Introduction to Documents, Volume 13: August–December 1843
Joseph Smith Documents from August through December
1843
In late August 1843,
, senior editor of the
Pittsburgh Gazette, visited Joseph Smith in ,
Illinois, to interview the Latter-day Saint prophet for his newspaper.
During their hour-long meeting, the men discussed politics, persecution,
revelation, theophany, and the construction of the Saints’ on a bluff
overlooking the . Though the tenor and
accuracy of White’s published account of the interview were later
questioned by the editor of the Nauvoo Neighbor, the
interview’s diverse content reflected Smith’s multifaceted role as a
civic and religious leader in 1840s
. Smith was first and foremost the prophet,
president, and trustee of a multinational church, but he was also the
mayor of a bustling frontier city, chief justice of an active municipal
court, and commanding officer of the largest independent militia unit in
the state of . He was actively engaged in business
affairs related to both the and the city of Nauvoo, outspoken in his
political views, and committed to helping church members recognize and
attain the blessings of divine providence. Smith’s position as both an
ecclesiastical and a civic leader also meant that he received a
continual stream of communications regarding spiritual, financial, and
legal matters. He entertained
countless visitors and migrants, including curious bystanders, earnest
religious seekers, new immigrants from , and a
delegation of Potawatomi Indians from .
The ninety-eight documents featured in this volume of
The Joseph Smith Papers reflect the breadth of Smith’s myriad roles and activities between August and December 1843 and
chronicle a busy, often tumultuous period of his life. They provide
greater insight into the growth and prosperity of the city of , the development
of Latter-day Saint theology and practice, and the expansion of
opposition to Joseph Smith and the church in and abroad. Many of the documents in this volume
exemplify important elements in the broader context of antebellum , including the role of
government in protecting civil rights, the effect of foreign immigration
on American society, and the development of the western frontier.
In August 1843, was a community
teeming with activity. In the preceding years, thousands of Latter-day
Saint migrants from the eastern and
poured into the largely
agrarian settlement. Hundreds of log cabins and wood-frame and brick
houses as well as dozens of city streets were constructed on the flats
adjacent to the , the bluff to the east of the
flats, and the prairies beyond the bluff, with more dwellings in
communities across the river in . Dozens of
businesses—including mercantile stores, gristmills, brickyards, hotels,
blacksmith shops, a post office, and a —were interspersed among the community’s
homes. Referring to the city and its residents in September 1843, recent arrival wrote to his brothers
in New Hampshire, “There is a great deal of
building a going on here this Summer and the place is groing fast. the
most of the people are industrious and honest but poor.”
’s advantageous
location on the made it a natural
stopping point for travelers and commercial traffic. One contemporary
observer noted that four or five steamboats landed at the city each
day. The river also allowed the Latter-day Saints
to transport sorely needed raw materials to Nauvoo; much of the lumber
used to construct the city’s burgeoning number of homes and businesses,
for example, was floated down the Mississippi from the church’s prolific
in . In
May 1843, Joseph Smith purchased a share of the steamboat Maid of Iowa, which conveyed residents back and forth across
the river, carried laborers to the pineries, and transported freight and
sundry mercantile goods.
In addition to constructing homes and businesses, church
members continued to erect three other important structures during summer and autumn 1843. In late August, laborers completed work on
the , a large two-story frame building that served as a
hotel for travelers and guests as well as the Smith family’s
residence. Workers
also continued to build, albeit slowly, a larger boardinghouse called
the on the southern edge of the city. The
, the focus
of the Latter-day Saints’ construction efforts, was taking shape on the
bluff east of the flats. Thanks to church members’ contributions of
money, goods, and labor, the edifice had a basement, flooring on the
first story, and walls “as high as the arches of the first tier of
windows all round” by late fall 1843.
Joseph Smith occasionally preached within its unfinished
walls or in a near the construction site. In several discourses
delivered in late summer and early
fall, Smith urged the Saints to continue providing the money,
raw materials, and physical labor necessary to finish the temple,
promising them that God would “fill it with power.”
