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Comprehensive History v2 (B. Roberts)
B. H. Roberts
Copyright 1930, Deseret News Press
Volume II of the Comprehensive History carries the story of the unfolding of the New Dispensation of the Fulness of Times from the arrival of the Missouri-exiled saints in Illinois, their settlement there-1839-to the very verge of the breaking up at Nauvoo and the departure of the church thence into the western wilderness; where, after a trek of thirteen hundred miles, the saints will found communities and build states and become a mighty people in the midst of the Rocky Mountains as predicted by their Prophet while yet at Nauvoo, then at the height of her development and glory.
Between these two points of time occur the events which make up the narrative of this Volume II; and what a sector of the Latter-day Saint history it unrolls!
It represents in its early chapters a people numbering several thousand, perhaps ten thousand, peeled and broken by years of relentless persecution, without food or shelter, sick and many dying, scattered in small groups in their wagons, their only homes, along both sides of the Mississippi between Quincy, Illinois, and the dilapidated steamboat landing called "Commerce"; with a few families wandering about in the sparsely settled prairies and high-rolling hills of the then territory of Iowa.
This narrative of Volume II recounts the rise of these saints from their fallen fortunes until they are settled in a compact community within the limits of Hancock county, Illinois, and Montrose, on the Iowa side of the Mississippi-but chiefly in the City of Nauvoo-of from thirty to forty thousand people. Commerce is transformed from a mere steamboat landing place of a warehouse or two, a few scattered, tumble-down residences and stores to Nauvoo, the Beautiful, the largest and best built city of the rapidly developing state of Illinois. A noble temple of light colored stone rose on a commanding height above the broad river bottom, and overlooked the great stretches of it north and south, as also it overlooked for miles around the farm and prairie lands eastward. This period witnessed farms opened, manufactures begun, and preparations negotiated to utilize the water power of the Des Moines rapids of the Mississippi, at the head of which Nauvoo was located, and naturally would become the chief beneficiary of it. The federal government was petitioned to construct a canal around these same rapids to enhance the value of the great "Father of Waters" as an all-year round, navigable stream; for at low water periods the rapids were impassible for large steamboats. This with a dam in the stream for power purposes would have improved Nauvoo's harbor facilities and would easily have made her the queen city of commerce and industry of the upper Mississippi valley.
Nauvoo had secured a charter from the state for a university, and an organization for such an institution was effected; which, with the genius for learning, and aspirations for knowledge inherent in the doctrines of the church of which Nauvoo was now become the center, could not have resulted otherwise than that Nauvoo would have become a great center of education and of art and science which attend upon the higher institutions of education wherever established. The Church of the Latter-day Saints held to the aphorism given of God through her Prophet: