able to incense the Mormons to commit crimes; they had recourse to this stratagem to set their own houses on fire & send runners into all the Counties adjacent; to declare to the people that the Mormons had burnt up their houses & destroyed their fields and if the people would not believe them, they would tell them to go and see if what they had said was not true. Many people came to see, they saw the houses burning & being filled with prejudice they could not be made to believe; but what <​that​> the Mormons set them on fire, which deed was most diabolical and of the blackest kind, for indeed the mormons did not <​set them on fire nor​> meddle with their houses or their fields. and the houses that were burnt together with the pre emption rights & the corn in the fields, <​had all been previously​> were all purchased <​by the mormons​> of the people & paid for in money & with waggons & horses & with other property about two weeks before; but they had not taken possession of the premises; but this wicked transaction was for the purpose of clandestinely to excite <​exciting​> the minds of a prejudiced populace & the , that they might get an order that they could the more easily carry out their hellish purposes in expulsion, <​or extermination​> extinction or utter extermination <​extinction​> of the mormon people. After witnessing the distressed situation of the people in my brother Joseph Smith Senr & myself returned back to the city of — And immediately despatched a messenger with written documents to stating the facts as they did <​then​>exist praying for assistance if possible & requesting the editor of the “Far West” Newspaper to insert the same in his Newspaper but he utterly refused to do so. We still believed that we should get assistance from the and again petitioned him praying for assistance setting forth our distressed situation. and in the mean time the presiding of the County court issued orders, upon affidavits made to him by the Citizens, to the of the , to order out the Militia of the to stand in constant readiness night & day to prevent the Citizens from being massacred which fearful situation they were in every moment, every thing was very portentous & alarming [p. 7]