| 144 prudent nor safe for us to vote at the polls; still we have continued to maintain our right to vote until the blood of our best men has been shed, both in Missouri and Illinois, with impunity.
"You are doubtless somewhat familiar with the history of our expulsion from the State of Missouri, wherein scores of our brethren were massacred. Hundreds died through want and sickness occasioned by their unparalleled sufferings. Some millions worth of our property was destroyed, and some fifteen thousand souls fled for their lives to the then hospitable and peaceful shores of Illinois; and that the State of Illinois granted to us a liberal charter, for the term of perpetual succession, under whose provision private rights have become invested, and the largest city in the State has grown up numbering about twenty thousand inhabitants.
"But, sir, the startling attitude recently assumed by the State of Illinois forbids us to think that her designs are less vindictive than those of Missouri. She has already used the military of the State, with the Executive at their head, to coerce and surrender up our best men to unparalleled murder, and that too under the most sacred pledges of protection and safety. As a salve for such unearthly perfidy and guilt, she told us, through her highest executive officers, that the laws should be magnified and the murderers brought to justice; but the blood of her innocent victims had not been wholly wiped from the floor of the awful arena ere the Senate of that State rescued one of the indicted actors in that mournful tragedy, from the sheriff of Hancock County, and gave him a seat in her hall of legislation; 1 and all who were indicted by the Grand Jury of Hancock County for the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith are suffered to roam at large, watching for further prey.
"To crown the climax of those bloody deeds, the State has repealed those chartered rights by which we might have lawfully defended ourselves against aggressors. If we defend ourselves hereafter against violence, whether it
1 J. C Davis, a State senator, was indicted for the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and by resolution of the Senate rescued from the sheriff.
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