| 555 the defendants for forty dollars and costs of suit. I confess I was astonished when I heard it and could not help thinking that prejudice sometimes overrules justice even in the jury box. I could not help comparing the results of this trial with one which came off the day previous wherein a certain person complained of another for destroying his cow by setting his dogs on the animal until they worried her. It appeared the cow of the plaintiff had seen fit to break into the defendant's lot without asking leave of the defendant, or rather his men, not liking such treatment, set their dogs on her and destroyed her. Well, the result of this trial was a verdict of damages for the plaintiff of thirty dollars and costs.
Now, sir, compair [compare] the two cases. On the one hand, here is a citizen of the United States near two hundred miles from his home and his friends; he is on a visit with his family, not dreaming of danger or difficulty. Two men, or rather wolves in sheep's clothing, for it is a fact that when Wilson and Reynolds made enquiry [inquiry] for Gen. Smith, at Dixon, at the time of the arrest, they said they were Mormon Elders and wanted to see President Joseph Smith, &c.-Two men, I say while he is thus enjoying himself with his family came upon him with each a loaded pistol in his hand and threatened to shoot him dead if he offered the least resistance, although no resistance had been offered. They then began to haul him about, and when he asked them what they wanted with him and what was their authority, they replied they were going to take him to Missouri; and jamming their pistol at his side swore that was their authority. He requested them to let him go into the house to bid his family good bye; but this they positively refused, not even giving him the privilege to get his hat. They then forced him into the waggon [wagon], and placing themselves one on each side with a loaded pistol pressed close against his side, and repeatedly striking him with them, so as to make him lame and sore for two weeks afterwards; they drove him to Dixon and ordered horses ready in fifteen minutes to drag him among his murderers; and otherwise abused, insulted, threatened and treated him in the cruelest manner possible, filling his family with the most excrutiating [excruciating] pangs and rending of the heart of his beloved companion with grief to witness their ferocious cruelty, not knowing but his life would be sacrificed before morning; and finally pursued their persecutions until it cost him from three thousand five hundred to five thousand dollars expences [expenses]; and all this without a cause, and when he sues for justice against these men, he obtains damages to the amount of FORTY dollars.
On the other hand a man loses a cow which had broke into his neighbor's lot, and he obtains damages to the amount of thirty dollars.
Now, Sir, if this is not the effects of prejudice, amounting to oppression, then I am no judge of right and wrong. I am very much inclined to think that if Gen. Joseph Smith or any of his friends had treated any citizen of this State or any other State in the manner he was treated by those men, and they had sued for damages as he did the case would have terminated very different; however, so it is.
The idea of a man yielding to such a degree of prejudice as to render him incapable of executing justice between man and man, merely from rumor and report, is to me perfectly ridiculous and contemptible, as well as wicked and unjust; and when a man is all the day long boasting of the rights and privileges guaranteed to every citizen of the United States under the Constitution and laws, and at the same time is so prejudiced against one of the most peaceable citizens that 'he does not know whether he can render him justice' in a court of equity, but would rather strengthen the hands of mobocrats and law breakers, the inference that one must naturally draw is, that such a man is either a consummate scoundrel and a hypocrite, or, that he is guilty of the most flagrant violation of the most sacred constitutional principles embraced in the fundamental doctrines of this Republic. I am happy, sir, to have evidence daily that no such corrupt prejudice exist in the heart of General Joseph Smith, nor in the community so far as I have been able to discover.
Now, as to the exceptions these men have taken in regard to Gen. Smith's religious views or general course of conduct it matters not much. his religious views are his inalienable right, and no-body's business, and the man who cannot render him justice on that account is a willful violator of the laws he professes to admire; and, sir, I have for more than two years past been a close observer of Gen. Smith's 'general course of conduct' as well as his private life, and justice to him, to myself and to the community at large compels me to say that in my intercourse with men I never associated with a more honorable, upright, charitable, benevolent and law abiding man than is the much persecuted Gen. Smith: &, sir, when I hear men speak reproachfully of him I never ask for a second evidence of their corruptness and baseness. General Smith, sir, is a man of God, a man of truth, and a lover of his country, and never did I hear him breath [breathe]
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