THREATS OF THE MOB—APPEAL OF THE SAINTS.
The third day after the events related in the preceding chapter, the mob, to the number of some five hundred, again came dashing into Independence bearing a red flag, and armed with rifles, pistols, dirks, whips and clubs. They rode in every direction in search of the leading elders, making the day hideous with their inhuman yells and wicked oaths. They declared it to be their intention to whip those whom they captured with from fifty to five hundred lashes each, allow their negroes to destroy their crops, and demolish their dwellings. Said they:
"We will rid Jackson County of the 'Mormons,' peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. If they will not go without, we will whip and kill the men; we will destroy their children, and ravish their women!"
"WE WILL RAVISH THEIR WOMEN!"
A threat most horrible. Worse than murder; for murder has in it yet some mercy as compared with ravishment, that worst exercise of brute force against helpless innocence. Murder when it has completed its work leaves its victim senseless and peaceful in death; "after life's fitful dream is over," he may sleep well. But what damning torments must that breast suffer which is robbed of its peace by brutal force! How deep the woe that bears the burden of an outraged modesty! How agonizing to be an object of pity! How much more cruel the living tortures of a life so humiliated than the calmness and the peace of death! When devils would with their direst terrors shake a people they say,
We will ravish your women!
The leading elders, seeing their own lives, and the property and lives of those over whom they presided in jeopardy, resolved to offer themselves as a ransom for The Church—willing to be scourged, or even put to death if that would satisfy their tormentors, and stop their inhuman cruelties practiced toward the flock of which the Holy Ghost had made them overseers. The men who thus offered their own lives for the lives of their friends were:
JOHN CORRILL,
JOHN WHITMER,
W. W. PHELPS,
A. S. GILBERT,
EDWARD PARTRIDGE,
ISAAC MORLEY.
Forever let their names be known throughout all Israel as men who have given the greatest evidence within the power of man to give, that they loved the brethren. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;" and that faith which will inspire in man a love for his fellows; that will lead him to offer his life as a ransom for his brethren, is so nearly akin to that faith and love which glowed within the breast of the Divine Master, that its source cannot be mistaken. But the inhuman wretches who had combined to drive the saints from their homes in Jackson County, were insensible to the sublime manifestations of love they witnessed. It appealed not to their adamantine hearts. With brutal imprecations they told these men that not only they, but every man, woman and child would be whipped or scourged until they consented to leave the county, as they had decreed that the "Mormons" should leave the county, or they "or the 'Mormons' must die."
The presiding brethren, finding that there was no alternative but for them to leave speedily or witness innocent blood shed by fiends incarnate, concluded to leave Jackson County. A new committee was selected by the mob to confer with the brethren, and the following agreement was entered into: