Administrative Records, Volume 1, Part 4 Introduction: January 1846
Part 4: January 1846
The day following the 4 October 1845
session of the Council of Fifty, the Latter-day Saints met in the
still-unfinished for
the first time so that they could dedicate the first floor in
advance of the upcoming general conference. With some five thousand
people in attendance, opened
the meeting with “a form of dedication prayer” and spoke on “our removal to another place,” the
theme that would dominate the three-day general conference that
began the next day. That conference, convened in the same
space, set the stage for much of what would occupy council members
and the church during the three-month recess before the council met
again.
In the 4 October meeting of the council,
had suggested the tone that
leaders should use in presenting to the Saints details of the plan
to move beyond the .
Insisting “that we are going cheerfully,” he wanted the focus to be
on “getting ready to go away,” with nothing said “about our
troubles, the mob, nor any thing pertaining to it.” Conference speaker
developed the
theme. Promising the Saints that “there is no sacrifice required at
the hands of the people of God but shall be rewarded to them an
hundred fold, in time or eternity,” he declared that “the Lord
designs to lead us to a wider field of action, where there will be
more room for the saints to grow and increase.” concurred with
Pratt’s assessment and thanked “the great God that the time has come
so much sooner than he expect[ed] and he almost feels to thank our
friends abroad for hastening it on.”
The conference provided the setting for making public the plans long
discussed in the Council of Fifty—and now made binding upon the
Saints by vote of the congregation. It was unanimously resolved that
“this people move, en masse, to the West.” The conference further
voted to “take all of the saints with us to the extent of our
ability, that is, our influence and property.”
recorded that
“all things went off in peace & union—not a dissenting voice in
the Congregation & a perfect union existing by the Saints to
remove from the country the coming Spring.” A circular carried the conference themes
abroad. In it spoke of “the present glorious
emergency” and instructed the Saints elsewhere to gather to to receive
their
endowments before the
was abandoned.
For the next three months a central focus of , the Quorum of the Twelve, and many members of the
Council of Fifty was to put these plans into action. This effort
began at the conference, with time dedicated to further organizing
emigrating companies and to appointing committees to supervise the
sale of lands in and around . Though none of the many subsequent councils held that
year to advance preparations were meetings of the Council of Fifty,
council members played important roles in these meetings and in
moving the plans forward. At a meeting held four days after the
conference, church leaders revealed for the first time the names of
the captains for all twenty-five companies. All but nine were
members of the Council of Fifty. The combined efforts of
the Saints to prepare teams, equipment, and foodstuffs yielded
impressive results. By late November, reported: “families
organized 3285[.] Waggons on hand 1508[.] Waggons on Stocks [i.e.,
under construction] 1892.”
To provide funds for the migration, church leaders sought to sell Mormon
lands and buildings in . In accordance with the earlier decision to offer
public and private properties to the Catholic church, was sent to
confer with John Baptist Purcell, the Catholic
bishop of , and to
invite him to send “authorized Agents to visit our that we may
negotiate with them at as early a period as possible the sale of our
property.” Purcell referred
Babbitt to Bishop William Quarter of , who then
instructed Hilary Tucker, a priest in , Illinois, and
George A. Hamilton, a priest in ,
Illinois, to travel to Nauvoo to evaluate the Mormons’ proposal to
sell the . On
9 December, Tucker and
Hamilton met with and other church leaders. “Our
object,” Young told them, “is to get means to assist away the poor.”
He spoke of hundreds of families “who have been robbed of their all”
and could not go west without assistance. Tucker and Hamilton
expressed interest in leasing or purchasing the temple and some of
the other public buildings, but no arrangements were ever
concluded.
Even as church leaders sought to sell the , they rushed to complete it so that Latter-day
Saints could participate in temple rituals, including sealings and
endowments, before leaving . The dual priorities of preparing for the emigration
and completing the temple were fused together in the minds of the
Saints. Though opponents believed that finishing the temple would
tie the Mormons ever stronger to Nauvoo, church leaders saw
finishing the edifice and endowing the Saints as a prerequisite for
moving west. As insisted to a gathering in the
temple, “We will enjoy it this winter and then leave it.” By
26 November church leaders
concluded that the temple was far enough along to begin ordinance
work, and on 29 November they
began furnishing the rooms to be used. The next day twenty-two men
met in the attic story to dedicate selected upper rooms for the
endowment. All but one of the men gathered were members of the
Council of Fifty.
