Mormon History, Jul 30, 1847 (Evening)

[Brigham Young Sermon] The brethren were addressed by President Young in his usual interesting and instructive manner. The meeting was opened by a Hosannah to God, three times. He addressed the brethren of the Battalion very warm and affectionately. He said the council had proffered their assistance to the government to go to California, but they were always silent on the subject, until they heard we were driven from our homes and scattered on the prairie. Then they made a demand for five hundred men, that they might have women and children to suffer, and, if we had not complied with the requisition, they would have treated us as enemies, and the next move would have been to have let Missouri and the adjoining states loose on us, and wipe us from the face of the earth. This is what they had in contemplation, and your going into the army has saved the lives of thousands of people, etc. President Young requested the brethren of the Battalion to turn out tomorrow and build a bowery to hold our meetings in. -- Salt Lake City [Pioneering the West 1846 to 1878: Major Howard EganÂ's Diary. Howard R. Egan, ed. Salt Lake City, 1917. 112]

[source: The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, Ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, Smith-Pettit Foundation, Salt Lake City (2009), http://bit.ly/BY-discourses]

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