| 360 June 18 to 22, Elder P. N. Brix stopped in Plano, enroute for Denmark. About this time General A. W. Doniphan was interviewed and his statements regarding the Missouri troubles were published in the Kansas City Journal, from which the following extracts are made:
"I came to Missouri in 1830, and located in Lexington, where I lived until April, 1833, when I removed to Liberty, Clay County. The Mormons came to Jackson County in 1830, and I met Oliver Cowdery, John Whitmer, and Christian Whitmer, three of the elders, in Independence, during the spring of 1831. Peter Whitmer was a tailor and I employed him to make me a suit of clothes."
"What kind of people were the Mormons?"
"They were Northern people, who, on account of their declining to own slaves and their denunciation of the system of slavery, were termed 'Freesoilers.' The majority of them were intelligent, industrious, and law-abiding citizens, but there were some ignorant, simple-minded fanatics among them, whom the people said would steal. Soon after they came to Jackson County, they established a newspaper at Independence, called the Morning and Evening Star, edited by W. W. Phelps, in which they published their peculiar tenets and pretended revelations, in which they set forth that they had been sent to Jackson County by divine Providence, and that they, as a church were to possess the whole of the county, which then embraced what is now Jackson, Cass, and Bates Counties. These assumptions were evidently made use of for the purpose of exciting the jealousy of persons of other religious denominations and the more ignorant portions of the community. This of course caused hard feelings between them and the people of the county, but I think the real objections to the Mormons were their denunciation of slavery, and the objections slaveholders had to having so large a settlement of anti-slavery people in their midst, and also to their acquiring such a large amount of land, which then belonged to the Government, and subject to preëmption. From these and other causes a very bitter feeling was engendered between the Mormons and citizens, which culminated in the month of July, 1833, when a public meeting was held at the court-house in Independence, at which it was resolved to tear down the Mormon printing establishment, which resolve was immediately carried out. The mob also committed numerous other outrages, the most brutal of which was the tarring and feathering of Bishop Partridge. I can't positively state who were the leaders of the mob, but it was participated in by a large number of the leading citizens of the county. The Mormons made but little if any resistance, but submitted to the inevitable, and agreed not to establish another paper, and there was an apparent tranquility [tranquillity] existing until about the first of the following November, when, from imprudent conduct on both sides, both Mormons and Gentiles-the citizens were then called
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