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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 [3]

gious Society is fostered and an other proscribed in its spiritual privaleges and the individual rights of its members as citizens denied
<​10​> I believe that all religious Society Societies have a right to deal with its <​their​> members for disorderly conduct according to the rules and regulations of such societies provided that such dealing be for fellowship and good Standing but we <​I​> doo not believe that any religious Society has authority to try men for <​on​> the right of property or life to take away <​from them​> this world’s goods or put them in Jepardy either life or limb neither to inflict any fisical [physical] punishment upon them They can onley excommunicate them from their society and with their with draw their <​from their​> fellowship
<​11​> I believe that men should appeal to the Civel law for redress of all wrongs and grieveences where personal abuse is inflicted or the right of propperty or character infringed where such laws exist as will protect the Same but we <​I​> believe that all men are Justified in defending thems Selves their friends and property and the government from <​the​> unlawful assaults and encroachments of all persons in times of exigincies where immediate appeal cannot be— made to the Laws and relief afforded
<​12​> I believe it just to preach the Gospel to the Nations of the Earth and warn the Righteous to Save themselves from the corruptions of the world But I do not believe it right to interfear with bond Servants neither preach the gospel to nor them contrary to the will and wish of their masters nor to meddle with or influence them in the least contrary to the wish to cause them to be dissatisfied with their Sittuations in this life theirby jeopardiseing the lives of men Such interfearence we I believe to be unlawful and unjust and dangerous to the peace of every government allowing human beings to be held in Servitude
<​13​> It has been reported by some vicious or de[s]igning characters that the believe in having their pro[p]erty in common and also the leaders of sade church controlls Said propperty— This is a base fabrication without the least the least shadow or collering of any thing to make it out of but on the contrary no persons feelings can be more repugnant to such [p. [3]]
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Document Information

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

Footnotes

  1. [3]

    See Revelation, 16–17 Dec. 1833 [D&C 101:76–88]; and Revelation, 22 June 1834 [D&C 105:25].

  2. [4]

    In July 1838, Sidney Rigdon declared that “in times of war” the Saints should “meet our foes sword in hand, and defend our rights, at the expense of life.” In fall 1838, the Saints took actions—both preemptive and defensive—against Missourians in an effort to maintain their rights in the state. (Oration Delivered by Mr. S. Rigdon, on the 4th of July, 1838, 5; see also Baugh, “Call to Arms,” chaps. 5–10.)

    Baugh, Alexander L. “A Call to Arms: The 1838 Mormon Defense of Northern Missouri.” PhD diss., Brigham Young University, 1996. Also available as A Call to Arms: The 1838 Mormon Defense of Northern Missouri, Dissertations in Latter-day Saint History (Provo, UT: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History; BYU Studies, 2000).

  3. [5]

    The text from here to the end of the letter is not present in the statement “Of Governments and Laws in General” included in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. (Declaration on Government and Law, ca. Aug. 1835 [D&C 134].)

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