I am very respectfully your ob't Serv't,
L. W. Boggs,
Commander-in-chief.[[3]]
In the meantime Major-General Lucas and Brigadier-General Wilson, both of Jackson county, (who had, five years previously, assisted in driving about 1,200 "Mormon" citizens from that county, besides burning 203 houses, and assisted in murdering several, and plundering the rest), raised forces to the amount of several thousand men, and appeared before the city of Far West in battle array.
A few of the militia then paraded in front of the city, which caused the cowardly assailants to come to a halt at about a mile distant, in full view of the town.
A messenger arrived from them and demanded three persons before they massacred the rest and laid the town in ashes. The names of the persons demanded were Adam Lightner, John Clemenson, and his wife. They gave no information who this army were, nor by what authority they came; neither had we at that time any knowledge of the governor's order, nor any of these movements, the mail having been designedly stopped by our enemies for three weeks previously. We had supposed, on their first appearance, that they were friendly troops sent for our protection; but on receiving this alarming information of their wicked intentions, we were much surprised, and sent a messenger with a white flag to inquire of them who they were, and what they wanted of us, and by whose authority they came.
This flag was fired upon by Captain Bogart, the Methodist priest, who afterwards told me the same with his own mouth. After several attempts, however, we got an interview, by which we learned who they were, and that they pretended to have been sent by the governor to exterminate our people.
Upon learning this fact no resistance was offered to their will or wishes. They demanded the arms of the militia, and forcibly took them away. They requested that Mr. Joseph Smith and other leaders of the Church should come into their camp for consultation, giving them a sacred promise of protection and safe return. Accordingly, Messrs. Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight, George W. Robinson, and myself started in company with Colonel Hinkle to their camp when we were soon abruptly met by General Lucas with several hundred of his soldiers, in a hostile manner, who immediately surrounded us, and set up the most hideous yells that might have been supposed to have proceeded from the mouths of demons, and marched us as prisoners within their lines.
There we were detained for two days and nights, and had to sleep on the ground, in the cold month of November, in the midst of rain and mud, and were continually surrounded with a strong guard, whose mouths were filled with cursing and bitterness, blackguardism and blasphemy—who offered us every abuse and insult in their power, both by night and day; and many individuals of the army cocked their rifles and, taking deadly aim at our heads, swore they would shoot us.
While under these circumstances, our ears were continually shocked with the relation of the horrid deeds they had committed and which they boasted of. They related the circumstance in detail of having, the previous day, disarmed a certain man in his own house, and took him prisoner, and afterwards beat out his brains with his own gun, in presence of their officers. They told of other individuals lying here and there in the brush, whom they had shot down without resistance, and who were lying unburied for the hogs to feed upon.