Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/342



The first attempt to found a colony of the followers of the Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith, was made at Kirkland, Ohio, where Sidney Rigdon lived. Rigdon had been an eloquent minister of the Christian (Campbellite) church in Kirkland and had met Joseph Smith soon after he claimed to have found the plates on which a revelation was inscribed, and from which the Mormon Bible was produced. Rigdon assisted Smith in procuring the printing of the Bible and on the 6th of April, 1830, they organized the “Church of Latter Day Saints.” Converts were made by the eloquent preacher, Rigdon, who acted as a missionary and on the First of January, 1831, they had secured more than one thousand members and believers in the new religion. Smith claimed to have a second revelation commanding him to found a colony of the saints in the far West and build a temple in the New Jerusalem. A location was chosen in the vicinity of Independence, Missouri, where a large tract of land was secured, houses built, farms opened and the foundation laid for the temple. The Mormons from Kirkland and converts from all quarters gathered at the New Jerusalem until several hundred were assembled. But the citizens of western Missouri were intensely hostile to the new sect and finally a large mob gathered, attacked the Mormon colony, destroying their printing office and other buildings and flogging some of their members. Governor Boggs finally called out nearly five thousand of the State militia, under General J. B. Clark, with instructions “to exterminate the Mormons, or drive them beyond the borders of the State.” This militia general at once proceeded to execute the orders. A large number of the leaders were arrested, their families driven from their homes at the point of the bayonet and the entire colony hurriedly sent destitute out upon the bleak prairie late in November, without even tents to protect them from the driving storms. The rivers and creeks were unbridged and filled with floating ice; the snow was deep, impeding their