Introduction to Documents, Volume 2: July 1831–January 1833
Joseph
Smith Documents Dating from July 1831 through January 1833
A revelation dictated by
Joseph
Smith on 20 July 1831 in ,
Jackson County, Missouri, declared that “the land of ” was “the
land of promise & the place for the .” That revelation set
the stage for some of the most important work undertaken over the succeeding years
by Joseph Smith and his followers. Dictated less than a week after from
, the 20 July revelation unveiled the site of the promised
city of Zion, a “” that the Saints would establish in preparation for the
second coming of Jesus Christ. This
revelation further designated the frontier town of Independence as the “centre
place” of the city of Zion, and in response, the Saints began a concerted effort to
build up in
Independence and in northwestern . A site was designated
for a temple, and church members began to migrate to Missouri. This city-building
effort created a nine-hundred-mile divide between the main bodies of church members
because some were called to settle in Missouri while others chose or were required
to stay in Ohio. The division tested
Joseph Smith’s leadership and strained the limited resources of the fledgling
church, which was just over a year old at the time the first document in this volume
was created.
This second volume in the Documents
series of The Joseph Smith Papers covers the period from July 1831 through January 1833. It
includes revelations, correspondence, minutes from meetings in which Joseph
Smith participated, an early attempt to record Smith’s personal
history, and various other Joseph Smith documents. Though few of these
documents are in Joseph Smith’s own handwriting, they help reconstruct his world
during this early period. They illuminate his vision of Zion—a righteous,
poverty-free community where the elect would be gathered in preparation for Christ’s
return. They chronicle his efforts both to keep records and to begin a program of
publishing his revelations. They document the solidification and expansion of a
leadership structure and highlight Smith’s struggles with his fellow workers and
with non-Mormon residents of areas where the Saints settled. The documents in this
volume reveal the strain between Joseph Smith’s prophetic calling, which gave him
authority over other members of the church, and the prevailing fear of concentrated
power among some early Mormons and their neighbors.
The idea that God would establish
the New Jerusalem, or the , somewhere in the Americas stemmed from the
Book of
Mormon, and several of Joseph
Smith’s revelations elaborated on the theme. In this New Jerusalem, the Saints would
help the “remnant of Jacob”—whom early church members believed to be the American
Indians—to build a temple of God. It
would be “a land of peace a City of refuge a place of safety for the saints” from
the calamities that would precede Christ’s second coming. There, “the righteous . .
. from among all Nations” would gather with the “remnant of Jacob.” A September 1830
revelation
explaining that the city of Zion would be built “among the ”
directed to preach to the Indian tribes living beyond the western
border of .
Additional revelations called , , and to accompany Cowdery to visit these
tribes,
which were placed there under the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This act authorized the government to
oversee the migration of native groups from eastern lands to lands west of the
organized states. When Indians resisted, the federal government forcibly removed
them. Believing this to be a process by which God was gathering
the “remnant of Jacob,” some church members observed Indian relocation with great
interest and approval. As an editorial in the church periodical The Evening
and the Morning Star declared in December
1832, “It is not only gratifying, but almost marvelous, to witness the
gathering of the Indians. . . . There is reason to rejoice that the great purposes
of the Lord are fulfilling before our eyes.”
When and
the other missionaries arrived in Indian Territory in January 1831, they lacked the necessary permits to interact with the
Indians living there. After being ejected from the land by a federal
Indian agent, the missionaries concentrated their efforts in and
its environs, while went to to try
to secure permits. Failing
in that attempt, Pratt returned to and reported his efforts to Joseph Smith. Dictated when in the summer,
the 20 July 1831
revelation
proclaimed that the would be built at Independence—just east of
’s
western border.
Building the
was a daunting task for Joseph Smith and his associates. Although was
the eastern terminus for the Trail, the
hamlet had existed for only a few years and lacked the amenities and civility of
more established areas.
