misunderstood them and their motives, in those days, sufficiently to
accept the unjust report as well-founded.

My father, as First Councillor of the Church, had proposed to President
Taylor that every man who was living in plural marriage should surrender
himself voluntarily to the court and plead: "I entered into this
covenant of celestial marriage with a personal conviction that it was an
order revealed by our Father in Heaven for the salvation of mankind. I
have kept my covenant in purity. I believed that no constitutional law
of the country could forbid this practice of a religious faith. As the
laws of Congress conflict with my sense of submission to the will of the
Lord, I now offer myself, here, for whatever judgment the courts of my
country may impose." He believed that such a course would vindicate the
sincerity of the men who had engaged in polygamy and defied the law in
an assumption of religious immunity; and he believed that the world
would pause to reconsider its judgment upon us, if it saw thousands of
men--the bankers, the farmers, the merchants, and all the religious
leaders of a civilized community--marching in a mass to perform such an
act of faith.

But President Taylor was not prepared for a movement that would have
recommended itself better to the daring genius of Brigham Young. Taylor
had given himself into the custody of the officers of the law once--in
Carthage, Illinois--with Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum Smith; and
Taylor had been wounded by the mob that broke into the jail and shot the
Smiths to death. This, perhaps, had cured him of any faith in the
protecting power of innocency. He decided against voluntary surrender;
and now that my father's liberty was so seriously threatened, he ordered
him to go either to Mexico or to the Sandwich Islands--his old mission
field--where he would be beyond the reach of the United States