352 as well as thrilling incidents, were presented to the saints. An armed and well-organized mob in a government professing to be governed by law, with the Lieutenant Governor, (Lilburn W. Boggs,) the second officer in the State, calmly looking on, and secretly aiding every movement, saying to the saints, 'You now know what our Jackson boys can do, and you must leave the country,' and all the justices, judges, constables, sheriffs, and military officers, headed by such western missionaries and clergymen as the Reverends McCoy, Kavanaugh, Hunter, Fitzhugh, Pixley, Likens, Lovelady, and Bogard, consisting of Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and all the different sects of religionists that inhabited that country; with that great moral reformer, and Register of the Land Office at Lexington, forty miles east, known as the head and father of the Cumberland Presbyterians, even the Reverend Finis Ewing, publicly publishing that the 'Mormons were the common enemies of mankind, and ought to be destroyed;' all these solemn realities were enough to melt the heart of a savage; while there was not a solitary offense on record, or proof that a saint had broken the law of the land.
"And when Bishop Partridge, who was without guile, and Elder Charles Allen, walked off, amid the horrid yells of an infuriated mob, coated like some unnamed, unknown biped, and one of the sisters cried aloud; 'while you, who have done this wicked deed, must suffer the vengeance of God; they, having endured persecution, can rejoice, for henceforth, for them, is laid up a crown, eternal in the heavens;' surely there was a time of awful reflection, that man, unrestrained, like the brute beast, may torment the body; but God, in return, will punish the soul.
"After the mob had ceased yelling, and retired; and while evening was spreading her dark mantle over the unblushing scenery, as if to hide it from the gaze of day; men, women, and children, who had been driven or frightened from their homes by yells and threats, began to return from their hiding places, in thickets, cornfields, woods, and groves, and view with heavy hearts the scenery of desolation and woe; and while they mourned over fallen man, they rejoiced with
(page 352) |