,
one of the missionaries who came to in July
1831, described it as “a new Town, containing a courthouse, built of brick,
two or three merchant stores, and fifteen or twenty dwelling houses, built mostly of
logs hewed on both sides.”
wrote to his wife, Lydia, in August 1831, “We have to suffer & shall for some
time many privations here.”
Once the site for the
was selected, church leaders wasted no time in beginning to build up a community
there. Less than two weeks after the 20 July
revelation
identified the site of the city, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation empowering
of church to
supervise “the work of the gethering” and to determine which of the Saints should
migrate to . A revelation later in
August 1831 further stated that Joseph Smith would
“be enabled to descern by the spirit those who shall go up unto the land of & those of my
that
shall tarry.” In practice, Smith and
conferences of elders appear to have shared this duty. In
order to facilitate the establishment of a successful and prosperous community,
church leaders asked farmers and skilled craftsmen to migrate to Missouri. Church agents raised funds necessary for
purchasing lands, and members were asked to consecrate property and money for the
establishment of Zion.
Joseph Smith intended for the
gathering to to
be orderly, and individuals were discouraged from migrating to
haphazardly. Instead, those moving to Missouri were asked to obtain a recommend from
church leaders—either three elders or, after December
1831, from
—that they could present to . The elders and Whitney were
not to provide any recommends until they received information from Partridge
concerning the number of Saints who could be accommodated in Missouri. “Let not your flight be in
h[a]ste,” one November
1831
revelation
declared, “but let all things be prepared before you.”
Because church members believed that
the gathering was a precursor to Jesus Christ’s return to the earth, the designation
of the site for the and the beginning of the gathering heightened
the millenarian feeling in the church. As an 1832 editorial in The Evening and the Morning
Star explained, the gospel would be preached to all nations, the “elect”
(including the American Indians) would be gathered to “the lands of their fathers’
inheritance” in either Zion or Jerusalem, and after all other “necessary
preparation” was made, the Saints would “meet the Savior at his second coming” and
he would “dwell with them in the millennium reign.” Because the elect needed to
be gathered before Christ’s return, Joseph Smith appointed many
individuals to proclaim the gospel and invite people to gather with the Saints. Some
were called to preach near their homes, others in the eastern or southern . Most of these missionaries went out in pairs, following an
injunction in a February 1831
revelation that
those preaching should travel “two by two.”
Revelations emphasized the
millenarian impetus for proclaiming the gospel. Some, dictated in 1830 and 1831, had depicted
apocalyptic events; a series of revelations dictated from September 1832 to January 1833 contained specific details
about the devastation that God would soon wreak on the world, the need for its
inhabitants to repent of their wickedness, and the obligation that elders in the
church had to warn the world of its impending doom. Because events like
the 1832 cholera outbreak seemed to indicate to Joseph
Smith and other religious believers that God was already unleashing his
judgments, Smith took seriously the
directive to warn the world. In January 1833, he
wrote a letter to
, editor of the American Revivalist, and Rochester
Observer, for publication in that paper. Smith’s letter included a warning
“that not many years shall pass away before the shall present such
a scene of bloodshed as has not a parallel in the hystory
of our nation.” The letter also contained a call to repentance: “Repent ye Repent,
ye and imbrace the and flee to Zion before the
overflowing scourge overtake you.” Later that month, at which several and elders received instruction
on both spiritual and secular topics, preparing them to “go forth among the
gentiles, for the last time” in preparation for Christ’s return.
In a further effort to make God’s
word available to the church and the world, Joseph Smith and other elders decided
in fall 1831 to publish some of the
revelations Smith had dictated to that point as a compilation titled the Book of Commandments.
Prior to this time, the revelations had not been widely disseminated, and some even
contained language expressly forbidding their own distribution until further
notice. The
decision to publish the revelations therefore represented a shift for the church; as
one revelation declared, “in the day that they were given,” the
were “to be kept from the world,” but now they were “to go forth unto all
flesh.” Some participants in
the conference later remembered hours of discussion and even some contention before
“it was finally decided to have them printed.” The revelations would be
published by the church’s printing works, which was setting up in
. Although the Book of Commandments was not printed during the
period of this volume, Phelps began publishing a number of the revelations in The Evening
and the Morning Star in June 1832, while
they were being edited for the forthcoming book. This volume of The Joseph
Smith Papers, which produces the earliest extant versions of the
revelations, considers the editorial changes made during the publication process as
redactions and omits them from the featured transcripts.
