Documents, Volume 6, Part 1 Introduction: 15 February–28 June 1838
Part 1: 15 February–28 June 1838
During the period from February to June 1838, JS moved to , Missouri, and helped reorganize church
leadership there; some of the principal dissenters in were
excommunicated and driven out; and the new settlement of , Daviess County, was surveyed, populated,
and organized as a of . JS had been planning to move
to Far West for some time, and as tensions worsened at the end of
1837, he intended to move as soon as possible. In early January
1838, dissenters, excommunicated church members, and others
threatened the lives of JS and his counselors in the . In addition, JS and faced litigation that was initiated by
excommunicated members and other adversaries. On
12 January, JS dictated a revelation directing him and his counselors in the First
Presidency to halt their work in “as soon as it is praticable” and move to ; faithful Saints were to follow. That night, JS
and Rigdon fled Kirtland on horseback, escaping the threat of
violence. JS’s wife and their three
children soon joined him on his journey to Far West, the central
gathering place for Saints in Missouri.
and other church leaders departed for
Missouri during the ensuing weeks and months. Among those remaining in
were , the
newly appointed president of the Kirtland stake of Zion; and , who
were appointed as assistant presidents to Marks; and
, the Kirtland
. Marks endeavored
to settle the debts of JS and Rigdon and to help the faithful
members of the church migrate to Missouri, and Whitney oversaw other
temporal operations of the church in Ohio. While these men
conducted JS’s business and produced documents on his behalf, JS
understandably wrote little if at all as he traveled west for two
months. JS, Rigdon, and their families encountered several
difficulties during this move in the
middle of the winter. Rigdon stopped traveling for several days
because of family illness, while JS and his family pushed on toward
Far West.
Situated on , the principal
waterway in , was already a sizable town. By summer 1837, Far
West had reached a population of approximately fifteen hundred
Saints. Because
the town was now the center of the Latter-day Saint gathering in
and a revelation had identified that state as the “land of
Zion,” the church in Far West was usually referred to in
contemporary documents as “Zion.” However, church members in Missouri were far from
living the ideal of social harmony meant to exist in Zion. Internal
dissent was a problem there as it was in , in part because , ,
and other dissenters had moved from
to Missouri and were holding meetings with the Zion church
presidency—, , and —in which they vented their frustrations
toward other church leaders. Additionally, several church
authorities in Caldwell County were concerned because members of the
Zion had recently sold land in , which many
church leaders still hoped to reoccupy, and had disregarded the
“,” the church’s divinely
revealed dietary code.
Therefore, in early February 1838, senior apostles and , the Zion , and the Zion conducted meetings in which the Zion presidency
members were removed from office and replaced with a pro tempore
presidency consisting of Marsh and Patten. Marsh indicated that the
proceedings were carried out according to JS’s instructions. On 10 March,
Phelps and John Whitmer were excommunicated from the church. Thus, reassertion of the
authority of JS and those loyal to him was well underway when JS and
his family arrived in Far West on 14 March.
The day after arriving in , JS met with the Zion
high council and bishopric. He reviewed the minutes of previous
council meetings and apparently approved of the decisions to remove
the former Zion presidency and to excommunicate and . The minutes of this meeting, as well as various other council
meetings that JS attended, were copied into Minute
Book 2, a volume containing minutes of church meetings
primarily held in . Within a few days of arriving, JS
composed a motto declaring the church’s devotion to
the revolutionary legacy of the ,
loyalty to the Constitution, and consent to obey all laws that were
“good and wholesome”—while at the same time condemning tyranny, mob
violence, and “vexatious lawsuits.” The motto signaled JS’s
determination to vigorously assert the civil rights of the
Latter-day Saints, including their right to settle in Missouri and
to pursue their goals without being legally or illegally harassed.
JS was deeply concerned about his personal liberty, as well as the
freedom and
safety of the Saints, especially after he faced lawsuits, threats of
violence, and the possibility of arrest in .
Two weeks after JS’s arrival, church clerk and
recorder arrived in and was immediately engaged in clerical duties.
Within a day or two, he began keeping a “Scriptory
Book”—a record of “scripts,” or transcripts, of various
letters, revelations, and other documents. Toward the end of April,
the content recorded in the book began to transition from document
transcripts to journal entries of JS’s activities. Accordingly, the
Scriptory Book is also referred to herein as JS’s journal for March
to September 1838. This important volume is the source of the church
motto and several other documents in part 1.
With JS and Robinson both in Far West, the number of JS documents
produced in March and April considerably increased. On 29 March, JS
wrote to the presidency with news of his safe arrival in Far
West, the illness delaying ’s family, and
recent adjustments to leadership in the church in . This and other
correspondence between JS and church members in Kirtland, as well as
in other places, form an important part of the corpus of JS
documents created during the period covered in part 1. JS’s
mid-March letters and other documents may have been produced in the
home of and , where JS initially took up residence. Within a
few weeks of arriving in Far West, JS apparently moved into the tavern on the central
block of the town.
JS and , who arrived in on 4 April, spent much of that month further
reorganizing church leadership in and dealing with
dissenters. On 6 April, the Latter-day Saints in Missouri assembled
in Far West to commemorate the anniversary of the church’s
organization, sustain the pro tempore presidency, and appoint new
officers. was appointed to join
and in the pro tempore
presidency. Partly to fill the vacancies resulting from the
excommunication of , who had served as the
church’s clerk, record keeper, and historian,
and were
appointed as historians, and
was named general church recorder and clerk, as well as scribe for
the First Presidency.
was appointed
clerk and recorder for the church in
and for the Zion high council. The reorganization of church officers on 6
April prepared the way for the conference held over the next two
days. The conference
meetings were apparently held indoors, perhaps in the town’s , which was the setting of several other
meetings held during this period. The Far West schoolhouse was
originally in the southwest quarter of town but was moved to the
center of town and used for various civic purposes and church
meetings. The meetings during the April conference were
the first of several held in Far West that JS presided at and
Ebenezer Robinson kept minutes for. The minutes of several of these
church meetings are included in part 1.
