Joseph replied: "You will yet see Wales and fulfill the mission appointed you, before you die."[[1]]
In the morning Dan Jones went down, at the Prophet's request, to learn the cause of a disturbance of the night, and Frank Worrell, the officer of the guard of Carthage Greys, said to Dan:
We have had too much trouble to bring old Joe here to let him ever escape alive, and unless you want to die with him, you had better leave before sundown; and you are not a damned bit better than him for taking his part, and you'll see that I can prophesy better than old Joe, for neither he nor his brother, nor anyone who will remain with them, will see the sun set today.
Brother Jones started to find the governor and on the way saw an assemblage of the mob, and heard one of them who was making a speech say:
Our troops will be discharged this morning in obedience to order, and for a sham we will leave the town; but when the governor and the McDonough troops have left for Nauvoo this forenoon, we will return and kill these men, if we have to tear the jail down.
When Dan found the governor, and related the threats, Ford only sneered at him. Ford was actually preparing to go to Nauvoo. He had disbanded some of the troops and in his hearing they declared that they would return and kill Joseph and Hyrum as soon as he was far enough away from town.
Ford refused permits for the Prophet's friends to pass in and out of the prison. This deprived Joseph and Hyrum of the society of all but Apostles Taylor and Richards who remained constantly with them.
The governor held consultation with the officers of the mob army. A Dr. Southwick who was there afterward declared that the purpose of the meeting was to consider the best way of stopping Joseph Smith's career, as his views on the government were being widely circulated and they took like wildfire. The mobocrats said that if he did not get into the presidential chair this election he would be sure to next time; and if Illinois and Missouri would join together and kill him, they would not be brought to justice for it.
As the governor continued his preparations to depart from Carthage to Nauvoo, and as it was clear that he intended to break his solemn promise by failing to take Joseph with him, Cyrus H. Wheelock, Dan Jones and John P. Greene went in town to him and protested with all possible solemnity against his deed. He professed to reassure them; and then he took with him Captain Dunn, and his company—of all the militia the least vindictive against the Prophet; and left as a guard the Carthage Greys—of all the mob the most bloodthirsty. These Carthage Greys had but two days before been under arrest for insulting the commanding general; their conduct had shown them to be notoriously hostile to the prisoners; and they had often in the governor's hearing threatened the lives of Joseph and Hyrum. Of the disbanded troops the governor permitted two or three hundred under Colonel Levi Williams, a sectarian preacher and a sworn enemy to Joseph, to remain encamped in the vicinity of Carthage, awaiting the hour when they might safely descend upon the jail.
Cyrus H. Wheelock was permitted to enter the prison, and during his visit he slipped a small revolver, of the kind known in those days as the "pepper-box" revolver, into Joseph's pocket. Cyrus was going to Nauvoo with messages from the brethren in prison. They were so numerous that Dr. Richards proposed to write them down feeling that Wheelock might forget, but Hyrum fastened his eye upon the messenger, and with a look of penetration, said: