On 28 December 1843, in , Illinois, swore an affidavit before JS as mayor, describing reports he heard about a gathering of “anti-Mormons” in southwestern , Illinois. According to a later JS history, Hyde had been sent to , Illinois, to obtain signatures for the ’ latest petition to Congress seeking redress for their expulsion from . While passing through southern Hancock County on 26 December, Hyde heard about a 23 December meeting in the vicinity, during which a group of “anti-Mormons” demanded that the several hundred Saints living in the region surrender their weapons or be forced from their homes.

This gathering was presumably the “meeting of the Anti-Mormon citizens” of the Green Plains precinct whose minutes were published in the 3 January 1844 issue of the Warsaw Message. Although the published minutes do not contain the meeting date, they indicate that —whom mentioned in his affidavit—served as the chair. According to the minutes, the assembly resolved to continue its campaign against the Saints by petitioning governor to curtail ’s legislative power and asking authorities to make another extradition request for JS. The minutes do not contain the language or resolution that Hyde described in his affidavit, but the group apparently agreed to continue committing acts of extralegal violence against the Saints. The published resolutions encouraged local citizens to detain any “suspicious character lurking around” and “give him our opinions of spies and bad characters.” They also pledged to use their “utmost energy to ferret out all dishonest persons in our section of country, whether Mormons or not.” These resolutions were couched in the euphemistic language of upholding social order, a type of rhetoric commonly employed by vigilante organizations. JS apparently first heard about the meeting on 25 December 1843, when a group of church members from the in southwestern visited him seeking counsel for how to respond to the threat. JS advised them “to keep law on their side. and th[e]y would come out well enough.”

returned from his visit to by 28 December and reported what he heard about the meeting to JS in an affidavit. Hyde wrote the affidavit and , clerk of the mayor’s court, certified it. reviewed the affidavit the next day, corrected the year, and made a copy. Bullock made a second copy of the affidavit on 1 January 1844. Both of these copies were apparently intended to be sent to , and one of the copies was among the “affidavits relative to the late Kidnapping of the Avery’s” that accompanied a 30 December 1843 letter from Phelps to Ford.

The same day that swore out his affidavit before JS, also swore out an affidavit before JS describing his imprisonment in . The juxtaposition of these two affidavits demonstrates that while the threat of kidnapping and removal to Missouri was diminishing, the tension between residents and their opponents in continued to escalate.