Essentials in Church History / A History of the Church from the Birth of Joseph Smith to the Present Time (1922), with Introductory Chapters on the Antiquity of the Gospel and the "Falling Away"

by Joseph Fielding Smith

The Violation of the Treaty

According to the agreement, the mob forces entered Nauvoo on the 17th, and in keeping with the usual mob spirit, failed to regard their agreement. Immediately they commenced to drive the Saints from the city, and treated some of the men in a most brutal manner. They commenced their diabolical deeds by searching the wagons on the bank of the river waiting to be ferried across, and ransacked their contents taking all firearms and scattering the goods over the ground. Families of the poor were ordered from the city at the point of the bayonet. The sick were sorely abused, and even those who were engaged in the burying of their dead were molested. They entered the temple, ascended the tower and rung the bell, shouting and yelling, and giving vent to filthy oaths in a fiendish manner. They plundered the homes of the people, irrespective of whether they were members of the Church or not. Colonel C. M. Johnson was sentenced to death, but his persecutors could not agree on the manner of his execution and he escaped. With such inhuman treatment, the members of the Church remaining in Nauvoo, were forced across the Mississippi River in their poverty and distress. Their condition was pitiable, but it could not move the hearts of the mobs of Illinois. These outcasts camped on the bank of the river for several days, where the Lord in his mercy fed them, as he did the children of Israel, with a supply of quails, until help arrived from the camps of Israel in the wilderness. As soon as they could leave they bid farewell to the inhospitable boundaries of “civilization” and took up their journey toward the west, there to build a city of refuge, and find a haven of rest among the more tender-hearted savages of the desert.

Notes

[1. ] The same day two hundred and thirty-five members of the Church, from branches in the New England and the Atlantic States, under the direction of Samuel Brannan, sailed from New York for California. They had chartered the ship “Brooklyn” at twelve hundred dollars per month, the lessee to pay the port charges. They carried with them farming implements of all kinds, blacksmith, carpenter and wheelwright tools and fixtures, the necessary parts for two gristmills and sawmill irons. They also carried text books on various subjects and many other volumes. The press and type on which the Prophet—a paper published by the Church in New York—was printed, and sufficient paper and other things as would be needed to establish a new colony in their distant home. They arrived at Yerba Buena, now San Francisco, Wednesday, July 29, 1846, having gone around Cape Horn and touched at the Hawaiian Islands. On their arrival they found the American flag waving over the fort the guns of which had saluted them on their entrance into the bay. Three weeks earlier the United States Flag had been raised and the country occupied in the name of the government. In January, 1847, Samuel Brannan commenced publishing a newspaper at Yerba Buena called the California Star, the first English paper published in California.

[2.] On the first night of the encampment of Sugar Creek nine infants were born. The weather was inclement and extremely cold and the people without proper shelter. Writing of these conditions, Eliza R. Snow, the poetess, has said: “As we journeyed onward, mothers gave birth to offspring under almost every variety of circumstances imaginable, except those to which they had been accustomed; some in tents, others in wagons—in rainstorms and in snowstorms. I heard of one birth which occurred under the rude shelter of a hut, the sides of which were formed of blankets fastened to poles stuck in the ground, with a bark roof through which the rain was dripping. Kind sisters stood holding dishes to catch the water as it fell, thus protecting the newcomer and its mother from a showerbath as the little innocent first entered on the stage of human life; and through faith in the Great Ruler of events, no harm resulted to either.

“Let it be remembered that the mothers of these wilderness-born babies were not savages, accustomed to roam the forest and brave the storm and tempest—those who had never known the comforts and delicacies of civilization and refinement. They were not those who, in the wilds of nature, nursed their offspring amid reeds and rushes, or in the recesses of rocky caverns; most of them were born and educated in the Eastern States—had there embraced the Gospel as taught by Jesus and his apostles, and, for the sake of their religion, had gathered with the Saints, and under trying circumstances had assisted, by their faith, patience and energies, in making Nauvoo what its name indicates, “the beautiful.” They had lovely homes, decorated with flowers and enriched with choice fruit trees, just beginning to yield plentifully.

“To these homes, without lease or sale, they had just bade a final adieu, and with what little of their substance could be packed into one, two, and in some instances three wagons, had started out, desertward, for—where? To this question the only response at that time was, God knows” (Women of Mormondom, Tullidge, ch. 32).

[3. ] It was not the intention of the Saints to leave Nauvoo until the springtime had fully arrived. But the human fiends, who hated the religion of the Saints and coveted their substance and property, were not willing for them to wait. What cared they for the suffering and exposure of an innocent people, driven from their homes and sheltered by the broad canopy of heaven in the midst of winter? “We could have remained sheltered in our homes,” said President Brigham Young, “had it not been for the threats and hostile demonstrations of our enemies, who, notwithstanding their solemn agreements, had thrown every obstacle in our way, not respecting either life, or liberty, or property; so much so that our only means of avoiding a rupture was by starting in mid-winter. Our homes, gardens, orchards, farms, streets, bridges, mills, public halls, magnificent temple, and other public improvements we leave as a monument of our patriotism, industry, economy, uprightness of purpose, and integrity of heart; and as a living testimony of the falsehood and wickedness of those who charge us with disloyalty to the Constitution of our country, idleness and dishonesty” (Manuscript History of the Church).

[4.] Daniel H. Wells, who had joined the Church August 9, 1846, after the departure of most of the members of the Church, but who had always been a true friend to the Prophet Joseph and Patriarch Hyrum Smith, addressed the remaining members of the Church, while they were in the hands of their enemies, as follows:

“There is no use in the small handful of volunteers trying to defend the city against such an overwhelming force. What interest have the Saints to expect from its defense? Our interests are not identified with it but in getting away from it. Who could urge the propriety of exposing life to defend a place for the purpose of vacating it? I have been in the councils of Joseph and Hyrum and the twelve, and I know they were desirous that the Saints should leave the state and go westward. Have not the twelve and most of the Church gone, and is not their counsel for us to follow? Have not they told us that our safety was not in Nauvoo, but in our removal westward?