But we have anticipated the current of events. With the
publication of the Book of Mormon, opposition grew more intense
toward the people who professed a belief in the testimony of
Joseph Smith. On the 6th of April, 1830, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints was formally organized and thus took
on a legal existence. The scene of this organization was
Fayette, New York, and but six persons were directly concerned as
participants. At that time there may have been and probably were
many times that number who had professed adherence to the newly
restored faith; but as the requirements of the law governing the
formation of religious societies were satisfied by the
application of six, only the specified number formally took part.
Such was the beginning of the Church, soon to be so universally
maligned. Its origin was small--a germ, an insignificant seed,
hardly to be thought of as likely to arouse opposition. What was
there to fear in the voluntary association of six men, avowedly
devoted to peaceful pursuits and benevolent purposes? Yet a
storm of persecution was threatened from the earliest day. At
first but a family affair, opposition to the work has involved
successively the town, the county, the state, the country, and
today the "Mormon" question has been accorded extended
consideration at the hands of the national government, and indeed
most civilized nations have taken cognizance of the same.
Let us observe the contrast between the beginning and the present
proportions of the Church. Instead of but six regularly
affiliated members, and at most two score of adherents, the
organization numbers today many hundred thousand souls. In place
of a single hamlet, in the smallest corner of which the members
could have congregated, there now are about seventy stakes of
Zion and about seven hundred organized wards, each ward and stake
with its full complement of officers and priesthood
organizations. The practise of gathering its proselytes into one
place prevents the building up and strengthening of foreign
branches; and inasmuch as extensive and strong organizations are
seldom met with abroad, very erroneous ideas exist concerning the
strength of the Church. Nevertheless, the mustard seed, among
the smallest of all seeds, has attained the proportions of a
tree, and the birds of the air are nesting in its branches; the
acorn is now an oak offering protection and the sweets of
satisfaction to every earnest pilgrim journeying its way for
truth.
From the organization of the Church, the spirit of emigration
rested upon the people. Their eyes were from the first turned in
anticipation toward the evening sun--not merely that the work of
proselyting should be carried on in the west, but that the
headquarters of the Church should be there established. The Book
of Mormon had taught the people the true origin and destiny of
the American Indians; and toward this dark-skinned remnant of a
once mighty people, the missionaries of "Mormonism" early turned
their eyes, and with their eyes went their hearts and their
hopes.
Within three months from the beginning, the Church had
missionaries among the Lamanites. It is notable that the Indian
tribes have generally regarded the religion of the Latter-day
Saints with favor, seeing in the Book of Mormon striking
agreement with their own traditions.
The first well-established seat of the Church was in the pretty
little town of Kirtland, Ohio, almost within sight of Lake Erie;
and here soon rose the first temple of modern times. Among their
many other peculiarities, the Latter-day Saints are characterized
as a temple-building people, as history proves the Israel of
ancient times to have been. In the days of their infancy as a
Church, while in the thrall of poverty, and amidst the
persecution and direful threats of lawless hordes, they laid the
cornerstone, and in less than three years thereafter they
celebrated the dedication of the Kirtland Temple, a structure at
once beautiful and imposing. Even before this time, however,
populous settlements of Latter-day Saints had been made in
Jackson County, Missouri; and in the town of Independence a site
for a great temple had been selected and purchased; but though
the ground has been dedicated with solemn ceremony, the people
have not as yet built thereon.
Within two years of its dedication, the temple in Kirtland was
abandoned by the people, who were compelled to flee for their
lives before the onslaughts of mobocrats; but a second temple,
larger and more beautiful than the first, soon reared its spires
in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. This structure was destroyed by
fire, but the temple-building spirit was not to be quenched, and
in the vales of Utah today are four magnificent temple edifices.
The last completed, which was the first begun, is situated in
Salt Lake City, and is one of the wonders and beauties of that
city by the great salt sea.[2]
[Footnote 2: For a detailed account of modern temples, with
numerous pictorial views, see "The House of the Lord," by the
present author; Salt Lake City, Utah, 1912.]
To the fervent Latter-day Saint, a temple is not simply a church
building, a house for religious assembly. Indeed the "Mormon"
temples are rarely used as places of general gatherings. They
are in one sense educational institutions, regular courses of
lectures and instruction being maintained in some of them; but
they are specifically for baptisms and ordinations, for
sanctifying prayer, and for the most sacred ceremonies and rites
of the Church, particularly in the vicarious work for the dead
which is a characteristic of "Mormon" faith. And who that has
gazed upon these splendid shrines will say that the people who
can do so much in poverty and tribulation are insincere? Bigoted
they may seem to those who believe not as they do; fanatics they
may be to multitudes who like the proud Pharisee of old thank God
they are not as these; but insincere they cannot be, even in the
judgment of their bitterest opponent, if he be a creature of
reason.
