Page:History of Utah.djvu/283

 ting, and

On the 17th of September the remnant of the Mormons crossed the Mississippi, and on the same day the gentiles took possession of Nauvoo.^^

It was indeed a singular spectacle, as I have said, this upon the western border of the world's great republic in the autumn of 1846. A whole cityful, with other settlements, and thousands of thrifty agri-

hallooing; they took several to the river and baptized them, swearing, throw- ing them backward, then on to their faces, saying: "The commandments must be fulfilled, and God damn you."' Hist. B. Young, MS., 345.

^' The best narrative, and indeed the only one that enters circumstantially into all the details of the expulsion from Nauvoo, is contained in the Assassina- tion of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the Prophet and the Patriarch of the Church of Latter-day Saints. Also a Condensed History of the Exjndsion of the Saints from Nauvoo by Elder John S. Fullmer (of Utah, U. S. A.), Pastoi of the Man- chester, Liverpool, and Preston Conferences. Liverpool and London, 1855. The work is written from a Mormon standpoint, but including as it does copies of the despatches of Illinois officers and officials, of the stipulations between the belligerents, and of some comments made by the Qnincy Whig, appears in the main reliable. The author's comments on the gentiles are suliiciently bitter, and his description of the fight at Nauvoo and the valor of the saints militant must of course be taken with due allowance. For instance: 'Seeing our men take possession of some vacant buildings on the line of their ap- proach, they took a position on an elevated spot of ground, and opened a heavy cannonade at a distance of something less than half a mile. This was returned with great spirit on our part from guns made of steam shafts that carried six-pound balls. Many were the balls that we picked up as they came rolling and bounding among us, and we sent them back with as much spirit and precision as they were first sent.' p. 37. Col Kane says: 'A vin- dictive war was waged upon them, from which the weakest iied in scattered parties, leaving the rest to make a reluctant and almost ludicrously una- vailing defence.' The Mormons, 54. In the General Epistle of the Twelve, Dec. 23, 1847, in Snow's Voice of Joseph, 14-15, we read: 'In September 1846 an infuriated mob, clad in all the horrors of war, fell on the saints who had still remained in Nauvoo for want of means to remove, murdered some, and drove the remainder across the Mississippi into Iowa, where, destitute of houses, tents, food, clothing, or money, they received temporary assistance from some benevolent souls in Quincy, St Louis, and other places, whose names will ever be remembered with gratitude. Their property in Hancock CO., Illinois, was little or no better than confiscated; many of their houses were burned by the mob, and they were obliged to leave most of those that i-emained without sale; and those who bargained sold almost for a song; for the influence of their enemies was to cause such a diminution in the value of property that for a handsome estate was seldom realized enough to remove the family comfortably away; and thousands have since been wandering to and fro, destitute, afflicted, and distressed for the common necessaries of life, or unable to endure, have sickened and died by hundreds; while the temple of the Lord is left solitary in the midst of our enemies, an enduring monu- ment of the diligence and integrity of the saints.' Mention of the expulsion from Nauvoo is of course made in most of the books published on Mormon- ism, but in none of them, except perhaps in one or two of the most rabid anti-Mormon works, which I have not thought it worth while to notice, is the conduct of the Illinois mob defended.