manifesto or questioned it. They accepted it--as it was
then and afterwards interpreted--as a revelation from God made through
the Prophet of the Church; and they subscribed to it as a solemn
covenant, before God, with the people of the nation.

Joseph F. Smith was one of the last to speak. With a face like wax, his
hands outstretched, in an intensity of passion that seemed as if it must
sweep the assembly, he declared that he had covenanted, at the altar
of God's house, in the presence of his Father, to cherish the wives and
children whom the Lord had given him. They were more to him than life.
They were dearer to him than happiness. He would rather choose to stand,
with them, alone--persecuted--proscribed--outlawed--to wait until God in
His anger should break the nation with His avenging stroke. But--

He dropped his arms. He seemed to shrink in his commanding stature like
a man stricken with a paralysis of despair. The tears came to the pained
constriction of his eyelids.

"I have never disobeyed a revelation from God," he said. "I cannot--I
dare not--now."

He announced--with his head up, though his body swayed--that he would
accept and abide by the revelation. When he sank in his chair and
covered his face with his hands, there was a gasp of sympathy and
relief, as if we had been hearing the pain of a man in agony. And my
heart gave a great leap; for, in these supreme moments of feeling,
things come to us that are larger than our knowledge, more splendid than
our hopes; and I saw, as if in the blinding glisten of the tears in my
eyes, a radiant vision of our future, an unselfish people freed from
a burden of persecution, a nation's forgiveness born, a grateful state
created. I saw it--and I looked at Smith and loved him for it. I knew
then, as I know now, that he and those others were at this moment
sincere. I knew that they had relinquished what was more dear to them
than the breath of life. I knew the appalling significance, to them,
of the promise which they were making to the nation. And in all the
degraded after-years, when so many of them were guilty of breach of
covenant and base violation of trust, I tried never to forget that in
the hour of their greatest trial, they had sacrificed themselves for
their people; they had suffered for the happiness of others; they had
said, sincerely: "Not my will, O Lord, but Thine, be done!"

Chapter V. On the Road to Freedom

In any discussion of the public a