Beyond the locus of ,
the church continued to grow and develop on the periphery. Spearheaded
by the ,
proselytizing efforts in the British Isles between 1837 and 1843 resulted in thousands of
new converts organized into dozens of church . After most of the returned to Nauvoo in mid-1841, church leaders in the and continued to communicate
with each other and with the Latter-day Saints in the British Isles
through letters and church publications such as the Times and
Seasons and the Millennial Star. Heeding
church leaders’ calls to gather to Nauvoo, British Saints began to
immigrate to the United States in significant numbers in 1840 and 1841. The influx
of thousands of new settlers strengthened the church but placed
additional stress on Smith and other leaders, who struggled
to buy land, secure housing, and provide jobs for the primarily
working-class converts from England’s industrial cities. Many of the
documents featured in this volume illustrate the social, economic, and
ecclesiastical challenges created by the church’s tremendous growth in
England and Nauvoo.
Even as Joseph Smith attempted to lead church
members to a bright future, the past continued to weigh him down. Over
the previous decade, Smith and the Latter-day Saints had faced
harassment through legal prosecution and intense, sporadic violence at
the hands of the citizens of . Between 1831 and 1833, a large contingent of
church members settled in ,
Missouri, after Smith dictated a revelation designating it as the place to build the “.” Threatened by the
Latter-day Saints’ “fanatical” religious beliefs, growing political
power, and perceived opposition to slavery, Jackson County residents
destroyed church property, tarred and feathered two church members, and
declared that “the mormons must leave the county,” or they “must
die.”
Church members were forcibly evicted from the county in late 1833, but similar concerns followed
them as they migrated to other parts of the state. When church members
began buying up land in , Missouri, in 1835 and 1836, local residents drafted
resolutions calling for their removal.
Latter-day Saint settlements also faced open hostility in 1838. After church members in Missouri experienced a series
of injustices by their neighbors—including intimidation at the polls in
, expulsion from the city of , and threats against the church settlement of —Joseph Smith and other church leaders called upon
the Latter-day Saints to defend themselves. In October 1838, church members engaged in skirmishes with vigilantes
and the Missouri militia, resulting in the destruction of property and
loss of lives on both sides. Responding to the bloodshed, Missouri
governor declared the Latter-day
Saints enemies of the state and ordered that they be “exterminated or
driven from the state.” Shortly thereafter, Smith was imprisoned for
treason and other charges and held in state custody for nearly six
months before escaping to . Joseph Smith’s experiences in Missouri left
him anxious to protect himself and other Latter-day Saints from hostile
forces. After the Illinois state legislature approved the act
incorporating in 1840, Smith and other church leaders did so primarily by
legal mechanisms—particularly the writ of and the Nauvoo courts—and the city’s
independent militia unit, known as the .
Smith’s troubles with were far from over, however. Between June 1841 and July 1843, the
governor of Missouri issued a requisition to the governor of for Smith’s extradition on three separate occasions,
and these events significantly shaped the documentary record featured in
Documents, Volume 13. During the 1841 and 1842 extradition attempts, Smith
obtained writs of habeas corpus and successfully challenged the legality
of his arrests in the Illinois Ninth Judicial Circuit Court and the
federal circuit court in , Illinois, respectively.
Despite failing to extradite Smith, Missouri officials, aided by
excommunicated church member ,
persisted in their efforts. Smith was arrested
again in June 1843, after Illinois governor honored the third extradition request, which was
based on charges stemming from the 1838 conflict between Latter-day Saints and their neighbors in
Missouri. With the aid of attorneys ,
, and , Smith obtained a writ of habeas corpus that
temporarily stalled his extradition to Missouri.
A week later, Smith and his attorneys obtained another writ from the
Nauvoo Municipal Court, which discharged him after a hearing. Though writs of habeas corpus helped
protect Joseph Smith from extradition to Missouri between 1841 and 1843, his repeated use of this
legal procedure caused some Illinois residents to believe that he was
manipulating the law to avoid justice. In many ways, the ever-present fear of
arrest, extradition, and incarceration defined how Smith and other
church leaders responded to the social and political crises that arose
during the last five months of
1843.
