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Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, circa 30 October 1839–27 January 1840
Source Note
Source Note
JS, , and , Memorial, to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, , ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; handwriting of and four unidentified scribes; twenty-eight pages; Records of the U.S. Senate, Record Group 46, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC. Includes endorsement.
Twenty-eight leaves measuring 11¾ × 8 inches (30 × 20 cm), originally bound with three stitches of white thread; only a small remnant of the thread remains with the document. There are thirty-five printed horizontal lines on the recto and verso of each leaf. The scribes left the verso of each leaf blank except the verso of the final leaf, which contains an endorsement in the handwriting of an unidentified scribe. The document was written in black ink with several insertions in blue ink and contains pagination in an unidentified hand.
Senator presented the memorial to the Senate on behalf of JS, , and on 28 January 1840. The Senate sent the document to its Committee on the Judiciary on 12 February 1840. That committee delivered its report on 4 March 1840, and on 23 March 1840 the Senate accepted the committee’s resolution to cease consideration of the memorial. The memorial was filed with other documents received by the Twenty-Sixth Congress until that collection was transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration sometime after the administration was created in 1934. Since then, the National Archives and Records Administration has had continuous custody of the document.
Footnotes
- [1]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. 1840, 138.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
- [2]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 Feb. 1840, 173.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
- [3]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 4 and 23 Mar. 1840, 215, 259–260.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Historical Introduction
Historical Introduction
On 28 January 1840, Senator of presented to the Senate a memorial signed by JS, , and —the ’s delegation to the federal government. This memorial, dated 27 January, petitioned the federal government for redress and reparations for the property and lives lost when the Latter-day Saints were driven from in 1838 and 1839.
The memorial summarized how the Saints were treated in from the time of their arrival in in 1831 to their expulsion from the state in 1838 and 1839. It detailed how, in six counties over nearly eight years, the Saints’ property was destroyed or confiscated by their fellow Missourians, a group the memorial referred to as “the Mob.” The memorial additionally chronicled the abuse these vigilantes, with the assistance of the state militia, meted out against church members. The document also described the October 1838 massacre of seventeen Mormon men and boys at in , Missouri. The authors of the memorial declared that the persecution church members experienced was motivated by intolerance of the Saints’ religious beliefs, jealousy of their economic prosperity, and apprehension over their growing political influence. The memorial described instances in which church members took up arms against their opponents in self-defense, which they believed was permissible under state and local laws. Although it acknowledged that some Saints had acted in a way unbecoming to Americans, the memorial declared that such persons were exceptions and that most Saints were admirable citizens.
Throughout the memorial, the authors insisted on their loyalty to the , their respect for the Constitution, and their belief that constitutional rights should be afforded to American citizens in any state in the country. The memorial also appealed to a nostalgic sense of the country’s founding era. For instance, it emphasized—albeit mistakenly—that one of the victims of the attack at was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. It also invoked democratic principles when it claimed that part of the violence in arose after Missourians denied suffrage to church members.
The memorial cited the many failed appeals the church and its members had made to the courts and government of , as well as the circumstances that threatened the Saints’ safety if they continued to seek redress through those legal channels. For example, the memorial stated that church members were forced to leave Missouri after Governor ordered that the Saints be driven from the state or exterminated. Accordingly, the delegation stated in the memorial that redress from the Congress was the church’s final option and that it would accept Congress’s decision whether or not it favored the Saints.
The memorial did not explicitly ask for monetary reparations, but it did set forth what JS, , and thought was an appropriate dollar amount for such an action should Congress decide in favor of the Saints. The three men declared that property worth $2 million had been damaged or stolen by vigilantes and militiamen in . They claimed that this amount could be validated by calculating property values tallied in affidavits they were in the process of gathering, some of which accompanied the memorial itself. In private correspondence, church leaders stated that they felt JS, Rigdon, and Higbee had provided a low estimate of the actual damages.
Although JS, , and signed the document, its primary authorship is unclear. The church’s delegation appears to have been involved throughout the process of its creation. The earliest extant draft of the memorial, titled “Petition to United States Congress” and referred to here as the “petition draft,” was in Higbee’s hand, possibly indicating Higbee was an author. Although the congressional delegation aided the church’s delegation in drafting the memorial, what impact these political leaders had on the memorial’s language is also unclear.
