Another circumstance which influenced somewhat the character of western Missouri's population in the early decades of the nineteenth century, was the fact that these sections of the state constituted part of the frontiers of the United States, and here had gravitated a more or less lawless class which sought the security of proximity to the boundary lines of the United States, from whose confines they could make their escape in the event of being hard pressed for violations of law in the older states whence they had come, or in their new habitat. Such were the Lovels, the Hawkins, the Heatherleys and many others.
The Latter-day Saints who settled in Missouri from 1831 to 1839 had come for the most part from the New England States and New York. There were, therefore, marked differences in character between them and the old settlers of Missouri; differences of ideas as to industrial and social life; of moral and religious life. The Saints were descendants chiefly of the Puritans, and both by inheritance and training had fallen heirs to the Puritan's strict views of industry, religion and morality. The Puritans taught that all labor was honorable, and industry a duty. Religion occupied a large share of their attention—entered in fact into all the affairs of life—though its duties meant largely a regular attendance upon church service; a strict observance of the proprieties while there; a rigid observance throughout of the Sabbath day. Neither work nor amusements were tolerated on that day. In the olden time among some of their forefathers it had been unlawful to sit in Boston Common on the Sabbath or to walk in the streets of Boston, except to church. Once a man was publicly whipped for shooting a fowl on Sunday. A woman was threatened with banishment for smiling in church. A person absent from church for more than one Sunday was in danger of being fined, whipped, or set in the stocks. Swearing was prohibited in nearly all the New England colonies, and a split stick was sometimes placed on the swearer's tongue.[[2]]
Both food and dress were plain, and the latter, in some instances, was regulated by law. Amusements were few. Dancing and card-playing were forbidden, and there was little music. The state sought to take entire charge of the individual, and supposed that tendency toward immorality could be stemmed by legislation. In early Connecticut no one under twenty was allowed to use tobacco, and none to use it more than once a day. The laws were severe and the penalties cruel. The stocks and whipping-post and pillory were in frequent requisition to correct moral delinquents. An offender might be made to stand on a stool in church with the name of his misdemeanor displayed on his breast. Among the common punishments were cropping or boring the ears and branding with a hot iron.[[3]]
Of course in later years there was a general relaxation from these severities, and many of these customs and laws, by the time our generation of Saints came on the scene, were obsolete. Still, the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which the Saints and their fathers had been reared was austere in its moral character, and stood in marked contrast to the moral atmosphere of the South, where, in respect of such things as church attendance, religious observances, personal liberty in eating, drinking and amusements, there was wider freedom.
In the sparsely settled country of western Missouri, the descendants of the old cavaliers and their following, who settled the South, and the descendants of the Puritans, who settled the North, were to meet: and very naturally one may see in these antagonistic elements—aside from the cause of antagonism which will be found in the newly revealed religion of the Latter-day Saints—natural causes of irritation between them founded in the differences of character, and their respective conceptions of industrial, moral, and religious duties. That the old settlers in Missouri, even those friendly disposed towards the Saints, recognized the incompatibility of the two classes is evident from the public utterances of a mass meeting held at Liberty, in Clay county, when the Saints were urged to seek anew locality where they could live by themselves. "They are eastern men," said the address, "whose manners, habits, customs, and even dialect, are essentially different from our own. We earnestly urge them to seek some other abiding place, where the manners, the habits, and customs of the people will be more consonant with their own."[[4]]
This difference of character between the Saints and the old settlers I account one of the causes of the Missouri persecutions.
The Question of Slavery.
The question of slavery in Missouri was a delicate one. It will perhaps be remembered that it was the application of the territory of Missouri for admission into the Union, 1818-19, that brought the question of slavery into one of its acute stages before the country; and inaugurated a long series of debates in the National Congress on the subject. It was upon the admission of Missouri into the Union in 1821 that the great Compromise which bears the state's name settled, not the question of slavery itself, but, for the time, the agitation of it.
That Compromise consisted finally in this: that while Missouri herself was admitted with a clause in her constitution permitting slavery, and also prohibiting free people of color from immigrating into the state, slavery was forever to be prohibited in all territory of the United States north of the line thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude (the southern boundary line of the state of Missouri); and Missouri was required "by a solemn, public act" of her legislature, to declare that the clause in her constitution relating to the immigration of free negroes into the state, should never be construed to authorize the passage of any law by which any citizen of either of the states in this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which he is entitled under the Constitution of the United States.
These historical facts are referred to here that the reader may be reminded that slavery was a delicate question in Missouri; that her people were super-sensitive about it since she was the first territory upon which the National Congress sought to impose the prohibition of slavery as a condition precedent to her admission into the Union, which, up to that time, had been a matter left to the people of the territory seeking admission to determine for themselves. Of course this attempt at restriction of slavery was made by northern members of the national Congress.[[5]] All the sentiment for the restriction of slavery was in the North. In 1831 the sentiment for the positive abolition of slavery had made such progress in Massachusetts, that William Lloyd Garrison established in Boston "The Liberator," a paper which advocated "the immediate and unconditional emancipation of every slave in the United States." As a result of this agitation anti-slavery societies were formed and active measures taken to advocate these opinions by means of lectures and pamphlets. These extreme measures against slavery did not meet with the approval of all or even the majority of the people of New England, much less with the approval of the people of other northern states. Still this agitation arose and was chiefly supported in New England. It will not be difficult to understand, therefore, that any considerable number of people from that section of the Union immigrating into a slave state would arouse suspicion; especially when that immigration was into a slave state upon which, when as a territory she had made application for admission into the Union, prohibition of slavery was sought to be enforced by the northern members of the National Congress. Nor will it be sufficient to dispel this suspicion to aver that these particular immigrants from New England, and other northern states are not abolitionists; that they take no part with, and do not share the fanatical sentiments of, the abolitionists; that their objects and purposes are of an entirely different and larger character.