Hyrum’s Feelings on His Imprisonment

After escaping from his wrongful five-and-a-half-month imprisonment in Liberty Jail, Clay County, Missouri, Hyrum recalled and summarized his feelings of the events as follows:

Mormon Liberty Jail

I was innocent of crime, and . . . I had been abused and thrust into a dungeon, and confined for months on account of my faith, and the “testimony of Jesus Christ.” However I thank God that I felt a determination to die, rather than deny the things which my eyes had seen, which my hands had handled, and which I had borne testimony to, wherever my lot had been cast; and I can assure my beloved brethren that I was enabled to

bear as strong a testimony, when nothing but death presented itself, as ever I did in my life. my confidence in God, was likewise unshaken. I knew that he who suffered me, along with my brethren, to be thus tried, that he could and that he would deliver us out of the hands of our enemies; and in his own due time he did so, for which I desire to bless and praise his holy name.

From my close and long confinement, as well as from the sufferings of my mind, I feel my body greatly broke down and debilitated, my frame has received a shock from which it will take a long time to recover; yet, I am happy to say that my zeal for the cause of God, and my courage in defense of the truth, are as great as ever. “My heart is fixed,” and I yet feel a determination to do the will of God, in spite of persecutions, imprisonments or death; I can say with Paul [that] “none of these things move me . . . so that I may finish my course with joy (Hyrum Smith: A Life of Integrity, Jeffrey S. O’Driscoll, 207).