One day, while we were still encamped at Council Bluffs, a delicate-looking stranger rode up on horseback. The young man was Colonel Thomas L. Kane, son of Judge Kane of Philadelphia, and brother of Dr. Kane, the celebrated Arctic explorer. Soon after reaching our camp he was stricken with fever. The best medical talent we had watched him unceasingly; and to the joy of the whole camp, he recovered. Never was watching, nursing, and praying better requited by man than he repaid to the Mormon people. As soon as his returning strength would allow, he hastened back east, and unsolicited by us delivered in his native city and in Washington some of the most truthful, vivid life scenes of the suffering of our people that have ever been published.
Chapter 5.
Daniel H. Wells.—Baptism for the Dead.—Lorenzo D. Young's Mission.—Wilford Woodruff.—Saved by Prayer.
The little band of one hundred twenty-five men who for three days defended the city of Nauvoo against fearful odds, are to me patriots and heroes, and their names and deeds should be handed down in history; for the wealth of history is the noble ideals it creates. Had there never been an angry Jewish mob, we should not have the martyr Stephen. Had there been no Gesler to hoist his cap on a liberty pole, there would have been no William Tell. Had there been no George III., there would have been no Patrick Henry nor Lafayette; and had there been no battle of Nauvoo, we should have had no Daniel H. Wells, as noble a patriot, and as true a lover of justice and liberty, as ever lived.
Daniel Hanmer Wells was one of the first settlers of Commerce, later called Nauvoo. When Joseph came in 1839 and bought land for the Church, Wells met the Prophet for the first time. He noted the intelligence and activity of the young leader. He (Wells) was studying law, and his legal attainments made him a useful man in the community. For several years thereafter he was justice of the peace, and thus became thoroughly acquainted with the people and their history. The result was that when the war-cloud broke, he shouldered his gun and for three days fought in defense of the weak and oppressed; and when they were overpowered, rather than submit to the enforced humiliation, he mounted his horse, bade adieu to his old home, and fled to the wilderness, casting his lot with the exiles, and becoming one of their staunchest leading men.
Now a few words about the ill-fated temple, that beautiful edifice which the Saints reared with so much love and sacrifice, and in which so many of our hopes and expectations centered. Like all other of our temples, it was erected for the benefit alike of the living and the dead. The Apostle Paul says, "If the dead rise not at all, then why are ye baptized for the dead?" Around that doctrine, amplified by later revelation, the Latter-day Saints have woven a social service that lays hold of the deepest affections of the heart, and in its scope is as broad as the ocean and as endless as eternity.
In the sacred font of that temple in Nauvoo, parents were baptized for their dead children, and children for their dead parents. There the husband and wife were sealed as such for eternity, and family ties were cemented to last forever. In the faith of every Latter-day Saint, the temple was therefore the holy of holies, the most sacred of all sacred places. Our enemies knew this; and fearing, that as long as the temple stood, we might be tempted to return, they resolved to destroy it.
A purse of five hundred dollars was raised by subscription and given to Joseph Agnew if he would burn it. On the night of October 6, 1848, Thomas C. Sharp and Agnew rode from Carthage to Nauvoo, twenty miles, and having a key to the front door. Sharp stood guard, while Agnew ascended to an upper floor and fired it. At sunrise the next morning there was nothing left but its four blackened walls.
Afterwards the Icarians, getting possession of the ruins, started, in 1850, to repair it for educational purposes; but a hurricane swept through the city and blew down the walls. Finally, piece by piece, the rock was hauled away, until not a stone was left to mark the place where the noble edifice once stood.