| 348 flatter herself that she would ever see her husband again, for if they could not find law to kill him, they would kill him without law. She was stripped of her bed and bedding, and of her household furniture, then placed in an open wagon with six helpless children, to make the best shift she could to get out of the State. The last news received from her she was on the banks of the Mississippi River in a tent, depending on the charity of the people for her support. This is the fifth time that I and my family have been unlawfully driven from house and home.'
"Now let everyone on reading this tale of horror speak out fully, fearlessly. Had the Mormons been pirates, bloodstained, had they been Indians, girdled with scalps, they would have deserved better treatment. Let the unsupported accusations brought against them be true, and yet the conduct of their plunderers and murderers was utterly without a palliation or excuse. Before the face of heaven and in the sight of men such acts are devilish.
"What, in a word, were the causes of the madness of these mobs? The Mormons were deluded, obstinate, zealous, exclusive in their faith. They used the vague prophetic denunciations of an enthusiastic sect. They retaliated the reproaches heaped upon them by religious opponents. This, we believe, was the great exciting cause. Their first persecutions were attacks on their opinions, and ridicule of their absurdity.
"Again, there were suspicions against the sincerity of their leading men. They were thought to be speculators on the credulity of the ignorant. Blind prejudice multiplied evil suspicions; enmity misconstrued natural acts; slander swelled trifles into monstrous wrongs; idle curiosity, greedy of alarm, and eager to gossip, circulated rumors. Now add that they were a larger and growing community, allied together both by necessity and choice, and withal prosperous, and we have an explanation of the fear, jealousy, envy, and hatred felt against them; an explanation, but no justification. The same elements were active and fierce in these Missouri outrages, which have kindled the faggot, and bared the sword, and opened the dungeon in all times. These elements
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