The incontrovertible facts are these: the Mormons never expected to stay in Kirtland indefinitely, Zion being father west. They left it when conditions became intolerable—when a combination of financial collapse and internal dissensions made a complete uprooting and new establishment absolutely necessary.

Their physical property, their homes, their farms, their stores and industries, their very temple itself, were all about to be lost by foreclosure. Church authorities have always described this as “legal persecution,” and there is no doubt that some of the creditors, like Grandison Newell, who boasted that he “drove the Mormons out of Kirtland,” got special pleasure out of enforcing their legal rights. On the other hand, the eastern merchants who had delivered thousands of dollars’ worth of goods which were sold at the Mormon stores, had a right to get such payment as they could, without the cry of persecution being raised. The plain fact is that the Mormons dissipated their physical “stake” in a riot of speculative excess.