Minutes and Testimonies, 12–29 November 1838, Copy [State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Treason]
Source Note
Minutes and Testimonies, , Ray Co., MO, 12–29 Nov. 1838, State of MO v. Gates et al. for Treason (Fifth Judicial Circuit of MO 1838). Copied ca. late 1838–ca. early 1839; unidentified handwriting; fifty-seven pages; Mormon War Papers, MSA.
contrary to law. He supported a parcel of Blacklegs in disturbing the worship of the Saints— and when the men whom the Church had chosen to preside over their meetings endeavoured to put the to order— by the authority of his office assisted those wretches in continuing their confusion and threatened the Church with a prosection for trying to put them out of the And issued writs against the Saints for endeavouring to sustain rights and bound them under heavy bonds to appear before his honour— and required bonds which were both inhuman and unlawful. One of those injured men was a man upwards of seventy years of age the venerable who had been appointed by the Church to preside— a man notorious for his peaceable habits
and united with a gang of Counterfiters thieves, liars, and Blacklegs of the deepest die to deceive, cheat and defraud the Saints out of their property by every art and stratagem which wickness could invent using the influance of the vileest persecutors to bring vexatious lawsuits upon vilanous persecutions and even steeling not excepted In the midst of this career for fear the saints would seek redress at their hands they breathed out threatnings of mobs and actually made attempts with their gang to bring mobs upon them. and his gang such of them as belonged to the Church were called to an account by the Church for their enequity— they confessed repentance and were again restored to the Church.
But the very first opportunity they were [p. [20]]