The proposed that we appoint a committee of three to select and preserve every mean, dastardly publication concerning us, in the papers of these , and when we are ready to leave we will publish them and scatter them through the States to show their meanness towards us.
The then went out for a few minutes with one or two others to fetch some wood, He called Er to the chair.
Coun. arose to suggest a title to that said book. “The beauties of American liberty.”
Coun. offered an amendment to be added to s motion, viz. “The land of the free, the home of the brave, and the assylum for the opprest.” [p. [64]]
The statement that the United States was an “asylum for the oppressed” was frequently coupled in general patriotic discourse with the refrain “the land of the free and the home of the brave” from “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Latter-day Saints used the combined phrase to contrast national ideals with the treatment they had received. Writing from New York around this same time, Orson Pratt included the phrase in a letter to the editor of the New York Tribune condemning the treatment of the Mormons. After recounting their expulsion from Missouri, Pratt inquired, “Is this American liberty? Is this ‘the land of the free—the home of the brave?’ Is this the grand asylum for the oppressed of every clime?” (Orson Pratt, “An American Citizen’s Appeal in Behalf of the Long Persecuted and Exiled Mormons,” New-York Daily Tribune, 15 Oct. 1845, [1]; see also “Address to the Saints,” LDS Millennial Star, Supplement, Aug. 1844, 5:1; and Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 1 Jan. 1839.)