"'Doniphan, I advise you not to take that Jackson county land in payment of the debt, God's wrath hangs over Jackson county. God's people have been ruthlessly driven from it, and you will live to see the day when it will be visited by fire and sword. The Lord of Hosts will sweep it with the besom of destruction. The fields and farms and houses will be destroyed, and only the chimneys will be left to mark the desolation.'"
"General Doniphan said to me that the devastation of Jackson county forcibly reminded him of this remarkable prediction of the Mormon prophet." (signed) L. M. Lawson.
"There is a prediction of the Prophet Joseph," remarks Elder Wells, in commenting upon Mr. Lawson's story, "not before put into print, and history has recorded its complete fulfillment."
That a just retribution overtook the entire state, as well as the inhabitants of Jackson county, and other western counties, I think must be conceded by all who are familiar with the events of her history in the Civil War. That which she did to an inoffensive people was done to her inhabitants, especially to those living within the districts formerly occupied by the Latter-day Saints; only the measure meted out to the Missourians was heaped up, pressed down, and made to run over.
The Missourians had complained that the Latter-day Saints were eastern men, whose manners, habits, customs, and even dialect were different from their own;[[65]] but the Missourians lived to see great throngs of those same eastern men flock into an adjoining territory and infest their border, so that the settlers of western Missouri became accustomed to, and learned to endure the strange manners, customs and dialect so different from their own.
The Missourians complained of the rapidity with which the Saints were gathering into the state to establish their Zion; but the Missourians lived to see hordes of the detested easterners gather into their region of country by continuous streams of emigrant trains, sent there by "Emigrant Aid Companies" of New England.
The Missourians falsely charged that the coming of "Zion's Camp" into western Missouri to aid their brethren to repossess their homes in Jackson county, was an armed invasion of the state; but the Missourians lived to see formidable hosts of eastern and northern men gather upon their frontiers and frequently invade the state. "The character of much of this emigration may be gathered," says one historian, "from the fact that the Kansas Emigration Societies, Leagues and Committees * * * sent out men only;" and that in some of their bands Sharp's rifles were more numerous than agricultural implements."[[66]] Of course the "Blue Lodges" of Missouri were organized largely on the same principle as the "Emigrant Aid Companies" of New England, and adopted practically the same methods, expecting to add Kansas to the list of slave states. But "certainly," remarks Lucien Carr, "if a company of so-called northern emigrants, in which there were two hundred and twenty-five men and only five women, whose wagons contained no visible furniture, agricultural implements or mechanical tools, but abounded in all the requisite articles for camping and campaigning purposes, were considered as bona fide settlers and permitted to vote, there could not have been a sufficient reason for ruling out any band of Missourians who ever crossed the border and declared their intention of remaining, even though they left the next day."[[67]]
Among the men sent to the borders of Missouri by the "Emigrant Aid Companies" of New England were some of the most desperate adventurers; and the Missourians who had pretended to be alarmed at the coming of "Zion's Camp," and feigned to regard it as an armed invasion of the state, saw their state repeatedly invaded—especially Jackson county—by the bands of Union "jayhawkers" organized from among these desperate eastern and northern men, who ruthlessly laid waste their homes and farms.
The Missourians had falsely charged the Saints with abolition madness, with tampering with their slaves, with inviting free negroes into the state to corrupt their blacks, whose very presence would render their institution of slave labor insecure; but they lived to see their system of slave labor abolished by the setting free of some one hundred and fifteen thousand slaves, valued at $40,000,000, eight thousand of whom were "martialed and disciplined for war" in the Federal armies, and many of them marched to war against their former masters.
Governor Dunklin and his advisors in the government of Missouri claimed that there was no warrant of authority under the laws and constitution of the state for calling out a permanent military force to protect the Saints in the peaceful possession of their homes until the civil authority proved itself competent to keep the peace and protect the citizens in the enjoyment of their guaranteed rights; but the people in the western part of Missouri saw the time come when they themselves prayed for the same protection; and Governor Stewart, unlike Governor Dunklin, approved the appointment of a battalion of volunteers consisting of three companies of rangers and one of artillery, all of which were placed under command of Lieutenant-Colonel John L. Bowen, to do the very thing the Saints had prayed might be done in their case.[[68]] But even this provision for their protection did not avail; for their old jayhawking enemies soon reappeared under new conditions—which will be stated in the next paragraph—under which they renewed their incursions of rapine and murder.