Nauvoo’s self-righteous holiness did not endear her to her sister cities. They resented the pious-speaking city council, which would pass an ordinance threatening vagrants, idle persons, and those who could not “give a good account of themselves” with a five-hundred-dollar fine and a six-months jail sentence merely for indulgence in “profane or indecent language.”! Did a sect have the right to impose its own standards on the casual visitor? they asked. Or was not this ordinance a device to keep non-Mormons out of the city? What were these “Saints” so anxious to hide ?
