants on which it was made were investigated.
This charge the Whigs vehemently denied and in turn accused the Democrats with having made it to influence the Mormon vote in favor of themselves. Thus crimination and recrimination went on, and whichever party the people of Nauvoo voted for, they were sure to incur the wrath of the other.
The Prophet Joseph kept his pledge with Cyrus Walker and voted for him, but the Democratic ticket was overwhelmingly successful in Nauvoo, and in the county and district. As soon as the result was made known the disappointed candidates and their friends were enraged. They began plotting against the people of Nauvoo, and started an agitation that had for its object the expulsion of the Saints from the state. Public meetings were called and committees appointed to correspond with surrounding counties to ascertain how much assistance they would render in expelling the Mormons from the state.
No effort whatever was made to conceal their intentions. The banishment of the citizens of Nauvoo from the state was openly discussed and advocated in public meetings and through the press. Bitter fruit, this, to be found growing on the tree of liberty, in the land of the free—in the asylum for the oppressed of all nations!