Due to civil unrest and rebellion in Upper Canada, Abel's missionary travels were not infrequently punctuated with perilous situations and persecutions; he was even falsely accused of the murder of a family of six and aggressively pursued by a mob bearing hot tar and feathers. And yet such circumstances of unwarranted strife and even torment were certainly not unfamiliar to many Mormon missionaries of the time, nor to their leaders. In retrospect, Abel's providential escape from his enemies in his foreign travels to the East did seem to fulfill a patriarchal promise (while also foreshadowing a dreadful civil war that would soon strike at the heart of his own country):