The old man shook his head and rubbed his thin gray curly hair again with a smile of constrained patience.  “You see, although I do not wish to grieve you by saying it, if we could only get rid of religion there would be a lot of brotherly kindness in the world that so far has never had a chance to say ‘peep’ and peck its shell.  Well, but here’s Boggs reading his letters, and he turns pale with horror at the thought of the corruption that has come among his good and pious people, so he writes off to the commanders of the militia that they are to stop fighting the mob, to fight against the Mormons, and only against the Mormons.  So then Atchison resigns.  He points out, fairly enough, that there hasn’t been a single conviction in any lawful court against the Mormons for the crimes they are accused of.  But what of that if Boggs is Governor?  So they have taken away the arms from the Mormon company of militia, and the other day they went up to Far West with three or four thousand men, and they got Smith and his brother Hyrum and three of the elders to come out to them, and they court-martialled them and ordered them all to be shot the next day.

“But it wasn’t done, madam,” he added hastily.  “General Doniphan had the pluck to stand out against it and say he would withdraw his troops, so they put them in irons and sent them to the gaol in Richmond, and then at the point of the bayonet they have forced the other leaders to bind themselves to pay all the expenses of the war and to get every Mormon, man, woman, and child, out of the State, or else they are all to be shot.  That is how the matter stands at present.”

“Do you incur any risk by the hospitality you give to me?” asked Susannah.  She had not as yet had energy, even if she had had inclination, to explain that the Book of Mormon was not sacred in her eyes, nor Smith a prophet.  “Do you think,” she asked the old man wistfully, “that the Mormons have ever been the aggressors, that they have committed any of the atrocities they are accused of?”

“In some cases they have pillaged, and burned, and murdered; they wouldn’t be human if some of them hadn’t got fierce under the treatment they have been receiving; but when a man like Atchison, who has been scouring the country and knows pretty well what has happened, prefers to resign his honourable office rather than fight against them, you may be sure they are not very far in the wrong.  Injuries, you know, will always set a few men mad.  There is your elder, Rigdon, for instance; when he got here and heard of some of the things your folks had suffered, he up and made a wild oration on the 4th of July, and said that if any more outrages were committed on the Mormons, the Mormons would up and exterminate all the Gentiles in the State.  But it has been well enough seen by any one who had eyes to see that no such language was ever countenanced by the real rulers of your sect.”

When Susannah thanked the old man for his candour he drove his moral once more.  “You see, madam, I can look at things as they are because I am not bound by any religion to look at them in any particular way.”