The temple was always a source of envy to the enemies of the Saints, and it was feared that if it continued to stand it would be a bond between its exiled builders and the city from which they had been cruelly driven, and an inducement for them to return. On the tenth of November, 1848, an incendiary, therefore, set it on fire, and the tower was destroyed, and the whole building so shattered, that on the twenty-seventh of May, 1850, a tornado blew down the north wall. I was informed by M. M. Morrill, who at the time of my visit was mayor of Nauvoo, and, by the way, one who had assisted in its defense when attacked by the mob, that one Joseph Agnew, confessed to being the incendiary. Finally all the walls were pulled down and the stone hauled away for building purposes, until now, not one stone stands upon another. Even the very foundation has been cleared away, and the excavation for the basement filled up and the site covered with inferior buildings.
At the time of my visit, in the summer of 1885, the population of Nauvoo numbered about seventeen hundred, nine-tenths of whom were Germans. The principal occupation is grape-growing, vineyards covering some portions of the city plat, which was once the principal business center. The whole place has a half-deserted, half-dilapidated appearance, and seems to be withering under a blight, from which it refuses to recover.
Such is the fate of Nauvoo, which once promised to be the first city of Illinois, and beyond all question would have been so had there existed sufficient virtue and honor in that State to have protected its founders in their rights.
* * * * * * *
Still stands the forest primeval; but under the
Shade of its branches
Dwells another race, with other customs
And languages.
The quotation connects me with my introduction, and reminds me that I have completed the task proposed in these pages. But in the fate which overtook the survivors of the Acadian peasant-exiles from Nova Scotia, and the Mormons exiles from Illinois, the former fails altogether to suggest the faintest hint of a parallel.
Only along the shores of the mournful and
mystic Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers
from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die
in its bosom,
Finishes the story of the Acadian exiles. Not so the story of the exiles from Illinois. They did not perish in exile, nor did merely a handful of them, broken in spirits as in fortunes return to live silent and sad on the site of their former homes. The Mormon exiles were not broken and scattered—they remained a people; beyond their exile they were destined to have a glorious history. Their faith in their religion was not shattered. Their church was not disrupted. Their hearts were not turned against their prophets. Their spirits were not blighted nor their hearts bowed down beyond the power of recovery; nor their fortunes so blasted that they could not hope for prosperity—for God was with them.
The institution—The Church—brought into existence, and its doctrines developed amid so much of spiritual tempest and pursued so relentlessly by mob violence, and which may be said to have had a second birth at Nauvoo, and to have received sanctification from the martyrdom of her earthly founder—The Church which these exiles bore with them into the western wilderness was not born to die. Whatever might be the fate of The Church and the Saints in other dispensations of the Gospel, God had now introduced the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, in which He has decreed that all things in Christ shall be gathered together in one—even in Him.[[8]] A dispensation in which the salvation of man and the redemption of the earth itself shall be consummated. And the earth and men made ready for the all glorious reign of truth and righteousness so long promised by God and His prophets. Hence The Church was not destroyed; and the people who fled with her to the wilderness did not perish. The blinding storms of sleet and rain which enveloped their principal companies as in melancholy trains they penetrated the wilderness of the then territory of Iowa, might easily have been taken for God's curtain rung down upon the most melancholy scene in America's history—the scene of a people in free America—the boasted asylum for the oppressed, where religious freedom is guaranteed by express constitutional provision—fleeing from the worst forms of oppression—the oppression of mob violence invoked in Illinois to crush their religious faith. But the curtain so rung down was not upon the final act. The hand of God again rolled it up; and when He did, it was to reveal to the world the exiles as the redeemers of desert wastes; the planters of cities; the builders of temples, the founders of States; and for themselves and for their religious faith so entrenched, so strengthened, so enlarged that the world shall never, while the earth itself remains, or sun or stars endure be rid of that faith founded—under God—by JOSEPH SMITH, THE PROPHET-MARTYR OF NAUVOO.