The clouds of persecution thickened in Ohio as the intolerant
zeal of mobs found frequent expression; numerous charges, trivial
and serious, were made against the leaders of the Church, and
they were repeatedly brought before the courts, only to be
liberated on the usual finding of no cause for action. Meanwhile
the march to the west was maintained. Soon thousands of converts
had rented or purchased homes in Missouri--Independence, Jackson
County, being their center; but from the first, they were
unpopular among the Missourians. Their system of equal rights
with their marked disapproval of every species of aristocratic
separation and self-aggrandizement was declared to be a species
of communism, dangerous to the state. An inoffensive
journalistic organ, _The Star_, published for the purpose of
properly presenting the religious tenets of the people, was made
the particular object of the mob's rage; the house of its
publisher was razed to the ground, the press and type were
confiscated, and the editor and his family maltreated. An absurd
story was circulated and took firm hold of the masses that the
Book of Mormon promised the western lands to the people of the
Church, and that they intended to take possession of these lands
by force. Throughout the book of revelations regarded by the
people as law specially directed to them, they are told to save
their riches that they may purchase the inheritance promised them
of God. Everywhere are they told to maintain peace; the sword is
never offered as their symbol of conquest. Their gathering is to
be like that of the Jews at Jerusalem--a pacific one, and in
their taking possession of what they regard as a land of promise,
no one previously located there shall be denied his rights.
A spirit of fierce persecution raged in Jackson and surrounding
counties of Missouri. An appeal was made to the executive of the
state, but little encouragement was returned. The lieutenant-
governor, Lilburn W. Boggs, afterward governor, was a pronounced
"Mormon"-hater, and throughout the period of the troubles, he
manifested sympathy with the persecutors.
One of the circuit judges who was asked to issue a peace warrant
refused to do so, but advised the "Mormons" to arm themselves and
meet the force of the outlaws with organized resistance. This
advice was not pleasing to the Latter-day Saints, whose religion
enjoined tolerance and peace; but they so far heeded it as to arm
a small force; and when the outlaws next came upon them, the
people were not entirely unprepared. A "Mormon" rebellion was
now proclaimed. The people had been goaded to desperation. The
militia was ordered out, and the "Mormons" were disarmed. The
mob was unrestrained in its eagerness for revenge. The "Mormons"
engaged able lawyers to institute and maintain legal proceedings
against their foes, and this step, the right to which one would
think could be denied no American citizen, called forth such an
uproar of popular wrath as to affect almost the entire state.
It was winter; but the inclemency of the year only suited the
better the purpose of the oppressor. Homes were destroyed, men
torn from their families were brutally beaten, tarred and
feathered; women with babes in their arms were forced to flee
half-clad into the solitude of the prairie to escape from
mobocratic violence. Their sufferings have never yet been fitly
chronicled by human scribe. Making their way across the river,
most of the refugees found shelter among the more hospitable
people of Clay County, and afterward established themselves in
Caldwell County, therein founding the city of Far West. County
and state judges, the governor, and even the President of the
United States, were appealed to in turn for redress. The
national executive, Andrew Jackson, while expressing sympathy for
the persecuted people, deplored his lack of power to interfere
with the administration or non-administration of state laws; the
national officials could do nothing; the state officials would do
naught.
But the expulsion from Jackson County was but a prelude to the
tragedy soon to follow. A single scene of the bloody drama is
known as the Haun's Mill massacre. A small settlement had been
founded by "Mormon" families on Shoal Creek, and here on the 30th
of October, 1838, a company of two hundred and forty fell upon
the hapless settlers and butchered a score. No respect was paid
to age or sex; grey heads, and infant lips that scarcely had
learned to lisp a word, vigorous manhood and immature youth,
mother and maiden, fared alike in the scene of carnage, and their
bodies were thrown into an old well.
In October, 1838, the Governor of Missouri, the same Lilburn W.
