THE FIRST AND ONLY ISSUE OF THE NAUVOO 'EXPOSITOR'—ITS MURDEROUS PURPOSE—REMOVAL OF A NUISANCE AND ERADICATION OF ITS CAUSE—TRIAL OF THE MAYOR AND OTHERS, AND THEIR ACQUITTAL IN AN HONEST COURT— GATHERING OF THE MOBS—THREATS OF EXTERMINATION—NAUVOO UNDER MARTIAL LAW.  
The publishers deem it a sacred duty they owe to their country and their fellow-citizens to advocate, through the columns of the Expositor, the unconditional repeal of the Nauvoo city charter.
 
This was one of the statements in the prospectus for a newspaper to be issued at Nauvoo by the Laws, Higbees and Fosters. These men had been excommunicated from the Church for their personal impurity and for plotting murder. With their wickedness exposed to the gaze of the world they had no longer any reputation at stake; they associated with gamblers, counterfeiters and thieves; and their great desire was, by every means in their power, fair or foul, to injure their former brethren.
 
The charter of a city is inestimable to the citizens. Without it rapid advancement is difficult if not impossible. Nauvoo had grown into prominence, and gave promise of becoming an important commercial and industrial center. The apostates knew well the vital point at which to direct their blow. Not only would they paralyze every industry by securing the repeal of the charter, but they would turn the city over to the dictation of hostile county and state officials; so that financial ruin and personal distress would be inflicted upon many of the people. To this end, they leagued themselves with kindred spirits whose evil efforts they could rely upon. The class of allies which they secured is shown by the fact that one of their associates was known to them, and was afterwards proved, to be a fugitive murderer.
 
Among the minor purposes avowed in this prospectus for the issuance of the newspaper, was the advocacy of the pure principles of morality. This was a high sounding pretense to create favor abroad. The Laws, the Higbees and the Fosters cared nothing for morality, except to abuse it. With them it was but a cloak. They had become accustomed to use it for a covering for vile purposes. This was not the first time nor this the last, when evil men—cast out by the Church for sexual sin—made great pretense in print of their morality and sought to charge offenses upon men faithful and pure.
 
They announced that they would exercise "the freedom of speech in Nauvoo, independent of the ordinances abridging the same;" and that the end would justify the means. The only restriction upon speech in Nauvoo was the forbidding of slander and immorality, and unless these men had intended to work evil with their paper they need not have promised to transgress the law.
 
But their purpose was not to convince the people of Nauvoo; it was to create sentiment abroad and to this end slander and falsehood were necessary. They were not the first men shrewd enough to see that the publication, within any city, of statements adverse to the community would be accepted abroad as current fact. Their plan was devised with satanic ingenuity: If the Expositor were allowed to print its defamations and falsehoods unchecked, the world would believe that all they said was true, and overwhelming sentiment would be created against Nauvoo and its people; if their press was stayed in its crime, they would cry that freedom of speech was assailed—and nothing appeals more quickly to the sympathy of Americans than this same cry, whether it is uttered sincerely or only by wretches who want license to traduce and defame innocence.
 
There was no disposition to restrain these publishers from printing their paper in Nauvoo. Their announcement was made on the 10th of May, 1844; they brought press and materials into the city, and began their work with as much protection and safety as any other publisher there. On the 7th of June next, they were prepared to put forth the first number of the paper. All at once a fear came upon them. They knew the man whom they wished to make their chief victim—Joseph Smith; they knew his truth, dignity and strength; they knew that he would not supinely submit to the ruin of the city and the defamation of its good men and women by such wretches as these publishers were known to be; they knew that if they committed crime they would be called to answer for it if the Prophet lived. So on the very day that the paper was to come forth burdened with lies, Robert D. Foster went to the mansion and demanded a private interview with Joseph. He asked the Prophet to go away with him alone, pretending that he wished to return to the Church and wanted to confer upon that subject. Joseph refused to talk except in the presence of witnesses, for this man Foster had often before misrepresented the Prophet's words. Joseph said to him that there was but one condition upon which he might return and that was to repent and to make restitution as far as possible.
 
While they stood talking Joseph put his hand upon Foster's vest and said: "What have you concealed there?"
 
Foster stammered in reply: "It's my pistol."
 
He would have lied, but under that piercing glance his bravado deserted him, and he was compelled to acknowledge the fact.
 
The reason of his visit was soon made plain, and it was made plainer at a later time by the testimony of unimpeachable witnesses, Saints and strangers alike. He had not come to seek forgiveness and restoration of fellowship; he had not come to make amends. He had come to lure Joseph away to his death. His party had sworn to slay the Prophet, and every attempt up to this time had failed. The situation was desperate for the plotters. They were about to commit a flagrant violation of the law, and the one man whom they most feared as the defender and executor of law was the mayor of the city. If they could have taken Joseph away where his assassination could have been accomplished without the instant capture of his murderer, they believed that safe refuge could be found in the bosom of the waiting mob at Carthage and other places.
 