As the church grew, a November 1831
revelation directed
church historian “to continue in writing & makeing a history of all the
important things which he shall observe & know.” By so doing, the church would
be able to inform “the rising generations which shall grow up on the Land of Zion”
of its doings.
Joseph
Smith also instructed Whitmer to keep a Book of the Law of God, in which
Whitmer was to record the names of those who had consecrated their property and
received an inheritance in Zion. Other
leaders kept records as well. After Whitmer and took a manuscript book of
revelations to in November 1831,
Joseph Smith and began recording
revelations in a new
book in . Likewise, Williams started a book of minutes of
meetings in Ohio in fall 1832.
Joseph Smith himself began a personal history around summer 1832, started a journal in November 1832, and began keeping a letterbook of his
correspondence about that same time.
As missionary efforts brought in
more converts and the settling of the Saints in established a large community of
church members outside , it became necessary to expand and formalize the leadership structure
of the church. At the in April 1830, the only established, formal leadership positions were first
and second elders, positions held by Joseph Smith and , respectively. The
office of
was instituted by a February 1831
revelation
directing that receive this appointment. After a September
1831
revelation affirmed
that some Saints would remain in , a
December 1831
revelation
appointed a bishop for Ohio. The responsibility
of a bishop was to serve as a “Judge in Israel” while also supervising the church’s
temporal concerns. A revelation giving “the
Laws of the Church” declared that church members were to “conscrate all [their] properties” to God. The bishop then apportioned each
family a “”—usually land—to provide for its needs. Whatever property or
money remained would be placed in a “” in order “to administer to him
that hath not.” Partridge supervised the by members; oversaw the
purchase of lands in ; and distributed , or parcels of land, to heads of
household. Whitney’s responsibilities, meanwhile, consisted mainly of
overseeing the storehouse in
Kirtland (operated from his dry goods store) and ensuring that the elders and the
poor in that area were not in want. He also provided recommends for those departing
Ohio for Missouri, certifying to Partridge that the individuals were worthy to
receive inheritances.
According to a September 1832
revelation, the
offices of bishop and elder were appendages to the greater priesthood, or . Men had first been to the
high priesthood at a June 1831 conference. Some
equated this ordination with an “” of power that provided them with the same power and
authority of the “ancient apostles.”
Thereafter, the term high priesthood referred either to the
authority or power of the greater priesthood or to the office of high priest within
that priesthood. By the end of 1831, many elders
in the church had been ordained high priests, though the term elders was still sometimes used to refer to church leaders generally, even
those holding the offices of high priest or bishop. The
September 1832
revelation also
explained that the offices of and were appendages to the . The lesser
priesthood could refer either to the specific authority of that priesthood or to the
office of priest. According to this revelation, high priests, elders, and priests
were to travel and preach, bishops were to provide for the needs of the poor, and
teachers and deacons were “to watch over the church.”
A November
1831
revelation directed
that presidents be appointed over those holding the various priesthood offices in
the church. Most male members held offices—deacon, teacher, priest, elder, or high
priest—and now these officers would come under the direction of one of these
presidents. At the summit of this structure, the would oversee “the administring of ordinances & blessings
upon the Church by the Laying on of the hands” while also presiding “over all the
Concerns of the church.” Designated as one “like
unto Moses,” the president would act as “a a revelator a translator & a prophet having
all the gifts of God which he bestoweth upon the head of the chu[r]ch.” In January 1832, Joseph Smith was ordained president of
the high priesthood at a conference held in , and he was acknowledged in this position in a
conference held in April 1832 in .
, who steadily assumed a more prominent position in church leadership
after his conversion in November 1830, received an
appointment as counselor to Smith in March 1832,
along with . Smith’s counselors assisted him with
clerical work, and they were sometimes referred to as scribes as well as
counselors.
