Joseph Smith Threatens to be a Second Mohammed, Creating a Gore of Blood From the Rocky Mtns to the Atlantic

I encountered this extraordinary passage in Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith. Pushed to his limit by harassment and persecution in Missouri, Joseph Smith was preparing the Mormon settlers for an encounter that promised to be violent. This is how he closed his speech.

"If the people will let us alone," he cried, "we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come on us to molest us, we will establish our religion by the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. I will be to this generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was 'the Alcoran or the Sword.' So shall it eventually be with us - ' Joseph Smith or the Sword.'"

It's curious that never came up during the Romney campaign.

[In the second paperback edition, revised and enlarged, 1995, pp. 230-1.]