Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate/Volume 2/Number 11/Editorials and notices

Editorial regarding difficulties in Jackson County

KIRTLAND, OHIO, AUGUST, 1836.

We have recently perused with intense interest and deep feeling, the report of a committee of vigilance appointed on the seventh of May last at a meeting of the citizens of Jackson county, Missouri, relative to the course they recommend to their constituents to be pursued towards our brethren, in the case they attempt to come into that county to form a settlement, or to possess their own property.

It will be recollected that our brethren went into that county, purchased land, formed a settlement, established a printing press and a store of Merchant goods, and were proceeding peaceably and quietly in the lawful enjoyment of their rights as citizens of these United States. It will also be recollected that they were forcibly driven from their purchased possessions by a ruthless mob in the inclement season of the year, November, 1833, and left without any covering but the open canopy of heaven. It will also be borne in mind, that many of their dwellings were thrown down—much, and in some instances all their property destroyed; and they driven from the county to perish with cold or famine, or to seek relief as mendicants among the hospitable of the county of Clay.—These acts, though thrilling to the heart of the philanthropist, and black as the character of their projectors are, light in comparison with the sable shade that yet remains to fill up the interstices of the great outline, and complete the picture! Yes, reader, they proceeded further. They not only destroyed property, and drove off peaceable citizens from their own dwellings, but they threatened life! Aye would to heaven they had done no more!—They unmercifully beat some, and deliberately killed others! (a few only.)

We say our brethren were guilty of no breach of the peace, had violated no law, and resisted no legal authority; we say so without the fear of contradiction; for if they had been guilty, the law, the officers to administer it, and all the force necessary to back them, were in the hands, and at the full and entire control of their enemies. We say they had not law either human or divine to afford the least pretext, no nor the shadow of a pretext for such conduct. If they had would they not have executed that law, rather than have the opprobrious epithets of perjury and murder affixed to their names recorded on the page of history and handed down to posterity. Certainly we think they would. You will ask, kind reader, how were they guilty of perjury. The answer is a plain one. The officers both civil and military are bound by oath or affirmation to support the constitution of the United States and the laws and constitution of the state of Missouri. This act, this direful deed, this diabolical crime was committed in open and palpable violation of all these. Is it not perjury then? is it not wil[l]ful and corrupt perjury? a clear case beyond the power of contradiction.

We have read a copy of their manifesto, and it is not even there asserted, though teeming with falsehoods as black as the hearts of their fabricators or the father of lies himself, that they had either law or constitution to warrant them in their hellish procedure. What then, you will ask, was the cause? We say simply because our brethren took the liberty guaranteed to all citizens of these United States to think differently from the professing christian world in matters of religion. This was not avowed as the cause in their manifesto, because it was matter of fact, and with this they had but little to do. But that it was the real cause you will believe when we say that when six of our brethren were in the hands of this lawless banditti, as a condition of peace and friendship offered them, they must renounce their religious belief, and all would be well. This they peremptorily [peremptory] refused. The only alternatives they had then left, were death, immediate death, or leave the county.

No legal process could be had to bring offending citizens to justice, their crimes pass with impunity and innocent blood yet cries from the ground for vengeance. All this in an enlightened land, a free government, where every free man at least has a natural, not only a natural but a constitutional right, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is not all, he has the same right to embrace one religious belief as another; the same right to be an infidel as he has to be a Baptist, a Presbyterian or a Methodist. He may be a Mahomedan, Jew or a Pagan, and he is equally safe; the constitution covers the whole ground; it promises him protection, however heretical or ridiculous his religious belief may be, provided he submit to the laws that procure him this protection.

If our brethren had been guilty of some offence or misdemeanor, prejudicial to the feelings or best interests of their supercilious neighbors, what should be done? The case is a plain one: if it were a breach of the law, the law was open and as said one anciently, there were deputies let them implead one another; and as we have before said, the law, the officers and the power were in the hands of our enemies.

Has the liberty of speech, the liberty of the press, the liberty of conscience, become odious to this religious generation? Is the foundation of all liberty, civil and religious to be sapped and the beautiful superstructure erected thereon by our fathers to be razed to the ground to gratify whom? the whole community beside our brethren? no, a lawless, ruthless, perjured banditti and their accomplices in bigotry, guilt and crime. These same monsters in human shape not content with the blood a part of our brethren and with inflicting one vital stab to the constitution and laws of our country, seem eager to reek their hands in the heart's blood of the remainder, and end their satanic career only with their final extermination. They have said they would not stop while a single Mormon's foot pressed their soil. Have our brethren attempted to drive them from their houses or their lands? have they attempted to urge their claim to any except that to which they had been seized by honest right of fair purchase? We fearlessly say no. Their manifesto is but a bundle of falsehoods perfectly in accordance with their subsequent conduct—and the same gang stand unrebuked, unpunished, breathing out threatenings and slaughter and death! Their proceedings to which we now allude are spread upon paper over their signatures, and will pass down to succeeding generations as matter of history, to the everlasting disgrace of all republics or all governments that promise protection to their citizens and then suffer them to be disfranchised; their property destroyed, confiscated or taken without the consent of its rightful owners, and even their lives threatened and taken, with impunity. Has it come to this! Are we irresistibly compelled to sing a funeral dirge over the grave of departed liberty, and bid a long and lasting farewell to what our hearts once held dear. Is this the way to cure people of folly or delusion?—Did the mother of abominations with her implements of cruelty and death ever succeed in curing people of heresy and delusion with all their refinement in bloodshed and murder? Let the book of Martyrs tell! Let the history of the bloody inquisition speak! Let the records of all past ages testify! And will not like causes produce like effects? Certainly then let reason and common sense sit in judgment and we join issue and abide the award.

