Journey Up the Mississippi River, from Its Mouth to Nauvoo, the City of the Latter-Day Saints

From the preface: "I have been induced to write the following pages at the solicitations of many friends. But the most particular reason why I have thus ventured to allow myself to be criticised, and, perhaps, wrong constructions put upon my ideas, is that my country, men and women, who have embraced the new doctrine of Mormonism should know the real condition of their friends in the city of Nauvoo. Of course, they are at perfect liberty either to believe or disbelieve my opinions on their religion and prophet, and the truths I tell them concerning the city; but those who have any thing like homes here will repent if they ever try the experiment of going to Nauvoo. None can prove that I have either selfish ends in view, or that I wish to forward the interest of any section of religionists, as I belong to none. "To do good is my religion." The slavery of one portion of society, their complete debasement, and the absence of all education amongst them, is repugnant to every lover of his kind, and I am not unwilling to throw my humble mite into the scale to make it appear in its naked deformity, "A monster of such frightful mien, As to be hated, needs not to be seen." I am no friend to emigration, believing, as I do, that the land of our birth, the spot where we have revelled in all the gaiety of childhood, where we formed first love, first friendship - where are the only ties that bind a benevolent mind to existence, home, country, kindred, and friends - that the moral and innate feelings which bind us to these things should not be dissevered, and send us pilgrims and strangers upon a foreign soil. Should the time ever come when a famine is likely to come amongst us, then an extensive emigration should take place; but it should be of those "who toil not, neither do they spin" and when these have once left our shores, I may venture to say that famine will leave the industrious and go along with those exported. I have written these pages in the few hours of interval I have from my daily avocation; and I therefore ask the indulgence of the intelligent reader for any error he may come across. As for the hypercritic who "strains at a gnat and swallows a camel," I can afford him, with great gravity, to say what he pleases."