Actually each migration had risen out of a special set of circumstances. The move to Kirtland from New York had been opportunistic; the flight from Kirtland had been largely the result of apostate rather than non-Mormon persecution. The various Missouri expulsions had been rooted deep in the slavery and Indian issues, which did not figure at all in Illinois. In the latter state, to a far greater extent than in Missouri, the political exploitation of Mormon numbers, made doubly repugnant by the presence of immigrant converts from monarchist England, was perhaps the most volatile fuel feeding
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