We look at the case negatively also; what have we not done? We have not claimed any man's silver, gold, houses, or lands, man—servants or maid—servants, camels or asses, without his consent and a fair equivalent. We have not violated any known law of our country. We have not molested any man in the peaceable enjoyment of any of his vested rights, and we say affirmatively that we neither claim nor ask any rights or privilege other than the constitution and laws guarantee to all its peaceable citizens. What then is the cause? We have taken the liberty to think differently from the professing christian world and have preached and proclaimed our sentiments; and not only so, we have spread them on paper and invited investigation; and when we have been met in the field with scripture, reason and fair argument, our opposers retire with shame from the unequal contest. Here then is one cause and perhaps the head and front of our offending. Did men anciently suffer because they testified that they had seen angels and held intercourse with the upper world?

Did men anciently who received the lively oracles of truth and recorded them for our instruction, live in peace and die regretted by their contemporaries? Let history, sacred and profane, answer these queries.

Is satan's empire divided and he contending against his own subjects, his own loyal subjects? Are our brethren persecuted, oppressed, smitten and afflicted by the saints of the most high God? We say they are not; if so, we have yet to learn for the first time, that the spirit which actuates our persecutors at the West and elsewhere is the spirit of our blessed Redeemer. We must blush and hang our head for our ignorance now that the frost of so many winters has gone over our head, and left us uninstructed in the fundamental principles of our holy religion. We had thought that the religion of Jesus filled the soul with love to God and man, and that love worked no ill to his neighbor. We had thought the true disciple of our Lord and Savior, would not knowingly and wantonly divest any man of his constituted rights, that he would not destroy his goods, and above all that he had not a heart black enough to drive females and innocent children from their own abode in the cold of November, and to cap the climax of iniquity and crime, shed the blood of some which yet cries from the ground unavenged. That the saints do wrong acts, and sometimes bring down the judgments of God upon themselves we are sorry, yet free to admit. But will they for a series of days, months, yea, and years too persist in breathing out threatenings and slaughter, against a people whose only crime for which they are now suffering consists in believing the scriptures of divine origin and all that is there recorded by the prophets and not fulfilled, will be fulfilled in these last days. We say not, we unequivocally say not.— May the Lord deliver us from the power of such men and the malevolent influence of their religion.

We say further, that all such as are the aidors, abettors or apologists for such conduct or such characters as of the Jackson county mob, are participators in their guilt and crime.

We can hardly dismiss the subject of our enemies in the West and their wicked designs which have drawn from us the preceding remarks, without almost involuntarily touching the subject of our Elders, Patten, Parrish and Woodruff, in the South. We know their perseverance and zeal in the cause of truth. Even the conduct of their enemies towards them speaks volumes in favor of their talents, as public declaimers. We feel that they had done their duty in Benton county, Ten. and that their exertions in the cause of truth in that region, have been such, that in the great day of accounts their skirts will be clear, and that wicked and perverse people be left without excuse, when the Lord shall judge the world in righteousness.

CONFERENCE

CONFERENCE.

A few days since we had the minutes of a Conference put into our hands which our friends may expect we will publish entire. But we hope they will excuse us if we condense their minutes and give only the substance. The conference was held on the 2d day of June last, in Lawrence, Lawrence Co. Ohio. Elder Seymour Brunson of this town presided, and Jesse T. Baily acted as Secretary. One elder, one priest and one teacher were ordained at said conference.

NOTICE

NOTICE.

Our readers will recollect that a dissolution of the Firm of F. G. Williams & Co. was published in the June no. of our paper, that Oliver Cowdery had purchased the entire establishment and all debts due said firm were to be paid to him. We also urged the necessity of prompt payments by all those who are in arrears, and that their names would be stricken from our subscription list unless payment should be made and they manifest their desire to continue, on or before the first of October next, except at our discretion.

We feel to repeat what we then said, and also to add, that the next number of our paper closes the present volume, and although our present subscription list is large and still increasing, yet without payment it is the more onerous for us to bear.

Our Elders abroad, who have procured for us many of our patrons, will accept our grateful acknowledgement for the interest they have taken for us, and still remember, that it is in their power to do us good by making collections of such subscribers as they may have procured for us and become responsible at the office for the amount of their subscription.

We hope that where there is no elder or other responsible person by when remittance can be made to us, some individual in each branch of the church, where our paper is not sent, will have the goodness to collect and forward to us the amount due in each branch, one letter can bring all the money, and all the names, with but a trifling expense. Let the old adage, "out of sight, out of mind," be for once reversed, and our pecuniary embarrassments cease.

We feel that it is due to many of our patrons, to say thus publicly, that they have paid us promptly; and some of them have rendered us essential service in times gone by when they were under no legal obligations to us; and consequently we infer they were actuated by a desire to do good and disseminate the truth. Therefore, we say, if the gift of a cup of cold water to a disciple entitle the donor to a blessing, certainly some of our patrons are entitled to our warmest thanks for past favors and most fervent prayers that the best of heaven's blessings may rest upon them.

We acknowledge that in some instances our paper during the past year, has not been issued as regularly as we or our friends could wish; a combination of causes not exactly in our power to control, prevented our doing so; but we trust that those causes have now measurably ceased to exist, that such arrangements are made in the editorial department as shall still make its columns both pleasing and instructing, and in the mechanical, as shall make it not only a workmanlike, but punctual periodical.