The Plains of Warsaw

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 25, 1957, Nos. 1-4

THE PLAINS OF WARSAW

BY CLAIRE NOALL

TN 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 newspaper, the Western World, they changed the name to the Warsaw Signal. Mr. Sharp, or Tom as he was called, at first defended the Mormons against other frontier newspaper attacks. He welcomed the newcomers on the river. But when he saw the Mormon military display in connection with the religious rites of laying the chief cornerstone for a new temple, he began to take thought over this Army of Israel in spanking gilt-trimmed uniforms of blue broadcloth. When he felt the arms of the Mormon political power working against him with its unified vote, his editorials questioned the extension of religious influence into civil patterns.

He received a reply from the Mormon prophet couched in terms that somehow lacked both the voice of high prophecy and the dignity of leadership on a religious plane. The insulting message was published in the Signal with a mocking rejoinder, bawdy in this hour, bitter in the next—and then violent with outraged feelings, whose final indulgence sought mortal violence through the death of Joseph Smith.

As we drove up the river, I saw the Mormons, gaunt and shivering, their feet bleeding from their forced trek east across Missouri in mid-winter of 1838-39, welcomed to the snow-bound doors of Quincy. I saw Quincy, with Warsaw, turning against the Mormons. I saw and heard the mass meetings along the river in Hancock County after the bloodshed was over, plotting further violence until every Mormon in Illinois should be driven into the winter storms of the Iowa plain.

Under "Father" Isaac Morley, the Mormon settlement south of Bear Creek refused to give up its holdings and withdraw to Nauvoo, as advised by the Church in the face of Warsaw-led arson, "wolf hunts" for humans, beatings, and possible murder. The plan to burn all the outlying Mormon villages was repeatedly announced. During the summer of 1845, a year after the Prophet's death, the so-called mob hurled the charge of horse thief against the Mormons of Morley Settlement; but no such challenge was ever proved.

Tom Sharp and his neighbor, Colonel Levi Williams of the state militia at Green Plains, between Warsaw and Morley Settlement, managed to procure through their followers among the various militias indictments against most of the Twelve Apostles in Nauvoo.

Nor were any of these charges proved, such as the false accusation against the Twelve for printing bogus money. Nevertheless, the lives of Brigham Young and his cousin and counselor, Willard Richards, and others of their quorum were suddenly threatened more pointedly. Thomas Ford, the governor of the state, finally advised against the arrest of Brigham and his associates lest the Mormons have no one to lead them out of Illinois.

Still the burnings on the prairie near Warsaw seared die night sky. In the late summer of 1845, Brigham Young refused any longer to submit to this oppression. He called out a company of the Nauvoo Legion, now disfranchised by the state legislature, to defend one of the Mormon towns. The note was intercepted. The town was burned, and Brigham Young and Willard Richards, clerk of the Twelve who also signed the military order, were indicted for treason.

The fury of the mob rose with renewed violence. Jacob B. Backenstos, the new sheriff of Hancock County, tried under direction of the governor to maintain the peace. Jake was accused of being a "jack" Mormon. Indeed, he numbered among his posse the notorious Mormon, long-haired Porter Rockwell with his braids, his young hand, and his sure aim. Backenstos rode to Warsaw with his men in an effort to squelch the "wolf hunts" of the mob, whose quarry was any Mormon found at large and alone or even in a small group. When, at Warsaw the sheriff's party faced raised gun barrels, bayonets, and bowie knives, the mounted men retreated. They were followed. Backenstos gave the order to fire. He himself took aim. Frank Worrell, guard at Carthage jail when Joseph Smith was assassinated, dropped from his horse, dead.

This was the final act needed by the mob to force the departure of the Mormons from Illinois.

Governor Ford sent a detachment of the federal army to Nauvoo to repress the Mormons and to maintain the peace between the factions, though he had more than once declared his intention to be fair to both sides. Brigham Young and his associates signed an agreement with Colonel Hardin of the federal army and Judge Stephen A. Douglas, former friend of the Mormons, to withdraw from Nauvoo by the spring of 1846. But spring would lend protection to the exiles. And the mob felt restive against such kindness of the elements.

The danger to the lives of Brigham Young, Heber C Kimball, and Willard Richards increased. They, with the rest of the Twelve, realized that they could not remain in Nauvoo in safety until spring. The promise could be violated at any moment.

The story of how on February 4, 1846, the first wagons in the exodus crossed the mighty river on open rafts or flatboats with huge chunks of ice swirling past, is well-known. But not many people have today interspersed their reading of nuclear energy with the words hidden away in the Journal History of the Latter-day Saint Church in Salt Lake City, spoken on July 24, 1850 by Willard Richards. He stood in the bowery, a walled-in shelter on what is now known as Temple Square, addressing his people:

.. . Few, comparatively, have been the actual murderers of the Saints . . .

Men cannot fight truth, life, or salvation without a medium of communication; consequently, when the truth was proclaimed by the Prophet, and men wanted to oppose and fight it, they had to oppose and fight those who believed and received it, who obeyed and practiced it; and thus those receiving the truth, were made the medium of violence against the truth. ... It has not been, it is not against the Saints, as in individuals, that the sword has been drawn. . . . The only way to get at the truth or falsehood . . . that is in a man, is through the medium of die man himself; hence every man is responsible for his own belief, faith, practice; and the spirit he harbors within himself, whether it be good or evil . . .

True, in this speech Richards finally denounced the actual murderers; but when notifying the Church of Joseph Smith's death at Carthage jail, he wrote to Nauvoo that the people of Carthage expected the Mormons to rise, but he had "promised them no." The next day from the steps of the Prophet's home, he reminded his people that he had pledged his word and his honor for their peaceful conduct. And when writing the news of Smith's death to Brigham Young then near Boston, Willard Richards said the blood of martyrs does not cry from the ground for vengeance; vengeance is the Lord's.

With a thought of the mystery that lies in the hand of the Lord, as I drove up the Mississippi in September, 1956, I recalled the friendship offered the weather-pounded Mormons at Quincy. I remembered the friendship at first offered by Tom Sharp from Warsaw, and I heard the blast of the shot that killed Frank Worrell. I saw the burning homes that preceded that shot. I heard the cries of the four Mormon men across the river, stripped and beaten. I pondered the drama of human conflict and trusted that out of the hatred existing in the world today such thoughts as Willard Richards expressed may again be heard. I hoped that their spirit would extend around the world today as it did in his time. As editor of the Deseret News, he mailed a printed copy of his speech to his world-encircling foreign correspondents, the Church missionaries in Australia, New Zealand, India, Turkey, Africa, and all the European countries from Spain and Italy to the North Cape.

On the Mississippi that day in Hancock County, I heard the plains of Warsaw repeating their story of the past. I saw an ailing man—Willard Richards—addressing his people in Salt Lake City in 1850. I heard him seeking wisdom from a higher power.

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