Regarding Moroni’s actions, Hugh Nibley wrote: “Stirring people up to anger is the specialty of the great trouble-makers in the Book of Mormon, who find it the surest road to personal prominence and power. To check Amalickiah’s move, ‘Moroni thought it was expedient’ to force a peace on the dissenters with all possible haste. Moving with his usual dispatch, he intercepted them before they got out of the country, made them surrender to him, and required them to take an oath, ‘a covenant to keep the peace’ and not fight against their own government. (Alma 46:35.) No citizen could give less, and those who refused were knowingly accepting the status of combatants, and could expect to be treated as such. At the time Moroni was acting with special military powers given him ‘by the chief judges and the voice of the people, ’ (Alma 46:34) and accordingly put to death as an enemy in arms those who refused to lay down their arms; but these were only a few (v. 35).