In autumn the mobs recommenced their murders, robbings, house and grain burnings, and driving families away from their lands and homes in the borders of our county, and elsewhere.
The sheriff of the County called out several posses and dispersed them, killing some and arresting others.
This bold and energetic execution of the sworn duties of Sheriff Backinstafs did not seem to be quite congenial to the spirit of the government and citizens of the State of Illinois—they being to a great extent in favor of mob violence, murder, plunder and house burning. Therefore, Sheriff Backinstafs was arrested to answer to the charge of murder, and another sheriff was imposed on the county, unlawfully, entirely independent of the ballot box. Backinstafs, however, was afterwards discharged by the Court, who justified his killing some of the mob, pronouncing it an official act in perfect conformity with his duties as an officer. The Governor sent troops to our county, on pretence of aiding the law, but, in reality, to aid the mob to escape justice and carry out their expressed resolutions of driving every member of the Saints, and their families, from the State. General Hardin and Major Warren, who had the command of this expedition, joined their advice with Judge S. A. Douglass and others, some of them citizens of Quincy, and meeting with President Young and our other leaders in council, advised and urged us strongly to yield to the mob, and abandon our houses, forms, cities, villages and Temple to this wholesale banditti, who were engaged against us, and sell them for what we could get, and remove out of the country. But very little of the real estate was ever sold.
To these extravagant counsels we finally yielded assent, and agreed to move West in the spring, and to advise others of our society so to do, as fast as we could sell.
We continued, however, our work on the Temple, a portion of which was finished and dedicated.
"It was the first specimen of a new order of architecture, introduced by President Joseph Smith, and was the most beautiful building in the Western States, erected at a cost of a million dollars. The mob subsequently set fire to it, the light of which was visible for thirty miles."
As winter approached, President Young, myself, the quorum, and many others were daily engaged in the Temple, administering in the holy ordinances of Endowment, to many hundreds of people. Thus closed the year 1845.
January 1st, A.D. 1846, I continued to minister in the Temple night and day, with my President and the rest of the Twelve, until early in February.
Soon after these things the ministrations in the Temple ceased; and President Young, with the rest of the quorum and many others, bade farewell to their homes in the beloved city of Nauvoo, and crossed the Mississippi River, with their families and such teams and wagons as they could get. They formed an encampment on Sugar Creek, in the State of Iowa.
February 14th, I crossed the river with my family and teams, and encamped not far from the Sugar Creek encampment, taking possession of a vacant log house, on account of the extreme cold. This encampment was about seven miles from Nauvoo. In leaving home at this inclement season, I left a good house, lot and out buildings, worth about seven thousand dollars, and several lots and houses of less value, besides a farm in the country worth near two thousand. But I was much in debt. I, therefore, left Mr. Bickford as my agent, authorized to sell the property, settle up my business, and take care of such of my family or friends as might be left it his care, including my aged mother, and the father, mother and sister of my wife. I was intending, when things were settled, to place the surplus, if any, at the disposal of the Church or its agents, in aid of the removal of such as were not able to remove without assistance.