Green Mountain Boys Response (Voltaire)

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The following answer was received in Hancock County, Illinois, from the Vermont residents Joseph Smith, Jr. addressed in his 1843 letter to the "Green Mountain Boys":

STRAFFORD, ORANGE COUNTY STATE OF VERMONT

Feb. 15th 1844

TO THE EDITOR OF THE WARSAW MESSAGE OR WARSAW SIGNAL IF THAT HAS COMMENCED.

Sir, If you think proper to publish the following in your paper, we desire you to do so, as we have not seen any reply to Joe Smiths call upon us Green mountain boys in any of our public journals although [their] may be and we have not seen it, and not knowing your exchange paper in this State we thought we would send our views for publication near the great fountain head of the mormon clan, as we have an opportunity to send by a gentleman travelling west. We wish to address ourselves to Joe Smith in regard to his call upon us &c. Gen. Joe Smith, Lord Mayor of the holy City of Nauvoo, President of the grand high Council of the Mormon military church &c. We have read your call upon us and many of us have consulted together upon the subject and have come to the conclusion that you to the conclusion that you ought to have justice done you and several of your coadjutors strictly and without much delay, for we believe you honestly deserve it according to our sense of justice, and that is this, that you be suspended by your neck to a gallows at least fifteen cubits & a span higher than Hamans. We believe that while you was in Kirtland you made a public declaration to your followers that the government of the United Stats was rotten and that after you got to farwest you would give them a new government, that the Mormons must and should rule this continent for the Lord had told you so. After being at farwest awhile, you then and there, made your declaration of independence through your mouth piece S. Rigdon, and published it to the world, although it is couchd in ambiguous terms it is not to be misunderstood. Then and there by that declaration, you and your followers cast off all allegiance to the General or States government and assumed a new one for yourselves, and that act, we consider no less than high treason. You marshalled your followers under a flag to march, burn, rob, and murder the benevolent citizens of Missouri, which is nothing short of high treason, followed up by robbing, and murdering the enterprising, benevolent, and hospitable Citizens of Missouri whose blood will still cry from the plains of Missouri for vengeance on your unhallowed head. We fully believe that the good citizens of Missouri bore with the outragous rascality of you and your serfs as long as any honest people could or would. You say that you & your friends lost a great many thousand dollars & that thousands of your friends were slain by the Missourians, which is too base a falsehood for any person of common sense to believe, for if you ever had thousands or even hundreds, we believe you... [illegible lines]

As to loosing all the lands, every one of your clan that owned land in Missouri had time to sell, and did sell for a valuable consideration before you left there.After you came to Illinois you published a long rigmarole of abuse against the Missourians and how you went to their camp carrying a white flag as is the custom between two civilized nations & expected the same deference paid to it as was usual between civilized nations, and you say that you was disappointed. Now what reason you had to expect any more regard paid to your white flag than a gang of pirates would if they were hard presd, and should raise a white flag we are unable to guess. We consider all your man... [illegible lines]

Now if you had actually met with some losses in the Missouri difficulties, we believe that the General government would have no right to grant you any redress, any more than it would any foreign savage tribe of Indians, should they go and fight the Missourians, and were driven off with the loss of their ponies. You call upon the states to go and help crush Missouri, to humble and abase her with a vengeance for you say if there is a whisper from the spirit of an Ethan Allen, or a gleam from the shade of a general Stark, let it mingle with our sense of honor and fire our bosoms for the cause, and may all the earth bear me witness if Missouri escapes vengeance. You call upon us to build steam frigates, to spread ourselves far and wide, and to open the iron eyes of our bulwarks by sea and land; like the dreadful splendor of an army with bayonets; and and if Missouri escapes vengeance, then Vermont is a hypocrite -- a coward -- and this nation a hot bed of political demagogues!!! (for Jesus Christ told you so, or in other words your counsillor) Now Joe why dont you call for the Spanish Armada at once, and lend a helping hand to get it on, so that you can glut your diabolical rage in a trice? Oh! what a consumate peace maker you must be!! What a messenger of the everlasting gospel of Jesus Christ!! You call for vengeance, blood, and Murder, and call upon death to send heated darts to sting with, the grave to open the trap door that they may stumble in. Oh! what philanthropy such a being must possess!! You call upon the masonic fraternity to assist you. We consider our obligations to our God, and our country paramount to the callsof a banditi of pirates or mormons, and furthermore we consider the masonic institution disgraced by establishing a lodge in Nauvoo at all, and we will never own as a brother of the fraternity one who we believe to be guilty of violating every law of civil society. A......a Hiram, a St. John or a Washington would never raise their hands before a wondering world and say my life for his, in refference to Joe Smith or any of your clan, no; not by a long way Joe -- but would say to you in true Roman style, procul. O procell este profani! (be off, be off ye profane.) go to Missouri and have your trial when you ought to go.You have made a great ado about persecution, and your dupes have cried loud and long; but we do not believe that you have been persecuted in any shape whatever, unless keeping you and your clan from robbing and murdering can be called persecution. You say that the privilege of enjoying life & religion according to the most virtuous and enlightened customs, rules, and etiqute of the nineteenth century are to the disgrace of the United States denied you. Now Joe that is a base falsehood, unless you mean your pure and undefiled religion which we believe to consist in filching all you can from your dupes, to keep a score of Cyprian Saints and Spiritual wives, and in devising ways and means for blood and carnage and pirates might cry persecution when brought to Justice. As for your Spiritual wife system, if fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent, in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the... [illegible lines] was their object to create should be perpetrated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan. As to the book of Mormon it is the silliest jumble of nonsense ever put in the form of a book. Gullivers travels, and the Hindoo... [illegible lines]

