Joseph Smith and his brethren, on hearing that the governor of Missouri was afraid to execute the laws by returning the exiled saints to their homes, again covenanted that they would never cease their exertions until Zion was redeemed, and truth, justice and law should triumph over falsehood, injustice, and mobocracy,—a covenant which they called upon the God of their fathers to witness, and which they engaged to fulfill either in this life or the life to come.
But standing above all human resolutions, as the heavens stand above the earth, is Jehovah's own decree that he will execute justice and judgment, and that he will not give to wickedness a lasting victory. Zion will be redeemed. God has decreed it. "Behold, I say unto you, the redemption of Zion must needs come by power; therefore, I will raise up unto my people a man, who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel, for ye are the children of Israel, and of the seed of Abraham, and ye must needs be led out of bondage with power, and with a stretched out arm: and as your fathers were led at the first, even so shall the redemption of Zion be." [A]
[Footnotes A Doc. & Cov. Sec. 103:15-18.]
CHAPTER XXIV.
ATTEMPT AT ARBITRATION.
Whether it was the fear of popular censure or the approach of Zion's Camp that awed the Jackson County mob into suggesting a peaceable adjustment of their difficulties with the saints, we cannot say. Perhaps both considerations had their weight. At any rate the month of May, 1834, found them suggesting to Governor Dunklin, through some influential gentlemen of Clay County, the propriety of dividing Jackson County so that the old settlers and the saints could occupy separate territory, and confine themselves within their respective limits, with the exception of the public right of ingress and egress upon the highway.
This plan of settling the Jackson County trouble was suggested by Colonel J. Thornton, and concurred in by Messrs. Reese, Atchison and Doniphan. Their communication brought out a reply from the governor in which he expressed his pleasure at these gentlemen making an effort to bring about a compromise of the difficulties. He told them that had he not been afraid of embarrassing himself as an officer of the State he should have exerted himself to have brought about a compromise even before then; but he was fearful of traveling out of the strict line of his duty as the chief executive of the State, should he do so. Said he:
My first advice would be to the "Mormons" to sell out their lands in Jackson County, and to settle somewhere else, where they could live in peace, provided they could get a fair price for their lands, and reasonable damages for injuries received. If this failed, I would try the citizens, and advise them to meet and rescind their illegal resolves of last summer, and agree to conform to the laws in every particular, in respect to the "Mormons."
Should success attend neither of these plans, he would then try the plan of dividing the county as suggested by Colonel Thornton. "If all these failed," said the governor, "then the simple question of legal right would have to settle it. It is this last that I am afraid I shall have to conform my action to in the end." From the whole tenor of this communication, we learn that even the governor understood that the "simple question of legal right" would reinstate the saints on the lands from which they had been driven. Here is an extract from the letter which confirms this statement: