Footnotes
“An Extract of a Letter Written to Bishop Partridge,” Times and Seasons, July 1840, 1:131–134.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
JS History, vol. C-1, 907–912; Jessee, “Writing of Joseph Smith’s History,” 441.
Jessee, Dean C. “The Writing of Joseph Smith’s History.” BYU Studies 11 (Summer 1971): 439–473.
See “Index to Papers. in the Historians Office,” ca. 1904, p. 3; “Letters to and from the Prophet,” ca. 1904, p. 1, Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL; and the full bibliographic entry for the Revelations Collection in the CHL catalog.
Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.
Footnotes
See Historical Introduction to Letter to the Church and Edward Partridge, 20 Mar. 1839.
The letter’s closing indicates that JS and his companions were still prisoners. The letter does not reference leaving the Clay County jail, meaning the letter was likely written before the prisoners departed Liberty on 6 April 1839. It is possible, though not likely, that it was written toward the end of their stay in Liberty rather than around 22 March. Hyrum Smith generally noted in his journal when correspondence arrived and was sent out. He did not write in his journal between 20 and 29 March, and his journal entries from 30 March to 6 April do not mention JS composing a general epistle to the church. When church clerks copied the undated letter into JS’s manuscript history in 1845, they inserted the epistle between entries for 25 March and 4 April 1839, dates associated with the departure of Heber C. Kimball and Theodore Turley from Liberty for Jefferson City, Missouri, and their later return to Liberty. (Hyrum Smith, Diary, 30 Mar.–6 Apr. 1839; Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 25 Mar.–4 Apr. 1839; see also Historical Introduction to Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839.)
Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.
JS’s thinking may have changed because he had given Galland’s 26 February 1839 letter greater thought than he had before writing the 20 March missive. (Letter to Isaac Galland, 22 Mar. 1839.)
Isaac Galland, Commerce, IL, to David W. Rogers, [Quincy, IL], 26 Feb. 1839, in JS Letterbook 2, p. 1.
Portions of the undated epistle were subsequently canonized in sections 121–123 of the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.
The Doctrine and Covenants, of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Containing the Revelations Given to Joseph Smith, Jun., the Prophet, for the Building Up of the Kingdom of God in the Last Days. Salt Lake City: Deseret News Office, 1876.
Parley P. Pratt recalled that when JS dictated documents, “each sentence was uttered slowly and very distinctly, and with a pause between each, sufficiently long for it to be recorded, by an ordinary writer, in long hand.” McRae’s script in the rough draft is notably looser than in other documents he inscribed for JS in the jail, especially the fair copy of the letter, and may be the result of dictation. Although both the rough draft and the fair copy were written on paper of the same size, the relative tightness of McRae’s script in the fair copy enabled him to fit an additional two to three words per line, reducing the length of the document by two pages. This draft contains the type of error commonly made by scribes who mishear similar-sounding words. For example, McRae wrote “thine elder one.” When correcting the manuscript, JS canceled “one” and inserted “son.” (Pratt, Autobiography, 48; JS et al., [Liberty, MO], to Edward Partridge and the Church, Quincy, IL, [ca. 22 Mar. 1839], Revelations Collection, CHL.)
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
Revelations Collection, 1831–ca. 1844, 1847, 1861, ca. 1876. CHL. MS 4583.
Both the rough draft and the fair copy were folded, addressed, and carried to Illinois, but it is unknown whether they were transported together.
Lyman Wight, Journal, in History of the Reorganized Church, 2:323.
The History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 8 vols. Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1896–1976.
Hyrum Smith, Diary, 30 Mar.–4 Apr. 1839. Heber C. Kimball, Theodore Turley, and Alanson Ripley were associated with the removal committee, a group charged with assisting the prisoners in Liberty and with organizing the Latter-day Saint exodus from Missouri. Ripley departed Missouri in early April and could have taken the undated letter to Illinois. (Far West Committee, Minutes, 26 Jan. 1839; Alanson Ripley, Statements, ca. Jan. 1845, Historian’s Office, JS History Documents, 1839–1860, CHL; Letter from Alanson Ripley, 10 Apr. 1839; see also Far West Committee, Minutes, 7 Apr. 1839.)
Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.
Far West Committee. Minutes, Jan.–Apr. 1839. CHL. MS 2564.
Historian’s Office. Joseph Smith History Documents, 1839–1860. CHL. CR 100 396.
Just as JS had wanted Emma Smith “to have the first reading” of the 20 March 1839 epistle, he likely wanted her to be the first to read the undated epistle. (Letter to Emma Smith, 21 Mar. 1839.)
Mary Fielding Smith, [Quincy, IL], to Hyrum Smith, 11 Apr. 1839, Mary Fielding Smith, Collection, CHL.
Smith, Mary Fielding. Collection, ca. 1832–1848. CHL. MS 2779.
See JS, Liberty, MO, to the Church and Edward Partridge, Quincy, IL, 20–25 Mar. 1839, copy, CHL; JS et al., Liberty, MO, to the Church and Edward Partridge, Quincy, IL, 20 Mar. 1839, copy, Albert Perry Rockwood, Mormon Letters and Sermons, 1838–1839, Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT; “An Extract of a Letter Written to Bishop Partridge,” Times and Seasons, July 1840, 1:131–134; and “Letter from Elder Jos. Smith,” LDS Millennial Star, Dec. 1840, 195–199.
Smith, Joseph. Letter, Liberty, MO, to the Church and Edward Partridge, Quincy, IL, 20–25 Mar. 1839. Copy. CHL.
Rockwood, Albert Perry. Mormon Letters and Sermons, 1838–1839. Western Americana Collection. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star. Manchester, England, 1840–1842; Liverpool, 1842–1932; London, 1932–1970.
In the rough draft, “which belongs” was canceled here.
In the rough draft, JS inserted “that are not of our faith.”
This language parallels the famous rhetoric of religious liberty that Thomas Jefferson used in his Notes on the State of Virginia. In the late eighteenth century, governments at the state and federal levels began passing laws and constitutional provisions such as the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. These laws and provisions, prompted largely by growing religious diversity, guaranteed the free exercise of religion first to white Protestants of all sects and gradually to white non-Protestants. This extension of religious liberty involved disestablishing previously privileged churches and ensuring that all churches enjoyed equal rights. These significant legal changes were paralleled by cultural changes, with white Americans beginning to accept coexistence with members of diverse religious groups. Although religious prejudice did not disappear, as the experience of many Catholics, Latter-day Saints, Jews, and other religious minorities attested, the formal granting of religious liberty gave rise to an unprecedented sense of ecumenism and pluralism in American society. (Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” 93–97; An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom [16 Jan. 1786], in Hening, Statutes at Large, 84–86; U.S. Constitution, amend. I; see also Beneke, Beyond Toleration, 6–10.)
Jefferson, Thomas. “Notes on the State of Virginia,” 1783–1784. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.
Hening, William Waller, ed. The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619. Vol. 12. Richmond, VA: George Cochran, 1823.
Beneke, Chris. Beyond Toleration: The Religious Origins of American Pluralism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Many Americans in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century interpreted the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1787 as providential, arguing that God inspired the framers as they drafted the charter, guiding them to make the United States an “asylum for liberty.” In 1833 JS dictated a revelation affirming that God “established the constitution of this Land by the hands of wise men” whom he “raised up unto this very purpose.” (Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 142–146; Revelation, 16–17 Dec. 1833 [D&C 101:80].)
Guyatt, Nicholas. Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607–1876. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
See Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:10–11; and Book of Mormon, 1830 ed., 44 [1 Nephi 17:29].