Erastus Snow

“ There is but one alternative for this people: it is our religion, our God, our liberty, or slavery, the Devil, and death. There is no drawing back. The wedge has been entered. Our God has led us forth and directed our course from the beginning to the present hour. "Shall I cause to come to the birth," saith the Lord, "and not bring forth?" No. Although the woman in travail and in pain to be delivered suffers anxiety, mingled with fear, yet soon her sorrow is forgotten, for joy that a man-child is born into the world. So it will be with this people, and our enemies cannot hinder it. ”

“ But the time will come when the fainthearted and the wicked, whose knees tremble and who cannot endure the contradiction of the ungodly world, and choose rather to hide their heads and retire, making lies their refuge, will lift up their eyes in hell, being in torment: they will look back, and they will try to repent as it were in sackcloth and ashes: they will seek repentance carefully with tears, but will not find it, because there will be no chance left for them to regain what they have lost. ”

“ My own feelings, and I believe the feelings of all the authorities of this people, are, that we want no disaffected or indifferent ones to remain among us. We will not lay a straw in their way, if they will depart in peace, if they do not wish to remain with the people of God and share with them in their joys and sorrows. ”

“ We are satisfied with our present rulers. When we have trusted in our God and his servants, we have been happy and blessed; but when we have trusted to the enemies of our God, we have been pierced with many sorrows. ”

“ The unbelieving world, which have rejected the Gospel revealed unto us, and a large portion of this people—those who have immigrated to this Territory within a few years past, have not had the benefit of the experience which the minor portion of this people have had ”

“ Although martial law has been declared in this Territory, and persons are not allowed to pass through, into, or out of it, without a permit from the proper officer, yet it has been declared by our Governor, published abroad, and has been repeatedly acted upon, that all persons feeling dissatisfied, unwilling to remain in their present position, and wishing to go to our enemies, and place themselves under their protection, and accept of their proffers, shall forthwith be furnished with a passport and escort. ”

“ If any of the citizens of this Territory have not as yet experienced enough of the tender mercies of this generation and the promises of corrupt officials of the United States Government, and they wish still to trust in them a little further, they have the privilege. ”

“ If the Lord has compassion upon them and hears their cries, their weeping, and their bitter lamentation in the day of their degradation and misery, it will be to give them the privilege of becoming, in a future day, the servants of those who maintained their integrity. ”

“ Until they have done all these things and are willing to pay this Territory some portion of the few hundred thousand dollars which it has expended to preserve peace with the savages around us, we shall have no reason to think that they are honest or sincere in their intentions. ”

“ It has not been created by iron bands placed around the outside of this people, only so far as the Lord has made use of the wicked to persecute and drive them together. That union has been the legitimate result of the principles of truth revealed unto us from heaven and adopted as the guide of their conduct by the people. ”

“ Since that period this people have grown a little more numerous; and, instead of being within two hours' ride of Carthage and Warsaw, they are a thousand miles from the frontier settlements of their enemies. ”

“ If they wish to leave for other climates, and will pay their honest debts, and not steal their outfit, they can have the privilege. Two or three small parties have started this fall, embracing the few remains of our Gentile traders who remained in our midst for purposes of speculation ”