Book Description

Excerpt from The Latter-Day Saints' Millennial Star, Vol. 65: October 8, 1903 Then again these mobs are growing rapidly in numbers so that those engaged in torturing and hanging number thousands when formerly the mob did not consist of more than forty or fifty men. President Roosevelt gave the best summary of the situation that has yet appeared when he said: The spirit of lawlessness grows with what it feeds on, and when mobs with impunity lynch criminals for one crime, they are certain to begin to lynch real or alleged criminals for other causes. Nobody in the world deplores more than do the Latter-day Saints the pre valence and brutality of mob violence. If mob violence in this country did not have its origin in the drivings and persecutions of the Latter-day Saints, it is certain that no class of people in this country have suffered more and longer from the lawlessness of the mob than have the Latter-day Saints. For more than half a century the Mormons have been the victims of lawless mob violence against which very little has been said, for the chief reason that the victims had been so long pursued by hatred and prejudice that the world had been taught to withdraw all its sympathy from them. Whipping, driving, and shooting Mormon Elders in the south called forth no anxiety and little objection upon the part of the press; and the Mormon Elder, pure and up right in his life, has received less sympathy and protest in his favor than the negro ravisher who deserved, perhaps, the punishment, however inexcusable the method of executing it. It is a precious boon to stand with all men face to face equal before the law and to live under a government where the orderly and just execution of the law prevails. We have always believed as a people that those who mobbed us, and that the country at large which acquiesced in mob violence were sowing to the wind and that some day the country would reap the whirlwind. That the prevalence of mob violence is a direct menace to the institutions of our country no one need to doubt who reads the comments of the press upon the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.