of their final petitions answer! Have any who
plundered and openly insulted the "Mormons" ever
been brought to the punishment due to their crimes?
Let boasting murderers of begging and helpless
infancy answer! Has the state ever remunerated even
those known to be innocent for the loss of either
their property or their arms? Did either the pulpit
or the press through the state raise a note of
remonstrance or alarm? Let the clergymen who
abetted and the editors who encouraged the mob
answer!

As a sample of the press comments against the brutality of the
Missourians I quote a paragraph from the Quincy _Argus_, March
16, 1839:

We have no language sufficiently strong for the
expression of our indignation and shame at the recent
transaction in a sister state, and that state,
Missouri, a state of which we had long been proud,
alike for her men and history, but now so fallen that
we could wish her star stricken from the bright
constellation of the Union. We say we know of no
language sufficiently strong for the expression of
our shame and abhorrence of her recent conduct. She
has written her own character in letters of blood,
and stained it by acts of merciless cruelty and
brutality that the waters of ages cannot efface. It
will be observed that an organized mob, aided by
many of the civil and military officers of Missouri,