Two incidents that occurred in midsummer 1843 contributed to rising
tensions between the Latter-day Saints and their neighbors in western
. On 7 August, Smith and other residents went to polling stations
to vote in the Illinois congressional election. Latter-day Saints
composed a majority of voters in the newly created sixth congressional
district, and both the Whig and Democratic parties actively courted
their votes. The Whigs nominated apparently to
secure the Latter-day Saint vote. Smith pledged to vote for Walker, but the day
before the election he endorsed a revelation received by his
brother indicating that church members
should vote for the Democrat . Hoge won the
election by a three-fourths majority. This angered local Whigs, who
publicly declared that a “Revelation from Heaven
. . . turned a majority against us.” One Whig
newspaper explicitly alleged that “Mormons in the Sixth District were
instructed to vote for Hoge.” The
perception that the Latter-day Saints would vote en masse according to the whims
of their leaders greatly disturbed and angered many Illinois residents.
Latter-day Saints’ success in electing church members to several
political offices in Hancock County—including , , and as county
commissioner, school commissioner, and probate judge,
respectively—further exacerbated the tension between them and other
residents of Hancock County.
Joseph Smith’s growing political
influence was not the only thing that troubled local residents: a
violent altercation between Smith and tax
collector in early August also reinforced the views of
some who believed that Smith had no regard for the law or the civil
officers who enforced it. Hostility between Bagby and Latter-day
Saint leaders had been building since early 1842. Smith claimed that
in March 1842 he paid property taxes on all
the land owned by the church except one parcel, the taxes for which he
asserted had already been paid.
In March 1843, Bagby also questioned Smith’s
personal secretary, , over alleged unpaid
taxes, and later that year he seized a piece of Smith’s property and
sold it to another resident.
The two men engaged in a heated argument when Smith confronted Bagby
about the property on 1 August 1843. After Bagby called him a liar and picked up a
rock, Smith reportedly “struck him two or three times.”
Bagby became a staunch enemy of Smith, determined to abase the
Latter-day Saint leader. Bagby later informed his brother
Charles Bagby that though he previously
committed to visiting him in Kentucky, he felt
“unwilling to leave the country now until I see the Arrogance of that
abomination in human shape Joe Smith humbled low in the dust.”
The perceptions that Smith was “unwilling to
submit to the ordinary restraints of law,” abused the power of habeas
corpus during previous extradition attempts, and wielded undue political
power and influence contributed to a growing tide of resentment on the
part of and other residents of . In mid-August 1843, this opposition
coalesced into the organization of a group of citizens who referred to
themselves as “Anti-Mormons.” When the church members who were
elected to political positions went to the county seat of , Illinois, to
take their oaths of office on 12 August, they were met by more than fifteen citizens armed
with “hickory clubbs— kn[i]ves. dirks and Pistols” who attempted to
prevent them from taking their oaths. Failing to prevent the Latter-day
Saints from taking office, the vigilantes planned an assembly “to
consider about the morm[on]s retain[in]g their offices.” On 19 August, approximately two hundred citizens attended a
“Great Meeting of Anti-Mormons” in an effort to facilitate Smith’s
extradition to . At that meeting, a committee formed to
draft a preamble and resolutions against the Latter-day Saints.
When they gathered again on 6 September, the self-proclaimed “Anti-Mormon Party”—which
included , former Warsaw Signal
editor , and militia colonel
—unanimously adopted the
committee’s resolutions and charged Joseph Smith with “a
most shameless disregard for all the forms and restraints of Law.” They
resolved that if the governor of “would not surrender Joe
Smith on the requisition of the Governor of . . . they would call in aid from other counties and
other States to assist them in delivering him up.” The committee members
further declared that they believed their lives were threatened by the
Latter-day Saints and that they would “avenge any blood that might be
shed” with violence. In language that echoed the words of other
radical political movements and vigilantes—such as the resolutions of
the citizens of a decade earlier—the
Anti-Mormon Party resolved to resist any and all future wrongs imposed
by Latter-day Saints “peaceably if we can, but forcibly if we
must.”
