The report of his discovery having got abroad, his house was beset, he was mobbed, and his life was endangered by persons who wished to possess themselves of the plates. He therefore packed up his goods, concealed the plates _in a barrel of beans_, and proceeded across the country to the northern part of Pennsylvania, near the Susquehannah river, where his father-in-law resided. Here, "by the gift and power of God, through the means of the Urim and Thummim, he began to translate the record, and, being a poor writer, he employed a scribe to write the translation as it came from his mouth." In 1830 a large edition of the _Book of Mormon_ was published. It professes to be an abridgment of the records made by the prophet Mormon, of the people of the Nephites, and left to his son Moroni to finish. It is regarded by the Latter-day Saints with the same veneration as the New Testament is among Christians.
The Church of the Latter-day Saints was organized on the 6th of April, 1830, at Manchester, in Ontario County, New York. Its numbers at first were few, but they rapidly increased, and in 1833 removed to the State of Missouri, and purchased a large tract of land in Jackson County. Here their neighbors tarred and feathered some, killed others, and compelled the whole to remove. They then established themselves in Clay County, in the same State, but on the opposite side of the river. From this place again, in 1835, they removed eastward to the State of Ohio, settled at Kirtland, in Geauga County, about twenty miles from Cleveland, and began to build a temple, upon which sixty-thousand dollars were expended. At Kirtland a bank was incorporated by Joe and his friends, property was bought with its notes, and settled upon the Saints, after which the bank failed--as many others did about the same time--and Ohio became too hot for the Mormons. Again, therefore, the Prophet, his apostles, and a great body of the Saints, left their home and temple, went westward a second time to the State of Missouri, purchased a large tract of land in Caldwell County, in Missouri, and built the city of the "Far West." Here difficulties soon beset them, and in August, 1838, became so serious that the military were called in; and the Mormons were finally driven, unjustly, harshly, and oppressively, by force of arms, from the State of Missouri, and sought protection in the State of Illinois, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi. They were well received in this State, and after wandering for some time--while their leader, Joe Smith, was in jail--they bought a beautiful tract of land in Hancock County, and, in the spring of 1840, began to build the city and temple of Nauvoo. The Legislature of Illinois at first passed an act giving great, and, probably, injudicious privileges to this city, which, in 1844, was already the largest in the State, and contained a population of about twenty thousand souls. The temple, too, was of great size and magnificence--being 128 feet long and 77 feet high, and stood on an elevated situation, from which it was visible to a distance of 25 or 30 miles. In the interior was an immense baptismal font, in imitation of the brazen sea of Solomon--"a stone reservoir, resting upon the backs of twelve oxen, also cut out of stone, and as large as life."