[1] About 6 p.m. The Maid of Iowa returned to her landing at the nauvoo house, the company who had been on the expedition on board of her, formed in a procession and walked up to my office, where they formed a hollow square and sent in a deputation to me, as soon as I had bid them welcome I opened the window of my office and requested that no man would leave the ground until I had spoken to them. My Brother Hyrum and I went into the hollow square and directed them not to allow their ranks to be broken. I then shook hands with each man, blessing them and welcoming them home.

I then took off my hat and related to them how I was brought home to the midst of my friends, and how I regained my liberty. I feel by the Spirit of the Lord that if I had fallen into your hands that you would either have brought me safe home, or that we should all have died in a heap together, at this time, a well dressed man, a stranger, who had a cloak around him, broke through the South line of the ranks when the orderly sergeant took the strange man by the nape of the neck and kicked him outside the ranks telling him not to come in again; as soon as quiet was resumed I continued my address to the company….

About dusk I dismissed the company, blessing them in the name of the Lord.

—2 July 1843

Notes

[1] See History of the Church, 5:481. Not in Teachings. The original source for this entry may be the "Book of the Law of the Lord." The following remarks were made to some fifty or sixty men who, under the direction of Jonathan Dunham, had been sent on the Maid of Iowa up the Illinois River to assist in rescuing the Prophet. Joseph Smith had been arrested on a charge of being an accessory to an attempted murder of ex-Governor Lilburn W. Boggs.