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Letter to Editor, 22 January 1840

Source Note

JS, Letter, , Chester Co., PA, to the editor of [Register and Examiner, West Chester, Chester Co., PA], 22 Jan. 1840; handwriting of ; signature of JS; four pages; private possession; photocopy in James C. Hayward, Collection, CHL.
The photocopy indicates that the original document has tears and breaks that have been mended by what appears to be clear cellophane tape. By 1977 the original document was held by James C. Hayward of Logan, Utah, but it is not clear how he obtained it. The photocopy was acquired by the Church Historical Department in 1983 from a document dealer and collector.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    See the full bibliographic entry for James C. Hayward, Collection, ca. 1836–1889, in the CHL catalog; JS, Brandywine, PA, Letter to Editor, 22 Jan. 1840, photocopy, not after 1982, copy in editors’ possession; Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 493; and JS, Brandywine, PA, Letter to Editor, 22 Jan. 1840, photocopy, ca. 1983, copy in editors’ possession.

    Smith, Joseph. Letter to the Editor of Register and Examiner, Brandywine, PA, 22 Jan. 1840. Photocopy, not after 1982. Copy in editors’ possession.

    Jessee, Dean C., ed. and comp. The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith. Rev. ed. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2002.

    Smith, Joseph. Letter to the Editor of Register and Examiner, Brandywine, PA, 22 Jan. 1840. Photocopy, ca. 1983. Copy in editors’ possession.

Historical Introduction

On 22 January 1840, JS composed a letter to the editor of an unnamed newspaper. Although it did not specify to which newspaper or editor it was directed, the letter appeared in the Register and Examiner, a newspaper published in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and edited by Joseph Painter, who was described as “an able writer and first-class business man.” The letter copied almost verbatim a statement of the ’ beliefs regarding government and laws that was first published in the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. In this letter, JS changed the statement’s point of view from “we” to “I” and at the end added some information not present in the original statement. At the time he composed the letter, JS was in , Pennsylvania; three days after the date of the letter, he attended an ’ for the Brandywine .
JS stated he was sending the letter to counteract “many false rumors” about him and the church. By the time JS visited the area, church missionaries had been preaching in , Pennsylvania, for approximately a year. Although they over fifty people in a relatively short period of time, they also encountered opposition. Local resident later stated that church members were called “a terable” and “dangerous people” by Chester County citizens in 1839. In spring 1840, a “Philanthropist of Chester County” published a pamphlet that attempted to refute the Book of Mormon and the church’s interpretation of the Bible. According to one source, the pamphlet contained “falsehoods, misrepresentations, foul insinuations, wholesale abuse and slander of the doctrines and characters of the Latter Day Saints.”
Because he expressed in this 22 January letter his belief that governments were obliged to protect citizens in their exercise of religion, JS may have wanted the letter published to try to influence the public to take up the Saints’ cause of obtaining redress for their expulsion from in 1838 and 1839. JS may have directed others to send similar statements to additional newspapers. In April 1840, the Peoria Register and North-Western Gazetteer published a letter “received several weeks since” from a “B. D.” of Tazewell County, Illinois. This letter also reproduced the statement on government from the Doctrine and Covenants.
JS’s letter was published in the 11 February 1840 issue of the Register and Examiner. The text featured here is the manuscript version of the letter; because JS signed it, this letter may have been the same version that was sent to the Register and Examiner. However, the published letter contains some minor differences from the manuscript version, including a different date, suggesting that the featured version might be a draft of what was eventually sent. Editorial changes in the text were apparently incorporated into the printed letter, although there are some instances (noted herein) where the published letter follows the text of the statement on government in the Doctrine and Covenants rather than the text of the manuscript letter. The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper in Boston, reprinted the letter in its 21 February 1840 issue without any commentary.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Futhey and Cope, History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, 331, 671–672. As editor of the Register and Examiner, Painter “took advanced ground in favor of the cause of temperance, and was strongly anti-slavery.” He served as an agent for the Underground Railroad.

    Futhey, J. Smith, and Gilbert Cope. History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881.

  2. [2]

    Declaration on Government and Law, ca. Aug. 1835 [D&C 134].

  3. [3]

    Lorenzo Barnes, Philadelphia, PA, 29 Jan. 1840, Letter to the Editor, Times and Seasons, Mar. 1840, 1:79. JS may have been at the home of Edward Hunter, a prosperous resident of Chester County who joined the church later in 1840 and who remembered JS coming to his house when JS visited the area. (Hunter, Edward Hunter, 316–317.)