Boggs, issued his infamous exterminating order, and called upon
the militia of the state to execute it. The language of this
document, signed by the executive of a sovereign state of the
Union, declared that the "Mormons" must be driven from the state
or exterminated. Be it said to the honor of some of the officers
entrusted with the terrible commission, that when they learned
its true significance they resigned their authority rather than
have anything to do with what they designated a cold-blooded
butchery. But tools were not wanting, as indeed they never have
been, for murder and its kindred outrages. What the heart of man
can conceive, the hand of man will find a way to execute. The
awful work was carried out with dread dispatch. Oh, what a
record to read; what a picture to gaze upon; how awful the fact!
An official edict offering expatriation or death to a peaceable
community with no crime proved against them, and guilty of no
offense other than that of choosing to differ in opinion from the
masses! American school boys read with emotions of horror of the
Albigenses, driven, beaten and killed, with a papal legate
directing the butchery; and of the Vaudois, hunted and hounded
like beasts as the effect of a royal decree; and they yet shall
read in the history of their own country of scenes as terrible as
these in the exhibition of injustice and inhuman hate.
In the dread alternative offered them, the people determined
again to abandon their homes; but whither should they go?
Already they had fled before the lawless oppressor over well nigh
half a continent; already were they on the frontiers of the
country that they had regarded as the land of promised liberty.
Thus far every move had carried them westward, but farther west
they could not go unless they went entirely beyond the country of
their birth, and gave up their hope of protection under the
Constitution, which to them had ever been an inspired instrument,
the majesty of which, as they had never doubted, would be some
day vindicated, even to securing for them the rights of American
citizens. This time their faces were turned toward the east; and
a host numbering from ten to twelve thousand, including many
women and children, abandoned their homes and fled before their
murderous pursuers, reddening the snow with bloody footprints as
they journeyed. They crossed the Mississippi and sought
protection on the soil of Illinois. There their sad condition
evoked for a time general commiseration.
The press of the state denounced the treatment of the people by
the Missourians and vindicated the character of the "Mormons" as
peaceable and law-abiding citizens. College professors published
expressions of their horror over the cruel crusade; state
officials, including even the governor, gave substantial evidence
of their sympathy and good feeling. This lull in the storm of
outrage that had so long raged about them offered a strange
contrast to their usual treatment. Let it not be thought that
all the people of Illinois were their friends; from the first,
opposition was manifest, but their condition was so greatly
bettered that they might have thought the advent of their Zion to
be near at hand.
I stated that professional men, and even college professors
raised their voices in commiseration of the "Mormon" situation
and in denouncing the "Mormon" oppressors. Prof. Turner of
Illinois College wrote:
Who began the quarrel? Was it the "Mormons?" Is it
not notorious on the contrary that they were hunted
like wild beasts from county to county before they
made any resistance? Did they ever, as a body,
refuse obedience to the laws, when called upon to do
so, until driven to desperation by repeated threats
and assaults by the mob? Did the state ever make
one decent effort to defend them as fellow-citizens
in their rights or to redress their wrongs? Let the
conduct of its governors and attorneys and the fate
of their final petitions answer! Have any who
plundered and openly insulted the "Mormons" ever
been brought to the punishment due to their crimes?
Let boasting murderers of begging and helpless
infancy answer! Has the state ever remunerated even
those known to be innocent for the loss of either
their property or their arms? Did either the pulpit
or the press through the state raise a note of
remonstrance or alarm? Let the clergymen who
abetted and the editors who encouraged the mob
answer!
As a sample of the press comments against the brutality of the
Missourians I quote a paragraph from the Quincy _Argus_, March
16, 1839:
We have no language sufficiently strong for the
expression of our indignation and shame at the recent
transaction in a sister state, and that state,
Missouri, a state of which we had long been proud,
alike for her men and history, but now so fallen that
we could wish her star stricken from the bright
constellation of the Union. We say we know of no
language sufficiently strong for the expression of
our shame and abhorrence of her recent conduct. She
has written her own character in letters of blood,
and stained it by acts of merciless cruelty and
brutality that the waters of ages cannot efface. It
will be observed that an organized mob, aided by
many of the civil and military officers of Missouri,
with Gov. Boggs at their head, have been the
prominent actors in this business, incited too, it
appears, against the "Mormons" by political hatred,
and by the additional motives of plunder and revenge.
They have but too well put in execution their threats
of extermination and expulsion, and fully wreaked
their vengeance on a body of industrious and
enterprising men, who had never wronged nor wished to
wrong them, but on the contrary had ever comported
themselves as good and honest citizens, living under
the same laws, and having the same right with
themselves to the sacred immunities of life, liberty
and property.