Spirit of Man Eternal.

The Nature of the Priesthood.

The Restoration of the Priesthood.

Adam in the Valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman.

Labors of the Patriarchs and Moses.

Angels to have Part in the Work.

The Kingdom of Heaven.

Future Deliverance of the Saints.

Importance of Revelation.

A Vision and Prophecy.

The Mission of Elijah.

Blessings for the Saints in Stakes of Zion.

Haste to Build up Zion.

Peace in Zion and Her Stakes.

The Prophet's Vision of Judgement.

Vision.

Angels.

Powers of the Devil.

The Gift of Tongues.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Baptism of Isaac Galland—Epistle of the Twelve to the Church.

Baptism of Isaac Galland.

Epistle of the Twelve to the Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to the Churches Scattered Abroad and to all the Saints.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The Escape of Parley P. Pratt and his Fellow Prisoners from Missouri—The Close of an Epoch.

Parley P. Pratt's Account of His Escape from Missouri.

Appendix to Volume III.

Affidavits of Hyrum Smith et al. on affairs in Missouri, 1831-39; Officially subscribed to before the municipal court of Nauvoo the first day of July, 1843.

Explanatory Note.

The Testimony of Hyrum Smith.

Testimony of Parley P. Pratt.

Testimony of George W. Pitkin.

Testimony of Brigham Young.

Testimony of Lyman Wight.

Testimony of Sidney Rigdon.

Introduction to Volume III.

Enlightenment a Factor in Determining Responsibility for Conduct.

Volume Three concludes, for the present, the history of the Church in Missouri. I think it proper, therefore, that here should be considered the causes of the Missouri persecutions, which resulted in the expulsion of the entire Church from that state.

There have been, of course, more extensive persecutions than those inflicted on the Saints in Missouri; but I doubt if there has ever been a persecution more cruel or terror-laden in its character. Viewed from the standpoint of its net results there were some fifty people, men, women, and children, killed outright; about as many more were wounded or cruelly beaten, and many more perished indirectly because of the exposure to which they were subjected through the winters of 1833-4 and 1838-9.

In round numbers it is estimated that between twelve and fifteen thousand people, citizens of the United States, after being dispossessed of their lands, were forcibly driven from the state. It is known that they paid to the United States government for land alone, three hundred and eighteen thousand dollars, which, at the minimum price of one dollar and a quarter per acre, would give them land holdings of over two hundred and fifty thousand acres, which represented for that day very large interests.^[1]

To this list of results must be added the more horrible one of several cases of ravishment at Far West; and also, after barely escaping from the sentence of death pronounced by a court martial, the cruel imprisonment through weary months of a number of Church leaders.

In passing judgment upon such matters as these account must be taken of the age and country in which they occurred; likewise the pretensions to right views of life, and devotion to freedom on the part of the perpetrators of the injustice. Undoubtedly a heavier debt is incurred to history, to humanity and to God, when the parties who resort to such acts of mob violence and injustice live in an enlightened age, and where the free institutions of their country guarantee both the freedom and security of its citizens.

If in the jungle a man meets a tiger and is torn to pieces, no one thinks of holding the tiger to any moral accountability. Perhaps the hunt will be formed to destroy the beast, but that is merely to be rid of a dangerous animal, and prevent the repetition of the deed. If another meets a cruel death among savages in heathen lands, while some moral responsibility would hold against them, according to their degree of enlightenment, yet the fact that it was an act of savages would be held to reduce the degree of moral turpitude. And likewise even in civilized states, in localities to which the vicious may gravitate, when acts of violence are committed there, some allowance may be, and generally is, made for the ignorance and general brutality of the particular neighborhood.

By this process of reasoning I think it will appear quite clear that moral responsibility, both on the part of individuals and communities or nations, increases in proportion to their enlightenment. If, therefore, this principle be kept in view, the persecution of the Latter-day Saints by the people of Missouri was a very heinous offense.

True it may be said that the worst acts of cruelty were perpetrated by low, brutish men among the mob or in the militia—for these bodies were convertible from one to the other on shortest possible notice, and wholly as the exigencies of the enemies of the Saints demanded—but these were led and abetted by quite a different order of men: by lawyers, members of the state legislature, by county and district judges, by physicians, by professed ministers of the gospel, by merchants, by leading politicians, by captains, majors, colonels, and generals—of several grades—of the militia, by many other high officials of the state including the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and finally by the action of the state legislature which appropriated two hundred thousand dollars to defray the expenses incurred by the mob-militia in carrying out the Governor's order, exterminating the Saints from the state. These facts are made apparent in the pages of this and the two preceding volumes of the HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. The facts cannot be questioned. They are written out most circumstantially in the Prophet's story. Times, places, and names are given of the incidents related, and the more important of these may be corroborated by histories of these events other than our own.

The persecutions then of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri, and their final expulsion from that state, were crimes against the enlightenment of the age and of the state where the acts occurred; a crime against the constitutions and institutions both of the state of Missouri and of the United States; as also a crime against the Christian religion. All this we have in mind when speaking of the severity and cruelty of these compared with other persecutions. The state of Missouri was guilty of a greater crime when it persecuted the Latter-day Saints than states were which in the barbarous times of the dark ages persecuted their people; though when estimated in net results there may have been more murders and robberies, greater destruction of property, and more wide-spread suffering in the latter than in the former.

It is in the light of the principle here laid down that I propose to review the causes of the persecutions of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri.

The People of Missouri and the Saints.

The people of the state of Missouri, and especially those living in western and upper Missouri, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, were chiefly from the states of the South—from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and the Carolinas. This is not stated as a matter