AFFAIRS AT NAUVOO.
Having visited Nauvoo and its vicinity in person, for the purpose of getting at the true state of affairs among the Mormons and their neighbors, we are enabled to give the latest as well as the most cor-rect intelligence. Nauvoo reposes in a state of quietude and tranquillity most remarkable. During some thirty hours that we passed in the "Holy City," we heard but one solitary intemperate ex-pression, and the man who uttered it was instantly checked, and made silent by more prudent spirits around him Elders Adams and Lyne, accompa-nied by others, left the city on Tuesday last, their object being to call home the absent Apostles and members of the Council of Seventy. Upon the return of these, there will take place a solemn de-liberation of the Twelve Apostles, who will ap-point a successor to the lost Prophet, and their ap-pointment will then be acted upon, either to be ratified or rejected, by the Council of Seventy. The walls of the temple are a little more than half up to the designed height, and all work ceased upon them during the recent troubles; but, at the public meeting on Monday afternoon, the people were no-tified by Elder Phelps, now one of the most active and influential men among them, that labor should commence again the next day. He told the men not to neglect their families; to be energetic in seeing them provided for first, and then hasten to work upon the temple. The system upon which this temple has been building is the exaction of la-bor every tenth day from every man who cannot purchase his exemption from the task with money. It will be, if ever finished, a very imposing looking edifice. It stands in a high and commanding posi-tion, a prominent object riviting the stranger's eye at once, and, upon near inspection, the style of ar-chitecture is found to be more than commonly at-tractive from its singularity. It is like nothing else, and, unless we may be allowed to designate it as the Mormonic order, it, certainly, has no name at all. The stone is of excellent quality, quarried in the neighborhood, and very good mechanics have been at work upon it.
The massive caps of the columns are already carved from huge blocks, showing a gigantic round human face, like the broad full moon. The col-umns are made to rest upon crescent moons, sculp-tured on the face of the stone, resting with the horns down, and with a profile of eyes, nose and mouth, upon the inner curve. What idea this is meant to convey, we could not learn, though the impression is irresistible, that the church is built up upon moonshine. The utmost harmony and peace, at least as far as was allowed to appear to the eye of a stranger, prevailed throughout Nauvoo. At Warsaw, and all about the adjoining district, a very different state of things is fully apparent. The people are boiling over with excited feeling. We arrived at Warsaw on our return. We found the inhabitants laboring under such a state of feeling as is quite evident can never be changed. In repy to the deputation from Gov. Ford, we were told that a committee had already left Warsaw to wait upon the Governor, with the deliberate expression, that either one or other of the antagonistical parties must abandon the county. We stopped at Quincy on Thursday evening, and saw the Governor. We frankly laid before him the charges we had heard made against him, both by Mormons and Anti-Mormons, all of which he combatted with fair and intelligent statements. The Macdonough soldiers, about whose dismissal the Mormons are most in-dignant, were disbanded from the simple fact that there was no sustenance for them in the power of the Governor, or the people of the place. Gov-ernor Ford depended upon the assurances of protection for the prisoners, given by the Carthage Greys and the guard around the door of the jail. The point most interesting, may be the manner of the murder, and without partiality, we can here give the straight forward truth. At the request of their own counsel, the prisoners were placed in an upper apartment of the jail, instead of the cells. This is another point upon which the Mormons feel sore, they believing, or pretending to believe, that the Smiths were so placed with design to give the assassins more facility in accomplishing their work. The first alarm in Carthage was a cry from the vicinity of the jail, "The Mormons! the Mor-mons! they have come to rescue the prisoners!" It is clear, from all our representations, that such was the instantaneous impression. The Carthage Greys were under arms, and immediately com-menced quick march for the jail. First was heard a solitary shot, followed by the quick and continu-ous reports of a revolving pistol, (these latter are known, and admitted to have been fired by the Pro-phet,) and then came a volley of fire arms, suc-ceeded by Joseph Smith tumbling head foremost from a window of the jail. The whole time of the action, from the first cry of "the Mormons! the Mormons!" until the Carthage Greys, on approach-ing the scene, discovered a band of men disappear-ing as fast as they could run, was scarcely ten minutes. This has been all represented fully at Quincy, though many still, whether from honest impression or fixed design, it is difficult and per-haps useless to speak, assume to impugn the integ-rity of the Greys. There is such a whirlpool of conflicting interests involving this business, that an impartial mind is completely astonished at the manner in which first high principles may be lost sight of in the petty differences of party. All men, from one end of the Union to the other, must con-demn, most emphatically, the outbreak at Car-thage. It was wrong; it was unjustified by any law; it was a demonstration bound to be regretted deeply by all our good citizens living under this free government. Still let us take care, and do the people of Hancock county, Illinois, fair justice.
—St. Louis Reveilie, July 6.
