Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 12

THE LAST EXILE

THE rest of autumn and the early months of winter were spent in making ready for the long march. The exact destination of the Saints was uncertain; but all knew that they were to journey beyond the Rocky Mountains. Such a trip required more preparation than had preceded the hasty jumps from county to county and from state to state which had constituted the earlier Mormon migrations. The grim leader now at their head was determined that this should be the last exile his people need endure. He meant to go so far that the new Zion would have time to grow to independent strength before Gentile hostility could again threaten it.

The great difficulty in preparing for the trek was poverty. The Mormon community was poor. Most converts were poor when they joined, and the ceaseless hostility of their neighbours had kept them so. From Ohio to Missouri, from Jackson county to Clay county, from Clay county to Caldwell county, from Missouri to Illinois -- no people could gather much gear while driven from pillar to post in this fashion. The Mormons had to make three guineas do the work of much more than five. Appeals were sent to the brethren in England and the eastern states, and quite a sum was raised in this way. Farms in the country round Nauvoo, and houses, stores and lots in town, were thrown on a stagnant market for sale. The proceeds went to buy horses, oxen, wagons, and supplies.

The varied industry of the time made partial amends for the lack of ready money. Much that the Mormons could not buy they could make. Nauvoo was turned into a vast wagon shop and tent manufactory. Such of the brethren as had no skill in these labours were sent to other towns, to find any work that offered, and to send their wages to the emigration fund at Nauvoo.

It is at such times that the primitive theocracy or the yet more primitive tribal organization shows to greatest advantage. The Mormon church had lost many adherents in the recent schisms. But among those who remained, there was loyalty and singleness of purpose. They gave unanimous consent to the westward march, leaving their leaders to fix the date and destination. They accepted with equal solidarity the word that those who had wealth must assist those who had none to reach the new Zion. They did not bicker, they did not argue, they did not complain. They worked, obeyed, and were cheerful. The social and political order in which they were enmeshed is death to individuality and progress. But as a means of giving purpose and unity to a motley clan, and of holding it firm in defiance to a world and an age, Mormonism never has been surpassed.

In all the activities of Nauvoo, Brigham Young bore a part. He was captain, preacher, counsellor, foreman and, on occasion, skilled labourer. He worked with his own hands on the boats which were to take the people across the great river in the spring, and on the temple, which the Mormons were determined to finish though they knew it must be left to their enemies. He sent young men into distant part of Iowa, Illinois, and even Missouri to buy cattle and horses at cheaper prices than the neighbouring towns were trying to wrest from the needs of Nauvoo, and studied maps of the western country, which consisted chiefly of the conventional signs for mountains, with vacant spaces marked "desert" in between. Heber Kimball was Brigham's most constant companion in work and study. Brigham wanted support, not advice; a lieutenant, not a counsellor; and in Heber Kimball, the Mormon leader had a follower whose loyalty was akin to worship.

There were other and tenderer duties for the Mormon chief to perform before starting on the westward trek. Brigham was not yet sufficiently married. He had begun collecting wives shortly after his return from England in 1841. He was the humble possessor of at least five by the end of 1843. He had taken four wives, among them one of Joseph Smith's widows, in 1844; and three wives, including another Widow Smith, in 1845. But there were still at Nauvoo comely maids and matrons willing to be stars in the crown of the prophet's successor; and Brigham gathered five of these to his capacious bosom in the single month of January, 1846. One of the five was another widow of Joseph, of course; it was hardly possible to collect that many eligibles at Nauvoo without finding at least one desolate widow of the prophet in the number. Brigham consoled two more of these sad ones for their loss of the fractional currency of matrimony before the sum of his weddings was complete.