Following the quarterly conference, JS and other church
leaders dealt with matters related to prominent dissenters. On 9
April, JS and wrote to , requesting the writings he had in his
possession as the former church historian. That day, other
church leaders sent letters to , , and , informing them that councils would be held
on 12 and 13 April to consider the men’s church membership. JS
testified in the trials of Cowdery and Johnson, and all three
dissenters were excommunicated.
With the church reorganized and major dissenters removed, JS and the high council turned
their attention to developing as the central gathering place for the church.
On 21 April, they passed resolutions to improve the in which they were meeting, build one or more
storehouses for provisioning poor Saints, and reestablish the church
press. They resolved to recommence the Elders’
Journal, with as the
publisher; to solicit new subscriptions; and to publish minutes of
some council meetings in the periodical. Over the next few
weeks, a prospectus for the Elders’ Journal was
printed and JS prepared material to include in the periodical. Ultimately,
two issues of the recommenced Elders’ Journal were
published; these issues, dated July
and August 1838, included minutes of meetings JS participated
in and documents written by JS and others during spring and summer
1838.
JS and the Saints also developed the church in by following the direction given in revelations
he dictated in spring 1838. In mid-April, he dictated brief
revelations for and . A revelation on 26 April stated that Far West was “most
holy” and a place in “the land of zion” in which to build up a city.
The revelation directed the Saints to continue gathering in Far
West, to construct a there, and to establish new settlements in the
area. Migration to Far West and its vicinity
was accelerating because was no longer an authorized gathering place;
hundreds from Kirtland were expected to arrive in Far West within
the next few months.
Many more were expected to migrate from the various branches of the
church in the and . The gathering of the Saints would require
settlement beyond the bounds of Far West, and church leaders had
been searching for several months to locate other places to
settle.
Entries in JS’s journal for late April and
early May document a brief interlude of relative tranquility in , with JS and collaborating on
a new church history, studying grammar, and attending meetings. In
late May, after arrived in Far West, the First
Presidency left for to select and survey lands for settlement. The previous year,
non-Mormon residents of Daviess County had warned the small number
of Latter-day Saints who had settled there to leave or be driven
out. However, the Saints in Daviess
County had remained, and the First Presidency now planned to expand
church settlement there. During this time, JS identified Spring
Hill, where church member had settled,
as . Latter-day Saint stated that when JS applied the name
Adam-ondi-Ahman to Spring Hill, he explained that Adam-ondi-Ahman
was “the valley of God, in which Adam blessed his children.” According to JS’s
journal, the location was “the place where Adam shall come to visit
his people, or the Ancient of days shall sit as spoken of by Daniel
the Prophet.”
Therefore, the central Mormon settlement in Daviess County took on
both primordial and millenarian significance. JS’s labors in Daviess
County were punctuated by brief visits home. During one of these
visits, his wife gave birth to their son . JS soon returned to
Daviess County, and according to his journal, he and others working
with him “continued surveying and building houses &c for some
time day after day.” The
selection and surveying of Daviess County land culminated in the
completion of a city plat and provided the basis for an orderly and
relatively compact settlement coordinated by church officials. While JS was busy with these activities,
his involvement in producing documents was greatly diminished.
At this time in , tensions continued to increase between the
church and prominent excommunicants who remained in . For
example, continued his emerging
law practice by encouraging lawsuits among and against the
Latter-day Saints for debts they owed.
JS and came to believe that peace and harmony—which they
viewed as essential to establishing Zion in —were impossible to achieve among the Latter-day
Saints as long as dissenters remained in the area. On 17 June,
Rigdon railed against the excommunicants in a public sermon.
According to , who recounted the sermon after
leaving the church several months later, Rigdon accused the
dissenters of various crimes and of seeking to undermine the First
Presidency. He also called upon the Latter-day Saints to rid the
community of their antagonists. Peck also stated that JS spoke
afterward and approved of Rigdon’s remarks. Around the same time, a letter was
signed by eighty-three Latter-day Saint men, warning former
Latter-day Saints Oliver Cowdery, , , , and that they had
three days to leave Caldwell County peacefully. The authorship of the
letter is neither stated nor implied, but one of the signatories,
, recalled decades
later that according to common belief, the letter “was gotten up in
the office of the First Presidency.” While Phelps, one of the dissenters
named in the letter, reconciled with church leaders and was
permitted to remain, the other dissenters fled the county on 19
June.
approvingly
noted the flight of the dissenters in the journal he was keeping for
JS.
By the end of June, the population in was sufficient for JS to organize a stake, including a
presidency, a high council, and a pro tempore bishop. Some of these
positions were filled by those who had served in the presidency and
bishopric of the stake. Around this time,
the church also sent a group of Saints to settle in the small town
of in Carroll
County, downriver from Adam-ondi-Ahman where the emptied into the . Church leaders purchased land at this
strategic site to benefit from Grand River commerce. The rapidly growing number
of church members in the area further angered Missourians who
objected to Latter-day Saint settlement outside of . These tensions eventually
led to the trouble that unfolds in the documents included in part 2
of this volume.