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hour of trial, compared with the foremost politicians in the country, including a President of the United States, as illustrated in the above example. It is charitably to be hoped, however, that President Polk was a very "silent party" to this scheme, and that his name was merely used to give potency to the promise of protection-, and to the threat that the General Government would intercept the Mormons in their exodus.

      Little did the political demagogues of the time, and these land speculators, understand the Mormon people, and still less the character of the men who were leading them; nor did "Elder Brannan" know them much better. From the beginning the Mormons never gave up an inch of their chosen ground, never, as a people, consented to a compromise, nor allowed themselves to be turned aside from their purposes, nor wavered in their fidelity to their faith. They would suffer expulsion, or make an exodus if need be, yet ever, as in this case, have they answered, "Our trust is in God. We look to Him for protection." So far "Elder Brannan" understood them; hence his profession of faith that the Lord would overrule and break the "covenant with death." But these men did wiser and better. They never made the covenant, but calmly defied the consequences, which they knew too well might soon follow. Not even as much as to reply to Messrs. Benson, Kendall & Co. did they descend from the pinnacle of their integrity.

      But, be it not for a moment thought that the Mormon leaders did not fully comprehend their critical position in all its aspects. A homely anecdote of the apostle George A. Smith will illustrate those times. At a council in Nauvoo, of the men who were to act as the captains of the people in that famous exodus, one after the other brought up difficulties in their path until the prospect was without one poor speck of daylight. The good nature of "George A." was provoked at last, when he sprang up and observed with his quaint humor that had now a touch of the grand in it, " If there is no God in Israel we are a 'sucked in' set of fellows. But I am going to take my family and cross the river, and the Lord will open the way." He was one of the first to set out on that miraculous journey to the Rocky Mountains.

      Having resolved to trust in their God and themselves, quietly setting aside the politicians, Brigham Young and several of the Twelve left the Camp of Israel for a few days, and returned to bid farewell to their beloved Nauvoo, and hold a parting service in the Temple. This was the last time Brigham Young ever saw that sacred monument of the Mormons' devotion.

      The Pioneers had now been a month on Sugar Creek, and during the time had, of course, consumed a vast amount of the provisions; indeed, nearly all, which had been gathered up for their journey. Their condition, however, was not without its compensation; for it checked the movements of the mob, among whom the opinion prevailed that the outfit of the Pioneers was so utterly insufficient that, in a short time, they would break in pieces and scatter. Moreover, it was mid-winter. Up to the date of their starting from this first camping ground, detachments continued to join them, crossing the Mississippi, from Nauvoo, on the ice; but before starting they addressed the following memorial: "To His Excellency Governor of the Territory of Iowa: Honored Sir: The time is at hand in which several thousand free citizens of this great Republic are to be driven from their peaceful homes and firesides, their property and farms, and their dearest constitutional rights, to wander in the barren plains and sterile mountains of western wilds, and linger out their lives in wretched exile, far beyond the pale of professed civilization, or else be exterminated upon their own lands by the people and authorities of the State of Illinois.

      "As life is sweet, we have chosen banishment rather than death, but, sir, the terms of our banishment are so rigid, that we have not sufficient time allotted us to make the necessary preparations to encounter the hardships and difficulties of these dreary and uninhabited regions. We have not time allowed us to dispose of our property, dwellings and farms, consequently many of us will have to leave them unsold, without the means of procuring the necessary provisions, clothing, teams, etc., to sustain us but a short distance beyond the settlements; hence our persecutors have placed us in very unpleasant circumstances.

      "To stay is death by ' fire and sword;' to go into banishment unprepared is death by starvation. But yet, under these heartrending circumstances, several hundred of us have started upon our dreary journey, and are now encamped in Lee County, Iowa, suffering much from the intensity of the cold. Some of us are already without food, and others have barely sufficient to last a few weeks: hundreds of others must shortly follow us in the same unhappy condition, therefore: "We, the presiding authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a committee in behalf of several thousand suffering exiles, humbly ask Your Excellency to shield and protect us in our constitutional rights, while we are passing through the Territory over which you have jurisdiction. And, should any of the exiles be under the necessity of stopping in this Territory for a time, either in settled or unsettled parts, for the purpose of raising crops, by renting farms or upon public lands, or to make the necessary preparations for their exile in any lawful way, we humbly petition Your Excellency to use an influence and power in our behalf, and thus preserve thousands of American citizens, together with their wives and children, from intense sufferings, starvation and death. And your petitioners will ever pray."

      In the diary of the President is a sort of valedictory, written before starting on their journey from Sugar Creek, which concludes thus: "Our homes, gardens, orchards, farms, streets, bridges, mills, public halls, magnificent temple, and other public improvements we leave as a monument of our patriotism, industry, economy, uprightness of purpose, and integrity of heart, and as a living testimony of the falsehood and wickedness of those who charge us with disloyalty to the Constitution of our country, idleness and dishonesty."

      The Mormons were setting out under their leaders, from the borders of civilization, with their wives and their children, in broad daylight, before the very eyes of ten thousand of their enemies, who would have preferred their utter destruction to their " flight," notwithstanding they had enforced it by treaties outrageous beyond description, inasmuch as the exiles were nearly all American born, many of them tracing their ancestors to the very founders of the nation. They had to make a journey of fifteen hundred miles over trackless prairies, sandy deserts and rocky mountains, through bands of warlike Indians, who had been driven, exasperated, towards the West; and at last, to seek out and build up their Zion in valleys then unfruitful, in a solitary region where the foot of the white man had scarcely trod. These, too, were to be followed by the aged, the halt, the sick and the blind, the poor, who were to be helped by their little less destitute brethren, and the delicate young mother with her new-born babe at her breast, and still worse, for they were not only threatened with the extermination of the poor remnant at Nauvoo, but news had arrived that the parent-government designed to pursue their pioneers with troops, take from them their arms, and scatter them, that they might perish by the way, and leave their bones bleaching in the wilderness.

      Yet did Brigham Young deal with the exodus of the Mormon people as simply in its opening as he did in his daily record of it. So, indeed, did the entire Mormon community. They all seemed as oblivious of the stupendous meaning of an exodus, as did the first workers on railroads of the vast meaning to civilization of that wonder of the age. A people trusting in their God, the Mormons were, in their mission, superior to the greatest human trials, and in their childlike faith equal to almost superhuman undertakings. To-day, however, with the astonishing change which has come over the spirit of the scene, on the whole Pacific Slope, since the Mormons pioneered our nation towards the setting sun, the picture of a modern Israel in their exodus has almost faded from the popular mind; but, in the centuries hence, when the passing events of this age shall have each taken their proper place, the historian will point back to that exodus in the New World of the West, as one quite worthy to rank with the immortal exodus of the children of Israel.

      At about noon, on the 1st of March, 1846, the " Camp of Israel" began to move, and at four o'clock nearly four hundred wagons were on the way, traveling in a north-westerly direction. At night, they camped again on Sugar Creek, having advanced five miles. Scraping away the snow, they pitched their tents upon the hard-frozen ground; and after building large fires in front, they made themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. Indeed, it is questionable whether any other people in the world could have cozened themselves into a happy state of mind amid such surroundings, with such a past, fresh and bleeding in their memories, and with such a prospect as was before both themselves and the remnant of their brethren left in Nauvoo to the tender mercies

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