On February 4, 1846, the Mormons began their exodus from Illinois. The season was open -- for the moment; and the first passengers were carried across the river on boats which were kept busy day and night until stopped by the ice. On February 5, camp was formed on Sugar creek, in the then territory of Iowa, nine miles west of the point of crossing. By the middle of the month, a thousand persons had gathered at this rendezvous with wagons, cattle, and equipment for the march. The weather had changed, heavy snows were falling, the mercury dropped to twenty degrees below zero, and teams were crossing the Mississippi on ice. Camp life at such a season would have been a severe trial for seasoned soldiers; and women and children as well as men were huddled on Sugar creek. Nine babies were born in tents and wagons in this camp during this frightful weather. American pioneers have been of hardy stock from the first; and never was that hardihood better shown than in this exodus of the Mormons.

On February 15, Young arrived at Sugar creek, bringing with him several apostles, and Captain Pitt's Nauvoo band. The campers were given two days to sing and dance themselves into forgetfulness of their troubles, and then Brigham assembled them to receive information and orders. He sketched in outline part of the journey which lay ahead; reminded them that only by discipline and cooperation could they hope to accomplish such a trip; and warned them that he meant to keep good order on the march, and that those who took part in it would have to "toe the mark." After this characteristic homily, Brigham returned to Nauvoo, and held a parting service in the almost completed temple, but in a few days he was back at Sugar creek, organizing the campaign. A letter was sent to the governor of Iowa, telling the persecutions which the Mormons had endured, and asking for protection during the march across the territory. At last, on March 1, while snow still covered the ground and bitter nights were still the rule, that march was begun.

No people not accustomed to the emergency-filled existence of pioneers could have made that journey. There were no roads. Snows and frost gave way to torrents of spring rain and seas of mud. The emigrants had scarcely half enough cattle for their wagons. Sometimes they covered five miles in a day; sometimes ten, sometimes not even three. At Chariton river, in a tent pitched on ground covered ankle deep with water, the wife of one of the elders gave birth to a child, who carried through life the name of the stream by which he was born. The emigrants had to ford or bridge streams, and corduroy their way across soft bottom-lands. Food was scarce, and only good discipline and communistic sharing saved the expedition from disaster in the first stage of its journey.

At Chariton river, during the halt enforced by floods, the camp was divided into companies with a semi-military organization. Fifty or sixty wagons constituted a company, each with a captain and second in command, and each provided with a commissary. This last was an indispensable officer, for the emigrants had to buy much of their supplies by the way. They had little money, and little to spare in the way of trade; but what they had was thrown into the common stock, and bartered on the best terms available. Brigham insisted on absolutely honest dealing. Counterfeit money was plentiful in those days, and one Mormon passed some of it to an Iowa farmer. Brigham descended in a hurricane of wrath on the culprit, and on the bishop who had pleaded for leniency in the case, and insisted on restitution. His anger was not more a matter of offended morality than of outraged common sense. He knew that if the first company of Mormons travelling through Iowa passed bad money, the following companies might count themselves lucky if left to starve.

From time to time along the road the Mormons established "travelling stakes of Zion" where some of the emigrants stopped and renting or "taking up" land, planted a crop to be harvested by those who came later on the trail. Other Mormons scattered among the pioneer settlements to work on the farms, taking their pay in flour, grain, and other provisions and supplies which went into the common treasury. Not all who thus went down among the Philistines returned safe to Israel; all across Iowa today may be found families whose forbears left Nauvoo with the Mormons, and stopped by the wayside. But a surprising proportion of these sorely tried men held true to the project of establishing another Zion beyond the deserts and mountains, where wicked men no more could persecute the chosen Saints of God.

It must not be thought from this tale of Mormon hardships that their march was a creeping procession of gloom. The emigration had its brighter side; and the Mormons, with their utter trust in the Lord and His regents, were of all people best fitted to gather such brightness as might be had. By the end of April, the rains had ceased. Thenceforward the journey lay across a smiling prairie country, with numerous wooded streams where game was plentiful. By this time, too, the people, grown accustomed to travelling, ordered their life by conditions of the camp, rather than of the home. Many of the better circumstanced families brought cows which were driven along with the teams. The cream thus afforded was hung from axles to be churned by the jolting of the wagons. Bread would be set and raised on the road, and when a halt was made for the night a little dugout in the hillside furnished an oven in which the loaves were baked. When any considerable stop was made, the whole male population of the camp engaged in work for the neighbouring farmers, or planted grain for the later companies to harvest, or made articles for sale or for use in the camp. The handicraft thus practised might not gain approval from modern aesthetes, but it served.