The memorial was drafted over several months, but it is unclear when the church delegation began creating the document. The petition draft was composed by with corrections inserted by and an unidentified scribe. Higbee was appointed to the delegation on 5 October 1839, so he likely did not start the draft until after that date. The first portion of the version of the memorial submitted to Congress was composed before the delegation arrived in , as evidenced by the presence of ’s handwriting on the first eight pages of the final draft. Fullmer, a resident of , Illinois, did not travel to Washington while JS, , and Higbee were there. Fullmer likely acted as scribe when the delegation stopped in Quincy while en route to the national capital. The presence of catchwords in the final draft suggests that Fullmer was copying Higbee’s petition—and at times editing the text—with the aim of preparing the memorial for printing at a later date.
The date on which the draft of the memorial was finished is also unknown. After the delegation started consulting with senators and representatives from on 5 December 1839, the Illinois leaders recommended “that a memorial and petition be drawn up in a concise manner.” The partially written document JS and brought with them to was the version that was finished by 27 January 1840. JS and others left the capital around 20 January in order to visit church members in and , suggesting that the memorial may have been complete by that date and that the delegation was waiting to return to Washington until they received news that the Senate had acquired the petition.
The memorial contains the handwriting of and four unidentified scribes. In the notes to this transcript, the unidentified scribes are recognized in the order that their handwriting first appears in the document: first unidentified scribe, second unidentified scribe, and so forth. The majority of the text is in the handwriting of Fullmer and the third unidentified scribe. The handwriting of the first, second, and fourth unidentified scribes are found primarily in the cancellations and insertions made throughout the text. Whereas the other scribes wrote in black ink, the second unidentified scribe wrote in blue ink.
The final version of the memorial submitted to Congress differed from the petition draft in several substantive ways. In some instances, scribes inserted quotation marks around sentences in the final version that were not rendered as direct quotes in the petition draft. Within existing sentences, language was inserted that emphasized the Saints’ role as victims of violence and legal injustice, as was language that more dramatically depicted the cruelty of the Saints’ oppressors. Furthermore, the final version of the memorial valued the Saints’ lost or damaged property in at $120,000, whereas the petition draft valued the same at $175,000. Instances in which the text of the final version of the memorial differed substantively from that of the petition draft are noted in the annotation herein.
In addition to the memorial itself, submitted supporting documents to the Senate. These documents apparently included two pamphlets, ’s Facts relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, from the State of Missouri and ’s History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons. Young also submitted affidavits signed by church members that documented and itemized the loss of life and property sustained at the hands of the vigilantes and militiamen.
After submitted the memorial to the Senate, Senator of spoke out against it, declaring that “a sovereign State seemed about to be put on trial before the Senate of the , and he was entirely opposed to the jurisdiction.” Senator John Norvell of then motioned that the Senate table the document, adding in the debate that ensued that he intended “that it may lie there forever.” However, Young prevailed upon the Senate to hear the memorial in its entirety. After it was read, senators of , William Campbell Preston of South Carolina, and of Kentucky weighed in on the debate. Ultimately, the Senate voted in favor of Norvell’s motion. On 12 February, the Senate referred the memorial to its Committee on the Judiciary for further consideration, and on 17 February, Senator Young submitted “additional documents” to accompany the memorial. The judiciary committee returned the memorial to the Senate with the committee’s corresponding report on 4 March 1840. Though it is not explicitly stated in the Senate records, the report suggests that the committee had been principally tasked with determining whether the federal government had jurisdiction in this case. The report stated that the committee members “have not considered themselves justified in inquiring into the truth or falsehood of the facts charged in the petition” and that “the petitioners must seek relief in the courts of judicature of the State of Missouri, or of the United States.” The report also included a recommendation that the committee be discharged from considering the memorial any further. The Senate passed the recommendation as a resolution on 23 March 1840.
Footnotes
- [1]
The memorial described Thomas McBride as a veteran of the Revolutionary War. His son stated, however, that McBride was born in 1776. (McBride, Autobiography, 17, 29–30.)
McBride, James. Autobiography, 1874–1876. Microfilm. CHL. MS 8201.
- [2]
Sometime after he started clerking for JS in 1843, Thomas Bullock prepared a register of affidavits for property church members lost in Missouri during the 1830s. This register contained 491 bills of damages, which totaled $1,381,084.51½. It appears, however, that Bullock’s register omitted several affidavits prepared by church members. (Thomas Bullock, “Bills,” Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845, CHL; Johnson, “Missouri Redress Petitions,” 32–34.)
Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845. CHL. MS 2703.
Johnson, Clark V. “The Missouri Redress Petitions: A Reappraisal of Mormon Persecutions in Missouri.” BYU Studies 26 (Spring 1986): 31–44.
- [3]
- [4]
JS et al., “Petition to United States Congress for Redress,” ca. 29 Nov. 1839, JS Collection, CHL.
- [5]
The church delegates arrived in Quincy on 30 October 1839 and continued their journey on 1 November 1839. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 29 Oct.–1 Nov. 1839, 66.)
- [6]
A catchword is placed in the bottom corner of a printed or handwritten page and is the word that appears first on the subsequent page. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century printers often used catchwords as a way of ensuring that they composed pages in the correct order. The plans to print the memorial were described in communications to the Saints. (Rumonds, Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress, 2:975; Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography, 53; Letter from Elias Higbee, 24 Mar. 1840; see also Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 Mar. 1841, 220–221.)
Rummonds, Richard-Gabriel. Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress. 2 vols. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004.
Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2009.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
- [7]
- [8]
Orson Pratt recorded that JS arrived in Philadelphia by 21 January 1840 and that Higbee followed four or five days later. Rigdon and Robert D. Foster remained in Washington DC, where Foster preached and waited to send word to JS and Higbee once Senator Young submitted the memorial to the Senate. (Orson Pratt to Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt, 6 Jan. 1840, in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, 1:61; Letter from Robert D. Foster, 24 Dec. 1839; Letter to Robert D. Foster, 30 Dec. 1839.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
- [9]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 17 Feb. 1840, 179.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
- [10]
John P. Greene, Facts relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, from the State of Missouri, under the “Exterminating Order” (Cincinnati: R. P. Brooks, 1839); Parley P. Pratt, History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons (Detroit: Dawson and Bates, 1839). In a hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Higbee directed the attention of the committee members to accounts and affidavits reprinted in these two pamphlets. (Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–A; Letter from Elias Higbee, 21 Feb. 1840.)
- [11]
According to the Senate journal, on 17 February 1840, Young submitted to the committee additional documents, which almost certainly included the affidavits JS, Rigdon, and Higbee brought with them from Commerce, Illinois, and several that church leaders had recently sent to them by mail. It is unclear, however, how many affidavits were submitted with the memorial in 1840. In preparing to leave Washington DC in March 1840, Higbee collected the documents supporting the memorial to bring back to Commerce. In 1840 and 1842, subsequent church delegations to the federal government submitted new memorials to Congress and attached to these documents several affidavits, including at least some of those that had been originally submitted by this first delegation as well as several that were prepared by church members in 1839 and 1840 but were not sent to Washington in time to be included with this memorial. Therefore, among the hundreds of affidavits housed in the collections of the National Archives and in the Church History Library, there is no clear indication which were submitted with the first memorial, which were submitted with subsequent petitions, and which were never submitted to Congress at all. (Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 17 Feb. 1840, 179; Letter from Elias Higbee, 24 Mar. 1840; Minutes and Discourse, 3–5 Oct. 1840; Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., 21 Dec. 1840, 85; 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., 10 May 1842, 799; “Latter-day Saints,” Alias Mormons: The Petition of the Latter-day Saints, Commonly Known as Mormons, House of Representatives doc. no. 22, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess. [1840]; see also the petitions and affidavits housed in Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845, CHL; and in Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives, Washington DC.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Journal, of the House of Representatives, of the State of Missouri, at the First Session of the Tenth General Assembly, Begun and Held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Nineteenth Day of November, in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Eight. Jefferson City, MO: Calvin Gunn, 1839.
“Latter-day Saints,” Alias Mormons: The Petition of the Latter-day Saints, Commonly Known as Mormons. House of Representatives doc. no. 22, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1840).
Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845. CHL. MS 2703.
Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives / Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Judiciary during the 27th Congress. Committee on the Judiciary, Petitions and Memorials, 1813–1968. Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789–2015. National Archives, Washington DC. The LDS records cited herein are housed in National Archives boxes 40 and 41 of Library of Congress boxes 139–144 in HR27A-G10.1.
- [12]
“Twenty-Sixth Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington DC), 29 Jan. 1840, [2].
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.
- [13]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. 1840, 138; “Twenty-Sixth Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington DC), 29 Jan. 1840, [2].
