Joe Smith and Liberty!
Summary: A denouncement of the Nauvoo Expositor by the Nauvoo Neighbor and justification for its destruction. Also printed in the Daily National Intelligencer (25 Jun 1844).
Transcript follows the scanned image.
[Joe Smith and Liberty! – New York Weekly Tribune no. 146 – 29 Jun 1844, p. 4, col. 3.]
Joe Smith and Liberty!
A party has of late grown up in Nauvoo hostile to Joe Smith and his apostles, and resolved to unmask some of the wickedness and imposture which is carried on there. To this end, they procured a printing establishment and issued the first number of ”The Nauvoo Expositor.” The following official bulletin from one of Joe Smith”s organs will show how summarily the establishment was broken up. We do not remember any thing quite so cool since Amos Kendall officially approved the breaking open and burning of the Mails on the pretext of Abolition. Hear Joe”s adjutant!
NAUVOO NEIGHBOR, EXTRA, June 10, 1844.
RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE. "A knot of base men, to further the wicked and malicious designs towards the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and to bolster up the intents of black-legs and bogus-makers, and advocate the characters of murderers, established a press in this city last week, and issued a paper entitled the “Nauvoo Expositor.” The prospectus showed an intention to destroy the charter, and the paper was filled with libels and slanderous articles upon the citizens and city council from one end to the other.
“A burnt child dreads the fire:” the Church as a body and individually has suffered till “forbearance has ceased to be a virtue:” the cries and pleadings of men, women, and children, with the authorities, why will you suffer that servile murderous intended paper to go on and vilify and slander the innocent inhabitants of this city, and raise another mob to drive and plunder us again as they did in Missouri? Under these pressing cries and supplications of afflicted innocence, and in the character, dignity, and honor of the corporate powers of the charter, as granted to the city of Springfield, and made and provided as a part of our charter for legislative purposes: viz, “to declare what shall be a nuisance, and to prevent and remove the same,” the city council of Nauvoo, on Monday, the 10th inst. declared the establishment and Expositor a nuisance; and the city Marshal at the head of the police in the evening took the press, materials and paper into the street and burnt them.
And in the name of freemen and in the name of God, we beseech all men who have the spirit of honor in them to cease from persecuting us collectively or individually. Let us enjoy our religion, rights, and peace like the rest of mankind; why start presses to destroy rights and privileges, and bring upon us mobs to plunder and murder? We ask no more than what belongs to us —Rights of Americans.
The Nauvoo Neighbor – Extra printed June 10, 1844, reprinted above, was also reprinted in the Nauvoo Neighbor of June 12, 1844.
Nauvoo Neighbor, June 12, 1844.