T H E PLAINS O F W A R S A W BY CLAIRE NOALL* T N THIS, the atomic age, why should one listen for voices from •^ old houses or see gaunt images of a peeled people, driven from Missouri, welcomed to the open doors of the homes along the first streets of Quincy, Illinois, more than a hundred years ago? Why should I, as I drove along the Mississippi River north of Quincy in a high-powered car of today, listen for the long past crack of a gun on the plain above Warsaw, or see the burning haystacks and red-embered homes of a near-by settlement on Bear Creek? Why should I hear from the opposite bank of the river the screams of four men, once kidnapped from Bear Creek, stripped and beaten in Missouri? Acts of hatred are best forgotten in favor of kinder, broader deeds. And for me, the slow wheel of time does reveal the hand of friendship between the Mormons and the "old settlers" of Hancock County before the voice of hatred worked among them. And certainly as I drove up the river, I saw the first landowners in their interesting homes at Quincy and Warsaw, planning for a prosperous future in shipping and industry. I felt the warmth of the handclasp extended to the Mormon exiles from Missouri, so soon to turn cold. At the same time I heard in the distant West of the Great Basin the words of a leader forgiving those men at Carthage jail for their coldness. He even forgave, though some of them lynched his friend, Joseph Smith. I saw that leader's hand extended in a Mormon meeting as, with measured words, he found remission for the men of violence on that historic grey-clouded afternoon in June, 1844. As my husband and I ambled north of Quincy along the beautiful stretch marked with its tree-shaded roadside tables beside the Mississippi, I almost lived the historic drama of human relations. When Thomas C. Sharp and his partner purchased the frontier
•Mrs. Noall is a prominent writer on various aspects of Utah history and a contributor to many periodicals, including her article on "Mormon Mid-wives" in Utah Historical Quarterly, X (1942). [A version of this piece appeared in The Bulletin (Warsaw, Illinois), November 15, 1956.—Ed. note]
