N. B. Some of the Mormon slaves referred to in , are the children of murdered parents; others of Mormon parents now in this .

Dear Sir:—I am not sure that I am not indebted to you for your last letter, not having answered it, as I remember. But as I have been very sick during the long interval of my silence, you will readily excuse any apparent neglect on my part.

I thank you for your paper sent me, the “Times and Seasons,” and have got much information from it, and since that, from other sources, in relation to the outrages committed upon the Latter Day Saints by the authorities as well as the people of the State of ; and my blood boiled with indignation to see the whole christian world—and the whole political world, too, look tamely on, and never raise a warning voice—a voice of expostulation, nor even giving the facts in the case! O what outrages will not be allowed or winked at by those in authority, and the people generally, if they happen to be inflicted upon those who bear an unpopular name, espouse an unpopular cause, and are poor and obscure! It seems as if we had again fallen upon the middle ages, when the privileged classes could pour out their sympathies by the hour, at the very circumstantial and minute detailes of the loss of the life, or any other serious evil that befel one of their own number; but they could write or hear without emotion, and even with satisfaction and joy, the history of the massacre of a thousand defenseless women and children, if they belonged to the common sort of people. Just read, for example, Madame de Sevigne’s account in a letter to her daughter, dated “Aux Rochers,” 30 Oct., 1675, in the 2nd volume of De Toqueville’s Democracy in America.

What, my dear sir, do you think of the treatment which the subject of American slavery receives at the hands of the American press—amongst the people generally, and especially in the halls of Congress? What think you of the sentenceing of three men from the Quincy Mission Institute of this , a short time since, to twelve years confinement in the penitentiary of , for no crime at all, or only such as God would regard as a virtue? Please look into this matter, and see if you can not join with the benevolent and fearless, and call the attention of the nation or the , to these outrages of .

I send you a paper, and mark one of the pieces for your perusal. Read it. I do not know whether you have examined the whole subject of American slavery; but if you have not, I beseech you to do so, and let me hear from you. Is it not sin? Yes. Then is it not right to repent of it? Yes. When? God allows not a moment. Is not repentance and abandonment of sin safe, so long as God commands, and stands ready to look after the consequences? Certainly so.

Well, can any Court, either State or national, rob me of liberty for twelve years, (even against their own State laws,) for acting precisely in accordance with the letter and spirit of the Constitution of the , and the precepts of Jesus Christ? Is it to be submitted to tamely, that three men shall be immured in a dungeon for twelve years—torn from their families and friends, and from society and usefulness, for barely teaching a fellow being how to go to a place where he may learn the sciences—have his own wages, aye, and his own person?

Let me hear from you. Have we not a right to sympathyze with each other?

, Hancock Co., Illinois.

, Ill., Jan. 20th, A. D. 1842.

Yours of the 3rd inst., accompanied by the “Genius of Liberty,” containing the address of Alvan Stewart, Esq., is before me, and I seize upon this, the first, opportunity to reply. You refer me to Madame de Sevigne’s letter to her daughter, dated “Aux Rochers,” 30th Oct., A. D. 1675, in the 2nd vol. of De Toqueville’s Democracy in America; and ask me to examine the subject of American [p. 723]