In their 15 February 1844 letters from the pineries, George Miller and Lyman Wight proposed creating a gathering place in the “table lands of Texas” somewhere near the Colorado River of Texas. With the annexation of Texas by the United States becoming increasingly more likely, Miller was shifting his sights further south, into Mexico. Several of Miller’s arguments appear to echo those made in his and Wight’s earlier letters, such as the need for a “more congenial” climate and the propriety of settling in the midst of “the Lamanite world.” Indeed, included in their original proposal was a plea to preach the gospel to “the Lamanites bordering on the United Territories from Green Bay to the Mexican Gulf,” with Mexico being specifically identified as a place where the “Gospel has not been fully opened.” (Council of Fifty, “Record,” 10 Mar. 1844.)

Phelps likely referred to Jacob C. Davis, the state senator for Hancock County who had been among those indicted for the murders of JS and Hyrum Smith. (Journal of the Senate . . . of Illinois, 2 Dec. 1844, 3; Oaks and Hill, Carthage Conspiracy, 55–56.)

Journal of the Senate of the Fourteenth General Assembly of the State of Illinois, at Their Regular Session, Begun and Held at Springfield, December 2, 1844. Springfield, IL: Walters & Weber, 1844.

Oaks, Dallin H., and Marvin S. Hill. Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975.