Joseph Smith's deliverance from freezing by the threat of burning houses

While traveling to Missouri in extreme cold with Sidney Rigdon and their families, they were refused admission to taverns because they were Mormons. Joseph Smith eventually forced entry into a tavern by threatening to burn the houses to keep them from freezing to death, and they were subsequently accommodated.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

When I was going up to Missouri, in company with Elder Rigdon and our families, on an extreme cold day, to go forward was fourteen miles to a house, and backward nearly as far. We applied to all the taverns for admission in vain: we were ‘Mormons,’ and could not be received. Such was the extreme cold that in one hour we perished. We pleaded for our women and children in vain. We counselled together, and the brethren agreed to stand by me, and we concluded that we might as well die fighting as freeze to death. I went into a tavern and pleaded our cause to get admission. The landlord said he could not keep us for love or money. I told him we must and would stay, let the consequence be what it might; for we must stay or perish. The landlord replied, ‘We have heard the Mormons are very bad people; and the inhabitants of Paris have combined not to have anything to do with them, or you might stay.’ I said to him, ‘We will stay; but no thanks to you. I have men enough to take the town; and if we must freeze, we will freeze by the burning of these houses.’ The taverns were then opened, and we were accommodated, and received many apologies in the morning from the inhabitants for their abusive treatment.