The convention also “agreed not to obey the mandates of the Mormon
officers of the county.” The Warsaw Message, edited by , gave the Anti-Mormon Party a strong public
voice in the succeeding months by publishing its resolutions, later
reprinting them in a special “extra” issue, and promoting the group’s
activities around the state.
The Anti-Mormon Party’s public pronouncements—particularly
that it would actively assist officials in extraditing
Joseph Smith—rekindled old fears of mob
violence and ushered in a state of heightened anxiety in . In mid-August,
Smith received a message from attorney enclosing a
letter from a friend in , Missouri. Patrick’s friend chastised him for
defending Smith during the June 1843 extradition attempt and informed
him that “if by her own authority cannot capture the
prophet, it will be but a small matter to raise volunteers enough here
to raze the city of Nauvoo to the ground.” Smith forwarded the
correspondence to , noting that the Latter-day
Saints did not fear an armed incursion into Nauvoo and that they stood
ready to defend the honor of the governor and the state “when any danger
actually threatens.” In the ensuing months,
Smith corresponded regularly with Ford, keeping him abreast of potential
threats from Missouri and from Illinois citizens whom Smith
characterized as a “mobocratic insurrection.” Ford largely dismissed the
threat of an armed incursion by Missourians but conceded that they would
likely adopt “some other mode of annoyance.”
While the size and strength of the allowed Joseph Smith to feel
confident that it could defend the
against a full-scale attack, the Latter-day Saints’ sufferings in cast a long shadow over Smith during this period.
For nearly ten years, he and other church leaders had unsuccessfully
petitioned Missouri officials and federal authorities for redress for
the persecutions and property losses the Latter-day Saints endured in
Missouri between 1833 and 1839. When church leaders
petitioned Congress in early 1840, for example, the Senate
Committee on the Judiciary ruled that the federal government had no
jurisdiction over the case and that “the petitioners must seek relief in
the courts of judicature of the State of Missouri, or of the .”
Frustrated by this kind of rationale, Times and Seasons
editor lamented in October 1843, “We have memorialized Congress, but they have
turned a deaf ear to our supplication and referred us again to the
state, and justice (!!!) of Missouri.”
Undaunted, Smith and other church leaders renewed
their efforts to petition the federal government for reparation by
drafting two additional memorials to Congress during late fall and early winter 1843. As part of
a broader strategy to obtain justice, they also published appeals
addressed to the citizenry of several eastern states and wrote letters
to five potential candidates for the presidency of the to ascertain “what
their course would be towards the sai[n]ts if they were elected” in
1844. Three
candidates replied with terse, noncommittal responses. Whig candidate
—initially a favorite of Joseph Smith, who had
declared himself a “Clay man” two months earlier—responded in mid-November, stating that while he
sympathized with the Latter-day Saints’ “sufferings under injustice,” he
could “enter into no engagements, make no promises, give no pledges, to
any particular portion of the people of the U. States.” In early December, Democrat reiterated the
Senate’s previous position when he told Smith that the Latter-day
Saints’ case did not “come within the Jurisdiction of the Federal
government, which is one of limited and specific powers.” Democrat declared that he did not think the president had the
power to award redress when the state of and Congress had rejected it.
Frustrated by their disappointing answers, Smith instructed to respond to Cass
and Calhoun in late December and “shew them the folly of keeping
p[e]ople out of their right and that there was power in governme[n]t to
redress wrongs.”
As Latter-day Saint leaders appealed to government
authorities for redress and deliberated over how to respond to threats
of mob violence, a new, more imminent crisis materialized in early December. Several weeks earlier, a
group of Missourians kidnapped
resident for allegedly stealing
horses from a resident of Clark County,
Missouri. The Missourians seized Avery and took him across the , where he was detained and coerced into
signing a confession that also implicated his father, , a member of the church also living in Hancock
County. On 2 December, Hancock County militia
colonel and a mob of church opponents
from and seized Daniel Avery and
forcibly carried him across the river into Missouri. Like his son,
Daniel Avery was brought before a Missouri judge and incarcerated while
he awaited trial. News of the two abductions reached on 5 December.
