Footnotes
“The Mormon Prophet,” Des Moines (IA) Register, 13 Mar. 1891, in Historical Department, Newspaper Clippings, 1831–1993, CHL.
Historical Department. Newspaper Clippings, 1831–1993. CHL.
“Signed on the Dotted Line: The Charles Aldrich Autograph Collection,” [6]–[7].
“Signed on the Dotted Line: The Charles Aldrich Autograph Collection.” Iowa Historian: The Newsletter of the State Historical Society of Iowa (Feb.–Mar. 2008): [6]–[7]. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. A copy of this digital newsletter is archived at publications.iowa.gov/6203/1 /Iowa_Historian_Feb-Mar_2008.pdf.
Footnotes
Mulholland had served as one of JS’s scribes since at least September of the previous year. The Nauvoo high council appointed him as a clerk for land contracts and subtreasurer of the church just seven days before JS departed for Washington DC. (JS, Journal, 3 Sept. 1838; Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 21 Oct. 1839, 25; Minutes, 27 Oct. 1839.)
Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 1839–1845. CHL. LR 3102 22.
This dispute—nicknamed the “Honey War” by a local newspaper because of stories that a Missouri tax collector cut down hollow trees containing beehives on the property of an Iowa resident in order to collect the honey instead of the tax—was a bloodless conflict that lasted throughout the 1830s. It climaxed in 1839 when a sheriff from Iowa Territory and a sheriff from Missouri both tried to collect taxes from residents on a tiny strip of land that each side claimed along the Des Moines River. The hostilities soon resulted in a standoff between both sides’ militias and elicited federal intervention. JS apparently learned of the conflict from a source other than Emma’s letter because he mentioned the dispute in a letter to Robert D. Foster a week before Emma’s letter arrived in Washington. (“The Border War,” Missouri Republican [St. Louis], 7 Dec. 1839, [2]; “The Honey War,” Missouri Whig, and General Advertiser [Palmyra], 26 Oct. 1839, [3]; Everett, Creating the American West, chap. 4; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 Dec. 1839, 10; Letter to Robert D. Foster, 30 Dec. 1839.)
Daily Missouri Republican. St. Louis. 1822–1869.
Missouri Whig, and General Advertiser. Palmyra, MO. 1839–1841.
Everett, Derek R. Creating the American West: Boundaries and Borderlands. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
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.
JS arrived in Philadelphia on 21 December 1839. He remained in the region, visiting congregations in some of the outlying communities, until he departed around 31 January 1840 for Washington DC, where he arrived by 5 February. According to the postmarks on this document, Emma mailed the letter at Commerce on 12 December 1839; it arrived in Washington on 8 January 1840 and was then forwarded to Philadelphia, though it is unknown when it arrived there. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 21 Dec. 1839, 70; 27 Jan. 1840, 2; Letter to Robert D. Foster, 30 Dec. 1839; Minutes and Discourse, 13 Jan. 1840; Discourse, 5 Feb. 1840.)