IN THE OLD WEST 311 



ficers who had joined the sect ; and now the author- 

 ity of the state government was openly defied. 

 In consequence, the executive took measures to 

 put down the nuisance, and a regular war com- 

 menced, and was carried on for some time, with 

 no little bloodshed on both sides ; and this armed 

 movement is known in the United States as the 

 Mormon war. The Mormons, however, who, it 

 seemed, were much better skilled in the use of the 

 tongue than the rifle, succumbed: the city of 

 Nauvoo was taken, Joe Smith and other ring- 

 leading prophets captured ; and the former, in an 

 attempt to escape from his place of confinement, 

 was seized and shot. The Mormons declare he 

 had long foretold his own fate ; and that when the 

 rifles of the firing party who were his executioners 

 were leveled at the prophet's breast, a flash of 

 lightning struck the weapons from their hands, 

 and blinded for a time the eyes of the sacrilegious 

 soldiers. 



With the death of Joe Smith the prestige of the 

 Mormon cause declined; but still thousands of 

 proselytes joined them annually, and at last the 

 state took measures to remove them altogether, 

 as a body, from the country. 



Once again they fled, as they themselves term 

 it, before the persecutions of the ungodly! But 

 this time their migration was far beyond the reach 

 of their enemies, and their intention was to place 

 between them the impassable barrier of the Rocky 