Alongside this solidifying structure
of ecclesiastical authority, conferences of elders and high priests continued to
provide much of the church’s governing direction. According to the church’s founding
“Articles and
Covenants,” the elders were to meet every three months to transact the
church’s business in gatherings known as general conferences. In addition to these
quarterly general conferences, elders and high priests convened frequently in
“special,” or ad hoc, conferences to deal with various questions. These included
disciplining church members, assigning elders to travel and preach, ordaining men to
offices in the church, and establishing administrative structures. Using
conferences as a governing body was similar to the practice of several Protestant
denominations at the time. Methodists, for example, held quarterly conferences to
conduct financial and administrative business, as well as to receive spiritual
instruction and to commune with each other.
Conferences served comparable purposes during 1831 and
1832 among followers of Joseph
Smith.
As the church’s ecclesiastical
structure began to be fleshed out, revelations also provided for the organization of
the church’s financial affairs. To this end, a revelation in spring 1832 commanded that the church’s
publishing and mercantile endeavors be organized.
Joseph
Smith, , , , , and —a group later known as the —had been assigned in November 1831 to
supervise and manage the publication of Joseph Smith’s revelations (including the
Book of
Commandments), while and continued to be responsible for
the operation of the church’s storehouses. According to an April 1832
revelation, these
various duties, or “stewardships,” were to be managed by a new entity called the
—a group of nine high priests (the six members of the Literary Firm and
Gilbert, Whitney, and ) instructed to “be bound together by
a bond & Covennant.” This coordination of stewardships
was apparently instituted not only to achieve greater efficiency in management but
also so that the mercantile and publishing endeavors could provide financial support
to the men managing them. As an April 1832
revelation
declared, every man in the United Firm would have “equal claims on the properties”
of the enterprises, “according to his wants & his needs.” Whatever surplus
remained would be provided to “the Lords Storehouse to become the common property of
the whole Churc[h].”
Some church leaders, including , , and church printer , relocated to
during this period. and
Independence were nearly nine hundred travel miles apart, which precluded frequent
visits, and communication by post took three to four weeks. Coordinating between the two centers
was therefore complex, and misunderstandings developed. Some of these difficulties
grew out of concerns about the new leadership structures that Smith
had established, including his appointment as president of the high priesthood.
Seeing such developments as an attempt by Smith to centralize power in himself, some
elders in objected, claiming that Joseph Smith was “seeking after Monarchal
power and authority.” He flatly denied
such accusations, stating in one letter that the charges “were absolutely false & could not
come from any other sourse than the fath[e]r of all
lies.” He further believed
that some of the Missouri leaders lacked the necessary motivation and initiative to
establish the . Several revelations cautioned those in against being
indolent, for, as a letter to Missouri church leaders declared, the Saints “ha[d] not come up to Zion to sit down in idleness.”
Joseph Smith wrote several letters
during this period to those in , chastising them for their conduct, expressing love when they
showed remorse, then reprimanding them again when they appeared renewedly idle or
rebellious. He was especially concerned after traveling to in spring 1832. He had resolved some
outstanding differences between and during the
trip—leaving “the hearts of all run[ning] together in
love”—but when he arrived back in and read letters from some of the Missouri elders, it was
clear that concerns persisted.
By late 1832, revelations were proclaiming that
Zion was in danger of losing its favored status with God. Even a December 1832
commandment to
build a temple in
could be seen as an indication that the special status of Zion was waning— perhaps
eclipsed in part by Kirtland.
The concerns of the leaders
were not, however, the only criticisms Joseph Smith had to contend with
during this period. One of his most visible critics was former church member ,
who published a series of nine disparaging letters in fall 1831 in the Ohio Star, a newspaper in
Ravenna, Ohio. Charging
that “never was there a despot more jealous of his prerogatives than Smith,” Booth called for those
who had fallen under the “Mormonite” delusion to awake to their senses and break
free. According to a later Joseph Smith history, Booth’s charges “excited feelings”
in the region. A revelation in December 1831 directed Smith
and to preach “in the regions round about” to counteract the influence
of the church’s “enemies.”
