| 622 commit those high and horrible crimes with which he has been frequently charged, and as frequently proved to be innocent.
After his return from the dungeons of Missouri, Mr. Smith repaired to Washington, and in a respectful manner laid his grievances and those of his sect before the President and Congress. Instead of obtaining redress from the representatives of the people for the lands and property of his friends, which had been confiscated by the people of Missouri, he and his brethren received only insult and additional injury.
He subsequently bent his way, under apparently happier auspices, to Illinois, in search of a place, where he and those of his profession might live in peace, and be permitted to worship his God in their own way, and where none might molest or make them afraid. He selected a beautiful site for a city, on the banks of the Mississippi, and having purchased the land, he invited his followers to join him. Hundreds nay thousands, became proselytes to the faith he professed, hard sufferings had already given his preachers an astonishing success, and multitudes flocked to Nauvoo as to a place of refuge, and commenced building the city.
And what has been the result? In a spot where eight or nine years ago the feet of--man seldom trod, where the panther and the bear had roamed without meeting a human face, there are now congregated upwards of ten thousand souls. An increase like this, probably unparalleled in the United States, and certainly was never exhibited in any other country.
But a greater honor to this city and its founder remains to be mentioned-Within this city there is more order, more personal security, more public virtue, more industry and fewer instances of crime prevailing, than in any town if its size in the world.
And who has been the centre [center] of attraction of such a population? What master spirit has brought these thousands together from far different countries-with habits of life and modes of thinking exceeding dissimilar, embracing, heretofore, systems of faith entirely discordant? The whole world will answer, it was Joseph Smith, a man everywhere spoken against, a man who was stigmatized with the epithets of liar, thief, robber, traitor, and even murderer, by those very men, who in all their conduct towards him and his people, from first to last have convinced the world that they were trying to attach to him names which more properly belonged to themselves. A man who by his death of martyrdom will multiply his followers by hundreds, and perpetuate his name to the latest generations.
In the process of time the city was incorporated by a special act of the legislature of Illinois; and at an election subsequently held, in pursuance of the act of incorporation, Joseph Smith was, without opposition, elected Mayor; which office he held up to the time of his MURDER, giving entire satisfaction to nine-tenths of the population of Nauvoo.
Such was the man whom the public press throughout the country has been incessantly traduced and villified [vilified]. It has maddened the brain and embittered the bosoms of millions of the American people against an innocent man, an unoffending religious sect, that sect too of our own nation and kindred.
But fanaticism has done its worst with Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and although no Mormon myself, (never having been a dozen times in their churches,) I would much rather take Joseph Smith's chances for happiness in that undiscovered country whither he has been so untimely hastened, than that of any of his traducers.
Joseph and Hyrum Smith, while living were the heads of a numerous and increasing sect.-By their deaths they become canonized; and the influence of their opinions, whether for good or for evil, has received a powerful if not an irresistible impetus. Mormonism has just begun its career. It will date its greatest triumphs from the MASSACRE AT CARTHAGE PRISON.
And the time is not far distant, when the murders of Joseph Smith, and those who have incited to murder, will be held as execrable, and their names only remembered with infamy, while a monument reaching to the clouds will point the pilgrim and way farer [fairer] to the sepulchre [sepulcher] of the great Founder of Nauvoo, and tell to succeeding ages, the deeds of one of whom it may be truly said, he was a father to the fatherless, and a friend to the widow in her affliction. J. L.
ANCIENT RUINS IN TEXAS.
We have been informed by a gentleman who has traversed a large portion of the Indian country of northern Texas, the country lying between Santa Fe and the Pacific, that there are vestiges of ancient cities and ruined castles or temples on the Rio Puerco on the Colorado of the west. He says, that one of the branches of the Rio Puerco, a few days travel from Santa Fe, there is an immense pile of ruins that appears to belong to an ancient temple. Portions of the walls are still standing, consisting of huge blocks of limestone regularly
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