| 176 then the judge of this circuit, demanding assistance. General Atchison returned with the messengers, went immediately to Diahman, and from thence to Millport, and found the facts substantially true as they had been reported to him-that the Gentile citizens of Daviess County, to the number of two hundred and fifty or three hundred, were assembled in a hostile attitude and threatening the utter extermination of the Mormons. He also found that the Mormons had settled in the county with the full permission of the resident citizens at the time.
"General Atchison hastily returned to Clay and ordered out certain detachments of the militia of his division to proceed to Daviess County and protect the Mormons and preserve the peace generally. Perhaps five hundred troops marched to Diahman. Among these were some companies from Carroll and Saline Counties, who had marched up Grand River, camping the first night out in Daviess near the old blockhouse on Splawn's ridge, in the central part of Daviess, east of Gallatin, near Millport, and the next night at Diahman. Though the troops were sent out to protect the Mormons, they were heartily opposed to them and in sympathy with their enemies, and had matters come to a fight would most certainly have taken sides with the latter. General Atchison, seeing this, determined to evacuate the country as soon as a fair semblance of peace could be observed. He remained in camp a few days near Diahman, and then marched his troops away, fearing every hour that they would unite with those he had come to put down.
"Even before the militia had disbanded or left Daviess County, the Gentiles declared and began open warfare against the Mormons, firing upon them whenever they met them, burning a number of their houses, and taking possession of their horses, and driving off their cattle. The Mormons soon retaliated. 'The prophet,' Joseph Smith, sent them from Far West a reinforcement of fifty men under Captain Seymour Brunson (or Brownson). Colonel Lyman Wight called out every able-bodied Mormon man or boy capable of carrying and handling a gun."-Pp. 126, 127.
Thus was inaugurated what is known as the '"Mormon
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