The Avery kidnappings set in motion a series of events that
had long-lasting repercussions for Joseph Smith and the
Latter-day Saints. Fears that additional church members could be seized
and transported to at any time were compounded by erroneous
reports that the governor of Missouri had issued another requisition for
Smith’s arrest. Smith and the City Council took
decisive action. On 8 December, the council passed a
radical ordinance to protect Smith and other Latter-day Saints from abduction
or arrest. Acting in his capacity as mayor and commanding general, Smith
also issued orders to mobilize the to defend the
city’s residents. In mid-December, the council enacted
additional ordinances, which authorized the creation of a full-time
municipal police force and required all legal officers seeking to arrest
or subpoena individuals in Nauvoo to first go through the mayor. On
18 December, constable arrested , a
participant in ’s kidnapping. Later that day,
Joseph Smith authorized and a contingent
of the to arrest Elliott’s
coconspirator . Militia members returned to
Nauvoo when Williams, who was a prominent member of the Anti-Mormon
Party, assembled an armed mob to resist arrest. Nauvoo residents later engaged in vigilante
activities to prevent witnesses from testifying against and Daniel Avery in Missouri. Though overt hostilities subsided somewhat
by the end of December, the actions
Smith and the Latter-day Saints took to protect themselves inflamed
tensions with Williams and the Anti-Mormon Party.
The fear generated by the Avery kidnappings, combined with
the noncommittal responses from the presidential candidates, persuaded
Joseph Smith and other municipal
leaders to once again petition the nation’s highest legislative body for
redress. In early December,
Smith convened a special session of the city council to pass legislation
in response to the kidnappings. During the meeting, he proposed to
“petition congress to take the under
their protecti[o]n.” The council formed a committee to draft a new
memorial to Congress. In the memorial’s final draft, which the city council approved in late December, the Latter-day Saints
petitioned for redress as they had in other memorials. In this memorial,
however, they also boldly requested that Congress grant the city of the powers and
rights of a federal territory to ensure the protection of its citizens,
including the power to call upon federal troops to defend the city
against threats, real and imagined, from Missourians—a unique request. Smith and
others apparently hoped that if Nauvoo gained the rights and powers of a
federal territory, national leaders would be compelled to intervene in
state affairs in order to protect the rights of a persecuted minority.
The city council later commissioned church apostle to take the memorial to .
Amid the political and social developments that occurred
between August and December 1843,
Joseph Smith continued to introduce,
clarify, and expand important points of church doctrine and theology
through sermons, private instruction, and sacred religious rituals.
Smith gave at least nine public discourses during this period on a
variety of topics including the , the , and eternal covenants.
In August 1843, for example, he gave a
funeral discourse in which he stated that parents could be sealed, or
linked, to their children by entering into an everlasting covenant. While speaking about
the different orders of the priesthood in late August, he taught that the , unlike the , held the to
“administer[i]ng endless lives to the sons and daughte[r]s of Adam,
kingly powe[r]s. of ano[i]nting.”
In private, Smith continued to administer to a
select group of church members sacred rituals, or , intended for the then under
construction. Contemporaneous accounts refer to meetings of this group
by a variety of names, including “prayer meeting,” “,” “council,” and once as “council of the quorum.” The first meeting of this council
occurred in May 1842, when Smith taught nine men about
“ & , , and the communications of keys . . . & all
those plans & principles by which any one is enabled to secure the fulness
of those blessings which has been prepared for the , and
come up, and abide in the prese[n]ce of Eloheim in the eternal
worlds.” In
late May 1843,
Smith gave the council “inst[r]uction on the prie[s]thood. the . &c. &c.” in
connection with some council members receiving an additional ordinance
that sealed them to their spouses for eternity.
Smith introduced another important
ordinance to the council in September 1843. On 28 September, Joseph and his wife were “anointed & to the highest and
holiest order of the priesthood.”
Other members of the council eventually received the same ordinance,
which referred to in his
journal as a “Second Anointing.”
