"the most interesting feature of the Rounds cases that were prosecuted against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon and that established the illegality of the Society is their apparent sponsorship. So far as we are aware, Samuel D. Rounds is a person having no prominence, or dealings with Joseph Smith for the Church and its members, except for these law suits. His name simply appears nowhere else. The Geauga County Execution Docket, however, states that the judgments against Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon were assigned to Grandison Newell, who sought to collect them, and did obtain partial satisfaction in the amount of $605. Newell was a bitter enemy of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. It apparently was general knowledge at the time that Newell was behind Round's lawsuits against the Society, for a contemporary citizen of Kirtand, reprinting in his personal reminiscences a letter from him to the Painesville Telegraph (that evidently was never published), says: 'The facts are that Perkins and Osborne were attorneys for Granison [sic] Newell in the prosecution of Smith and Rigdon for illegal banking.' Joseph Smith's assertion that the anti-bank litigation was stirred up by his enemies, a charge which has not been connected to Rounds, is most likely true, because it evidently refers to Newell. If this interpretation of the evidence is correct, Newell himself may have been guilty of stirring up and maintaining litigation in the names of others, which was a crime known as "maintenance" at the common law." [[54. Marvin S. Hill, C. Keith Rooker, Larry T. Wimmer, BYU Studies, Vol. 17, No. 4, p.441. end54]]

"Zion's Camp did not redeem Zion, but it transformed Mormon leadership and culture. In February 1834, the Kirtland high council elected Joseph Smith as 'commander-in-chief of the armies of Israel.' This was one of the first acts of the newly organized high council which thus acknowledged Smith's religious right to give God's command to 'go out unto battle against any nation, kindred, tongue, or people.' Zion's Camp was the first organization established for the external security of Mormonism. A year later, the military experience of Zion's Camp (rather than any ecclesiastical service) was the basis upon which Smith said he was selecting men for the newly organized Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Seventy. Unlike other American denominations, 'the church militant' was a literal fact in Mormonism, not just a symbolic slogan." (The Mormon Hierarchy, page 85)

"And yet, although so social and even convivial at times, he would allow no arrogance or undue liberties. Criticisms, even by his associates, were rarely acceptable. Contradictions would arouse in him the lion at once. By no one of his fellows would he be superseded.... one or another of his associates were more than once, for their impudence, helped from the congregation by his foot.... He soundly thrashed his brother William... While with him in such fraternal, social and sometimes convivial moods, we could not then so fully realize the greatness and majesty of his calling." (Letter by Benjamin F. Johnson to Elder George S. Gibbs, 1903, as printed in The Testimony of Joseph Smith's Best Friend, pages 4-5)

"Josiah Butterfield came to my house and insulted me so outrageously that I kicked him out of the house, across the yard, and into the street." (History of the Church, vol. 5, page 316)

"Bagby called me a liar, and picked up a stone to throw at me, which so enraged me that I followed him a few steps, and struck him two or three times. Esquire Daniel H. Wells stepped between us and succeeded in separating us.... I rode down to Alderman Whitney... he imposed a fine which I paid, and then returned to the political meeting." (Ibid., page 524)