The leading party, with Brigham in direct command, reached the Missouri river the middle of June, camped at Council Bluffs, and began building boats for the crossing. The main body, following slowly, stopped at the "travelling stake" of Mount Pisgah, one hundred and thirty-eight miles farther east. Here, on June 26, they were overtaken by Captain Allen, of the regular army, who offered to enlist five hundred of their young men for service in the Mexican war which had begun that April. Such Mormons as volunteered were to serve for twelve months, and would form part of the expedition against California. It was believed in Washington that the Mormons intended to settle on the Pacific Coast, and Captain Allen mentioned this in his call for recruits. "Thus is offered to the Mormon people now, this year, an opportunity of sending a portion of their young and intelligent men to the ultimate destination of their whole people, and this entirely at the expense of the United States, and this advance party can thus pave the way and look out the land for their brethren to come after them."

Apostle Woodruff, in command at Mount Pisgah, referred the matter to Brigham Young at Council Bluffs. Brigham closed with the proposition at once, and five hundred and forty-nine young Mormons were enlisted. The fighting was ended in California long before they arrived, but they did a certain amount of garrison duty before the expiration of their term. A few remained in California, a few re-enlisted and were lost to the church; but practically all who lived to be mustered out rejoined their brethren.

Mormon writers describe this call for troops as a tyrannical demand made upon a weakened and distressed people; and at the same point to the enlistment of the battalion as proof of the unexampled loyalty of the Saints.

Both tales could not be true, and it happens there is not a fraction of truth in either. Captain Allen came, not with a demand for services but with an offer of help, which was seized with eagerness by a people needing nothing so much as steady employment at cash wages. The government believed it was conferring a favour on the Mormons when it made this offer; they believed they were conferring a favor on themselves when they accepted it; and the historian, looking back on the incident, can find no reason to reverse these contemporary judgments. The talk about ardent patriotism is a peculiarly irritating bit of ecclesiastical hypocrisy, and one which could find currency only among a people singularly untrained in all that patriotism means.

Meanwhile, the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo continued unchecked. Major Warren, on guard with a small squad of militia, reported in May that the ferries were carrying across thirty-five teams and a proportionate number of human beings every twenty-four hours. As fast as companies could be organized and assembled on the Iowa side, they took the trail for the unknown land of refuge in the West. An independent witness who rode from Council Bluffs to the Mississippi in July declared that 12,000 Mormons were then moving westward across Iowa. Any honourable antagonism among the Gentiles around Nauvoo would have been satisfied by this wholesale migration; but there were malcontents in the neighbourhood who had little understanding of honour, and who did not scruple to rouse mob violence against the helpless Mormons who remained behind.

Foremost of these counsellors of strife was one T. C. Sharp, editor of the "Warsaw Signal." Sharp had been implicated in the murder of Joseph and Hyrum, and had not ceased his efforts to stir up further war against the Mormon community. He brought to the work an energy and perhaps a fanatical sincerity worthy of a better cause; and his credulity or imagination was equal to accepting and circulating any tale of Mormon villainy. So long as Major Warren remained at Nauvoo, his cool courage and skilful tact kept the peace. But Warren marched to Mexico that summer, and there was no one to take his place.

