trious Senators and Representatives of a great and free people for redress and protection.
Hear! O hear the petitioning voice of many thousands of American citizens who now groan in exile on Columbia's free soil! Hear! O hear the weeping and bitter lamentations of widows and orphans, whose husbands and fathers have been cruelly martyred in the land where the proud eagle exultingly floats! Let it not be recorded in the archives of the nations, that Columbia's exiles sought protection and redress at your hands, but sought it in vain. It is in your power to save us, our wives, and our children, from a repetition of the bloodthirsty scenes of Missouri, and thus greatly relieve the fears of a persecuted and injured people, and your petitioners will ever pray.
The names of the petitioners are omitted for want of room.
The foregoing memorial was presented in the spring of 1844, making the third time those horrid scenes of murder had been laid before the Congress of the United States.
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CHAPTER XXII.
Why the Saints are persecuted.—Persecutions in different ages of the World.—How Jethro came to Moses.—The Saints locate in Illinois.—A short season of peace.—Hostilities resumed.—Perfidy of the Governor of the State.—Assassination.—The Prophet's testimony that his work was finished.—The Saints are driven.—Their journey.—War with the remainder.—Extracts from Epistle.—Peace. Perpetual Fund.—Labors of the Elders.—Publications.—The work of twenty years.—The power of truth.
DOES the reader request to know the cause of those horrid persecutions? I would ask, what caused the persecutions against the Saints anciently? The answer of the one answers the other. It is acknowledged, however, a singular phenomenon in human nature that a class of people, moral, virtuous and innocent, should become an object of envy, hatred, malice, spoliation and murder by their sur-