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.
- [14]
Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 149 (1840); Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 646, 833, 1452, 1664, 1763–1764, 1800; “Twenty-Sixth Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington DC), 29 Jan. 1840, [2]. In their respective remarks, Clay and Preston urged the Senate to refer the memorial for consideration by the Committee on the Judiciary. Benton advocated for the tabling of the memorial but “only for a day or two.”
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005, the Continental Congress, September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States, from the First through the One Hundred Eighth Congresses, March 4, 1789, to January 3, 2005, inclusive. Edited by Andrew R. Dodge and Betty K. Koed. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.
- [15]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. 1840, 138. The breakdown of votes for and against Norvell’s motion is unknown.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
- [16]
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 and 17 Feb. 1840, 173, 179.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
- [17]
Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 Mar. 1840; see also McBride, “When Joseph Smith Met Martin Van Buren,” 156.
McBride, Spencer W. Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
- [18]
Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 Mar. 1840; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 23 Mar. 1840, 259–260. Neither the Senate journal nor the Congressional Globe provides details of the Senate vote on this resolution. The Senate journal merely indicates that the resolution passed, and the Congressional Globe makes no mention of the resolution in its report on the business Congress attended to on that date. (See Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 281 [1840].)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
violation of every legal right, there is provided a legal remedy. What then we would respectfully ask, is the remedy for these violations of right in the persons & property of the Mormons? Shall they apply to the Legislature of the State of for redress? They have done so. They have petitioned, and their petitions have been treated with silence and contempt. Shall they apply to the Federal Courts in ? They are not permitted to go there; and their juries would be made up of citizens of that state with all their prejudices against them. And <But> if they could apply to the courts of ; whom shall they sue? The final order for their destruction <expulsion> and extermination, it is true, was granted <issued> by the of the State; but is he amenable? and if so, is he not wholly irresponsible, so far as indemnity is concerned? Will not the great mass of our persecutors justify themselves under that order? For ourselves we see no redress, unless it be awarded by the Congress of the . And here we make our solemn, last appeal, as American citizens—as Christians—and as men. To your decision, favorable or otherwise, we will submit; and if it should unfortunately be against us, we will return to our brethren in silence, and without a murmur; in the full belief, if our grievances do not admit of remedy, that it is not the fault of your honourable Bodies; and that as Christians it is our duty to bear them with patience; until the Great Disposer of all human events shall in his own good time remove us from these persecutions to that promised [p. 27]
Source Note
Source Note
Document Transcript
Document Information
Document Information
Footnotes
Footnotes
- [174]
The right of access to the courts is presumed in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Missouri’s constitution explicitly guaranteed the people’s right “to apply to those vested with the powers of government for redress of grievances, by petition or remonstrance.” (U.S. Constitution, amend. V; Missouri Constitution of 1820, art. 13, sec. 3.)
- [175]
Edward Partridge et al., Petition, 10 Dec. 1838, copy, Edward Partridge, Papers, CHL.
Partridge, Edward. Papers, 1818–1839. CHL. MS 892.
- [176]
The petition draft does not include the phrase “in Missouri.” (JS et al., “Petition,” ca. 29 Nov. 1839, p. 35.)
Cancellation and insertion in blue ink in the handwriting of second unidentified scribe.
- [177]
The petition draft does not include the word “final” in this sentence. (JS et al., “Petition,” ca. 29 Nov. 1839, p. 35.)
Cancellation and insertion in blue ink in the handwriting of second unidentified scribe.
Cancellation and insertion in blue ink in the handwriting of second unidentified scribe.
- [178]
From this point on, the text of this document is not included in the petition draft. That draft closes: “Is not this a place of justification [for the] acts of i[n]dividuals done in pursuance of that order? If not before whom shall the mormons institute a trial? Should they summon a Jury of the individuals who composed the Mob An appeal to them were in vain. They dare [not] go to Missouri to institute a suit. Their lives would be in danger.” (JS et al., “Petition,” ca. 29 Nov. 1839, p. 35.)
- [179]
“The Great Disposer of All Human Events” was a common reference to God in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century America. The name was commonly used to imply that God had a plan for America—the land and its people—that would unfold along a divinely ordained timetable. (McBride, Pulpit and Nation, 24–26; Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 37–38.)
McBride, Spencer W. Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
Guyatt, Nicholas. Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607–1876. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.