| 561 The Editors of the Courier call this coming to the point, and fitting to the occasion, and whether it be so or not I will leave others to judge. But how the Courier could ever charge Lee with using "harsh terms," is truly surprising, when they themselves had but a few moments before charged the Mormons with being Thieves and Robbers.
I have done with Mr. Lee, and will just notice one or two other charges brought against the Mormons in the same paper, and which cannot be shuffled on to the shoulders of a letter writer from Ohio, or that of a Mr. Lee, but will stick to the backs of the Editors of the Courier as doth the bark of the tree of which it forms as component part.
It is needless for me to say that I allude to your justification of the cold blooded butchery of upwards of nineteeu [nineteen] men, wowen [women] and children, (Mormons) by the inhabitants of Missouri, without color of law. But the sentence throughout exhibits such a thirsting after the blood of that people, by the editors of the Courier, that I must copy it entire. It reads-"Of their treatment in Missouri we know nothing, except that they no doubt well deserved the punishment meted out to them:" and in the next sentence which follows, you class them with murderers and pirates.
Now one thing is certain, that up to the time, yea, the very moment of the massacre, the editors of the Courier, nor no man living, can point to one single act of the Mormons deserving of censure, much less of the horrible punishment they received. But it is necessary for me to recur back to the declaration of the Courier, that "of their treatment in Missouri we know nothing." Yes, this is your language: and when I first read it, shame and indignation filled by breast, to think that an editor in these United States, conducting one of the most popular journals of the day, a paper that I have esteemed above all others, and as an evidence of it have been a subscriber from its birth to the present day, and have otherwise aided to increase the subscription list, should be guilty of such a palpable derelection [dereliction] from truth. It may be safely asserted, that there is not an intelligent man of mature age in the United States or in Great Brittain [Britain], who has not heard of the massacre of the Mormons in Missouri; yet you, gentlemen, a long time conductors of a public journal, whose circulation is co-extensive with the United States, and who are in the weekly receipt of papers from all parts of the country, yet of the treatment they received, these you say "you know nothing.'"
But alas for you, the fact is self-evident to every man, that you do know, and did know at the time you penned the article, all the circumstances connected with that tragedy, and your declaring that "they deserved the punishment meted out to them," is in plain English saying, that they deserved the punishment of death without trial, in the most barbarous manner because they chose to worship God, Jehovah, or because they would not worship him according to some of the various approved fashions of the world.-These are your sentiments published to the world
Leaving the murdered men out of the question, nineteen of whom were ooly [coolly] and deliberately shot in a Smith's shop, through the appertures [apertures] between the logs, the circumstance of the murder of the poor boy Sardius Smith scarcely nine years of age, and consequently incapable of any moral turpitude, who was shot with a ball out of a rifle in the hands of a villain by the name of Glaze, of Carroll county, should have excited your pity, as you cannot believe that poor Sardius "merited the punishment meted out to him."
Indeed it has never been pretended that the boy was guilty of any offence [offense]; he with the men had sought refuge in the Blacksmith's shop, and through fear had crawled under the bellows, where he remained till the massacre was over, when he was discovered by a Mr. Glaze, who presented his rifle near the boy's head, and literally blowed off the upper part of it. Glaze, the murderer, afterwards publicly boastd [boasted] of the heroic deed all over the couutry [country]; and at this late day we find the editors of the respectable journals commending the act, and declaring that hey merited the punishment meted out to them without assigning any cause whatever for the bloody deed.
I cannot close these remarks without noticing another plain and palpable misrepresentation of facts, to be found in the closing paragraph of the Courier. It reads thus-"Without note or comment,
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