99. # 2 -- ZION'S CAMP, a brief history, summer of 1834

  I decided to split this entry into part 1 and part 2.  I realized it probably is too long for one entry, and as I am approaching 100 posts, I am re-thinking how I should do it.  I had one ancestor, Thomas Colborn, told about in the previous entry, who was in Zion's Camp. 

This is a brief history of:

                                                     ZION'S CAMP

In the winter of 1833–34 the Saints in Jackson County, Missouri, were persecuted and driven out of their homes by enemy mobs. The Saints had very little food and no protection from the winter weather.  Church leaders in Missouri sent Parley P. Pratt and Lyman Wight to Kirtland to seek help and guidance from the Prophet Joseph Smith. The Prophet received a revelation (D&C 103) directing him to organize a group of men to march to Missouri and help the Saints there. This group, which would be called Zion’s Camp, was to take food, clothing, and money to the Missouri Saints and help them recover their homes and land.   This involved going from city to city for 2 or 3 months to recruit the men, who would be willing to give their lives for their fellow brothers in the Gospel. 

 Ultimately, 207 men, 11 women, and 11 children comprised Zion’s Camp, many fewer than the Lord had requested through the Prophet. The men averaged 29 in age, which was Joseph’s age at the time. They left families with little or no money nor any source of income, and the men were leaving during a critical planting and harvesting time. Several members of the Church planted gardens to provide for the families of the men who left, so they would have something to sustain themselves.

The one-thousand-mile march to Jackson County, Missouri, was by no means easy for the company. They often marched thirty-five miles in one day with “blistered feet, oppressive heat, heavy rains, high humidity, hunger, and thirst.” One of the biggest problems for the company was lack of food. The men were always hungry and, due to poor conditions, were often forced to eat rancid or maggoty food.  

   Unfortunately, during the journey, some of the men complained about their hardships or about their leader's decisions.  On one occasion dissension was so great that the Prophet Joseph Smith warned them that before they left their camp the next day, they would see signs of the Lord's displeasure with them.  The next day, nearly every horse in the camp was sick or lame.  The Prophet then told them that if they would humble themselves, repent, and become unified as a group, the animals would immediately receive their health.  By noon, all of the animals had recovered, except for that of one man who retained his bitter feelings and tried to stir up others.   Their experiences were quite dramatic, and can be read on lds.org.  (Put Zion's Camp in the search field.)

At the end of the march of Zion’s Camp to Missouri, their enemies were prepared to meet them. While making preparations to camp at Fishing River (where the revelation in D&C 105 was received), a group of Missourians rode into camp. The Prophet Joseph Smith recorded: “Five men armed with guns rode into our camp, and told us we should ‘see hell before morning;’ and their accompanying oaths partook of all the malice of demons. They told us that sixty men were coming from Richmond, Ray county, and seventy more from Clay county, to join the Jackson county mob, who had sworn our utter destruction” ( History of the Church, 2:102–3). The Prophet comforted the members of Zion’s Camp, however, and promised that the Lord would protect them. A short time later, a huge storm began to blow in. This is a story often told in Church History.  While many in Zion’s Camp found shelter in an old Baptist church nearby, the storm ruined the plans of the mob, who gave up their efforts to fight the “Mormon army."  

 For most of the men in Zion’s Camp, their close association with a prophet of God was worth the hardships they endured. Years later, Elder Wilford Woodruff, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, testified: “We gained an experience that we never could have gained in any other way. We had the privilege of beholding the face of the prophet, and we had the privilege of traveling a thousand miles with him, and seeing the workings of the Spirit of God with him, and the revelations of Jesus Christ unto him and the fulfillment of those revelations” (in Journal of Discourses, 13:158).  

  Wilford Woodruff, who became the 4th President of the Church, and was one of the original 12 apostles..

  Some were disappointed at the Lord’s revelation in Doctrine and Covenants 105 to not fight, and they murmured against the Prophet and the Lord, and a few soon left the Church. As a result, a plague of cholera swept the camp. Fourteen people died, including some of those who had remained faithful. Sometimes the righteous also suffer when there are wicked people among them. The Prophet Joseph Smith promised that if the rebellious would humble themselves and repent, the plague would leave. His words were fulfilled.

 This rugged journey served as a test to determine who was worthy to serve in positions of leadership and trust and to receive an endowment in the Kirtland Temple. The Prophet later explained: “God did not want you to fight. He could not organize his kingdom with twelve men to open the gospel door to the nations of the earth, and with seventy men under their direction to follow in their tracks, unless he took them from a body of men who had offered their lives, and who had made as great a sacrifice as did Abraham.”   In the following February 1835 the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Quorum of the Seventy were organized. Nine of the original Apostles, all seven presidents of the Seventy’s quorum, and all sixty-three other members of that quorum had served in the army of Israel that marched to western Missouri in 1834. Zion’s Camp may not have accomplished what some of the members thought it would, but as the Lord said in Doctrine and Covenants 105:19 , it served as a “trial of their faith.” Some did not pass the test and left the Church, while the faithful were strengthened by their experience.