CHAPTER II.
STRENUOUS LIFE IN NAUVOO—CITY BESIEGED—THRILLING EXPERIENCE—MIRACLE OF QUAILS—RUN OVER BY WAGON—WAGON SINKS TO BOTTOM OF RIVER—LIFE IN UTAH—MISSION ABROAD—HER POSTERITY.
They succeeded in acquiring a fairly comfortable home in Nauvoo, and a farm a short distance outside of the city, but they were not destined to long enjoy their possessions. The enemies of the Church were not content with having killed the Prophet and Patriarch; they were determined to drive the Saints from the state of Illinois, as they had previously been driven from Missouri. The Saints, especially in the outlying settlements, were continually being harassed by the lawless mob. Farms were frequently pillaged or their crops burned. Domestic animals were driven off, and the inhabitants in some instances severely beaten and compelled to flee from their homes to save their lives. Many of their houses were also set fire to before the owners' sight.
Not only were the Saints the victims of these ruthless depredations, but they were actually accused of being the perpetrators of the same, and this made the pretext by the mob for demanding that the Saints remove from the state or abandon their religion. Is it any wonder that some of the more weak and faithless of the members chose the latter alternative?
An agreement was finally entered into, between the Saints on one side, and state officials and leaders of the mob on the other, that the Saints should leave the state as soon as they could sell their possessions. It soon became apparent, however, that they would have to abandon their homes instead of selling them, as their enemies, though anxious to secure them, showed little disposition to pay for them.
The majority of the Saints living in Nauvoo left there to journey westward in the early part of the year 1846, leaving those whose services to work upon the Temple were required, or who lacked the necessary equipment for the journey, to follow on afterwards. When the Apostles returned later to Nauvoo to dedicate the Temple they exacted a promise from those yet remaining there, and who possessed the necessary outfits to undertake the journey, that they would not abandon any of the less fortunate Saints who might desire to accompany them, but help them out of the state. Before they were ready to depart, however, the mobocrats, in far superior numbers, surrounded and besieged the city.
Charles Lambert took a prominent part in the city's defense, helping to manipulate one of the cannons, which, in the emergency, he and others had improvised from an old steamboat shaft, and which had been mounted upon a part of the running gear of a wagon.
Mother Lambert was an interested and anxious spectator of the battle. In addition to having her own small family to care for, a Mrs. Haines, a neighbor, who was very ill, had been brought to her home to be nursed, her husband being absent from the city. During the bombardment, which continued for several days, some of the cannon balls fired by the mob passed close by, but none of them actually struck the house. In one instance an old gentleman, who felt too feeble to be among the city's defenders, but whose anxiety to see how the battle waged led him to ascend to the top of the roof of the Lambert house to get a good view, was so alarmed by a cannon ball passing close by his head, that he rolled from the roof to the ground.
A flag of truce was finally raised by the mob and a treaty effected, one of the provisions of which was that the Saints would vacate the city within three days. Such of the household goods possessed by the Lambert family as could be, were loaded into a wagon box and an attempt made to remove across the river. As they approached the Mississippi, however, in the lower part of the town, so many other wagons were found to be ahead of theirs, waiting to be ferried over, that a temporary camp was made near an abandoned home.
While on the way from their home to this point the family had been surrounded by a large posse of the mob and compelled to give up to them such fire arms as they possessed. Soon after reaching the temporary camp, and while Father Lambert was absent with his team for the purpose of hauling John Haines' wagon, with his household goods and his sick wife in it, down to the same point, a second mob appeared and demanded that Mother Lambert give up to them whatever fire arms were in the wagon. In vain she told them the weapons had already been surrendered, and that she did not have the keys to unlock the boxes in the wagon. They used a hammer to forcibly break open the boxes, and proceeded to ransack all that the wagon contained, with the result that they obtained possession of a sword and bowie knife. These they brandished before the frightened mother and panic-stricken children, accusing her of lying to them when she said she had no fire arms, and threatening to cut her head off.