As regards the death of your Father and brother, any one that can be brought to believe in your pretensions, must believe that you are guilty of their death yourself, for you and your pharisaical hypocrites publicly declare and have published to the world that laying on your hand or the hands of the Elders will immediately heal the Sick, and when so easy done who but a murderer would look and tamely se[e] their Father & brother die when so easy heald. Why dont you immediately remove the rheumatic affections from your Mother [Lucy Mack Smith] and not let her suffer one day longer. You say your Father stood Several times in the battles of [the] American revolution, but he was not in it neither in the last war with the british nation but if you mean the revolution you attempted in Missouri it would look a little more plausible but we dont believe it in either case. He was a great coward when in the prime of life. You have passed some encomiums upon him but appear studiously to avoid saying anything about his being too extremely fond of muton to be seen hereabouts any longer. You ought to have given his full history for you was old enough when you left here to remember a great many things about him and how he used to tel about your being born with a veil over your face, and that he intended to procure a stone for you to see all over the world with.

You must well remember his frequent declarations that the whole bible was the work of priestcraft, and that no Nation was so enlightened, but it could be made to believe in any religion however absurd it might be, if it was advocated perseveringly for fifty years, it would become the popular religion of the country, and as good as any other; that Voltaires writings were the best bible then extant, and Thomas Paines age of reason, the best commentary. It appears that he undertook to make his word good in trying a new religion and obtaining a few knaves to help start it. -- And you and your coadjutors keep it a going with a full determination to undermine the general government of our great republic. How much wisdom, prudence and virtue, our presidents Governors, and rulers will obtain by your appeal to us we leave for them to say, but one thing, they will readily discover, your eagerness for discord and civil commotions, your diabolical and treasonable object.

You have given a wonderful display of your great precosity, and of your great knowledge of the languages; what learning!! Perhaps you can tel how long it would take a crew of pirates; to cry persecution, mobs, hell-hounds and such names to their pursuers, before they could makeone honest community actually believe the pirates were honest and were persecuted, and the civil citizens a mob. As for ourselves we believe you stand in the same position as the pirate does; and it has been your cry from first to last. But we have no sympathy for you but say to you remember Haman -- If you studied piracy while digging for the money your Father pretended old Bob Kidd [had] buried, you should also have studied the fate of pirates. We think the Governor, and Citizens of Illinois have shown a little imbecility, in suffering you and your banditti to take up your residence and enjoy all the privileges and immunities as citizens, the but ends broke off before you yield to such an infamous wreck as Joe or any of his merauders. We do not believe that Joe or any that was expeld from Missouri could ever have obtained a place of residence here in Vermont much less admited to vote in any case whatever in the state, and it has been a wonder to thousands of us that the Gov. of Illinois ever permited Joe to take a lodging in that state. We had designed noticing each particular subject in your call to us in detail, but for the present will write but little more. We will just add that should you cause another outbreak you will be met by more than ten thousand bayonets of the Green Mountain BoysAs you closed your appeal in lofty strains of poetry most sublime, we will put your fish ordinance into rhyme: OrdinanceFish not no more Along Nauvoo shoreFor instead the troutYou may haul more of my little ones andAgain I say as I said beforeFish not near Nauvoo shoreFor I am tired of hearing so many complaintsAbout catching the (spritual)fruit of my cyprian saintsNo Joe you may go on in the depths of disgraceLike all of the low money diggersBut you shortly will be put in a placeNever envied by the meanest Niggers.

(original document at Yale University's Beinecke Library)

“As to the book of Mormon it is the silliest jumble of nonsense ever put in the form of a book. Gullivers travels, and the Hindoo shastres are before it, but all three will do to go together.”

Thomas Sharp and Anti-Mormon Sentiment in Illinois 1842-1845 on JSTOR