Minutes and Testimonies, 12–29 November 1838, Copy [State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Treason]
Source Note
Minutes and Testimonies, , Ray Co., MO, 12–29 Nov. 1838, State of MO v. Gates et al. for Treason (Fifth Judicial Circuit of MO 1838). Copied ca. late 1838–ca. early 1839; unidentified handwriting; fifty-seven pages; Mormon War Papers, MSA.
business and were ingaged while you were there, since your arrival here you have commenced a general system of the same kind of <conduct> in this place, You set up a nasty, dirty, pettifoggers office pretending to be Judges of the law, when it is a notorious fact that you are profoundly ignorant of it, and of evey other thing which is calculated to do mankind good, or if you know it you take good care never to practise it. And in order to bring yourselves into notice you began to interfere with all the business of the place trying to destroy the character of our merchants and bringing their creditors upon them and break them up, In addition to this you stirred up men of weak minds to prosecute one another for the vile purpose of getting a fee for pettifoging for one of them. You have also been threatning continually to enter into a general system of prosecuting, determined as you said to pick a flaw in the titles of those who have bought city lots and built upon them not that you can do any thing but cause vexatious lawsuits
And amongst an the most monstrous of all your abominations we have evidence, which when Called upon we can produce that letters sent to the post office in this place have been opened, read, and destroyed, and the persons to whom they were sent never obtained them thus ruining the business of the place, We have evidence of a very strong character that You are at this very time engaged with a gang of counterfeiters coiners and blacklegs, as some of those characters have lately visited our from and told what they had come for, and we know assuredly, that if we suffer you to continue we may expect and that speedily to find a general system of stealing counterfeiting cheating and burning property, as in , for so are your associates carrying on there at this time and that encouraged by You by means of letters you send continually to them, and to crown the whole you have had the audacity to threaten us, that if we offered to disturb you & you would get up a mob from and Counties for this insult if nothing else and your threatnings to shoot us if we offered to molest you we will put you from the county of so help us God?