| 1042 made, because the offenders must be tried in the county where the offence [offense] was committed, and the inhabitants of the county, both magistrates and people were combined, with the exception of a few; justice cannot be expected. At this day your petitioners do not know of a solitary family belonging to our church, but what have been violently expelled from Jackson county by the inhabitants thereof.
Your petitioners have not gone into detail with an account of their individual sufferings from death and bruised bodies, and the universal distress which prevails at this day, in a greater or less degree throughout our whole body. Not only because those sacred rights guaranteed to every religious sect have been publicly invaded, in open hostility to the spirit and genius of free government, but such of their houses as have not been burnt, their lands and most of the products of the labor of their hands for the last year, have been wrested from them by a band of outlaws, congregated in Jackson county on the western frontiers of the United States, within about thirty miles of the United States military post at Fort Leavenworth, on the Missouri river.
Your petitioners say that they do not enter a minute detail of the sufferings in this petition lest they should weary the patience of the venerable chief, whose arduous duties they know are great, and daily accumulating. We only hope to show him that this unprecedented emergency in the history of our country,-that the magistracy thereof is set at defiance, and justice checked in open violation of its laws, and that we, your petitioners, who are almost wholly native born citizens of these United States, of whom they purchased their lands in Jackson County, Missouri, with intent to cultivate the same as peaceable citizens, are now forced from them, and dwelling in the counties of Clay, Ray, and Lafayette, in the state of Missouri, without permanent homes, and suffering all the privations which must necessarily result from such inhuman [inhumane] treatment. Under these sufferings, your petitioners petitioned the governor of this state, in December last, in answer to which, we received the following letter:
FAREWELL MESSAGE OF ORSON PRATT.
To the Saints of the Eastern and Middle States, Greeting:
Dear Brethren:
The time is at hand for me to take a long and lasting farewell to these Eastern countries, being included with my family, among the tens of thousands of American citizens who have the choice of DEATH or BANISHMENT beyond the Rocky Mountains. I have prefered [preferred] the latter. It is with the greatest of joy that I forsake this Republic: and all the saints have abundant reasons to rejoice that they are counted worthy to be cast out as exiles from this wicked nation; for we have received nothing but one continual scene of the most horrid and unrelenting persecutions at their hands for the last sixteen years. If our heavenly father will preserve us, and deliver us out of the hands of the blood-thirsty Christians of these United States, and not suffer any more of us to be martyred to gratify their holy piety, I for one shall be very thankful. Perhaps we may have to suffer much in the land of our exile, but our sufferings will be from another cause-there will be no Christian banditti to afflict us all the day long-no holy pious priests to murder us by scores-no editors to urge on house burning, devastation and death. If we die in the dens and caves of the Rocky Mountains, we shall die where freedom reigns triumphantly. Liberty in a solitary place, and in a desert, is far more preferable than martyrdom in these pious States.
Perhaps the rich may ask, how they are to dispose of their farms and houses so as to get to Nauvoo this winter, and be ready to start early in the spring with the great company?-In reply to this inquiry, we observe that they can do it if they only have a disposition. Many of them might have disposed of their property years ago, but have been holding on to the same, for the purpose of getting a greater price, or for fear of losing their property by the ravages of mobs, if they gathered with the saints: thus they have not been willing to readily comply with the great commandment of God, concerning the gathering, and thus they are deprived of the privilege of sacrificing their property by being driven from the same: but still they can reprieve themselves in some measure, by selling immediately, at all hazards, although they should not get one third of its real value.
The Lord requires a sacrifice, and he that is not willing, will fail of the blessing. Brethren now is the time for you to be up and doing, for unless you can get to Nauvoo this winter, it will be entirely needless for you to go in the spring for you could not arrive in time to leave with the saints.
We would say to the poor in the East, that it will be of no use for them to go to Nauvoo, unless they have means sufficient to purchase horses, wagons, tents, &c., for it will be in vain for them to think of starting for the Rocky Mountains without these things; and the
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