The Expositor was produced and read in the council. It was held by some that the purpose for which it was published was to provoke the people to some overt act which would make them amenable to the law, and increase the bitterness of the outside prejudice against them. This was doubtless the case. Such it seems was the understanding of the council. In relation to this circumstance Elder Taylor remarks:
"With a perfect knowledge, therefore, of the designs of these infernal scoundrels who were in our midst, as well as those who surrounded us, the city council entered upon an investigation of the matter. They felt that they were in a critical position, and that any move made for the abating of that press would be looked upon, or at least represented, as a direct attack upon the liberty of speech, and that, so far from displeasing our enemies, it would be looked upon by them as one of the best circumstances that could transpire to assist them in their nefarious and bloody designs."
After spending nearly a whole night in considering the best plan to pursue, it was finally decided to declare the Expositor a nuisance, and order its abatement. Elder Taylor made the motion and it was carried unanimously, with the exception of one vote, and that person acknowledged the righteousness of the movement, but feared it would afford the enemies of the city too great an advantage by giving some ground for the cry that would be raised, that the freedom of the press had been overthrown in Nauvoo. It is quite certain, however, that if the city council had not taken this means of suppressing the Expositor, the citizens would have risen en masse and a mob would have destroyed it: and that would have given the enemies of the Saints as good ground for agitation against Nauvoo and her people as the action of the city council did. So Elder Taylor's motion prevailed.
The Expositor Press was destroyed by the city marshal, John P. Green, and a small posse of men he called to his assistance. The type was pied in the streets and the papers in the office taken out and burned. The whole proceeding was done quietly but determinedly. The only force employed was the breaking in of the doors to the Expositor office when admittance was denied. Some of the leading apostates set fire to their houses and fled to Carthage, the county seat of Hancock County, with the lie on their lips that their lives were in danger. Fortunately the police in Nauvoo discovered the houses of these men on fire and extinguished the flames before any material harm was done, so that they had no blackened ruins to point to as a witness of Mormon atrocity.
All the mischief anticipated from suppressing the Expositor nuisance came to pass. "The Mormons had laid unhallowed hands upon the press!" "They opposed the freedom of speech!" "The laws were no longer a protection to life and property in Nauvoo!" "A mob at Nauvoo under a city ordinance had violated the highest privilege in the government!" Such were the sentences that flew as if on the wings of the wind to all parts of Illinois.
A mass meeting was held at Warsaw, the prevailing sentiment of which was that "to seek redress in the ordinary mode would be utterly ineffectual." The meeting therefore adopted resolutions announcing that those present were at all times ready to co-operate with their fellow citizens in Missouri and Iowa to exterminate—utterly exterminate—the Mormon leaders—the authors their troubles. Another mass meeting was held at Carthage at which the Warsaw resolutions were adopted.
The anti-Mormon press teemed with intemperate articles, outrageously false accusations and frantic appeals to the very worst passions of human nature. The citizens of Nauvoo were represented as a horde of lawless ruffians and brigands; anti-American and anti-republican; steeped in crime and iniquity; opposed to freedom of speech and to progress; among whom neither persons nor property were secure. They were accused also of having designs upon the citizens of Illinois and of the United States; and for these things the people were called upon to rise en masse and utterly exterminate them.
While these falsehoods were being extensively circulated through Illinois and the surrounding states, it was the most difficult thing, almost impossible to get a true statement of the case before the country. True accounts of the proceedings of the city council in the Expositor affair were published in the Times and Seasons and also in the Neighbor; but it was impossible to circulate them in Hancock and surrounding counties, as they were destroyed at the post offices. To get them abroad Elder Taylor had to send them a distance of thirty or forty miles from Nauvoo before posting them. In some instances they had to be taken to St. Louis, a distance of two hundred miles, to ensure their reaching their destination.
The systematic circulation of falsehood on the one hand, and the suppression of the truth on the other, resulted in a tremendous storm of indignation against the Saints—especially against the leading Elders—that threatened to overwhelm them.
In the midst of this excitement, complaint was made by Francis M. Higbee, and a warrant issued against the members of the city council for riot in destroying the Expositor press and fixtures. The warrant was issued by Mr. Morrison, a justice of the peace in Carthage, and required the constable, Mr. Bettisworth, to bring the parties named in it before him, "or some other justice of the peace," to be dealt with according to law. When the writ was served on the members of the council they expressed a perfect willingness to submit to an investigation of their proceedings; but as the law of the state made it the privilege of the accused to "appear before the issuer of the writ or any other justice of the peace," they desired to avail themselves of this privilege, and go before some other magistrate than Justice Morrison, alleging as their reason for this that it was unsafe for them to go to Carthage. The constable refused to grant their request, whereupon they sued for a writ of habeas corpus before the municipal court of Nauvoo, and on a hearing of the case they were dismissed.[[2]]