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Comprehensive History v3 (B. Roberts)
B. H. Roberts
Copyright 1930 Deseret News Press
The dominant idea of this volume is the Exodus of the church of the New Dispensation from Nauvoo-from Illinois-from the United States of America, in fact; for in their great trek of a thousand miles to the Great Basin of the Rocky Mountains, the Latter-day, Saints, making up the membership of that New Dispensation church, went beyond the western boundaries of the United States, into the territory of the Republic of Mexico. They were expatriated, not only from Nauvoo and from the State of Illinois, but from their country-the United States of America-the self-boasted "land of the free" and at the time the much vaunted "asylum" of the oppressed of all people-yet expatriating their own, and that on a matter of religious differences!
I put this exodus from Nauvoo, from Illinois, from the United States, on the ground of expatriation rather than on the ground of self-exile, because it was a forced exodus; submitted to after an appeal had been made to the governor of every state of the Union for a place of asylum for the community of the Latter-day Saints, now doomed by conditions made intolerable for them in Illinois. This appeal was met with contemptuous silence, save in one case only,-the governor of Arkansas who in his answer to the appeal expressed sympathy indeed but advised emigration to the western wilderness as a solution to the Latter-day Saint religious community problems. So they must needs go, and they did. As one of their leaders, in after years humorously referring to their presence in Utah's valleys, said: "We came here willingly because we had to!" And the Lord said to the church on the eve of her departure into the wilderness:
"They brethren have rejected you and your testimony, even the nation that has driven you out. * * * For they have killed the prophets and them that were sent unto them, and they have shed innocent blood, which crieth from the ground against them. * * * Joseph Smith, whom I did call upon by mine angels, my ministering servants, and by mine own voice out of the heavens to bring forth my work, which foundation he did lay, and was faithful, and I took him to my self. Many have marveled because of his death, but it was needful that he should seal his testimony with his blood, that he might be honored and the wicked condemned. Have I not delivered you from your enemies, only in that I have left a witness of my name!"
Martyrdom (Vol. II) closed an epoch; Exodus (Vol. III) opens another; and one full of human interest. It deals with change in the manner of life of the people; a new human leader; a new environment; an epoch of empire founding activities. It will be the story of the march of a people stripped of their earthly possessions constituting themselves an industrial column en march through-at first,-a somewhat fruitful wilderness, from the Mississippi to the Missouri-through the now state of Iowa, where they learned to be self-supporting from their industry, exchanging physical strength and industrial skill of hand and mind for food supplies and other means for their strange trek through the wilderness, to the far distant, and somewhat barren and inhospitable land that will become their home.