| 668 assembled together in a hostile attitude to the amount of two or three hundred men, threatening the utter extermination of the Mormons. He immediately returned to Clay County and ordered out a sufficient military force to quell the mob. Immediately after they were dispersed, and the army returned, the mob commenced collecting again; soon after, we again applied for military aid, when General Doniphan came out with a force of sixty armed men to Far West; but they were in such a state of insubordination that he said he could not control them, and it was thought advisable by Colonel Hinkle, Mr. Rigdon, and others, that they should return home. General Doniphan ordered Colonel Hinkle to call out the militia of Caldwell and defend the town against the mob, for said he, you have great reason to be alarmed, for he said Neil Gillium from the Platte country had come down with two hundred armed men and had taken up their station at Hunter's mill, a place distant about seventeen or eighteen miles northwest of the town of Far West, and also that an armed force had collected again at Millport, in Daviess County, consisting of several hundred men, and that another armed force had collected at De Witt, in Carroll County, about fifty miles southeast of Far West, where about seventy families of the Mormon people had settled upon the bank of the Missouri River at a little town called De Witt. Immediately a messenger, whilst he was yet talking, came in from De Witt, stating that three or four hundred men had assembled together at that place armed cap-a-pie, and that they threatened the utter extinction of the citizens of that place if they did not leave the place immediately, and that they had also surrounded the town and cut off all supplies of food, so that many of them were suffering with hunger. General Doniphan seemed to be very much alarmed, and appeared to be willing to do all he could to assist, and to relieve the sufferings of the Mormon people; he advised that a petition be immediately got up and sent to the Governor. A petition was accordingly prepared and a messenger dispatched immediately to the Governor, and another petition was sent to Judge King
"The Mormon people throughout the country were in a
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