As JS declared in a July 1843 discourse, “Civil and religious liberty— were diffused into my soul by my grandfathers. while they dandld me on their knees.” (Discourse, 9 July 1843.)

“The fathers of seventy six” is a reference to the patriots of the American Revolution. JS had previously appealed to the “patriotism of ’76” and asked a meeting of Nauvoo citizens to “let the spirit of 76 burn in their bosoms” in seeking redress for their losses in Missouri. (General Joseph Smith’s Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys, 21 Nov.–ca. 3 Dec. 1843; Minutes, 4 Dec. 1843.)

The Nauvoo City Council had recently created a memorial seeking better protection for Nauvoo. It similarly referred to America as “the Land where the Proud Eagle exultingly floats.” An eagle is part of the Great Seal of the United States. (Memorial to the Unites States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 16 Dec. 1843–12 Feb. 1844; Charles Thomson to James Madison, 1 Dec. 1801, in Hackett et al., Papers of James Madison, 289–291.)

Hackett, Mary A., J. C. A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, and Susan Holbrook Perdue, eds. The Papers of James Madison: Secretary of State Series. Vol 2, 1 August 1801–28 February 1802. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993.

The lion was a symbol of the British Empire. (“Lion,” in Complete Dictionary of Symbols, 291.)

Tresidder, Jack. Dictionary of Symbols: An Illustrated Guide to Traditional Images, Icons, and Emblems. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1998.

This insertion and all others in this document are in the handwriting of Orson Hyde.

The population of white Americans in the Oregon territory increased in the early 1840s, prompting the creation of a provisional government and strengthening American land claims in the area. (Robbins, Oregon, 51–54.)

Robbins, William G. Oregon: This Storied Land. 2nd ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020.

The Republic of Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 665–666.)

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. The Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Mexican forces had twice invaded Texas and occupied San Antonio temporarily in 1842. The two parties agreed to an armistice in June 1843 and met in February 1844 to formalize the agreement. (See Dawson, “Army of the Texas Republic,” 130–131; and Stevens, “Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic,” 289–290.)

Dawson, Joseph G., III. “Army of the Texas Republic, 1836–1845.” In Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845, edited by Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, 113–147. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017.

Stevens, Kenneth R. “The Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic, 1836–1845.” In Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845, edited by Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, 271–303. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017.

Settlers in Oregon created a provisional government in spring 1843 that included a legislature, executive committee, and court system. A territorial government in Oregon was not established until 1848. (Johnson, Founding the Far West, 51; An Act to Establish the Territorial Government of Oregon [14 Aug. 1848], Statutes at Large, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., chap. 177, pp. 323–331.)

Johnson, David Alan. Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840–1890. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, from the Organization of the Government in 1789, to March 3, 1845. . . . Edited by Richard Peters. 8 vols. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846–1867.

In 1818 the United States and Great Britain negotiated a joint occupation treaty for the northwest coast of North America. The treaty was designed to last ten years, but in 1827 the two nations extended the treaty indefinitely. By the 1840s, American politicians debated how this treaty could be broken to establish clear boundaries between the claims made by the United States and Great Britain. On 28 January 1844, Indiana congressman Robert Dale Owen, a Democrat, delivered a speech in the House of Representatives that was then published as a pamphlet. Owen, the son of utopian idealist Robert Owen, urged that the United States take a hard-line stance against British claims to Oregon, even if the result was war. He declared, “The chase and the hardships of the frontier have trained, to our hands, an army of hundred thousands, not uniformed or enrolled indeed, but with every essential of the soldier, and armed with that terrible weapon, America’s own rifle, before which the bayonetted musket of the regular—witness New Orleans!—is but as the plaything of a child.” (“Convention with Great Britain,” and “Proclamation,” American State Papers: Foreign Relations, 4:406–408; 6:1000; Oregon and the Nootka Convention: Speech of Mr. Robert Dale Owen, 8.)

American State Papers: Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the Congress of the United States. Edited by Walter Lowrie, Matthew St. Clair Clarke, Walter S. Franklin, Asbury Dickins, and James C. Allen. American State Papers: Foreign Relations. 6 vols. Washington DC: Gales and Seaton, 1832–1834, 1858–1859.

Oregon and the Nootka Convention: Speech of Mr. Robert Dale Owen, of Indiana, Delivered in the House of Representatives of the United States, Jan. 28, 1844, in Vindication of the Course Pursued by the Government of the United States, in relation to the Territory of Oregon. No publisher, not before 1844.

The pamphlet that explained JS’s platform for his presidential candidacy had likewise asserted, “Oregon belongs to this government honorably, and when we have the red man’s consent, let the union spread from the east to the west sea.” (General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, ca. 26 Jan.–7 Feb. 1844.)

In 1837 the Republic of Texas formally requested annexation by the United States, but President Martin Van Buren refused to pursue the matter because of the likelihood of political repercussions from the admission of slaveholding Texas into the union. (Crapol, John Tyler, 177.)

Crapol, Edward P. John Tyler: The Accidental President. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

The Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat who assisted the United States during the American Revolutionary War and later participated in the French Revolution, was seen as “a hero of the American Revolution and the apostle of liberty in two hemispheres” by nineteenth-century Americans. (Loveland, Emblem of Liberty, 7.)

Loveland, Anne C. Emblem of Liberty: The Image of Lafayette in the American Mind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971.