Additional barbs followed. An
article that attacked the Book of Mormon and was originally written in February 1831 by of the reformed Baptist movement
was republished in booklet form in 1832. “Every age of
the world has produced impostors and delusions,” Campbell declared, and the Book of
Mormon was only “the most recent and the most impudent delusion which has appeared
in our time.”
, editor of the Painesville Telegraph, also attacked Joseph
Smith in his newspaper, calling Mormonism a “strange delusion and
imposition” and ridiculing those who were migrating to the “land of promise” in . In the face of such
harassment, Joseph Smith lamented in a letter to that “there is no confidence to be placed
in . . . man” and that “the spirit of man is as cold as the northern blast.”
The verbal ridicule escalated to
physical violence in March 1832. On the night of
24–25 March, a group of
men—including former church members such as —broke into the and
Alice (Elsa) Jacobs Johnson home in , Ohio, where
Joseph Smith and his family were staying, and seized Smith. The mob carried him to a
nearby meadow where they tore off his clothes and scratched his body “like a mad
cat.” They then attempted to force aqua fortis (a highly corrosive solution of
nitric acid in water) into his mouth and finally tarred and feathered him. At the
same time, another group yanked from his bed and dragged him across the
frozen ground, seriously injuring his head, before tarring and feathering him. The
attackers left the door to the Johnson home open after breaking in, which exposed
Smith’s adopted infant son, , to the cold night air. The
baby was sick with the measles at the time, and Smith believed that the exposure
contributed to his son’s death just a few days later.
The attack on his person and the
death of his child caused Joseph Smith to feel considerable anxiety for his
family’s safety and well-being. Frequent absences from his family exacerbated such
concerns. His duties as head of the church required two separate trips to between
June 1831 and July 1832, as well
as travel to other locations to preach and provide direction to the Saints. Such
journeys meant that Smith was separated from his family for at least six of the
nineteen months covered by this volume. While Joseph Smith was on these journeys,
his letters to his wife expressed his concern for her and for their
children. Delayed in returning to after a trip to Missouri that closely followed the assault in
, Smith wrote to Emma of his
longing to be with her and with their adopted daughter, (twin sister of , the infant boy who had
died), and of his sadness at not receiving any letters from home. Complaints from Missouri elders
about his alleged thirst for power frustrated Smith, in part because his trip to
Missouri—taken, in his view, to bolster the Saints there—required leaving his family
in the care of others, a situation that left Emma “very disconsolate.”
Later in 1832, he left Ohio
again—this time when Emma was in the advanced stages of pregnancy—and accompanied
on a mission to and
other eastern cities. A lone surviving letter from this trip again reveals Joseph Smith’s deep
concern for his wife and family.
These two letters to
are remarkable not only for illuminating Smith’s character but also because they are
the only extant holograph Joseph Smith letters from July 1831 to January 1833, the period covered in this
volume. In fact, few of the documents featured in this volume are in Smith’s own
handwriting. More than once, he described his “inability in convaying my ideas in
writing.” He was more comfortable relying
on scribes and clerks to record revelations, minutes, and correspondence. Although
Joseph Smith did pen some of his own letters, he seems never to have committed a
revelation to paper himself. Instead, Smith dictated revelations to scribes, though
he later copied some of the inscriptions into record books. These scribes were
generally close associates of Joseph Smith, and some became trusted advisers. and , his two most prolific
scribes in this period, both eventually became counselors to Smith in the presidency
of the high priesthood. Their scribal work included helping with Joseph Smith’s “new
translation” of the Bible—a project on which Smith had been working since
1830 and which he perceived as an inspired process of
revising, clarifying, and augmenting the text of the Bible. For much of the time
between July 1831 and January 1833,
Smith focused on this project, which eventually resulted in changes to the wording
of approximately three thousand verses of the King James Version and added hundreds
of details not found in the Bible. Smith’s revision of the Bible also raised doctrinal
questions that were answered with additional revelations.
