CIVIL WAR
At the close of this year, a rebellion broke out in
the United States between the North and South, commencing at Charlestown, South
Carolina, agreeable to the fulfilment of Joseph Smith’s prophecy given at
Kirtland, December 25, 1832, which I often heard him speak of afterwards should
take place, which I bear record was literally fulfilled every whit according to
his word. (Joseph Holbrook, Mormon Pioneer, a Journal, ed. Pamela Call
Johnson, 2 vols. [rev ed.; 2019], 2:52)
Dream
City of Bountiful
January 18, 1861
While I had been mediating on the exact fulfillment of
Joseph Smith’s prophecy, twenty-eight years before, it transpired and how God
does fulfil all His words by His prophets, I had the following dream:
I thought that I was suddenly taken to the city of
Washington, the Capitol of the United States, by the power of God to the
Representative Hall. There being a joint session at the time, I took the
speaker’s stand. There was a death like silence in the house, every member seemed
chained to his seat.
I said that all in the house were strangers to me,
save one, and that one would come to my side if I should call him, and that was
William N. Hooper. I told them that I stood there by the power of God, and that
I asked no odds of any of them, and that I could go out of this hell as I came
in, without your doors or any other passage, and that they were the
representatives of the people of the greatest Nation on the earth, and that
they were a pack of fools.
That I was not in favor of slavery or yet opposed to
it. That it was in the hands of God. That they were blind in the North as well
as in the South and did not know what to do to save the nation’s ruin, or the
causes of the clouds of darkness that overwhelmed our heads, and that they were
under the curse of God’s wrath for their wickedness for He was coming out of
His hiding place to vex the nations for slaying the prophets, Joseph Smith, and
his brother, Hyrum, which was sent to this generation, and would have saved
this Nation, if they would have received him and carried out his policy of
Government.
But you gave assent to his death, and cast his
followers out from among you, and caused many of them to suffer death, and
sought their destructions by your means, and your armies.
There sits Judge Douglas, who knew the prophet, Joseph
Smith in his life time, who has aspired to the chair of the Chief magistrate of
our nation, who recommended to cut out the loathsome ulcer of the people in
Utah.
But God had put an ulcer in your breast that you
cannot cut and you are cursed with a more cursing. I told them that there was
but one way for their redemption and to save the nation from their utter
destruction, and if Congress would proclaim a fast throughout the land from the
least to the greatest, and repent before the God of Joseph Smith, and seek with
all might, mind, and strength, to restore back to the Latter-Day-Saints what
you have robbed them of as a nation, and bring them in judgment that have killed
our prophets and punish them for their crimes; then will I tell you of a man if
you will follow his council, that will save the constitution of our once
beloved but now downtrodden country and that man is Brigham Young.
I visited President Buchanan and his cabinet and told
him he could find a plenty of means and an army to destroy the Saints, but
could not have power or spirit in him to deal with those under his own nose and
that God has put hooks in his jaws to weaken and disgrace him.
Therefore, let the President and his cabinet and the
governors and their counsellors with all their people proclaim a fast and
repent as did the people of Ninevah in sackcloth and ashes, if they would be
saved and restore to the Saints their constitutional rights and I awake and
found it was a dream. (Ibid.,
53-54)
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