The Salt Lake tribune. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1890-current, 1910-07-29
A "PERFECTLY ORDERLY" MOB.

SsqucnC TO the year lSSU, Wnen IL was
agreed that in the main the old condi-
tions should be forgotten, and that we
all should begin anew under the cove
nants made by the church chiefs, and
the Gentiles Of Utah, in settlement of
the old difficulties. We think we can
truthfullY say that this rule has been
set aside by this paper only when pro
vocation thereto has been given either
by church officials or by the Deseret
News, their chief spokesman of the pub
lie press We now offer such provoca~
tion as justification for reference to an
old subject. ms we find it given in an
editorial in the church organ s issue of
Wednesday evening, as follows:
II has often been charged against the
saints at Nauvoo, that they were enc
mics Of a free press because they de-
stroyed the printing outfit OF the most
infamous sheet OF paper ever printed un-
der the American flag; although 1t was
done in a perfectly orderly manner. and
by the proper legal authorities.
The printing establishment of the
Nauvoo Expositor was destroyed under
the terms of the Nauvoo charter. which
had been procured by the Mormon
chiefs from the Illinois legislature by
means Of the rottenest of rotten polit-
ical chicanery, and which charter has
been described by men of high legal
talent and constitutional knowledge to
have been the most astounding and out
rageous document of the kind ever is
sued in the United States. Under that
charter the mayor and council were
given the right to declare to be nul"
sance any institution within the cor
porate limits OF Nauvoo that did not
meet with their personal appreciation.
The mayor of Nauvoo was the president
of the church, Joseph Smith, who was
also commander of the Nauvoo Legion,
one of the best military forces in the
State of Illinois and composed wholly of
fanatical religious followers of Smith.
As has been developed by indisputable
testimony, and much of it coming from
men and women who were members OF
the Mormon church at Nauvoo, Joseph
Smith and his favorites among the lead
ership of the church practiced the most
filthy immoralities; they were parties
to the ruin of scores of women, some
of them married and some unmarried, /,
they personally maintained secret as
signation quarters, into which married
women and maidens were lured to their
DOWNFALL; they inaugurated secretly
among themselves the practice Of polygs
amy, which was then ard is now, moth
ing more and nothing less than whole
sale adultery; they compelled women
who had been forced into adulterous
relations with them sin the name of
the Lord' to swear before all the world
that no such adulterous practice ex-
listed. these same women later in Utan
confessing that they had lied about the
matter in Nauvoo; they had lecherously
invaded the homes of their own breth-
rem and had made indecent proposals TO
married Mormon women who ex-
posed the nastiness to their
husbands. In all of these things
they had trampled under foot
every right that is most dear to the
American heart-cheapened virtue and
made Of the marriage vow mockery,
and rendered unsafe in the land the
persons of daughters of the saints. A
small number Of members Of the church
rebelled against their rottenness, and
they began the publication of the Maui
VOC Expositor as medium through
which their objections to the priestly
attacks upon the foundations of the
American home could be expressed. But
one number was printed, in which Jo'
seph Smith and other unclear curses
were criticized for their blasphemous
and even devilish misuse of the name
of religion and the Deity. The terms
in which this criticism was expressed
were of the mildest nature-in this day
| they would almost be considered as un
maryland the paper was full of kind
| ly admonitions to better behavior The
trouble was that the Nauvoo Exposition
told the truth, and it stuDg the bogus
prophet and his concupiscent associates
TO the quick. This cowardly impostor
and his beastly satraps composed the
municipal government of Nauvoo-the
"proper legal authorities Of whom
the News speaks-and they declared the
truthful Nauvoo Expositor to be nui
sance and ordered its destruction. In
fact. Joseph Smith, prophet, ordered
Joseph Smith, mayor, to order the city
marshal, a Joseph Smith DANTE, to gel
together the Joseph Smith police force
and destroy the only public agency
through which the outraged Mormon'
Of Nauvoo could speak as against theil
libidinous bogus prophet and his lech
erous and sycophantic priests 1t wa,
the most atrocious piece of property
vandalism and unprovoked destructive