Indeed, from July 1831 through January 1833, Joseph
Smith dictated over forty revelations with content that ranged from
eschatological and millenarian to doctrinal and didactic to corrective and
procedural. Spoken in the voice of Deity, these written pronouncements were accepted
by Smith’s followers as the word of God, and church members responded to God’s
commands and directives, even at great personal sacrifice. According to one
revelation, God gave revelations to his servants “in their weakness after the manner
of their Language.” Philip Barlow has
written that Joseph Smith lived in “a society deeply immersed in the images and
language of scripture,” especially that of the King James Version of the Bible. As
such, Smith dictated revelations saturated with biblical syntax and language. “When
recording the impressions of his revelations,” Barlow notes, “he naturally fell into
the language accessible to him.” The doctrines in the revelations also
reflected important biblical themes, such as the gathering of Israel, apocalyptic
events preceding Jesus Christ’s second advent, the peaceful millennium that would
follow, and the priesthood held by Moses and Aaron—all topics discussed in books
such as Exodus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Revelation.
Revelations were prompted by a
variety of circumstances; some resulted from specific questions posed by Joseph
Smith, his close associates, or his followers. As with other documents, most
of the revelation texts presented here are transcribed from copies, not from the
original manuscripts. The revelations presented in this volume come primarily from
three sources: a manuscript book of revelations that began keeping in and then took to
in
late 1831 (the Book of
Commandments and Revelations, or Revelation Book 1); a manuscript book of
revelations
and Joseph Smith began keeping in Ohio in 1832 (the
Revelation Book, or Revelation Book 2); and copies provided to , who was appointed bishop to the church in Ohio in December 1831. A few transcripts also come from copies
of revelations made by individual church members.
Over a quarter of the documents in
this volume are minutes of meetings at which Joseph Smith presided or participated.
These minutes are drawn largely from two volumes: Minute Book 1, which
was begun by
late in 1832 as a record of
meetings occurring in , and Minute
Book 2, a compilation of minutes of meetings held in Ohio, , and
other locations. These minutes cover conferences and councils held by elders and
high priests. Although they do not contain a comprehensive record of all that
occurred at these meetings, the minutes provide a glimpse into church governance and
policy making in this early period.
Most of the revelations, minutes,
and other texts in this volume were created in three locations: ,
Jackson County, Missouri, the “centre place” of Zion; , Ohio, where Smith
and his family lived from September 1831
to September 1832; and ,
Ohio, where the body of the church had moved in the winter and early spring of 1831 and where Joseph Smith and
his family resided from September 1832 to
January 1838. In Hiram, they stayed in the home of and
Alice Johnson. While there, he worked in an upstairs room in the
southeastern corner of the house, and many, if not most, of the Hiram texts
originated in that room. Many of the Kirtland documents featured herein originated
in two upstairs rooms—the “translating room” and the “council room”—in ’s . Additional texts were created in other locations to which
Joseph Smith traveled, such as the in ;
“Porter’s public house” in , Indiana; and the home of and Margaret Kelsey
Lewis in , Missouri.
The revelations, letters, minutes,
and other documents that chronicle Joseph Smith’s life from July 1831 through January 1833 show a man presiding over
an organization in flux. The young church was evolving rapidly, largely in response
to the commandment to build up a new Zion community in and to
gather the elect there. This attempt to establish Zion led to increased efforts to
preach and publish the word of God and to changes in leadership structure while also
generating interpersonal strife and external persecutions. This volume depicts
Joseph Smith’s struggle to lead his people amid the opposition and the challenges
inherent in guiding a growing and geographically expansive organization—an
organization that, by 1833, contained over a
thousand members in Missouri and hundreds more in , , Indiana, , , , ,
New Hampshire, , , and . “I will procede to
unfold to you some of the feelings of my heart,” Smith wrote to one of his
colleagues in November 1832. The documents that
follow capture some of those feelings and provide insights into Joseph Smith and
into the religious movement flourishing around him.