Gospel Doctrine: Selections from the Sermons and Writings of Joseph F. Smith

by Joseph F. Smith

I said, "Yes, sir."

"Have you got any ammunition?"

I said, "No, sir."

"Well," he said, "you report to Brother Rockwood, at the commissary office, and he will furnish you with ammunition, and you take your gun and go out to the front."

So I went home and sat up all that night, running bullets out of my mountain lead; reported the next day to Brother Rockwood, received a chunk of Mother Cadbury's cheese and some crackers, and started on my horse, with a brother-in-law, for the front. I spent part of the winter of 1858, and all of the spring and a portion of the summer of 1859, guarding Uncle Sam's troops; and we never hurt one of them, not one. We never molested a single individual of them; but we hedged up their way, and they camped out at Fort Bridger all winter long, and we sent them salt to save them; and they rejected it, because they were afraid there was something in the salt, more than the savor of it. But I assure you the salt was pure and good.

Now, just before that time, I was a farmer. I had to plow my land and farm it, but I did not have a spear of grass or hay to feed my team, and how was I going to do my spring work? This valley produced mighty little hay at that time. I hitched up my team, my brother and I, and we drove sixty miles to the north and bought a couple of loads of wild grass hay, and carted that hay down sixty miles to feed our teams in order to plow our land. I used to think, how in the world are we going to live in Utah without feed for our teams. Just then the Lord sent a handful of alfalfa seed into this valley, and Christopher Layton planted it, watered it, and it matured; and from that little beginning, Utah can now produce a richer crop of hay than Illinois or Missouri can do. So the hay question was settled, and the coal question was settled. Then the question of producing food from the land. Why, it was a marvel. One good man cultivated his little farm for thirty years, without a change, and raised from fifty to sixty bushels of wheat per acre each year on his farm, during that entire period. So the soil is rich, and everything is favorable for Zion here where President Young determined that he would stay; if we had not stayed here, it is clear we would have been overwhelmed and swallowed up by the multitudes who rushed to California.

Now, my brethren and sisters, I know whereof I speak with reference to these matters, for I have come down through every atom of it, at least from the expulsion from the city of Nauvoo; in February, 1846, I stood upon the bank of the river and saw President Young and the Twelve apostles, and as many of the people of Nauvoo as had teams or could possibly migrate, cross the Mississippi river on the ice. The river froze within a day or two, because of heavy frost, which enabled them to cross as they did, and thus the first real marvel and manifestation of the mercy and the power of God was manifest, in making a roadway across the Mississippi a mile wide at that place by which our people could go on their journey to the West. I saw them go. My brother was with them, and I wondered if I would ever see him again. We remained there in Nauvoo until September, 1846, when the city was besieged, at the mouth of the cannon and musket, and my mother and her family were compelled to take all that they could move out of the house—their bedding, their clothing, the little food they possessed, leaving the furniture and everything else standing in the house, and fled across the river, where we camped without tent or shelter until the war was over. The city was conquered, and the poor people that were left there were compelled to seek shelter somewhere else. From that moment on, I have been in the conflict. I have seen it and experienced it all the way through; and I am satisfied with my experience.

I bear record to you of the divinity of the work in which you are engaged, and, I bear record to you and testify that it has been the power of God, not that of President Young or of his associates, that has kept the people together and united them. By that power you have been able to come here this morning and with one united voice, and uplifted hands, sustain in the positions to which they have been chosen the men who have been called and appointed and ordained by virtue of authority from God, to preside over you and teach you things that are good to be taught and good to be known and observed, which will bring life and salvation to those who will hearken and be obedient.

The Lord bless you; the Lord bless the pure in heart throughout the world. May the Lord have mercy upon the suffering nations that are afflicted by this terrible calamity of war. May he save the poor and the needy and the honorable among the children of men, to come eventually to a knowledge of his truth, that they may be saved in his kingdom.

Much could be said. Joseph Smith taught the building of temples. I can scarcely quit. Joseph Smith was the instrument in the hand of God in revealing the ordinances of the house of God that are essential to the salvation of the living and the dead. Joseph Smith taught these principles, and his brethren to whom he taught them have carried out his views. They have put his doctrine to the test. They have obeyed his counsel, and they have honored him and his mission and sustained him as man has never been sustained by any other people under God's heavens. So we will continue to sustain Joseph the prophet, and his work that he has accomplished among the children of men, and we will abide in the truth forever, by the help of God. Even so. Amen.—Sermon, Salt Lake Assembly Hall, July 8, 1917.