Testimony of Sidney Rigdon.
Introduction to Volume III.
Enlightenment a Factor in Determining Responsibility for Conduct.
Volume Three concludes, for the present, the history of the Church in Missouri. I think it proper, therefore, that here should be considered the causes of the Missouri persecutions, which resulted in the expulsion of the entire Church from that state.
There have been, of course, more extensive persecutions than those inflicted on the Saints in Missouri; but I doubt if there has ever been a persecution more cruel or terror-laden in its character. Viewed from the standpoint of its net results there were some fifty people, men, women, and children, killed outright; about as many more were wounded or cruelly beaten, and many more perished indirectly because of the exposure to which they were subjected through the winters of 1833-4 and 1838-9.
In round numbers it is estimated that between twelve and fifteen thousand people, citizens of the United States, after being dispossessed of their lands, were forcibly driven from the state. It is known that they paid to the United States government for land alone, three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars, which, at the minimum price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, would give them land holdings of over two hundred and fifty thousand acres, which represented for that day very large interests.[[1]]
To this list of results must be added the more horrible one of several cases of ravishment at Far West; and also, after barely escaping from the sentence of death pronounced by a court martial, the cruel imprisonment through weary months of a number of Church leaders.
In passing judgment upon such matters as these account must be taken of the age and country in which they occurred; likewise the pretensions to right views of life, and devotion to freedom on the part of the perpetrators of the injustice. Undoubtedly a heavier debt is incurred to history, to humanity and to God, when the parties who resort to such acts of mob violence and injustice live in an enlightened age, and where the free institutions of their country guarantee both the freedom and security of its citizens.