Joseph smiled upon the craven wretch, and told him to bring his witnesses if he desired and they would confer concerning his restoration to fellowship. This, Foster willingly promised and left the mansion, saying that he would return with his friends immediately. He never came back. His answer was to send forth the Expositor, edited by Sylvester Emmons, reeking with libel and fulfilling its promise to override the law in its determination to deal a death blow at the city of Nauvoo. Naturally the inhabitants were enraged. Citizens said:
 
If these men do not like Nauvoo, why do they continue to reside here? The repeal of the charter means the financial and social ruin of the city. This would despoil us without benefiting these men, except by the gratification of vengeful hate.
 
It would have been easy in that state of public feeling to incite an attack upon the paper or its publishers. But the leading men remained cool and counseled strict observance of law. Let this be remembered; for it shows that Joseph was never willing to meet evil with evil; that he would rather suffer wrong than to do wrong; and that his appeal was always made to law and justice instead of passion. And let it be remembered that not only then but afterward through all the difficulties which followed closely upon the publication of the Expositor, the lives of the Laws, the Higbees and the Fosters were as safe in Nauvoo as they would have been in Carthage, Springfield or Washington.
 
Three days later, June 10, at a meeting of the city council the Expositor was declared a public nuisance and was ordered to be abated. Under the resolution to this effect the marshal was ordered to proceed as he would for the removal of any other nuisance—he was to eradicate it. If a vile odor assail the nostrils of decent people, the only effectual remedy is to abolish the cause; and such was the course pursued in this case. Marshal John P. Greene with his assistants proceeded to the office of the Expositor and destroyed the press and pied the type.
 
This was summary action; but it was legal. It was the only remedy for any public or private wrong inflicted by the Expositor. Its publishers were impecunious. Suits for private redress or fines for public recompense would have been unavailing; while the imprisonment of the publishers would have been heralded as a still greater wrong against the freedom of the press than was the destruction of the offending materials.
 
Immediate events showed that the league to ruin Nauvoo by newspaper lies was widely extended, for mobocratic excitement outside of Nauvoo arose on the instant, and wholesale and indiscriminate vengeance was threatened.
 
And yet the destruction of an offending press was not new in Illinois. Thomas Ford was governor at this time, and in the awful crimes which closely followed he was the responsible participant. It is interesting, therefore, to note what he said of a similar destruction of an unpopular press and type, at another time and in another community. In the history of Illinois, published after his death to get bread for his destitute children, he details the proceedings of the Alton mob. In 1837, Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, of the Presbyterian church, published the Alton, Illinois, Observer as a religious paper, in which slavery was opposed. Abolitionism was not popular there and to quote Ford's words: "The people assembled and quietly took the press and type and threw them into the Mississippi. It now became manifest to all rational men that the Alton Observer could no longer be published in Alton as an abolition paper. The more reasonable of the abolitionists themselves thought it would be useless to try it again. However, a few of them, who were most violent seemed to think that the salvation of the black race depended upon continuing the publication at Alton." Certain members of the Presbyterian church determined to continue this paper. One of the principal men engaged in the movement to re-establish the Observer was Reverend Mr. Beecher, president of Illinois college; and of him Ford says: "Mr. Beecher was a man of great learning and decided talents; but he belonged to the class of reformers who disregard all considerations of policy and expediency. He believed slavery to be a sin and a great evil, and his indignant and impatient soul could not await God's own good time to overthrow it, by acts of His providence working continual change and revolution in the affairs of men." A new press was bought, and it was determined that Lovejoy, who was very objectionable to the rabble, should continue as editor. After the arrival of the press it was guarded in a warehouse; but the mob gathered and demanded its possession. Ford speaks of the protectors of the press as being converted into demons of obstinacy. A fight occurred, the mob being the first assailants. Lovejoy and one of the mobocrats were killed; other men were wounded. The press was seized and, like the other, it was thrown into the river—although not a single copy of the paper had yet been printed with these materials. No man was punished for this crime of abolishing a free press at the expense of murder. Thus it will be seen that the will of a community, in other parts of Illinois, was considered sufficient without legal process to secure the extinction of an obnoxious paper and the perpetual silence of its editor—the silence of death by assassination. In Nauvoo no such highhanded course was pursued: no man was injured in his person; and the destroying of the press was in pursuance of a municipal order. At Alton, the unpopular publishers advocated merely a national reform, in the highest interest of human liberty and morality; at Nauvoo the publishers attacked the most vital local well-being and assailed the character of the community for the purpose of advancing an............