Letter to Horace Hotchkiss, 25 August 1841
Letter to Horace Hotchkiss, 25 August 1841
Source Note
Source Note
JS, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to , , New Haven Co., CT, 25 Aug. 1841; handwriting of ; address in handwriting of ; four pages; Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, Springfield, IL. Includes address, postal stamp, postal notation, and docket.
Two leaves (at one time a bifolium but now separated), each measuring 9¾ × 7¾ inches (25 × 20 cm). The letter was written on all four pages. It was then addressed, trifolded twice in letter style, sealed with a red adhesive wafer, and stamped at the Nauvoo post office. The letter was later refolded for filing.
The custodial history of the letter is unknown before it came into the possession of the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop in Chicago, Illinois, which sold it in 1972 to the Illinois State Historical Library (now the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum).
Historical Introduction
Historical Introduction
On 25 August 1841, JS wrote a letter in , Illinois, to his creditor in , Connecticut, discussing JS’s debts. JS’s letter was a response to a communication a month earlier, wherein Hotchkiss expressed his confusion and dissatisfaction that JS had not paid his debts through his , as had been arranged. Although JS commissioned Galland to obtain deeds to land in the eastern and transfer them to Hotchkiss as payment for the debts, Galland never accomplished the task. By July, Galland informed Hotchkiss that he was returning to Nauvoo. Meanwhile, JS had not been informed that Galland, upon whom JS and the were relying, had apparently abandoned his assignment. JS had even begun to place increased trust in Galland—in a May 1841 letter, he asked his primary agent, , to turn his responsibilities over to Galland.
The lack of payment particularly displeased because he had deferred the first interest payment on the debt for two years. According to the bond and promissory notes from the initial purchase in 1839, JS was to pay an annual interest of $3,000 for twenty years, after which the principal would be due. However, according to the letter featured here, JS believed that Hotchkiss had agreed to defer the first five interest payments and accept lands as payment for both the principal and the interest. Hotchkiss’s September response reveals that he remembered agreeing to accept land payments for the interest only. The miscommunication was frustrating for both parties, but in the ensuing correspondence, JS and Hotchkiss renegotiated the agreement to pay the debt with the eastern lands.
made a copy of the 25 August letter before it was sent. That copy was retained in JS’s . The original was mailed on 28 August through the post office and is the version featured here. received the letter and responded three weeks later with a letter recounting his various attempts to accommodate JS’s repayment efforts—efforts that had been unsuccessful thus far. Hotchkiss presumably showed the letter featured here to his business partner, , who then also wrote a letter to JS.
Footnotes
JS, Nauvoo, IL, to Horace Hotchkiss, New Haven, CT, 25 Aug. 1841, copy, JS Collection, CHL.
Letter from Smith Tuttle, ca. 15 Sept. 1841. A filing docket added to the letter indicates that Hotchkiss received it.
property than we are doing it. for your interest? If so, to the alternative; I therefore propose in order to avoid the perplexity and annoyance that has hitherto attended the transaction, that you come and take the premises and make the best you can of it. Or stand off and give us an oppertunity, that we may manage the concern, and enable ourselves by the management thereof to meet our engagement as was originally contemplated. We have taken a city plat at at the head of navigation for vessels of heavy towage on the most advantagious terms, The proprietors waiting on us for the payment of the plat until we can reallize the money from the Sales, leaving to ourselves, a large and liberal net proffit. We have been making every exertion and used all the means at our command [to lay] a foundation that will now begin to enable us to meet our pecuniary engagements, and no doubt in our minds, to the entire satisfaction of all those concerned, if they will but exercise a small degree of patience, and stay a resort to Coersive Measures, which would kill us in the germ, even before we can (by reason of the season) begin to bud and blossom, in order to bring forth a plentiful yield of fruit.
I am with considerations of high respect your Obt. Servt.
Joseph Smith
P.S. Since writing the above, I have had a conference with my Bro. , who informs me that when he left that he left with [p. [3]]
Source Note
Source Note
Document Transcript
Document Information
Document Information
Footnotes
Footnotes
On the south side of Warsaw, Illinois, the city of Warren had recently been platted by the church and was intended to house the influx of Latter-day Saint immigrants coming to Illinois and Iowa Territory. On 26 August 1841 the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles wrote a letter inviting immigrants to settle in Warren. (Brigham Young et al., “An Epistle of the Twelve,” Times and Seasons, 1 Sept. 1841, 2:520–521; JS History, vol. C-1, 1222; Letter from Calvin A. Warren, 31 Aug. 1841.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
TEXT: Hole in page; text supplied from retained copy of the letter in JS Collection, CHL.
Hyrum Smith returned to Nauvoo in early August. (JS History, vol. C-1 Addenda Book, 10–11.)
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