It was then that the Mormon leaders addressed the famous petition to President Polk and the Governors of all the States, excepting Missouri and Illinois, changing simply the address to each person. Here it is: "Nauvoo, April 24th, 1845.
"His Excellency James K. Polk, President of the United States.
"Hon. Sir: Suffer us, in behalf of a disfranchised and long afflicted people, to prefer a few suggestions for "your serious consideration, in hope of a friendly and unequivocal response, at as early a period as may suit your convenience, and the extreme urgency of the case seems to demand.
"It is not our present design to detail the multiplied and aggravated wrongs that we have received in the midst of a nation that gave us birth. Most of us have long been loyal citizens of some one of these United States, over which you have the honor to preside, while a few only claim the privilege of peaceable and lawful emigrants, designing to make the Union our permanent residence.
"We say we are a disfranchised people. We are privately told by the highest authorities of the State that it is neither prudent nor safe for us to vote at the polls; still we have continued to maintain our right to vote, until the blood of our best men has been shed, both in Missouri and Illinois, with impunity.
"You are doubtless somewhat familiar with the history of our expulsion from the State of Missouri, wherein scores of our brethren were massacred. Hundreds died through want and sickness, occasioned by their unparalleled sufferings.
Some millions worth of our property was destroyed, and some fifteen thousand souls fled for their lives to the then hospitable and peaceful shores of Illinois: and that the State of Illinois granted to us a liberal charter, for the term of perpetual succession, under whose provision private rights have become invested, and the largest city in the State has grown up, numbering about twenty thousand inhabitants.
"But, sir, the startling attitude recently assumed by the State of Illinois, forbids us to think that her designs are any less vindictive than those of Missouri.
She has already used the military of the State, with the executive at their head, to coerce and surrender up our best men to unparalleled murder, and that too under the most sacred pledges of protection and safety. As a salve for such unearthly perfidy and guilt, she told us, through her highest executive officers, that the laws should be magnified and the murderers brought to justice; but the blood of her innocent victims had not been wholly wiped from the floor of the awful arena, ere the Senate of that State rescued one of the indicted actors in that mournful tragedy from the sheriff of Hancock County, and gave him a seat in her hall of legislation; and all who were indicted by the grand jury of Hancock County for the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, are suffered to roam at large, watching for further prey.
"To crown the climax of those bloody deeds, the State has repealed those chartered rights, by which wo might have lawfully defended ourselves against aggressors. If we defend ourselves hereafter against violence, whether it comes under the shadow of law or otherwise (for we have reason to expect it in both ways), we shall then be charged with treason and suffer the penalty; and if we continue passive and non-resistant, we must certainly expect to perish, for our enemies have sworn it.
"And here, sir, permit us to state that General Joseph Smith, during his short life, was arraigned at the bar of his country about fifty times, charged with criminal offences, but was acquitted every time by his country; his enemies, or rather his religious opponents, almost invariably being his judges. And we further testify that, as a people, we are law-abiding, peaceable and without crime; and we challenge the world to prove to the contrary; and while other less cities in Illinois have had special courts instituted to try their criminals, we have been stript of every source of arraigning marauders and murderers who are prowling around to destroy us, except the common magistracy.
"With these facts before you, sir, will you write to us without delay as a father and friend, and advise us what to do. We are members of the same great confederacy. Our fathers, yea, some of us, have fought and bled for our country, and we love her Constitution dearly.
"In the name of Israel's God, and by virtue of multiplied ties of country and kindred, we ask your friendly interposition in our favor. Will it be too much for us to ask you to convene a special session of Congress, and furnish us an asylum, where we can enjoy our rights of conscience and religion unmolested? Or, will you, in a special message to that body, when convened, recommend a remonstrance against such unhallowed acts of oppression and expatriation as this people have continued to receive from the States of Missouri and Illinois? Or will you favor us by your personal influence and by your official rank? Or will you express your views concerning what is called the "Great Western Measure" of colonizing the Latter-day Saints in Oregon, the north-western Territory, or some location remote from the States, where the hand of oppression shall not crush every noble principle and extinguish every patriotic feeling?
"And now, honored sir, having reached out our imploring hands to you, with deep solemnity, we would importune you as a father, a friend, a patriot and the head of a mighty nation, by the Constitution of American liberty, by the blood of our fathers who have fought for the independence of this republic, by the blood of the martyrs which has been shed in our midst, by the waitings of the widows and orphans, by our murdered fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and children, by the dread of immediate destruction from secret combinations now forming for our overthrow, and by every endearing tie that binds man to man and renders life bearable, and that too, for aught we know, for the last time,—that you will lend your immediate aid to quell the violence of mobocracy, and exert your influence to establish us as a people in our civil and religious rights, where we now are, or in some part of the United States, or in some place remote therefrom, where we may colonize in peace and safety as soon as circumstances will permit.
"We sincerely hope that your future prompt measures towards us will be dictated by the best feelings that dwell in the bosom of humanity, and the blessings of a grateful people, and many ready to perish, shall come upon you.
"We are, sir, with great respect, your obedient servants, Brigham Young, Willard Richards, Orson Spencer, Orson Pratt, y Committee, W. W. Phelps, A. W. Babbitt, J. M. Bernhisel, In behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at Nauvoo, Illinois.
"P.S.—As many of our communications, post-marked at Nauvoo, have failed of their destination, and the mails around us have been intercepted by our enemies, we shall send this to some distant office by the hand of a special messenger."
The appeal itself is not a mere attempt at rhetoric. The very inelegance of multiplied ties and sacred objects invoked and crowded upon each other, to touch the hearts of men in power, is truly affecting. There is a tragic burden in the circumstances and urgency of the case. But the prayer was unanswered.
Towards the close of the year 1845, the leaders, in council, resolved to remove their people at once and seek a second Zion in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains. It was too clear that they could no longer dwell among so-called civilized men. They knew that they must soon seek refuge with the children of the forest; and as for humanity, they must seek it in the breasts of savages, for there was scarcely a smoldering spark of it left for them, either in Missouri or Illinois, nor indeed anywhere within the borders of the United States.
They had now no destiny but in the West. If they tarried longer their blood would fertilize the lands which they had tilled, and their wives and daughters would be ravished within the sanctuary of the homes which their industrious hands had built. Their people were by a thousand ancestral links joined to the Pilgrim Fathers who founded this nation, and with the heroes who won for it independence, and it was as the breaking of their heartstrings to rend them from their fatherland, and send them as exiles into the territory of a foreign power. But there was no alternative between a Mormon exodus or a Mormon massacre.
Sorrowfully, but resolutely, the Saints prepared to leave; trusting in the Providence which had thus far taken them through their darkest days and multiplied upon their heads compensation for their sorrows. But the anti-Mormons seemed eager for the questionable honor of exterminating them. In September of the year 1845, delegates from nine counties met in convention, at Carthage, over the Mormon troubles,