# The Rocky Mountain Saints/Chapter 26

​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/197 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/198 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/199 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/200 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/201 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/202 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/203 ​Page:The Rocky Mountain Saints.djvu/204 ​length, without moving his feet. From the holes in his vest (the day was warm, and no one had on a coat but myself), pantaloons, drawers, and shirt, it appears evident that a ball must have been thrown from without, which entered his back on the right side, and passing through lodged against his watch which was in his right vest pocket, completely pulverizing the crystal and face, tearing off the hands, and smashing the whole body of the watch, at the same instant the ball from the door entered his nose. As he struck the floor he exclaimed, emphatically, 'I'm a dead man!' Joseph looked towards him, and responded: 'Oh, dear brother Hyrum!' and opening the door two or three inches with his left hand, discharged one barrel of a six-shooter at random in the entry, from whence a ball grazed Hyrum's breast, and entering his throat, passed into his head, while other muskets were aimed at him, and some balls hit him. Joseph continued snapping his revolver round the casing of the door into the space as before, three barrels of which missed fire, while Mr. Taylor, with a walking-stick, stood by his side and knocked down the bayonets and muskets which were being constantly discharged through the doorway, while I stood by him, ready to lend any assistance with another stick, but could not come within striking distance without going directly before the muzzles of the guns. When the revolver failed we had no more fire-arms, and expected an immediate rush of the mob into the room and instant death. Mr. Taylor rushed into the window, which is some fifteen or twenty feet from the ground. When his body was nearly on a balance, a ball from the door within entered his leg and a ball from without struck his watch, a patent lever, in his vest pocket near his left breast, and smashed it into 'pie,' leaving the hands standing at five o'clock sixteen minutes and twenty-six seconds—the force of which ball threw him back on the floor, and he rolled under the bed which stood by his side, where he lay motionless. The mob from the door continued to fire upon him, cutting away a piece of flesh from his left hip as large as a man's hand; and were hindered only by my knocking down their muskets with a stick, while they attempted to reach their guns into the room, probably lefthanded, and aimed their weapons so far around as almost to reach us in the corner of the room, whither we retreated and dodged, and then recommenced the attack with my stick again. Joseph attempted, as the last resort, to leap through the same window from whence Mr. Taylor fell, when two balls pierced him from the door, and one entered his right breast from without, and he fell outward, exclaiming: 'O Lord my God!' As his feet went out of the window my head went in, the balls whistling all around. He fell on his left side, a dead man. At this instant the cry was raised: 'He's leaped the window!' and the mob on the stairs and in the entry ran out. I withdrew from the window, thinking it of no use to leap out on a hundred bayonets then around General Smith's body. Not satisfied with this, I again reached my head out of the window, and watched some seconds to see if there were any signs of life, regardless of my own, determined to see the end of him I loved. Being ​fully satisfied that he was dead, with a hundred men near the body, and more coming around the corner of the jail, and expecting a return to our room, I rushed towards the prison door at the head of the stairs, and through the entry from whence the firing had proceeded, to learn if the doors into the prison were open. When near the entry Mr. Taylor called out: 'Take me.' I pressed my way until I found all doors unbarred; returned instantly, caught Mr. Taylor under my arm, and rushed by the stairs into the dungeon or inner prison, stretched him on the floor and covered him with a bed in such a manner as not likely to be perceived, expecting an immediate return of the mob. I said to Mr. Taylor: 'This is a hard case to lay you on the floor; but if your wounds are not fatal I want you to live to tell the story.' I expected to be shot the next moment, and stood before the door awaiting the onset."
Who committed this dastardly deed is still a mystery upon which no light has ever yet been thrown. The foregoing facts render it highly probable that the plan of assassination was devised by other men than those who carried it into execution.
It is hardly likely that Governor Ford had anything to do with the concoction of the project; but it is impossible to dispel from the mind the idea that he was not entirely ignorant of the possibility of such an event being anticipated, if indeed not contemplated. It is quite probable that his disbandment of the troops was seized upon by greater minds than his own as a propitious circumstance that favoured the accomplishment of the desperate deed. A person of the name of Daniels, who was a private in the regiment commanded by Col. Levi Willianis, made statements preceding and during the trial which afterwards took place, to the effect that when the editor of the Warsaw Signal, Thomas C. Sharpe, brought dispatches from the Governor, ordering the disbandment of the troops, on the morning of the 27th, the intelligence created great excitement. They were clamourous to march upon Nauvoo, and were already a few miles on their way to that place. When the order was received, the troops were formed into line, and Sharpe was invited to address them. This Daniels asserts that, in his speech, Sharpe counselled the command to march eastward to Carthage, take the jail by storm, and kill the Smiths; that the Governor had already gone to Nauvoo; and that the Mormons, upon hearing of the death of the Smiths, would kill the Governor, and that they would then be rid of his interference. ​Other speakers on the occasion favoured the proposition; but some opposed it, maintaining as fiercely their opposition to "killing men in jail." Finally, a call was made for volunteers, whereupon William N. Grover was the first to advance, and was followed by the company that committed the murder.
The assassination of Joseph Smith was deplored by every right-thinking person. Aside from the horror and detestation naturally entertained against the crime of murder, it was readily seen that the dignity of martyrdom was the Prophet's crown of glory. It carved for him a place in history to which a natural death would never have conducted him.
