Extract of a Letter Dated

Kalamazoo, Sept. 29, 1844

MUCH ESTEEMED BROTHER:-We had learned before receiving your letter, that our highly esteemed and much beloved Prophet and Patriarch

had been cruelly murdered by a lawless banditti. When I received the news beyond doubt that they were dead, language can not express the feelings I then had. In solemn silence I withdrew by myself and my grief found vent in a flood of tears. The whole train of events connected with the history of their lives came rushing to my mind; their privations, their persecutions, the scourgings, imprisonments, and mobbings they had received while endeavoring to establish the principles of eternal truth on the earth once more, were all remembered by me in that dreadful hour. Is this indeed the boasted land of liberty, of equal rights, and religious toleration? Look at yonder proud flag with its stripes and stars! gracefully has it floated in the breeze of every clime, saying to the menials of other lands, "I overshadow a land which is an asylum for the oppressed of all nations." Yonder, on its mountains, in its valleys, on its wide spread prairies, is liberty religious and political. There the laws which make every man free and equal, with the privilege of worshiping [worshipping] God as he pleases, hold their supremacy.

Oh ye Americans! take down that flag, nail it to its staff no longer: it is sheer hypocrisy; liberty exists only in name; your laws are powerless when exerted in the Saints' defence [defense]; your prairies have been drenched with the blood of Saints, men, women, and children: even those noble patriots who fought for your liberties, have not escaped. Your prisons have been stained with the blood of prophets, martyred for the truth of heaven, for the testimony of Jesus. Your soil has drunk the blood of Saints as the rains of heaven; while all eternity has wept o'er the scene, and yet you boast of liberty.

Oh tell it not in Europe, publish it not in Asia, let not the children of Ham know of your folly lest they have you in derision; for savages could not but contemplate your cold blooded assassins with horror, and your cruel deeds would cast a shade of darkness over the blackest deeds of the tyrants of ancient lands. Although you have killed the Prophet Joseph, here ends your boasted triumph: the immortal conqueror of death, Jesus Christ, has passed the same way before him, and has opened the gates to eternal life; "for it became Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings;" "for if we suffer with Him, we shall reign with Him."

I was much pleased to learn that the Twelve had taken the presidency of the church. I believe under their supervision the church will prosper, and God will bear it off victorious; and I will say with all my heart, roll on thy work thou King of Saints; bring in everlasting righteousness, fill the earth with thy knowledge and glory, make an end of sin, bid dire commotion cease, avenge the wrongs of thy Saints, and let peace and harmony pervade the earth. Amen.

Yours, as ever,

E. M. WEBB.

From the New York Prophet.