“ February 20. 1840— Dear Brother— I have just returned from the Committee Room, wherein I spoke about one hour and a half, there were but three of the Committee present, for which I am very sorry— I think they will be obliged to acknowledge the justice of our cause. They paid good attention; and I think <​my remarks​> were well received— It was a special meeting appointed to hear me by my request. The Senators and Representatives were invited to attend, and attended, and God gave me courage, so that I was not intimidated by them, , I thought felt a little uneasy at times; but manifested a much better Spirit afterwards than ; I told them firstly that I represented a suffering people who had been deprived, together with myself of their rights in ; who numbered something like fifteen thousand souls; and not only they, but many others were deprived of the rights guaranteed to <​them​> by the Constitution of the ; at least the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand free born Citizens are deprived the enjoyment of Citizenship, in each or, every State, that we had no ingress in the State of ; nor could any of us have only at the expence of our lives, and this by the order of the , I then took their own declaration of the cause of our expulsion: referred them to s Pamphlet, which I held in my hand, then shewed that the first accusation, therein contained, was on account of our religious tenets, furthermore that the others were utterly groundless: I went on to prove that the whole persecution from beginning to end was grounded on our religious faith— For evidence of this I referred them to ’s testimony and P. Powells; I stated that there was abundant testimony to prove this to be a fact among the documents I then gave a brief history of the persecutions from the first settlement in the to our final expulsion— I also stated that the Society were industrious [p. 1016]