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Show John Joshua and Nathan Join the Army 63 It was in April 1833, that the first organized mobs began to for the removal of the Saints from the state. agitate However, the church leaders went forward with their plans to possess the "land of and promise," on June Missouri Saints the plans of the Saints Many July 1833, it was 25, 1833, the prophet forwarded for the "City to the of Zion." moving into the promised land and estimated that 1,200 had gathered there. were by However, mob activities increased in proportion to the move the Saints into Missouri, and on July 20, 1833, the printing ment of office a belonging to the church at Independence was destroyed by mob, who also tarred and feathered Bishop Edward Partridge and a man by the name of Allen. From here things went from bad to worse. In October William W. Phelps and Orson Hyde were sent to the state capital, Jefferson City, to memoralize Governor Daniel Dunklin. The governor wrote a letter in reply that he was prepared to enforce the law, but conditions became progressively worse in stead of better. On October 31, 1833, the mob destroyed ten Mor mon homes west of the Big Blue in Jackson County and severely beat several of the Mormon brethren. The next day Independence itself attacked and the store belonging to Gilbert and Whitney was ransacked. F our days later a skirmish between mob members and Mormons took place west of the Big Blue which left two mob members and one Mormon dead. II was ' Local law enforcement seemed to have abdicated and the governor was either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. Over the next few months the mob acting partly on its own and partly under the their of a state militia, compelled the Saints to give up and then forced them out of J ackson County across the guise arms river into It Clay County. under such circumstances that the extraordinary revela raising of an army to relieve the Jackson County Saints and restore them to their homes was given. tion was calling for the The revelation stated that young and middle-aged men were recruited, and that an attempt was to be made to raise five hundred men, but if they were unable to get five hundred, three hundred would do, and even one hundred would be accepted if that was all they could procure. But they were not to march with less than a hundred.' to be |
