Footnotes
“The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Dec. 1833, 118.
The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.
It is unknown whether a complete copy of Hyde’s published letter to the editor of the Boonville Herald still exists. However, Oliver Cowdery included at least a partial copy of the letter in The Evening and the Morning Star. (“The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Dec. 1833, 118; see also “Civil War in Jackson County!,” Missouri Republican [St. Louis], 12 Nov. 1833, [3].)
The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.
Missouri Republican. St. Louis. 1822–1919.
JS, Journal, 25 Nov. 1833; see also “More Trouble in the Mormon Camp,” Painesville (OH) Telegraph, 29 Nov. 1833, [3].
Painesville Telegraph. Painesville, OH. 1822–1986.
JS had earlier instructed church members in an 18 August 1833 letter to not sell their land in Jackson County. (Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson Co., MO, 18 Aug. 1833.)
Orson Hyde, Letter to the Editor, The Evening and the Morning Star, Dec. 1833, 120.
The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.
JS, Journal, 25 Nov. and 18 Dec. 1833.
Four months earlier, in August, JS wrote, “We are no safer here in Kirtland then you are in Zion the cloud is gethering arou[nd] us with great fury and all pharohs host or in other words all hell and the com[bined] pow[e]rs of Earth are Marsheling their forces to overthrow us.” On 21 January 1834, Oliver Cowdery wrote, “Our enemies have threatened us, but thank the Lord we are yet on earth. They came out on the 8th about 12 oclock at night, a little west & fired cannon, we suppose to alarm us, but no one was frightened, but all prepared to defend ourselves if they made a sally upon our houses.” (Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson Co., MO, 18 Aug. 1833; Oliver Cowdery, Kirtland, OH, to William W. Phelps and John Whitmer, Clay Co., MO, 21 Jan. 1834, in Cowdery, Letterbook, 22.)
Cowdery, Oliver. Letterbook, 1833–1838. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
See Revelation, 22–23 Sept. 1832 [D&C 84:24]; and Revelation, 7 Aug. 1831 [D&C 59:2].
On 11 September 1833, church leaders in Kirtland decided to buy a new press and type to continue printing The Evening and the Morning Star, and the following month Cowdery traveled to New York to make the purchases. On 6 December 1833, Cowdery and others began to typeset the first Kirtland issue of the Star. Nearly two weeks later, on 18 December 1833, “the Elders assembled togeth[er] in the printing office and then proceded to bow down before the Lord and dedicate the printing press and all that pertains therunto to God . . . and then proceded to take the first proof sheet of the star edited by Bro Oliv[er].” (Minutes, 11 Sept. 1833; Frederick G. Williams, Kirtland, OH, to “Dear Brethren,” 10 Oct. 1833, in JS Letterbook 1, p. 58; JS, Journal, 4–6 and 18 Dec. 1833.)
Oliver Cowdery initially made this request in an August 1833 letter to church leaders in Independence the day after he arrived in Kirtland. In early October, Frederick G. Williams reminded William W. Phelps that “Oliver has writen to you for the names and residences of the subscribers for the Star and if you have not sent them we wish you to send them immediately that there may be no delay in the papers going to subscribers as soon as they can be printed.” Unbeknownst to JS, church leaders in Missouri mailed the list of the Star’s subscribers two days before he wrote the letter featured here. Oliver Cowdery later recorded in a January 1834 letter to Missouri, “We received the names of our former subscribers a few days since, which was mailed on the 3d of last month.” In the January 1834 issue of the Star, Cowdery noted, “We forwarded the last number to those whose names were on the Mail Book of W. W. Phelps & CO. at Missouri.” (Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson Co., MO, 10 Aug. 1833; Frederick G. Williams, Kirtland, OH, to “Dear Brethren,” 10 Oct. 1833, in JS Letterbook 1, p. 58; Oliver Cowdery, Kirtland, OH, to John Whitmer, 1 Jan. 1834, in Cowdery, Letterbook, 14; Notice, The Evening and the Morning Star, Jan. 1834, 128.)
Cowdery, Oliver. Letterbook, 1833–1838. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.
The Church of Christ apparently intended to print a newspaper to curry favor with the Democratic Party. Whether the paper was to address local, state, or national politics is unknown. It is also not known which influential Democrats had offered church members patronage. In August 1833, JS told church leaders in Missouri that “we think it would be wise in yo[u] to try to git influence by offering to print a paper in favor of the goverment.” On 29 November 1833, Oliver Cowdery wrote a letter from Kirtland, saying, “We shall print the Democrat in this place, as circumstances render it impossible to print it elsewhere We shall draw a Prospectus soon.” Circumstances, however, prevented the church from publishing a political newspaper until 1835, when the Northern Times was first printed. (Letter to Church Leaders in Jackson Co., MO, 18 Aug. 1833; Oliver Cowdery, Kirtland, OH, to Horace Kingsbury, Painesville, OH, 29 Nov. 1833, in Cowdery, Letterbook, 10; Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 1:51–53.)
Cowdery, Oliver. Letterbook, 1833–1838. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.
Crawley, Peter. A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. 3 vols. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997–2012.
This information was not included in the extract of Phelps’s letter that Cowdery published in the Star. (See Letter from William W. Phelps, 6–7 Nov. 1833.)