| Show THE ED MORMONS COUNCIL BLUFFS may 15 1877 to the editor of the herald berald when thousands are crying for vengeance on an innocent people for the crimes of some who once bore their name and seem ever ready to credit every false and sensational sat ional report from utah it is but justice to sometimes lookyat look at matters from the mormon standpoint that good and evil will be amply rewarded and that to nations andin divid bals who shed innocent blood a day of reckoning will inevitably come isa is a fundamental principle in the mormon creed the people of utah are making history aud and none regret more than they that any who ever had a right to be called mormons cormons should be the cause of one dark paragraph in that history they heartily respond to the sentiment mete out justice to ail all and ana protect the innocent but they too comprehend why so many consider only the tha first part applicable to mormons cormons Mor mons why justice to them wears one thing and to their fellow citizens another about thirty elgh ayears ago they were driven from the state of WE ils lis souil by an authorized mob of state militia but one alternative was offered them extermination or fight they were treacherously disarmed and in this condition were robbed of household goods and their domestic animals and grain wantonly destroyed ien men ten women and children were driven out into the elements fa ph the month of december with a meager remnant of necessaries nece sarles saries saved from the grasp of their plunderers who were in some cases led by so called ministers of the gospel some were whipped until their bowels gushed out ol 01 old oid d meily metis men men in the prime of life and beardless boys were killed hilled when unarmed and defenseless women in conditions which demand the protection and are supposed to elicit the kenderest ten derest sympathies pa thies of manhood were compelled to flee in hi destitution from burning houses others were abused and sometimes until death kindly released them from sum suf suffering fiering some of their leaders were starved in prison and then human flesh set before them and if the assertions assenti lons ions of those who brought it were wore true the body of some woman victim supplied the horrid repast about four hundred persons perished in the fiendish persecutions As the new religion had not then beem been preached in lands with very few exceptions the sufferers were native americans Aine alne ricans the country their country looked on with the approval silence gives and an indifference which evidenced no sympathy the proper authorities ties were petitioned for protection and redress until the chief executive of the nation was reached lils ills reply your cause is just but I 1 can do nothing n 0 thing for you has assured him an unenviable immortality and can only be considered the response to the cry of the oppressed whom it was bound by every consideration of justice and humanity to protect were any of the mormons cormons guilty of crimes the power that could thus destroy could have easily punished the guilty and protected the innocent the turf had time to form over the graves of the victims of missouri vindictiveness before the mormon leaders jos joa and hyrum smith were assassinated in carthage jail jall 2 while in the hands of the onn off officers leers of the law and under the pledged protection of thos ford tho the governor vernor of illinois A As there was no cause for legal action against thern them a mob of state were permitted by the passive treachery of the state executive to answer the ends of premeditated violence this thia occurred on the of june 1844 1814 less than six years after the expulsion from missouri the city charter of nauvoo was annulled by legislative enactment and its militia disarmed by order of the executive of the thi state left defenseless in the hands of their enemies the treachery that had brought the smiths in reach of their assassins followed up the people until they were forced to endure the storms of winter on the prairies of iowa in the month of ferrua february ry 1846 the sick and destitute whom the tho straitened circumstances of those already gone had not permitted to succor and assist were all that vere were left of the founders of this beautiful city the mob knew no mercy and extended none to this pitiful remnant after af ter making a heroic but desperate effort in self defense in the following september they were forced across the mississippi river biver to famish to sicken in the hot sim aim by day and the chilling dews of autumn nights and homeless in sight of hundreds of empty houses which their own hands had assisted to build nauvoo founded in sorrow and destitution with the capstone of its magnificent temple laid in the fires of persecution 3 bad become in the short space of seven years one of the most moat populous populo usand and flourishing cities of the then great west now for thirty years its desolate gardens and decaying houses houkes have been a silent though impressive monument of the indifference of the american people to the wrongs and sufferings of a portion of their fellow citizens because their bious doctrines came in contact with tradition and public opinion greater in the nauvoo than ia in the missouri persecutions while the loss of life by direct violence was perhaps less the sub sut subsequent sequent loss was great on account of the long period of destitution and hardship occupied in journeying to the only shelter left them the mountain deserts one thousand ilves lives were exodus and th the 0 journey to the rocky bocky mountains the bones of the mormon dead are scattered along from the mississippi river to the shores of the great salt sait lake with scarcely a monument now left to indicate a sad tale of bereavement rea or tell the naine name of the departed about persons died at winter quarters now known as florence machof much of the suffering and loss of life at that place may be attributed to 0 the action of the general government in calling for a battalion of men for the mexican war it depleted p feted the destitute scattered mormon camps of of their ablest men for preparing shelter and the necessaries of life for the ensuing winter there was not even a plea of necessity for this despotic act this extension of human hrman su suffering ff bring ering for the proffered services of many volun volunteers had been refused because not needed not one eminent statesman potent in the power of high official ond off cial clai influence and scar sear scarcely cely eely a moiety of public opinion has yet demanded every crime known in the catalogue of human depravity against the mormons cormons in mississippi and illinois should be brought to justice tice the states which sanctioned these criminal proceedings by the official acts of the representatives of the people have haxe made ne no resti aution for the financial losses of or the persecuted the general government has turned a deaf ear to their complaints and arid they are still exiles I 1 from the lands of which they hol hoi hold hoid d government titles there thero are many still liv living I 1 i ng who suffered in these terrible persecutions and some carry the marks of their sufferings on their bodies there is also a large amount of documentary evidence ceas as to the facts fasts in the case casl how long must justice still wait how long can our country afford to let these bills against it accumulate JAMES A LITTLE omaha omara herald |