Sharp managed to stir up the Warsaw militia to a move against Nauvoo early in June; but the heroes found they had forgotten their powder, and returned without making an attack. Next month came a more serious disturbance. A number of Mormons harvesting some distance from Nauvoo became involved in a quarrel with a neighbouring farmer, who gathered allies, tied tip the Mormons and flogged them. The flogged row spread like a prairie fire; each side seized prisoners to hold as "hostages"; the militia officer whom Governor Ford sent to protect Nauvoo found himself opposed by a larger force of militia commanded by the sheriff of Hancock county, who was bent on driving the Mormons across the river forthwith. A little later, the sheriff's posse, now known as "regulators," was placed under command of another militia officer, so that the visible authority of the state was seen on both sides of the controversy. The Mormons asked sixty days in which to complete their migration. This was refused. A Campbellite preacher named Brockman, a man whose unsavoury reputation gave promise of the evil deeds that followed, was placed at the head of the regulators, and the last "Mormon war" of Illinois was begun.

Brockman advanced to the attack of Nauvoo, September 12, 1846, with about 700 men. The entire Mormon population left in the town hardly exceeded this number; but many so-called "New Citizens," Gentiles from the east and south who had moved in and bought property, took part in the defense. Brockman scattered his riflemen in the adjacent cornfields, and kept up a noisy fire of artillery. The defenders had no artillery, but they made a substitute by boring out some steamboat shafts, and fired six-pound shots from these impromptu cannon. The town was wholly unfortified; a company of regulars would have entered it in fifteen minutes; but after burning powder for an hour or more, Brockman's forces retired, and settled down to a siege. The Mormons lost three men killed and several wounded in the engagement; the regulators lost ten or a dozen wounded, of whom one died.

There was no hope of protection from Governor Ford, nor of justice from regulators commanded by Brockman and hounded to activity by T. C. Sharp. But a committee of citizens from Quincy came out to see if they could prevent further bloodshed. After some days of negotiation, a treaty was signed, providing that the Mormons should leave as soon as they could cross the river, except ten men, who were to see to the disposal of the unsold property.

Brockman was to enter the city, but pledged himself not to molest the citizens or the departing Mormons. He kept his word just as long as the presence of a crowd of sight-seers from Quincy put a constraint upon him. The moment he was left in full control, he ordered all " New Citizens " who had sided with the Mormons to leave at once, and the riffraff under his command enforced the order with the usual aimless brutality of a mob.

The wretched remnant of the Mormons fled before their enemies as in older days the villagers of Italy might have fled before the Huns. Sick men and women were carried away on their beds, sick babies were clutched in their mother's arms as the whole population struggled for the ferries. No one stopped to gather his property; few even halted to seize a day's provisions. They had no tents, no money, and many of them had no horses or wagons. Still they fled; for they believed, and with some show of justice, that any exile was better than to be held prisoners by Brockman's mob. By night of September 18, some seven hundred helpless fugitives were camping on the malarial flats across the river from Nauvoo.

Of all attacks by Gentiles on the Mormon community this was the last and the least defensible. It stands without a shred of palliation or excuse. The Mormons were leaving Nauvoo; nearly all of them had already gone. Love of cruelty for its own sake, or desire to plunder the property which might otherwise be sold to the "New Citizens," were the sole rational reasons for violence at this time. Doubtless both motives were present in the leaders of the mob. But that men like Sharp and Brockman could rouse hundreds of citizens to follow them in such a senseless and conscienceless crusade shows once more how thin is the mantle of civilization that drapes the naked savagery of the primeval caves.

American citizens did this thing, and American institutions permitted it. By so much, therefore, do our citizenship and our institutions fall short of the democratic ideal of orderly freedom. The raid on Nauvoo repeats the lesson that the great and all but fatal lack in American life is discipline; not the discipline which kings and priests impose on subjects and worshippers, but which free and just-minded men impose on themselves.

Had democracy been less riotous, theocracy had been less attractive. But democracy can claim at least the negative merit that it does not train people to work together for ill. Its worst deeds are mild when set beside those of any temporal or spiritual despotism that history knows. The attack on Nauvoo was a crime which the present writers can neither palliate nor deny -- but the attack on Nauvoo fades into insignificance in the shadow of Mountain Meadows.