Beginning in October, other women
received the ordinance and began regularly attending meetings of the
council. In addition to participating in sacred rituals, the growing
number of church members invited to attend these meetings prayed
together and received instruction from Joseph Smith about teachings and
doctrines associated with the .
Closely associated with Joseph Smith’s teachings
about eternal marriage was the doctrine of plural marriage. Smith began
practicing plural marriage in in
April 1841, and over
the next two and a half years he instructed a select group of Latter-day
Saints to participate in the practice. Smith
was sealed to at least fifteen women as plural wives in 1843, including two
during the period covered by this volume: nineteen-year-old , the daughter of and Parmelia Darrow Lott,
caretakers of Smith’s Nauvoo ,
and
fifty-six-year-old , a widow and
elder sister of church apostle . Lott and Murray were likely
the last two women sealed to Joseph Smith during his lifetime. While
most Latter-day Saints remained unaware that Smith and others engaged in
the practice, the church leader quietly shared his teachings on the
doctrine during the second half of 1843. On
12 July, he dictated a revelation on marriage that captured in writing earlier
teachings about the priesthood and the new and everlasting covenant. The
revelation also explained that God had commanded Abraham and other
prophets to marry “many wives,” and instructed Smith and others to “do
the works of Abraham, enter ye into my law and ye Shall be Saved.”
This revelation circulated among a small number of
prominent Latter-day Saints in July and August and elicited varied
reactions. Most of those who were taught the doctrine of plural marriage
during this time eventually came to accept the revelation, and some
participated in the practice in the months that followed. On 12 August, read the revelation to the
and presidency and then admonished them to accept
it. According to later affidavits, most of those present received the
doctrine favorably.
, , and , however, reportedly “refused to receive said
Revelation as from God.”
, a counselor in the , was
likewise troubled by the new doctrine. After receiving a copy of the
revelation, Law apparently met with Joseph Smith to discuss
his reservations about the doctrine. “We talked a long time about it,”
Law later recalled, and “finally our discussion became very hot and we
gave it up.” Law’s opposition to the practice of
plural marriage was apparently a poorly kept secret in late 1843, and it eventually became one of
the central tenets of his vociferous opposition to Smith.
Though at times accepted or at least
tolerated her husband’s practice of plural marriage,
later testified
that Emma Smith grew resentful “soon after” Joseph Smith was sealed to
Partridge and her in mid-May. According to , when Joseph Smith and read the 12 July
revelation to Emma Smith, she “did not believe a word of it
and appeared very rebellious.” Several days later, after a copy of the
revelation was made, she destroyed the original dictated text. Clayton
also noted that after Emma Smith returned from on 12 August, she resisted the doctrine of plural marriage “in
toto” and Joseph Smith worried that she would “obtain a divorce &
leave him.” Joseph Smith’s relationships with some of his plural wives
continued to generate hard feelings between him and Emma in the weeks
that followed. On 31 August, Clayton noted in his journal that Emma Smith
became “very jealouse” when Joseph Smith read aloud a letter from
traveling
, which discussed the
fallout from a possible plural marriage proposal by Smith to branch member . Tensions between Joseph and
Emma Smith apparently eased by October.
Other documents created during fall 1843 allude to the ways that church
members discussed the practice of plural marriage or how Joseph Smith regulated it. Addressing rumors circulating in
in October 1843, Smith told a group of Latter-day Saints to
“set our women to work & stop th[e]ir spinni[n]g street yarn and
talking about spiritual wives.” In late November, the Nauvoo high council
tried church member after Smith accused him
of seducing a young girl and claiming that Smith sanctioned such
behavior. It is possible Smith taught Sagers about the doctrine of
plural marriage, but it is unclear whether Smith authorized Sagers to
practice it. The high council ultimately ruled that the charge was “not
sustained.” Smith’s charges and the decision rendered by the high
council suggest that Smith was not always successful in controlling the
practice of plural marriage or putting down imitations of it.
