VIEWS CONCERNING ZION--MOB VS STORM.
As soon as the camp was reorganized at Salt River, Parley P. Pratt
and Orson Hyde were sent as delegates to wait upon Governor Dunklin,
at Jefferson City, and request him to call out a sufficient military
force to reinstate the saints in the possession of their homes. In the
interview the governor frankly admitted the justice of the demand,
but expressed fears that if he should so proceed, it would excite
civil war, and deluge the whole country with blood. He advised these
delegates to counsel their people, for the sake of peace, to sell the
lands from which they had been driven. To this the delegates refused to
consent, saying:
We will hold no terms with land pirates and murderers. If we are not
permitted to live on the lands we have purchased of the United States,
and be protected in our rights and persons, they will at least make a
good burying ground in which to lay our bones; and we shall hold on to
our possessions in Jackson County, for this purpose at least.
The governor could not and did not blame them; but he trembled for the
country, and dared not carry out what he admitted to be the plain,
imperative duties of his office.
Elders Pratt and Hyde rejoined the camp not far from the line of Ray
County. As soon as they arrived, the Prophet Joseph, his brother Hyrum,
Lyman Wight, and some others repaired to a grove, and heard their
report.
"After hearing our report," says Parley P. Pratt, "the President
(Joseph Smith) called on the God of our fathers to witness the justice
of our cause, and the sincerity of our vows, which we engaged to
fulfill whether in this life or in the life to come. For, as God lives,
truth, justice, and innocence shall triumph; and iniquity shall not
reign."
As the brethren approached Richmond, threats were made that they should
not pass through the town, and rumor had it that a force of men was
in waiting to intercept them. Daylight of the nineteenth of June saw
them, in spite of the threats, quietly passing through the streets of
the sleeping town. When they broke camp in the morning, they designed
reaching Clay County that day; but they met with so many reverses in
the day's march, such as wagons breaking down, wheels running off,
etc., that they failed to accomplish it. Early in the evening they went
into camp between two forks of Fishing River.
A plan had been laid for the complete destruction of "Joe Smith's
army," as Zion's Camp was called by the Missourians; and now the time
for its\ execution had arrived. A mob of two hundred men had been
raised in Jackson County, which was to cross the Missouri into Clay
County, about the mouth of Fishing River, where a man named Williams
kept a ferry. This mob was to be joined at the fords of Fishing River
by a party of sixty from Richmond; and still by another mob, seventy in
number, from Clay County. Indeed, it looked as if Zion's Camp was to be
annihilated forthwith.
While the brethren were making preparations for the night, five men
armed with guns rode into camp, and insolently told the brethren they
would "catch hell before morning." "And their oaths," says Joseph,
"partook of all the malice of demons."
The Jackson mob assembled opposite the mouth of Fishing River, and
one scow-load--forty in number--was sent over. By this time the sun
was but little more than an hour high, and the camp observed a small
cloud coming up from the west. "It wasn't any larger than your hat
when I first saw it," said one [A] who was present, and described
the occurrence to me; "but in about twenty minutes the whole heavens
were inky blackness, which now and then seemed split by the vivid
streams of lightning." All the artillery of heaven seemed to be in
action. The wind blew and the rain and hail fell in torrents. The
hailstones--unusually large ones--cut down the corn crop and other
vegetation. Large limbs were wrenched from sturdy oaks and twisted into
withes by the fierce wind.
[Footnote A: This was the late Judge Joseph Holbrook of Davis County,
who personally related the circumstance to me.]
The tents in the camp were blown down, and the most of the brethren
took refuge in an old church house near their camp ground. Big Fishing
River, that was not more than six inches deep before the storm arose,
was about forty feet deep the next morning; and the mob swore that
Little Fishing River rose thirty feet in that many minutes.
This storm prevented the mob from collecting as arranged. The scow that
had ferried over part of the Jackson mob, in returning for more, was
met by the storm and only after much difficulty about dark reached the
Jackson side. Those that had been shipped across were exposed to the
pitiless pelting of the storm all night, which cooled their desire to
"kill Joe Smith and his army."
"Instead of continuing a cannonading which they commenced, * * * they
crawled under wagons, into hollow trees, and filled one old shanty."
[B] The next morning they were as anxious to reach the Jackson side of
the Missouri as they had been the night before to get at "Joe Smith's"
camp. The other parts of the mob who were to give the brethren "hell
before morning" met with a fate equally unpleasant. Their horses
were frightened, broke away from their masters, and wandered over
the prairies in some instances several days. Their plans for the
destruction of Zion's Camp were frustrated, and the brethren rejoiced.
[Footnote B: Joseph's history under date of 19th of June, 1834.]