sufferings and persecutions of the Mormons, he says: "And, hard as it was to write it, it must forever remain a truth on the page of history, that, while the flower of Israel's camp were sustaining the wing of the American eagle by their influence and arms in a foreign country, their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and children were driven by mob violence from a free and independent state of the same national republic, and were compelled to flee from the fire, the sword, the musket, and the cannon's mouth, as from the demon of death."
Some of the Mormon seceders represent that they intended to excite an Indian war, and furnished the men to lull suspicion, knowing that active service would in the end make them a well-disciplined corps. But it is not probable there was any settled purpose of the kind. Nor is it to be presumed that they felt much attachment to a country which they had over and over again doomed to destruction, and against which they habitually indulged in bitter complaints and denunciations. According to William Smith, the prophet Joseph's brother, the leaders intended to establish an independent government beyond the Rocky Mountains; and as the Great Salt Lake Valley, to which they were journeying, was at the time Mexican territory, there would seem to be good evidence to that effect. Their professions of loyalty and patriotism must therefore be received with many grains of allowance. Colonel Kane says: "At the commencement of the Mexican war, the President considered it desirable to march a body of reliable infantry to California at as early a period as practicable, and the known hardihood and habits of
