Three other men started with the Apostles: Hiram Clark in company with Parley and Orson, and Theodore Turley and Reuben Hedlock in company with George A. Smith.
This was the sublime missionary movement of the Apostles. How like the grain of mustard seed! Leaving the people of God in sickness and in poverty, they themselves being on the verge of the grave, these disciples of Jesus went forth to proclaim the gospel of redemption. If their faith had not been such as not to be shaken, the world never more would have heard of their endeavor. But it was firm and steadfast, and God rewarded it; and the little mustard seed quickened and grew and became a mighty tree. The Prophet said of them:
Perhaps no men ever undertook such an important mission under such peculiarly distressing, forbidding and unpropitious circumstances. Most of them * * * were worn down with sickness and disease or were taken sick on the road. Several of their families were also afflicted and needed their aid and support. But knowing that they had been called by the God of heaven to preach the gospel to other nations, they conferred not with flesh and blood, but obedient to the heavenly mandate, without purse or scrip, commenced a journey of five thousand miles entirely dependent on the providence of that God who had called them to such a holy calling.
The Twelve faltered not an instant in their appointed labor, and while they spread abroad the tidings of salvation, the Prophet in Nauvoo was directing the gathering Saints that they might build a city whose loveliness and greatness should attract the eye of every beholder.
On the 5th day of October, 1839, a general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was convened at Nauvoo, at which it was decided to establish there a stake of Zion, and to organize a branch of the Church on the opposite side of the river in Iowa Territory, and officers were appointed to preside and officiate in the stake and over the branch.
At this same conference it was resolved that Joseph Smith, accompanied by Elias Higbee and Sidney Rigdon, should proceed to Washington to lay before the President and Congress of the nation the wrongs which the Saints had endured.
CHAPTER XLV.
REASONS FOR AN APPEAL TO WASHINGTON—JOSEPH AND COMPANIONS DEPART FOR THE NATIONAL CAPITAL—THE PROPHET'S ACT OF PHYSICAL HEROISM—HE SEES INGRATITUDE—MARTIN VAN BUREN AND JOSEPH SMITH—THE LATTER'S SCORN— COWARDICE AND CHICANERY—"YOUR CAUSE IS JUST, BUT I CAN DO NOTHING FOR YOU."
The Saints had suffered innocently in Missouri; they had appealed in vain for redress; they were impoverished through the robberies which had been perpetrated upon them; and their old men, delicate women, and little children, even after the gathering to Nauvoo, were dying of privations.
These were material reasons for an application to the national government for succor; and besides these, the Prophet knew that the Lord required this appeal to be made that—upon the answer thereto—the nation's responsibility for the barbarities might be judged.