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

    Hunter, William E. Edward Hunter: Faithful Steward. [Salt Lake City]: Mrs. William E. Hunter, 1970.

  4. [4]

    Benjamin Winchester, Payson, IL, 18 June 1839, Letter to the Editor, Times and Seasons, Nov. 1839, 1:11; Lorenzo Barnes, Philadelphia, PA, 29 Jan. 1840, Letter to the Editor, Times and Seasons, Mar. 1840, 1:79; Lorenzo Barnes, Wilmington, DE, 8 Sept. 1839, Letter to the Editor, Times and Seasons, Dec. 1839, 1:27–28; see also Orson Pratt to Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt, 6 Jan. 1840, in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, 1:61.

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

  5. [5]

    Hunter, Edward Hunter, 316.

    Hunter, William E. Edward Hunter: Faithful Steward. [Salt Lake City]: Mrs. William E. Hunter, 1970.

  6. [6]

    Snow, E. Snow’s Reply to the Self-Styled Philanthropist of Chester County, 1. This anonymously authored pamphlet was published as Mormonism Unmasked, Showed to Be an Impious Imposture, and Mr. Bennett’s Reply Answered and Refuted. By a Philanthropist of Chester County (Philadelphia: T. K. and P. G. Collins, 1840).

    Snow, Erastus. E. Snow’s Reply to the Self-Styled Philanthropist, of Chester County. No publisher, 1840.

  7. [7]

    “The Mormons,” Peoria (IL) Register and North-Western Gazetteer, 24 Apr. 1840, [1]. “B. D.” was likely Benjamin Dobson, listed in the 1840 census as a resident of Tazewell County. Dobson was baptized in 1836. (“The Mormons for Harrison,” Peoria Register and North-Western Gazetteer, 17 Apr. 1840, [2]; 1840 U.S. Census, Tazewell Co., IL, 16; “Mormonism,” Peoria Register and North-Western Gazetteer, 29 June 1839, [1]; “Obituary,” Saints’ Herald, 1 Jan. 1877, 15.)

    Peoria Register and North-Western Gazetteer. Peoria, IL. 1837–1843.

    Census (U.S.) / U.S. Bureau of the Census. Population Schedules. Microfilm. FHL.

    Saints’ Herald. Independence, MO. 1860–.

  8. [8]

    “The Latter Day Saints,” Register and Examiner (Chester Co., PA), 11 Feb. 1840, [1].

    Register and Examiner. West Chester, PA. 1836–1851.

  9. [9]

    “The Latter Day Saints,” Liberator (Boston), 21 Feb. 1840, 32.

    Liberator. Boston. 1831–1865.

Page [2]

<​5​> I believe that all men are bound to sustane and uphold the respective Governments in which they reside while protected in their inherent and in alienable rights by the Laws of such Governments and that Sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every Citizen thus prote[c]ted and should be punished accordingly and that all Governments have a right to enact such laws ass in their own judgements are best calculated to secure the public interest at the same time <​however​> holding sacred the freedom of concience
<​6​> I believe that every man should be honoured in his station Rulers and magistrates as such being plalaced [placed] for the protection of the inocent and the punishment of the guilty and that to the Laws all men owe respect and deference as with out them peace and harmony would be supplanted by anarchy and confusion terror human Laws being instituted for the express purposs of regulating our interests as individuals and Nations between— man and man and divine laws given of heaven prescribing rules on spiritual concerns for— faith and worship both to be answered by man to his maker
<​7​> I believe that rulers states and and governments have a right and are bound to enact Laws for the protection of all Citizen in the free exercise of their religious belief But I do not believe that they have a right in justice to deprive Citizens of this privalege or proscribe them in their opinions so long as a regard and reverence are is Shown to the Laws and such religious opinions do not justify Sedition nor conspiracy
<​8​> I do not believe that the commission of crime should be punished according to the nature of the offence that murder treason Robbery theft and the breach of the general peace in all respects should be punished according to their criminalty and their tendancy to evil among men by the Laws of that Government in which the offence is committed and for the public peace and tranquility all men should step forward and use their ability in bringing the offenders aggainst good laws to justice punishment
<​9​> I do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civel government whereby one reli [p. [2]]
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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Letter to Editor, 22 January 1840
ID #
510
Total Pages
4
Print Volume Location
JSP, D7:128–133
Handwriting on This Page
  • Lorenzo Barnes

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