The Life of Joseph Smith, the Prophet

by George Q. Cannon

But Governor Dunklin's letter contained a promise that, in the event of a failure to get proper execution of the law in Jackson County, he would, upon official notification, take further steps to enforce its faithful observance. Upon this slight hope, the Saints began to restore their houses to comfort and to labor in the fields for their maintenance.

The Saints had engaged four lawyers to aid them in obtaining a redress of their grievances, and as soon as this fact became known, the event occurred which Governor Dunklin should have foreseen. With tenfold intensity the fire of hatred raged against the people. On the night of October 31st an armed mob attacked a settlement of the Saints west of Big Blue, tore the roofs from many of the dwelling houses, whipped the men and drove the women and children screaming into the wilderness. The profanity of the mob was appalling. None of the Saints were armed, and the resistance which they might have offered with sticks was forbidden by their captors under penalty of death. Satiated with brutality, the mob at length retired, leaving orders that the Saints—men, women and children—should leave the county. The next day was the first of bleak November; and when the cold morning dawned, the Saints crept out of their hiding places whither they had fled for safety, and came back to their despoiled homes to find their habitations and their gardens in ruins. The women wept for their scourged and bleeding husbands. Children sobbed with hunger, cold and fear. How were these plundered people to find means for journeying to a land of safety? And whither were they to go? Asylum had already been denied them in the adjoining county: adequate protection had been practically denied to them by the civil power of the state; and they had no hope that any section of Missouri would harbor them.

Such scenes of horror were repeated night after night at Independence, and every dwelling place of the Saints in that county. At Independence, on the 1st of November, one of the mob was caught in the very act of robbing the store of Gilbert & Whitney, and was carried before Samuel Weston, a justice of the peace; but despite the boast of the Governor, Mr. Weston refused to issue a warrant or to entertain the case, and the robber was turned loose to join his fellows in a continuation of murderous work. Other efforts were made to secure the aid of judicial power to stop the horrible work of the rabble, but in vain. Such of the officers of the law as were not allied with the mob dared not assert their authority. And so the work of rapine went on until it ended in murder.

The 3rd day of November, 1833, was Sunday, and the Saints hoped for a cessation of hostilities, but none came. Word went out among the mob that Monday would be a bloody time. On November the 4th, the day of Joseph's return to Kirtland from his Canada mission, a large party of the mob fired upon some of the Saints west of Big Blue. Several of the Saints were wounded, two desperately. These were young men named Barber and Dibble, who were thought to have been fatally injured; but Philo Dibble finally recovered, and at the time of this writing is still living, a respected citizen of Utah Territory. After lingering in great agony, Barber died the next day. Three times and more the Saints had permitted their enemies to smite them, and three times and more they had submitted patiently. They had appealed to civil and military power in vain, and now the sight of blood thus wantonly shed aroused in them a strong spirit of resistance. When the mob continued the massacre they were greeted by shots from such of the Saints as had guns, and two of the mob fell dead. One of them, Hugh L. Brazeale, had often boasted: "I will wade to my knees in blood but that I will drive the Mormons from Jackson County."

The men who had caught the mobber in the act of plundering Gilbert & Whitney's store were arrested upon a fictitious charge of assault upon that wretch. Apparently the mob had no difficulty in obtaining process of court and securing its service. An effort was made to kill these prisoners while they were in charge of the officers of the law, and shots were fired at them, and they had to be placed in jail to protect their lives.

And now comes the most diabolical feature of all the persecution in Missouri up to that date. On the 5th day of November, 1833, Lieutenant-Governor Boggs permitted the mob to organize as a militia, and placed them under the command of Colonel Thomas Pitcher. While the Saints showed no intention of resisting, the rabble did not feel the need of such organization; but when it was found that, driven to the last extremity, the Saints would fight for their lives, Boggs clothed the mob with military power, that resistance to them might be charged against the Saints as insurrection against the legal authorities of the state of Missouri.

Colonel Pitcher demanded that the Saints should give up their arms; that certain men who had been engaged in the fight west of Big Blue should be delivered into his hands to be tried for murder; and that the people should leave the county forthwith. It was clear that the alternative was death to the men and outrage to the women and children. And so the Saints yielded under solemn promise of protection. As soon as the demand was complied with, the mob rushed like demons in various directions, bursting violently into houses and threatening the women and children with massacre. One party of the mob was headed by Rev. Isaac McCoy, and other preachers joined in the rabble. Men, women and children fled to the prairie and to the river banks, seeking in the wilderness, amidst all its terrors, a peace denied them by civilized men. Husbands and wives and children were separated, and one knew not whether his beloved kin were dead or alive.

Who can say that a restoration of the Gospel of Peace was not necessary in such an age?

After a time most of the scattered Saints gathered in Clay County, where a court of inquiry was ordered by Governor Dunklin, but the murderers and robbers who slew the Saints and took their substance in Jackson County, Missouri, went unwhipped of justice. Clay County was the only section of the state which received the Saints with any degree of charity. From Van Buren and Lafayette and other counties they were forced to flee as they were from Jackson.

In Clay County, where many of them had found a haven of rest among noble-hearted citizens, the Saints prepared and sent up to Governor Dunklin such piteous appeals as might have melted a heart of adamant. They had been stripped of all their worldly substance; winter was upon them; they even lacked food and raiment; and from hour to hour they were in expectation of further assaults. It was their supplication to the Governor that he would use the power of the state to restore them to their lands and possessions, and to give a sufficient guard to a court of inquiry, which might examine into the whole history of the outrages made against them. The court of inquiry was held, and Colonel Pitcher was arraigned and ordered for further trial by court-martial. But it soon became clear that the Saints could not be restored to their lands in Jackson County under existing conditions; because the mob swore that if they returned, there would be a wholesale massacre of Mormons, and the Governor, it was said, had not the constitutional right to establish a permanent guard for the persons and property of the defenseless Saints.