From the Springfield (Illinois) Journal, Aug. 15.
Governor Ford and the Mormon Votes.
We ask the most serious attention of our readers to the following proclamation of Governor Ford, and to the remarks which accompany it from the Rock Island "Upper Mississippian." These articles (the proclamation and the remarks,) with the additional fact, as is understood and believed, that the leaders of the loco foco party stand pledged to sustain the Nauvoo charters, furnish ample reasons why the whole Mormon vote was thrown for loco foco candidates.
The late difficulties in the neighborhood of Nauvoo will cost the state some 25 or 30,000 dollars, The people of Illinois must pay this money by taxation; but what care our leading loco focos for the expenditure of this money, so long as they have been able to make votes out of it?
TO THE PEOPLE OF WARSAW IN HANCOCK COUNTY.
I am continually informed of your preparations and threats to renew the war, and exterminate the Mormons. One might suppose that you ought to rest satisfied with what you have already done. The Mormon leaders if they resisted the law have submitted to its authority. They have surrendered the public arms; and appear to be ready to do any thing required, to make atonement for whatever wrong may have been done. Since the assassination of the two principle leaders, under circumstances well calculated to inflame their passions, and drive them to excesses for the purpose of revenge, they have been entirely peaceful and submissive, and have patiently waited the laws to repress the wrongs of which they complained. There has been no retaliation; no revenge; and for any thing that I can ascertain, there will be none. Those of your people who are charged with being most hostile to them, have lived, if they knew it, in perfect security of illegal violence. I am anxious for a pacification of your difficulties. You cannot drive out or exterminate the Mormons. Such an effort would be madness, and would not be permitted by the people of the state.. You cannot be sustained in it either by force or law.
You are blinding yourselves to your weakness, and keeping up an agitation which must fail of the purpose intended, and recoil with terrible energy on your heads. I exhort you to consider your infatuated resolutions. Try your Mormon neighbors again, and if you cannot dwell together in amity, you may at least refrain from injuring each other. From the moderation of the Mormons from what they conceive to be the deepest injury, you might well hope that if they ever entertained designs inconsistent with your liberty and happiness, those designs have been abandoned. They are also interested in preserving the peace. It is not natural to suppose that they, any more than yourselves, wish to live in continual alarm. They hope for quiet, and will be peaceful and submissive in order to enjoy it. But you are continually driving them to desperation by an insane course of threatening and hostility, and depriving yourselves of the peace by the same means used to disquiet them.
If I have said any thing severe in this address, I pray you to attribute it to my deep conviction that your course is improper and unwarrantable. Such is the opinion of the people at large in this state, and all over the country. From being right in the first instance, you have put yourselves in the wrong, and there are none who sustain you. As men of sense you are bound to see, if you will open your eyes, that you cannot effect your purposes. Nevertheless you are still training and drilling, and keeping together, and threatening a renewal of the war.—I have said to you often that you cannot succeed; by this time you see it yourselves. What can your small force be against two thousand armed men, entrenched in a city, and defending themselves, their wives and their children? Besides, if you are the aggressors, I am determined that all the power of the state shall be used to prevent your success. I can never agree that a set of infatuated or infuriated men shall barbarously attack a peaceful people, who have submitted to all the demands of the law; and when they had full power to do so, refrained from inflicting vengeance upon their enemies.
You may count on my most determined opposition—upon the opposition of the law and upon that of every peaceful law abiding citizen of the country. This is not spoken in anger. God knows I would do you no injury unless I am compelled to do so to sustain the laws. But mob violence must be put down. It is threatening the country with anarchy and ruin. It is menacing our fair form of Government, and destroying the confidence of the patriot in the institutions of his country.
I have been informed that the Mormons about Lima and Macedonia have been warned to leave their settlements. They have a right to remain and enjoy their property. As long as they are good citizens, they shall never be molested; and the sooner these misguided persons shall withdraw their warning and retrace their steps, the better it will be for them!
July 25,1844. THOMAS FORD.
[We omit the comments of the Mississippian. They dissect the proclamation, insist that the people to whom it is addressed have done and are doing no more than their own safety requires, and contend that Governor Ford is influenced by a desire to propitiate the Mormons for political objects.]