The administration of ordinances in the began on 10
December, and from that day almost until the council met
again on 11 January, and his closest associates spent nearly all
their time involved with the temple and its ordinances. Young
oversaw endowment ceremonies for hundreds (eventually thousands) of
men and women; because work started early in the morning and
continued late into the evening, he often slept in the temple. More
than once late at night, Young and those who stayed overnight with
him read information about the West, including ’s and
Lansford Hastings’s book-length accounts of
the region “west of the .” By
late
December, Young and the apostles began involving the
Presidency of the Seventy more fully in administering the temple
ordinances, and by at least 7
January they had turned responsibility for the endowment
entirely over to that presidency. This transition allowed Young and the
apostles to attend to other temple ordinances and to devote more
time to the fast-approaching challenge of leaving for the West.
As early as April 1845, governor had warned
that the federal government might
intercede to prevent the Mormons’ departure, and this concern only
grew with time. On 11 December, Young received a
detailed and disturbing letter from , a church leader in who
had been contacted by Amos Kendall, the former
postmaster general and a well-connected Democratic Party political
insider. In an attempt to extort an agreement from the Mormons to
give him and his business partner fully half of all of the land they
would eventually settle on in the West, Kendall misrepresented to
Brannan that federal intervention against the Mormons was imminent.
Brannan conveyed the warning that “the Secretary of War and the
heads of government were . . . determin’d to prevent our moving
West, alleging that it is against the Law for an armed body of men
to go from the to any other
government.” Rather than allow the Mormons to settle in or ,
Brannan reported, the government would obliterate them “from the
face of the earth.” Young responded with an
effort to secure government contracts for building a line of forts
or stockades on the route to Oregon,
but the possibility of having the way hedged up remained.
In addition, Latter-day Saints worried that their enemies would pursue
charges against church leaders in local and federal courts. Although
the agreement brokered by between
church leaders and the anti-Mormons in in early October 1845 had stated that no
prosecutions on either side would take place while the Saints
prepared to leave the state, anti-Mormons proffered charges of
counterfeiting against and other leaders
in local courts later that month. and Major
William B. Warren, the head of the
peacekeeping force in
set in place by Hardin, refused to enforce the writs, but on 31 October several church leaders
nevertheless met to make plans to evade authorities should
government officials attempt “to prevent our removal West by taking
out writs for the council of
Fifty.” Stymied by local and state authorities,
anti-Mormons appealed to the federal court in ,
Illinois. On 18 December a
federal grand jury indicted Young for counterfeiting Mexican and
American coins. The grand jury also issued bills of
indictment for four other members of the Quorum of the Twelve,
Council of Fifty members and
, and several non-Mormons who
had previously been associated with the church, such as former
council members and .
Although some of the indicted men—such as and —were likely counterfeiters, the scope of
the alleged counterfeiting in
was clearly exaggerated and some of the charges were likely
fabrications. In reality, the Mormons in Nauvoo—like most Americans
in western states like —were specie poor;
financial records suggest that much of the business in Nauvoo was
conducted through barter and exchange. After the indictment,
narrowly escaped arrest
when a deputy federal marshal came to Nauvoo on 23 December and waited outside the
for
him. Learning of the situation, church leaders disguised in a cloak and sent him down with . When Grant
addressed Miller as if the latter were Young, the marshal arrested
Miller and then left the city with his prize, traveling all the way
to before the
ruse was discovered.
Although and other leaders escaped arrest,
fears of federal intervention over the indictment were heightened
when Young received a letter from to Sheriff
warning that
in response to the charges, Secretary of War might send “a
Regiment or two of the Regular Army” to occupy until arrests
could be made. Ford also declared that “it is very likely that the
Government at Will
interfere to prevent the Mormons from going West of the Many
intelligent persons sincerely believe that they will join the
Brittish if they go there and be more trouble than ever And I think
that this consideration is likely to influence the Government.” Young did not intend
to wait to test the likelihood. By 6 January he instructed , clerk of the
council, to alert members of the Council of Fifty to gather in the
attic story of the on
Sunday morning, 11 January.
Although the bound volumes of the minutes of the Council of Fifty contain
minutes of only two meetings in January
1846, those of 11 and 13 January, council
members met at least twice more that month before they ceased
meeting and their focus shifted to carrying out the project that the
council had been formed to advance. kept minutes on 11 and 13 January, but there are no extant Clayton minutes for
the 18 January meeting. The
surviving record for that meeting, included in an appendix to this volume, was copied by temple clerk into ’s journal. An appendix also reproduces Clayton’s surviving draft
minutes for the 19 January
meeting.