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Appendix: Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 March 1840

Source Note

United States Senate, Report, , 4 Mar. 1840. Featured version published in Public Documents Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States, during the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the United States, vol. 5, Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840, [1]–2. Transcription made from digital images obtained from Oxford University by Google Books in 2006.
The volume contains eighty-two documents, numbered 197–278, printed with an index on a total of 1,151 pages. The document featured here is number 247. The pagination restarts with each document.

Historical Introduction

On 4 March 1840, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary wrote a report to the Senate containing the committee’s resolution to dismiss the ’s memorial to Congress. Senator of had submitted the memorial to the Senate on 28 January 1840, at which time it was read aloud. The Senate initially voted to table the memorial, but on 12 February it referred the memorial to its Committee on the Judiciary. Though accounts of congressional proceedings do not explicitly mention the judiciary committee’s tasks, this report and other documents related to the memorial suggest that the Senate assigned the committee to determine whether the case fell within the jurisdiction of Congress before it considered the memorial’s merits.
Between 20 and 22 February, the committee heard testimony from at least four men: church representative , Senator of , Representative of Missouri, and a Mr. Corwin of . Higbee wrote to JS on 22 February that if the committee decided the Senate should consider the church’s memorial further, the church could send several witnesses to to testify. In this report, however, the committee stated that Congress had no jurisdiction over the church’s petitioning efforts and resolved that the committee—and by extension the Senate—should no longer consider the memorial. Even though this report is dated 4 March, Higbee reported that the committee had made its decision by 26 February.
The report primarily summarized the church’s memorial to Congress. It is unclear which of the five Committee on the Judiciary members composed this report. An extant manuscript draft of the report written in unidentified handwriting contains numerous phrases and entire sentences that were canceled with new text inserted in their place. On 23 March 1840, the Senate received the report, voted in favor of the resolution, and ordered that the report be printed.
Two copies of this report were apparently sent to JS—one by Senator John M. Robinson of and another by —although the report itself was not addressed to JS or any member of the church’s delegation to the federal government. An 1840 general of the church approved a resolution that declared this report “unconstitutional, and subversive of the rights of a free people.” This report and the conference’s official response to it were published in the March and April issues of the Times and Seasons, respectively. Later in 1840, the Senate published the final version of this report in a collection of other documents from the first session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. The report as published by the Senate is reproduced here as an appendix because it represents the Senate’s response to JS’s and his fellow delegation members’ petition to the federal government.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. and 12 Feb. 1840, 138, 173; Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 149 (1840).

    Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.

    The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.

  2. [2]

    Letter from Elias Higbee, 22 Feb. 1840; Historical Introduction to Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.

  3. [3]

    Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–A; Letter from Elias Higbee, 21 Feb. 1840; Letter from Elias Higbee, 22 Feb. 1840.

  4. [4]

    Letter from Elias Higbee, 22 Feb. 1840.

  5. [5]

    Letter from Elias Higbee, 26 Feb. 1840.

  6. [6]

    See Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.

  7. [7]

    At this time, the Committee on the Judiciary consisted of five senators: Garret D. Wall of New Jersey, Thomas Clayton of Delaware, Robert Strange of North Carolina, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and Oliver H. Smith of Indiana. (Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 16 Dec. 1839, 11; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 835–836, 894–895, 1937, 1990, 2107.)

    Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.

    Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989: The Continental Congress September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States from the First through the One Hundredth Congresses March 4, 1789, to January 3, 1989, Inclusive. Edited by Kathryn Allamong Jacob and Bruce A. Ragsdale. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989.

  8. [8]

    Substantive differences between the published report and the manuscript draft are noted in the annotation herein. (“Report from the Committee on the Judiciary on the Memorial of the ‘Latter Day Saints’ Commonly Called Mormons,” 4 Mar. 1840, Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives, Washington DC.)

    Memorial of Ephraim Owen, Jr. H.R. Doc. no. 42, 25th Cong., 3rd Sess. (1838).

  9. [9]

    Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 23 Mar. 1840, 259–260.

    Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.

  10. [10]

    See Letter from Elias Higbee, 9 Mar. 1840.

  11. [11]

    Minutes and Discourse, 6–8 Apr. 1840.

  12. [12]

    “Important from Washington,” Times and Seasons, Mar. 1840, 1:74–75; Minutes and Discourse, 6–8 Apr. 1840.

    Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.

Page [1]

-[SENATE.]-
-[247]-
26th Congress,
1st Session.
 
IN SENATE OF THE .
March 4, 1840.
Submitted, laid on the table, and ordered to be printed. (Seal)
Mr. [Garret D.] Wall made the following
REPORT:
The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the memorial of a delegation of the , commonly called Mormons, report:
The petition of the memorialists sets forth, in substance, that a portion of their sect commenced a settlement in the county of , in the State of , in the summer of 1831: that they bought lands, built houses, erected churches, and established their homes, and engaged in all the various occupations of life: that they were expelled from that in 1833, by a mob, under circumstances of great outrage, cruelty, and oppression, and against all law, and without any offence committed on their part, and to the destruction of property to the amount of $120,000: that the society thus expelled amounted to about 1,200 souls: that no compensation was ever made for the destruction of their property in : that after their expulsion from , they settled in , on the opposite side of the , where they purchased lands, and entered others at the land office, where they resided peaceably for three years, engaged in cultivation and other useful and active employments, when the mob again threatened their peace, lives, and property and they became alarmed, and finally made a treaty with the citizens of that they should purchase their lands, and the Mormons should remove; which was complied with on their part, and the Mormons removed to the county of , where they took up their abode, and re-established their settlement, not without heavy pecuniary losses and other inconveniences: that the citizens of never paid them for their lands, except for a small part. They remained in from 1836 until the fall of 1838, and during that time had acquired, by purchase from the Government, the settlers, and pre-emptioners, almost all the lands in the county of , and a portion of the lands in and Carroll counties; the former county being almost entirely settled by the Mormons, and they were rapidly filling up the two latter counties. Those counties, when the Mormons first commenced their settlement, were, for the most part, wild and uncultivated, and they had converted them into large and well-improved farms, well stocked. Lands had risen in value to $10 and even $25 per acre, and those counties were rapidly advancing in cultivation and wealth: that in August, 1838, a riot commenced, growing out of an attempt of a Mormon to vote, which resulted in creating great excite [p. [1]]
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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Appendix: Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 March 1840
ID #
19819
Total Pages
2
Print Volume Location
JSP, D7:538–543
Handwriting on This Page
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Footnotes

  1. [1]

    This document was numbered 247 within the series of Senate documents published by the first session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress.

  2. [2]

    TEXT: Illegible circular seal.

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