Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, circa 16 December 1843–12 February 1844, Thomas Bullock First Copy
Source Note
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , JS, , and , Memorial, , Hancock Co., IL, to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, , 21 Dec. 1843; handwriting of ; docket in handwriting of ; notation in handwriting of ; endorsements in handwriting of ; seventeen pages; JS Office Papers, CHL.
bequeathed to us by the sufferings and blood of our noble ancestors. But alas! Our expectations were vain, Two years had scarcely elapsed before we were unlawfully and unconstitutionally assaulted by an organized mob consisting of the highest officers in the both civil and military who openly and boldly avowed their determinations in a written circular to drive us from said . As a specimen of their treasonable and cruel designs, your honorable body are referred to said Circular of which the following is but a short extract, namely
“We the Undersigned Citizens of , believing that an important crisis is at hand as regards our civil society in consequence of a pretended religious sect of people that have settled and are still settling in our styling themselves Mormons and intending as we do to rid our Society “peaceably if we can forcibly, if we must” and believing as we do that the arm of the civil law does not afford us a guaranty or at least a sufficient one against the evils which are now inflicted upon us and seem to be increasing by the said religious sect, deem it expedient and of the highest importance to form ourselves into a company for the better and easier accomplishment of our purpose”
This Document was closed in the following words
“We, therefore, agree, that after timely warning and receiving an adequate compensation for what little property they cannot take with them, they refuse to leave us in peace as they found us we agree to use such means as may be sufficient to remove them and to that end we each pledge to each other our bodily powers, our lives fortunes and sacred honors”
To this unconstitutional document were attached the names of nearly every Officer in the together with the names of hundreds of others.
It was by this Band of Murderers that your Memorialists in the year 1833 were plundered of their property and robbed of their peaceable homes. It was by them that their fields were laid waste, their houses burned and their men, women and children to the amount of about twelve hundred persons banished as exiles from the while others were cruelly murdered by their hands. [p. [2]]