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Show Page 106 or loyalty. He wrote of Orson in his credentials, "He by us is recommended...as a gentleman of principle and character." Orson's sojourn in Washington was pleasant but fruitless. He laid the petition before the judiciary committees of both houses, but, as he later wrote, "Our petitioners are unheeded or treated with contempt. And thousands of American citizens must linger out a life of wretched exile, deprived of the use of their own lands, and of the sacred rights of American Liberty." In May, he wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee out of a "deep sense of duty to myself, and to many thousands of sufferers who have entrusted this memorial to my charge." He argued for Congressional intervention, insisting that the expense and certain outcome of litigation in Missouri courts would necessitate eventual appeal to the Supreme Court - where, even if judgment were rendered in favor of the Mormons, the army would be required to exact retribution. In addition, Orson pointed out the Constitutional prohibition on federal courts to adjudicate cases of law and equity between a state and citizens of another state. The thrust of his appeal was to the futility of judicial remedies; that it lay only in the province of Congress to provide redress to the 12 much-injured Mormon people. These arguments were in vain - the judiciary committee recommended once again to the Mormons recourse through the courts of the state of Missouri and emphasized the powerlessness of the federal government in the internal affairs of any state. It was perhaps ingenuous of the Mormons to press the Congress, in view of the extremely delicate question of states' rights, then raging among the federal representatives and threatening to pull the Union apart. Congress was still dominated by the hidebound, pro-slavery Democratic party, and any move that smacked of federal intervention in the affairs of individual states was quite simply out of the question. |