At the height of the difficulties in Missouri in the summer of 1838,

Sydney Rigdon, the first counselor in the first presidency, gave two very

influential speeches. One speech targeted internal apostates, the other targeted external mobs.

On June 17, 1838, Rigdon gave what was later termed the Salt Sermon, and a few weeks later on Independence Day he gave a talk

called the July 4th Oration. John Corral remembered the June Salt sermon this way, quote,

The dissenters kept up a kind of secret opposition to the presidency and the church.

They would occasionally speak against them, influence the minds of the members against them, and occasionally correspond with their enemies abroad.

And the church, it was said, would never become pure unless these dissenters were routed

out from among them. Moreover, if they were suffered to remain, they would destroy the church.

President Rigdon delivered from the pulpit what I call the salt sermon.

If the salt have lost its savor, it is of thenceforth good for nothing but to be

cast out and trodden under the foot of men."

John Whitmer, who at this time was labeled as one of those dissenters, recalled,

quote, they preached a sermon, called it the salt sermon, in which these Gideonites understood that they should drive the dissenters as they termed it.

Their band of Gaddyantans kept up a guard and watched our houses and abused our families and

threatened them that if they were not

gone by mourning they would be drove out and threatened our lives if they ever saw

us in Far West end of quote. Who were these Gideonites that helped drive out whom they called

the dissenters? They are more commonly known as the Danites, named after the biblical

warning tribe of Dan in the Old Testament. The Danites were in the biblical summer of 1838, who, like other Antibilum frontier communities, had the goal to warn out

undesirable persons and activities from their town.

In Missouri in 1838, the undesirables were the unbelievers.

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