She says:
They [the mob] told us we must leave the state forthwith or be killed. It was cold weather, and they had our teams and clothes, our men all dead or wounded. I told them they might kill me and my children and welcome. They sent word to us from time to time, saying that if we did not leave the state they would come and kill us. We had little prayer meetings; they said if we did not stop these, they would kill every man, woman and child. We had spelling schools for our little children; they said if we did not stop these they would kill every man, woman and child. We [the women] had to do our own milking, cut our own wood; no man to help us. I started on the 1st of February for Illinois without money; mobs on the way; drove our own team; slept out of doors. I had five small children; we suffered hunger, fatigue and cold.
This is one scene by which the whole Missouri tragedy of that day may be judged.
Some time after the Saints had completed their exodus Hyrum Smith epitomized the awful events in the following words:
Governor Boggs and Generals Clark, Lucas, Wilson and Gilliam, also Austin A. King, have committed treasonable acts against the citizens of Missouri, and did violate the constitution of the United States and also the constitution and laws of the state of Missouri, and did exile and expel, at the point of the bayonet, some twelve or fourteen thousand inhabitants of the state, and did murder some three or four hundred of men, women and children in cold blood, in the most horrid and cruel manner possible. And the whole of it was caused by religious bigotry and persecution, and because the Mormons dared to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience, and agreeably to His divine will, as revealed in the scriptures of eternal truth.
The Prophet himself bore testimony that the conduct of the Saints under their accumulated wrongs and sufferings was most praiseworthy. He had observed them from within his prison walls, and after the order of exile was fully enforced he wrote:
The courage of the Saints in defending their brethren from the ravages of the mobs, their attachment to the cause of truth, under circumstances most trying and distressing which humanity can possibly endure; their love to each other: * * * their sacrifice in leaving Missouri and assisting the poor widows and orphans and securing them homes in a more hospitable land; all combine to raise them in the estimation of all good and virtuous men, and has secured them the favor and approbation of Jehovah, and a name as imperishable as eternity. And their virtuous deeds and heroic actions, while in defense of truth and their brethren, will be fresh and blooming when the names of their oppressors shall be either entirely forgotten, or only remembered for their barbarity and cruelty.
On the 5th day of April, 1839, Captain Bogart, who was now the county judge of Caldwell, with a number of apostates and mobocrats, visited Elder Theodore Turley, in Far West, and called his attention to the revelation given through Joseph Smith, July 8th, 1838, in which the following passage occurs:
Let them [the Twelve] take leave of my Saints in the city of Far West on the 26th day of April next, on the building spot of my house, saith the Lord.
Bogart and his companions said to Elder Turley: