The Missouri Persecutions

by B. H. Roberts

The leading elders with their families were to move from the county by the first of January following; and to use their influence to induce all their brethren to leave as soon as possible, one half by the first of January, 1834, and the remainder by April, 1834. They were also to use all the means in their power to stop any more of their brethren moving into the county; and also to use their influence to prevent the saints then enroute for Missouri settling permanently in Jackson County, but for those then on the way they were to be permitted to make temporary arrangements for shelter until a new location was agreed upon by the society. John Corrill and A. S. Gilbert were to be allowed to remain as general agents to settle up the business of The Church, so long as necessity required. Gilbert, Whitney & Co. were to be permitted to sell out their merchandise then on hand, but no more was to be imported. The Evening and Morning Star was not again to be published, nor a press established by any member of The Church in the county. Edward Partridge and W. W. Phelps were to be allowed to pass to and from the county to wind up their business affairs, provided they moved their families from the county by the first of January following. On the part of the mob, the committee pledged themselves to use all their influence to prevent any violence being used against the saints, so long as the foregoing stipulations were complied with on the part of The Church.^[A]

[Footnote A: Evening and Morning Star, p. 229.]

A day or two after this treaty was entered into, The Church in Zion dispatched Oliver Cowdery to Ohio to confer with the general Church authorities on the situation of the saints in Missouri. This conference resulted in the general authorities sending as special messengers Elders Orson Hyde and John Gould to Jackson County, with instructions to the saints not to dispose of their lands or other property, nor remove from the county, except those who had signed the agreement to do so.

Meantime the saints attempted to settle in Van Buren, the county joining Jackson on the south (the name has since been changed to Cass), but the people of that county, after the saints commenced a settlement, drew up an agreement to drive them from there, and destroy the fruits of their labors; so they were obliged to return to their former homes.

While the saints were making efforts to carry out the first part of the stipulation entered into with the mob of Jackson County, the mob on their part failed to refrain from acts of violence. Daily the saints were insulted. Houses were broken into, and the inmate threatened with being mobbed if they stirred in their defense. But Truth began to make herself heard. As the fiendish acts of the mob became known, they called forth execrations from various quarters. A number of articles published in the Western Monitor, printed at Fayette, Howard County, Missouri, censured the conduct of the mob, and suggested that the saints seek redress of the State authorities for the wrongs they had suffered. Whereupon the leaders of the mob began to threaten life, and declared that if any "Mormon" attempted to seek redress by law or otherwise, for defamation of character, or loss of property, he should die.

These threats, however, did not deter the saints from appealing to the chief executive of the State for a redress of grievances. A petition setting forth their suffering, and denying the allegations of the mob, was presented by Orson Hyde and W. W. Phelps to Daniel Dunklin, who, at the time, was governor of the State. In addition to relating the story of their wrongs, and denying the charges made by the mob, upon which the old settlers of Jackson County depended to excuse or defend their acts of cruelty toward the saints, the petition set forth that whenever that fatal hour arrived that the poorest citizen's person, property, or rights and privileges shall be trampled upon by lawless mobs with impunity, "that moment a dagger is plunged into the heart of the Constitution of the country, and the Union must tremble * * * We solicit," said they, "assistance to obtain our rights; holding ourselves amenable to the laws of our country, whenever we transgress them." They asked the governor by express proclamation or otherwise to raise a sufficient number of troops, who, with themselves, might be empowered to defend their rights; that they might sue for damages for the loss of property, for abuse, for defamation of character, and, if advisable, try for treason those who had trampled upon law and government, that the law of the land might not be defied, nor nullified, but peace restored to the country.

To this very reasonable request Governor Dunklin made a patriotic reply. He stated he would think himself unworthy the confidence with which he had been honored by his fellow citizens, did he not promptly employ all the means which the Constitution and laws had placed at his disposal to avert the calamities with which the saints were threatened, and added:

Ours is a government of laws, to them we all owe obedience, and their faithful administration is the best guarantee for the enjoyment of our rights. No citizen, nor number of citizens, have a right to take the redress of their grievances, whether real or imaginary, into their own hands. Such conduct strikes at the very existence of society, and subverts the very foundation on which it is based. I am not willing to persuade myself that any portion of the citizens of the State of Missouri are so lost to a sense of these truths as to require the exercise of force, in order to insure respect for them.

He advised the threatened saints, therefore, to make a trial of the efficacy of the laws; that wherein their lives had been threatened, they make affidavit to that effect before the circuit judge, or the justices of the peace in their respective districts, whose duty it then became to bind the threatening parties to keep the peace. By this experiment it would be proven whether the laws could be executed or not; and in the event that they could not be peacefully executed, the governor pledged himself, on being officially notified of that fact, to take such steps as would insure a favorable execution of them.

As to the injuries the saints had sustained in the loss of property, the governor advised them to seek redress by civil process—expressing the opinion that the courts would grant them relief.^[B]