[Brigham Young] I called the Twelve and bishops together and informed them that I had received a letter from Brother Samuel Brannan, stating that he had been at Washington and had learned that the secretary of war and other members of the cabinet were laying plans and were determined to prevent our moving west: alleging that it is against the law for an armed body of men to go from the United States to any other government. They say it will not do to let the Mormons go to California nor Oregon, neither will it do to let them tarry in the states, and they must be obliterated from the face of the earth. We prayed that the Lord would defeat and frustrate all the plans of our enemies, and inasmuch as they lay plans to exterminate this people and destroy the priesthood from off the earth, that the curse of God may come upon them, and all the evil which they design to bring upon us, may befall themselves; and that the Lord would preserve the lives of his servants and lead us out of this ungodly nation in peace. I said we should go out from this place in spite of them all, and the brethren all felt that God would deliver us from the grasp of this ungodly and mobocratic nation. -- Nauvoo, Illinois
[Source: History of the Church. 7 Vols. B. H. Roberts, ed. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, Co., 1902. 7:543-44, in 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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