Anti-Mormonism
The Signal was vigorously anti-Mormon in its editorial stance. During the two separate periods of time when it bore the name Warsaw Signal, the owner and editor of the newspaper was Thomas C. Sharp, a leader in opposing Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Mormon presence in Illinois. In a June 9, 1844 editorial, Sharp wrote:
War and extermination is inevitable! Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!!—Can you stand by, and suffer such INFERNAL DEVILS! To ROB men of their property and RIGHTS, without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!!
In a June 14, 1844 extra edition, the Signal published the minutes of a meeting of Warsaw residents organized by Sharp whereby those in attendance condemned Smith's destruction of the printing press of the anti-Mormon Nauvoo Expositor and resolved that "the Prophet and his miscreant adherents, should ... be demanded at their hands, and if not surrendered, a war of extermination should be waged to the entire destruction, if necessary for our protection, of his adherents."
After Smith and his brother Hyrum were assassinated by a mob on June 27, Sharp editorialized in the July 10 edition:
Joe and Hiram Smith, at the time their lives were taken, were in the custody of the officers of the law; and it is asked by those who condemn the act, why the law was not first allowed to take its course before violence was resorted to? We answr that the course of law in the case of these wretches would have been a mere mockery; and such was the conviction of every sensible man.
After the majority of the Latter Day Saints left Illinois under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Signal continued to report on the Mormons and their progression west and remained editorially opposed to the presence of Latter Day Saints in Illinois and surrounding states, particularly those who chose to follow James Strang.
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