and sustain ourselves. If the saints would hearken to council counsel we could sustain ourselves here, but they will not, and this place will be left to apostates as was because the saints wont take council. If the church had taken council from the beginning we would have been free before now. He would just as soon go to one place as another. If we once get out of the jurisdiction of the men will never go away from us to tell the enemy how strong we are, and if we would take this course here we could sustain ourselves in this place. Now he knows all about it, and when the brethren get ready to go they will come here and he will tell them the straight shoot were to go.
The house then adjourned one hour. [2 lines blank] [p. [103]]
After the leadership of the church left Kirtland, Ohio, in 1837 and 1838, the number of Saints living there significantly decreased because of migration or defection. After preaching there in June 1844, Brigham Young observed that “the people are ded an cold in relegion here.” In January 1845 Young counseled his brother living in Kirtland to gather all the faithful Saints to Nauvoo, leaving Kirtland “to the owls & the bats for a season.” Since that time, as noted in the council meeting on 1 March 1845, Sidney Rigdon and other dissenters had visited Kirtland seeking to convert any remaining Latter-day Saints and to organize a congregation there. (Young, Journal, 8 June 1844; Brigham Young, Nauvoo, IL, to Phineas Young et al., Kirtland, OH, 21 Jan. 1845, copy, Brigham Young Office Files, CHL.)