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.
lawsuits. And among the most monstrous of all your abominations we have evidence which when called upon we can produce; that letters sent to the Post office in this place have been opened and read and destroyed, and the persons to whom they were sent never obtained them— thus ruining the business of the place. We have evidence of a very strong character that you are this very time engaged with a gang of Counterfeiters and coiners and blacklegs as some of those characters have lately visited our from and told what they had come for, and we know assuredly that if we suffer you to continue we may expect and that speedely to find a general system of Stealing, Cheating, Counterfeiting, and burning property as in for so are your associates carrying of there at this time and that encouraged by you by means of letters you send continually to them.
And to crown to whole you have had the audacity to threaten us that if we offered to disturb you— you would get up a mob from and Counties— for this insult if nothing else and your threatenings to shoot us if we offered to molest you We will put you from the County of So help us God