Another source of internal tension during this period was
Joseph Smith’s deteriorating
relationship with his longtime counselor in the First Presidency . In early 1843, Smith received intelligence
suggesting that Rigdon was in league with former church member in an effort to extradite Smith to . Smith
threatened to have Rigdon disfellowshipped in March, but it was not until he received additional
information in early August that
Smith took more decisive action. In a
mid-August
discourse, Smith asserted that “a certain man in this city .
. . has made a covena[n]t to bretray and give me up.” Smith then
proposed that the congregation withdraw fellowship from Rigdon and that
he “no longer be acknowledged as my counselor.” Smith
temporarily suspended Rigdon’s priesthood and was so certain that the congregation would vote
at an upcoming to drop Rigdon from the First
Presidency that he privately installed as his replacement. However, when Smith expressed
his dissatisfaction with Rigdon at the church’s semiannual conference held
in early October, , , and came to Rigdon’s defense, and the congregation
voted to retain him. Smith’s alienation
from Rigdon and Law, two of his counselors in the First Presidency,
epitomized the discord that was taking root within the church.
Even amid this turmoil, the days surrounding Christmas 1843 were characterized by domestic tranquility
and joyous celebration for Joseph Smith. On 22 December, he spent a portion of his morning reading to
his children, and on the following day he devoted time to “attending to
. . . domestic duties [and] making preparations for a Christmas dinner
party.” In the early morning hours of Christmas Day, Smith and his
family were aroused by carolers, which, according to his history,
“caused a thrill of pleasure to run thro[ugh] my soul.” In the
afternoon, Joseph and hosted around fifty couples at
a gala held in the . Smith’s journal noted that he, Emma, and their guests
“spent the evening in Music Danci[n]g &c. in a most cheerful &
frie[n]dly mannr during the festivities.” The cheery mood continued
through the evening and following day when and arrived in
after being released from prisons in . The Smith family was
again serenaded by a large choir when the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Day, and the next evening, Joseph and Emma hosted
another large gathering, complete with music and dancing, that lasted
late into the night.
Though the holiday season generated good feelings and a
spirit of celebration, fears about mob abduction and treachery from
within were never far from the surface. On 29 December, the city council convened a special session to
administer oaths of office to the city’s new police force. During the
meeting, Joseph Smith as mayor instructed the
new recruits on their duties to prevent theft, enforce city ordinances,
and protect citizens; he also
counseled them to “be at peace with all men so long as they will let us
alone.” He then addressed another potential threat, solemnly telling the
men, “I think my life more in danger from some little doe head of a fool
in the city than from all the volobulory of enemies abroad, and if I can
escape the hand of an assassin I can live as might Caesar, have lived if
. . . [it] had not been for a Brutus.” He continued, “I have . . .
pretended friends who have betrayed me as I am informed.”
Following the meeting, rumors began to circulate that the
city’s police force had taken a private oath to defend Smith and oppose his enemies.
Though Smith had not identified the “doe head” or “Brutus” by name, some
of the police were informed or assumed that it was either or because of their opposition to plural
marriage. Several days later, when the city council met to sort rumor
from fact, Smith vigorously denied allegations that he directed some of
the police to secretly put Law “out of the way.” The rumors and misunderstandings that stemmed
from Smith’s 29 December remarks proved fatal to his
relationship with his second counselor. Law and his wife, , were
conspicuously absent from a 30 December prayer meeting, and William Law stated in his
journal several days later that though he did not consider Smith an
enemy, “I did not say I was his friend.”
The documents featured in this volume of
The Joseph Smith Papers underscore the growth and
relative prosperity of the Latter-day Saint community centered in , as well as the
growing religious, political, and social influence of the church and its
members in western and abroad. They also demonstrate that
cracks were forming in the veneer of peace and harmony. Resistance to
the practice of plural marriage threatened to erode the internal unity
that Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints
had tried to cultivate since arriving in Nauvoo nearly five years
earlier, while external enemies in and Illinois persisted
in a relentless push to “sweep Mormonism and its founder into
nothingness.” The tumultuous events of fall and early winter 1843, such as the rise
of the Anti-Mormon Party and the nascent opposition to plural marriage
by and others, laid the foundation for the explosive
conflict that erupted in 1844 and culminated in the murder of Joseph and .