Why he and his confrere Wilson,--against whom the prosecution for false imprisonment, etc., seems to have deen dropped,failed to show their warrant at the time of the Prophet's arrest, and acted, instead of as officers, in the role of kidnappers, has never been satisfactorily explained. Possibly kidnapping was their purpose, and not anticipating the intervention of officers and courts, they deemed the warrant superfluous and unnecessary.

Another election occurred. Cyrus Walker was the Whig candidate, and Joseph P. Hoge the Democratic candidate for Congress, from the district of which Hancock County was a part. The Whigs, it seems, had been counting upon, and fully expected to receive the Mormon vote; notwithstanding their former criticism of the Democrats for condescending to accept it. What gave the Whigs hope of securing it at this election was the fact that Mr. Walker, their candidate, had defended the Mormon leader in his latest legal difficulty and rescued him from the clutches of the would-be kidnappers, Reynolds and Wilson. Judge Pope, whose decision in January had liberated the Prophet, was also a Whig, as was Mr. Browning, the eloquent champion of the prisoner's cause on that occasion. These considerations, it was thought, would be of sufficient weight to turn the majority of the Saints in favor of Mr. Walker.

The Mormons, however, or the majority of them, stood by their democratic principles, and cast their ballots for Mr. Hoge; while a minority, including the Prophet, being Whigs, voted for Mr. Walker.* Hoge was elected by a majority in the district of 455 votes.

The Whigs were now angry again; not only at the Mormons, for failing to solidify in favor of Mr. Walker, but also at the Democrats, for again accepting Mormon assistance.

It is not at all clear, however, that the Mormons were responsible for the defeat of Mr. Walker at this election. Many of the Whigs, being sincere anti-Mormons, were "highly indignant" at

*The Mormons in Adams County, being Whigs, voted at this election for Mr. O. H. Browning, the party candidate in that district.

their candidate for defending the Prophet in the Reynolds and Wilson affair.* It is not improbable, therefore, that the dissatisfied ones repudiated him at the polls. Still it cannot be doubted that this exhibition of anti-Mormon animus on the part of the Whigs was not likely to attract Mormon votes, and it may have accounted in part for the large majority rolled up at Nauvoo for the democratic candidate.

Naturally the Whigs were angry, but they ought not to have been surprised. After denouncing the Democrats for receiving on a former occasion Mormon support, and filling their journals with accounts of alleged Mormon atrocities at Nauvoo, they should have been prepared for what awaited them. A little queer, too, that the fox, having once pronounced the grapes sour, should make another desperate attempt to taste them, and be angry because they were still out of reach. It beats the original fable. But such is politics.

Jealousy of the political power of the Mormons was now much enhanced. In August, several of them, chosen for county offices at the late election, proceeded to Carthage, the county seat of Hancock, to qualify. They were there threatened by an armed mob, led by Constable Harmon T. Wilson, who swore that they should not be installed. The Mormons, however, filed their bonds and took the required oaths of office, while their opponents were deliberating upon how best to prevent them.

The anti-Mormon party, which for some time had been discontinued, was now reorganized, with "war to the knife "-figuratively speaking-as its motto. Not altogether figurative, either, was that motto, if what followed may be taken as a criterion. The party pledged itself to assist Missouri in any future attempt that she might make against the Mormon leader.

Nor was this all. Mobs began attacking and burning Mormon houses outside Nauvoo, and even threatened to come against the city. Governor Ford being appealed to for protection, answered much in

* Gregg's History of Hancock County, page 295.

the same vein as President Van Buren when visited by the Prophet on a former occasion. "You must defend yourselves," was the inference drawn from Ford's reply. The Nauvoo Legion was therefore held in constant readiness to repel any mobocratic assault that might be made upon the city or the surrounding settlements.

POLITICIANS-JOSEPH SMITH A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES-HIS PLATFORM OF PRINCIPLES-PLANNING THE WESTERN EXODUS THE LAWS, FOSTERS, AND HIGBEES EXCOMMUNICATED THE "EXPOSITOR ABATEMENT ARREST OF THE MAYOR AND

CITY COUNCIL OF NAUVOO-A GATHERING

STORM-NAUVOO UNDER MARTIAL LAW

GOVERNOR FORD DEMANDS THE SURRENDER OF THE MORMON LEADERS-THE PROPHET AND HIS FRIENDS START FOR THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS-THE RETURN-THE SURRENDER CARTHAGE JAIL-MURDER OF THE PROPHET AND PATRIARCH.

HE question has probably occurred to the reader, was there really any ground for the charges of immorality and licentiousness hurled against the Mormon leaders by their enemies, personal, political and ecclesiastical. What of John C. Bennett's story to the effect that Joseph Smith sanctioned illicit relations between the sexes? Was the tale true or false? We propose to answer these queries.

First let us ask if it seems consistent,-except upon the theory that the Mormon leaders were double-dyed hypocrites, arrant knaves, who were wont to sacrifice on occasion one of their own number in order to throw a halo of virtue around the rest,-that such men as John C. Bennett, D. P. Hurlburt and others, expelled from the Mormon Church for unchastity, would have been so expelled if unchastity had been sanctioned by that Church or those leaders? Again, where was their cunning, that shrewdness for which their enemies gave them credit, to have thus alienated from their cause for such a purpose— their own preservation-men fully cognizant of their crimes?

Reader, the Latter-day Saints, with all their faults-for they have never pretended to be perfect-are a chaste and virtuous people. We speak of course of the generality of them. There are black sheep in

every fold. No community on earth values virtue more highly. They require chastity in man, as well as in woman, and next in enormity to murder, in their minds and according to their doctrines, are the sins of seduction and adultery. Had they their way the adulterer and the seducer, no less than the murderer, should answer for his crime with his life. Those who do not know this, do not know the Latter-day Saints, and they who state to the contrary simply state what is not true.

Then why so much talk about Mormon immorality? It springs, aside from sheer falsehood, from this fact. The Mormons believed in a doctrine called by them Celestial Marriage, but by others named polygamy. Whatever may be thought of the propriety of the former term, the latter, strictly speaking, is a misnomer. Polygamy means "many marriages," and may imply a plurality of husbands as well as wives. That a woman should have more than one husband, living and undivorced at the same time, the Mormons have never believed, but that a man, upright and moral, might under proper regulations, and in conformity with religious principle, have more than one wife, they have believed and in times past have practiced according to that belief. Polygeny, meaning "many wives," and not polygamy, which may mean "many husbands," is a more correct term to use in this connection.

With the Mormons this was a religious principle,-a tenet of their faith. They ceased its practice after nearly half a century's observance, because of a manifesto issued by the President of their Church, indicating as the will of the Lord that it should be discontinued. Congress had previously passed laws against plural marriage, making it a crime, and the Supreme Court of the United States had declared those laws constitutional. Not immediately, however, did the Mormons cease the practice of polygamy. They thought that Congress was wrong in thus legislating against their religion; that the Supreme Court was wrong, and might yet see its error, as it did in the Dred Scott case, and reversing its former ruling declare the anti-polygamy laws unconstitutional. But finally, after