Letter to Thomas Leiper Kane, 8 March 1859
Col. Tho. L. Kane.
Dear Sir—I am compiling the
history of our exodus from Nauvoo to these
vallieys of the mountains in 1846. This part
of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday
Saints will be not only presented as one of the
most striking and prominent events in the dealings
of God with this people in their rise and progress, but
it will stand in bold relief as the main key of the
American history of the nineteenth century.
Closely intermingled with this conmemora-
ble history, which will be read with feelings of deep
interest by future generations, the name of Col. Thos.
L. Kane stands most prominent, not only as a
philanthropist, and one that made superhuman
exertions to dam up and roll back a mighty
flood of wrath, indignation, and persecution,
issuing forth from a powerful nation of twenty
millions of freemen, with the intention of anni-
hilating, at one fell swoop, thirty thousand men,
women, and children, because they had the
independence of mind to worship God according
to the dictates of their own consciences, and to
fulfil the destiny marked ^out^ for them by the God
of heaven, but as an instrument, in the hands