It has been difficult for public writers to agree when summing up his character. To one class he has appeared as the knave and the impostor; to others, the fanatic and self-deceived; to his own people he was the greatest of prophets; while others still have suggested that he was the victim of the extravagances of spirit-communications with an imagination crude, uncultivated, and superstitious. Knowing little and believing much, every impression was to him a revelation, and every calamity to the world an evidence that "the end" was nigh at hand. An English writer, closing a notice of the Prophet's career, says of him:
"If anything can tend to encourage the supposition that Joseph Smith was a sincere enthusiast, maddened with religious frenzies, as many have been before and will be after him; and that he had a strong invincible faith in his own high pretensions and divine mission, it is the probability that, unless supported by such feelings, he would have renounced the unprofitable and ungrateful task, and sought refuge from persecution and misery in private life and honourable industry. But whether knave or lunatic, whether a liar or a true man, it cannot be denied that he was one of the most extraordinary persons of his time, a man of rude genius, who accomplished a much greater work than he knew, and whose name, whatever he may have been whilst living, will take its place among the notabilities of the world."
The Saints in Nauvoo received the news of the assassination on the following morning. Their grief was indescribable. It was "a day of sorrow and of darkness—a day of lamentation, and mourning, and of woe."
"With the news from Carthage came the recommendation from the apostles Taylor and Richards, and Samuel H. Smith (a brother of the murdered men), to the Saints to "be still—be patient." The Governor added to that brief epistle an injunction that the Mormons should act upon the defensive until protection could be furnished them.
The Legion was called out at ten o'clock in the morning, and addressed by W. W. Phelps, Colonel Buckmaster, the Governor's aide-de-camp, and others. Preparations were made to receive the last remains of the murdered Prophet and his brother, the Patriarch.
When the bodies were brought to the city in the afternoon, they were met by ten thousand people of every age and of both sexes, who followed the earthly relics of the martyrs to the Mansion House, and there Willard Eichards, Judge Phelps, and other prominent men, addressed the multitude. Every heart was stirred. Sorrow and indignation were mingled in every breast, and a desire for vengeance smouldered beneath the sentiments of wonder and grief.
The assembly separated peacefully, resolved to trust to the law for justice upon the assassins, and, if that failed, their implicit confidence in God for deliverance remained unshaken. ​
The Governor from this time did everything in his power for the preservation of peace, but this momentary check was only a temporary lull in the storm. Human efforts were now ineffectual to stem the tide of trouble which rolled in upon the Saints.
At the October term of the Hancock Circuit Court indictments were found by the Grand Jury against Levi Williams, Thos. C. Sharpe, M. Aldrich, Jacob C. Davis, Wm. N. Grover, John Allyer, Wm. Davis, John Willis, and Wm. Gallagher, for the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. The Governor, aware of the unenviable position that he occupied in respect to the alleged charges of complicity with the mob, resolved that the prosecution should be ably and fairly conducted, and, in addition to the District Attorney, called in the aid of the Attorney-General for the State.
Out of three hundred persons summoned, and after three days' challenging, a jury was at last empanelled. Of the indicted, four only were arrested Sharpe, Grover, Davis, and Williams. The trial lasted nine days, when the jury retired, and, after an absence of three hours, returned a verdict of "Not Guilty;" a conclusion which surprised no one.
* ↑ "He is embalmed in the affectionate memory of thousands; and as time lends a halo of enchantment to encircle his name, hymns of praise and legends of his holy deeds will be sung and cherished by those who believe that the Prophet-Saint of earth is to reign a god over a brilliant world of his own creation, surrounded by happy queens and carolling children, through his own blessed eternity."—Lieut. Gunnisori's Work, p. 165.
* ↑ "The Mormons," p. 165. Mackay.
* ↑ The interment of the mortal remains of the Prophet and Patriarch was attended to with proper solemnity, and a sorrowing multitude accompanied the mourners to the burial-place; but there was a sequel to the public services which the people never knew. The bodies of Joseph and Hyrum were not in that funeral procession: they were reserved for private interment. It was believed that sacred as the tomb is always considered to be, there' were persons capable of rifling the grave in order to obtain the head of the murdered Prophet for the purpose of exhibiting it or placing it in some phrenological museum—the skull of Joseph Smith was worth money. This apprehension in point of fact proved true, for the place where the bodies were supposed to be buried was disturbed the night after the interment. The coffins had been filled with stones, etc., to about the weight which the bodies would have been. The remains of the two brothers were then secretly buried the same night by a chosen few in the vaults beneath the Temple. The ground was then levelled and pieces of rock and other débris were scattered carelessly over the spot. But even this was not considered a sufficient safeguard against any violation of the dead, and on the following night a still more select number exhumed the remains and buried them beneath the pathway behind the Mansion House. The bricks which formed the path were carefully replaced, and the earth removed was carried away in sacks and thrown into the Mississippi. [N. B. If this last statement is true, the bodies must have been removed a third time, as, since writing the above, the Author has it on unquestionable authority that they now repose in quite a different place.] Brigham Young has endeavoured to obtain possession of the remains of the Prophet, that they might be interred beneath the Temple at Salt Lake. It is stated by Brigham that Joseph, like the son of Jacob, made the request that the Saints when they went to the Rocky Mountains should carry his bones with them. The family of Joseph maintain that the Prophet never expressed any such desire, but said very much to the contrary. It is affirmed that, "previous to Joseph's death, he predicted that the Church would be scattered, and saw that the time might come when Brigham Young would lead the Church; and that if he did, he would lead it to perdition. He told his wife, Emma, to remain at Nauvoo, or if she left, to go to Kirtland, and not to follow any faction." To have given the bones of Joseph into Brigham's charge would have been to confirm the Saints in the Rocky Mountain Zion, to which the Smith family are decidedly opposed. The remains of the martyrs are destined for Zion in Missouri.