heir
enemies; after which the meeting adjourned.

We now return to Missouri. The Mormons who had settled in and about
Independence, in the year 1831, having become very arrogant, claiming
the land as their own, saying, the Lord had given it to them, and making
the most haughty assumptions, so exasperated the old citizens, that a
mob was raised in 1833, and expelled the whole Mormon body from the
county. They fled to Clay county, where the citizens permitted them to
live in quiet till 1836, when a mob spirit began to manifest itself, and
the Mormons retired to a very thinly settled district of the country,
where they began to make improvements.

This district was at the session of 1836-7 of the Missouri legislature,
erected into a county, by the name of Caldwell with Far-West for its
capital. Here the Mormons remained in quiet until after the bank
explosion in Kirkland, in 1838, when Smith, Rigdon, and others of the
heads of the sect arrived. Shortly after this, the Danite Society was
organised, the object of which, at first, was to drive the dissenters
out of the county. The members of this society were bound by an oath
and covenant, with the penalty of death attached to a breach of it, to
defend the presidency, and each other, unto death, right or wrong. They
had their secret signs, by which they knew each other, either by day or
night; and were divided into bands of tens and fifties, with a captain
over each band, and a general over the whole. After this body was
formed, notice was given to several of the dissenters to leave the
county, and they were threatened severely in case of disobedience. The
effect of this was, that many of the dissenters left: among these were
David Whitmer, John Whitmer, Hiram Page, and Oliver Cowdery, all
witnesses to the Book of Mormon; also Lyman Johnson, one of the twelve
apostles.

The day after John Whitmer left his house in Far-West, it was taken
possession of by Sidney Rigdon. About this time, Rigdon preached his
famous "Salt Sermon." The text was:--"Ye are the salt of the earth, but
if the salt has lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is
thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden
under foot of men." He informed the Mormons that the Church was the
salt; that dissenters were the salt that had lost its flavour; and that
they were literally to be trodden under the foot of the Church, until
their bowels should gush out.

In one of the