If in the jungle a man meets a tiger and is torn to pieces, no one thinks of holding the tiger to any moral accountability. Perhaps the hunt will be formed to destroy the beast, but that is merely to be rid of a dangerous animal, and prevent the repetition of the deed. If another meets a cruel death among savages in heathen lands, while some moral responsibility would hold against them, according to their degree of enlightenment, yet the fact that it was an act of savages would be held to reduce the degree of moral turpitude. And likewise even in civilized states, in localities to which the vicious may gravitate, when acts of violence are committed there, some allowance may be, and generally is, made for the ignorance and general brutality of the particular neighborhood.
By this process of reasoning I think it will appear quite clear that moral responsibility, both on the part of individuals and communities or nations, increases in proportion to their enlightenment. If, therefore, this principle be kept in view, the persecution of the Latter-day Saints by the people of Missouri was a very heinous offense.
True it may be said that the worst acts of cruelty were perpetrated by low, brutish men among the mob or in the militia—for these bodies were convertible from one to the other on shortest possible notice, and wholly as the exigencies of the enemies of the Saints demanded—but these were led and abetted by quite a different order of men: by lawyers, members of the state legislature, by county and district judges, by physicians, by professed ministers of the gospel, by merchants, by leading politicians, by captains, majors, colonels, and generals—of several grades—of the militia, by many other high officials of the state including the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and finally by the action of the state legislature which appropriated two hundred thousand dollars to defray the expenses incurred by the mob-militia in carrying out the Governor's order, exterminating the Saints from the state. These facts are made apparent in the pages of this and the two preceding volumes of the HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. The facts cannot be questioned. They are written out most circumstantially in the Prophet's story. Times, places, and names are given of the incidents related, and the more important of these may be corroborated by histories of these events other than our own.
The persecutions then of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri, and their final expulsion from that state, were crimes against the enlightenment of the age and of the state where the acts occurred; a crime against the constitutions and institutions both of the state of Missouri and of the United States; as also a crime against the Christian religion. All this we have in mind when speaking of the severity and cruelty of these compared with other persecutions. The state of Missouri was guilty of a greater crime when it persecuted the Latter-day Saints than states were which in the barbarous times of the dark ages persecuted their people; though when estimated in net results there may have been more murders and robberies, greater destruction of property, and more wide-spread suffering in the latter than in the former.
It is in the light of the principle here laid down that I propose to review the causes of the persecutions of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri.
The People of Missouri and the Saints.
The people of the state of Missouri, and especially those living in western and upper Missouri, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, were chiefly from the states of the South—from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas. This is not stated as a matter of reproach, for among the American people there have been no better or nobler citizens of the Republic than the people of the states enumerated. I merely make the statement in order to present a fact, and because other facts grow out of it. To say that Missouri was settled by emigrants from the states of the South carries with it the explanation why Missouri was one of the slave states, and her people attached to the social and industrial methods of life attendant upon that circumstance. That is to say, they looked with contempt upon manual labor; regarding it as menial and proper only for slaves to perform. With that idea is closely related another; namely, that white people who from circumstances were compelled to perform manual labor, or who followed it from principle, in the eyes of the people of the South were of an inferior class; contemptuously characterized by some as "white trash," and by others, inclined to be more polite, as "poor whites."
Freedom from manual labor gave to those of active dispositions in such communities an opportunity to follow the more desirable vocations of professional life; the law, medicine, the Christian ministry, merchandising and general business; or leisure for political or military activities; or the pursuit of pleasure, fishing, hunting, horse racing, and social life generally. These conditions naturally resulted in pride, often in arrogance, and a desperate sort of courage, which held honor high and weakness and cowardice in contempt; also something of intolerance for those disposed to set themselves against such an order of things.
The reader will recognize, of course, that I have so far in mind only the better element of the population, the least of the evils and some of the advantages resulting from such industrial and social conditions. There were, however, quite different and more serious results than any yet noted arising from this system of society. While those disposed to activity and inclined to honorable pursuits might enjoy certain advantages from the system, on the other hand, it fostered man's natural inclination to idleness and love of ease that comes of idleness; and fostered jealousy and bitterness against those more industrious and successful. In such a class the system led to ignorance, irreligion, and criminal tendencies; constituting them a dangerous element in the community. It was doubtless this class the Prophet Joseph had in mind when he said soon after his first arrival in western Missouri: "Our reflections were great, coming as we had from a highly cultivated state of society in the East, and standing now upon the confines or western limits of the United States, and looking into the vast wilderness of those that sat in darkness. How natural it was to observe the degradation, leanness of intellect, ferocity and jealousy of a people that were nearly a century behind the times, and to feel for those who roamed about without the benefit of civilization, refinement, or religion!"
Many of the positions in the higher walks of life, in western Missouri, were sought by the unworthy, the corruptible and the vicious—men who sought all the advantages of the southern ideals of life without possessing the refining virtues which for generations in the older states of the south made some of the evils of the social system that obtained there at least tolerable. Such were the Brazeales, the Wilsons, the Hunters, the Kavanaughs, the Likens, the Loveladys, the McCartys, the McCoys, the Pixleys, the Simsons, the Silvers, the Westons, the Gilliams, the Birches, the Blacks, the Bogarts, the Clarks, the Liveseys, and the Penistons.