This event occurred during a carnival of crime and murder in the country around Nauvoo, all of which has given rise to such conflicting opinions that the investigator, after conversing with numerous witnesses and reading various journals of the time, cannot fail to conclude that both Mormon and Gentile desperadoes infested that part of the state. Edward Bonney, in a little volume entitled The Banditti of the Prairies, gives a thrilling record of crime which he, as an officer, assisted in bringing to light, and which resulted in the execution of a number of Mormon murderers, but I discovered that he himself was brought to trial under an indictment for issuing counterfeit money. A change of venue carried the case to a Gentile court, where he made a successful defense. Recrimination, robbery, riot, and organized resistance by both parties in this war continued until the final eviction of the Mormons from the state. Fourteen years had now passed since the New Church was organized by a few obscure men. At the time of the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum Smith the Mormon enrollment of Nauvoo numbered thousands.
The history of other new religious faiths was repeated. Mormonism was strengthened by the persecutions through which its enemies aimed at its extermination.
"Strive with the half-starved lion for its prey—
Lesser the risk
Than rouse the slumbering spirit of wild fanaticism."
In August, 1844, Brigham Young, in accordance with a revelation said to have been received by him, declared himself to be the successor of Joseph Smith, and in December he was elected by the great assembly at Nauvoo, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which was the name officially adopted for the new society. Sidney Rigdon was also an active candidate for the office. His defeat was humiliating. He was tried, convicted, and condemned.
Previous to the death of Smith there appears to have been but one organized separation from the parent church, but Young and Rigdon were not the only persons who laid claim to the mantle of the prophet, Smith. The succession was bitterly contested by James J. Strang, who aside from Brigham Young, was perhaps the first and most formidable aspirant for office, partly because of his powers of leadership, and partly because he declared that at the moment of Smith's death he received a revelation that vested in him divine authority to become leader of the Saints. But little seems to have been written concerning the remarkable career of this Mormon prophet, who for several years exercised a dictatorship over his few thousands of followers which in rigor hardly has a parallel in our history. Some letters from his followers, and among them those of Bishop George Miller, have come into my hands, and these give some history of the Strangite movement. Miller had been appointed by Young to organize the association to erect the Nauvoo house and temple, but finally joined Strang and opposed Young. Neither these letters nor the records in the historical society are so complete and convincing as are the statements of Strang's own people.
It has been my privilege to be granted several interviews with the one person who doubtless knows more than any other now living concerning the life of the so-called king and prophet, Strang, and of the autocratic rule of his island dominion. It was her husband, Thomas Bedford, who put the final quietus on that monarch's authority.
Sitting with her daughter and me in their neat little cottage in Northern Michigan, she modestly consented to give the full story, which they both stated had never before been given in detail even to her own children, but, as she said, the time had come when all the truth should be given, and some of that truth had to that time for various reasons been withheld.
Mrs. Bedford descended from hardy Connecticut stock, and at the age of seventy-six abounded in vigor, and yet she was serene in temperament. Her statements in reviewing the thrilling history of her experiences in the Northern Empire were clear and definite, and she never hesitated in giving either names or dates.
In the winter of 1844, Mrs. Bedford passed through the Endowment house at Nauvoo. After suffering with the Saints in their various vicissitudes of fortune and fate in Nauvoo and Nebraska, in the year 1850 and at the age of sixteen, she entered with her parents the Strang colony on Beaver Island and spent five years in that fellowship.
