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Sidney Rigdon, Appeal to the American People, 1840, Second Edition

Page 53

Source Note

[], An Appeal to the American People: Being an Account of the Persecutions of the Church of Latter Day Saints; and of the Barbarities Inflicted on Them by the Inhabitants of the State of Missouri, second edition; i-vi, 7–60 pp.; Cincinnati, OH: Shepard and Stearns, 1840. The copy used herein is held at CHL.

Historical Introduction

While incarcerated at , Missouri, in March 1839, JS addressed a letter to the church “at Illinois and scattered abroad and to in particular,” instructing the Saints to gather up “a knowledge of all the facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them by the people of this ”. Among the earliest responses to JS’s call was ’s pamphlet, An Appeal to the American People: Being an Account of the Persecutions of the Church of Latter Day Saints; and of the Barbarities Inflicted on Them by the Inhabitants of the State of Missouri (Cincinnati: Glezen and Shepard, 1840).
A manuscript draft of this pamphlet, simply titled “To the Publick” was presented to a conference of church members at , Illinois, on 1 November 1839. The conference voted to approve the manuscript and authorized its publication on behalf of the church. The pamphlet, when published, carried the endorsement of JS, , and as “Presidents of said Church.”
and collaborated on the publication of the text, which was available in print by May 1840. Though no author is named on the title page, was acknowledged as author in an 1840 Times and Seasons newspaper article, and when the pamphlet was advertised in that church periodical in 1841. JS and held some expectation that funds from the sale of An Appeal would eventually help defray costs of their late-1839 trip to .
By July 1840, and had been authorized to produce a second, revised edition to be published by Shepard & Stearns in . Page related some of the circumstances surrounding its publication and circulation in a letter sent to JS, “. . . at [Ohio] we parted for a few days . . . Elder Hyde went to Cincinnati where in my absince he published a second Edition of the ‘Apeal to the American people’ (2000 copies)[.] when I arrived the work was about completed[.] after disposing of as many of them as posible and suplying the market about cincinnati and the adjacient country he left me with some fourteen or fifteen hundred on hand, to dispose of” (John E. Page, Philadelphia, PA, to JS et al., Nauvoo, IL, 1 Sept. 1841, JS Collection, CHL). Funds from this printing were to be for the express purpose of subsidizing Hyde and Page’s imminent mission to in Palestine.
The second edition was essentially a lightly edited reprint of the first, with a four-page “Publisher’s Preface” added. In the preface, and noted the purpose of the publication, explained the severe hardships imposed by the persecutions upon Page’s own family, provided a detailed account of a vision experienced by Hyde, and expressed enthusiasm about the prospects of the mission. The preface also contained a copy of an official letter of appointment and commendation for Hyde and Page from an April 1840 church conference at , Illinois, signed by JS, and a letter of reference from , governor of .
Although many of the events reported in both editions of ’s pamphlet can be corroborated from other sources, his chronology of events is often inaccurate. However, Rigdon’s account does contain the texts of several significant documents. Among these are JS’s September 1838 affidavit concerning the 7 August 1838 visit to and those of and regarding the massacre. Consequently, though in many respects Rigdon’s document from a historical perspective is more advocacy than history, it offers access to some important material not readily found elsewhere.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Letter to the Church and Edward Partridge, 20 March 1839 [D&C 123:1, 6].

  2. [2]

    Sidney Rigdon, JS, et al., Petition Draft (“To the Publick”), circa 1838–1839.

  3. [3]

    “A History, of the Persecution,” Times and Seasons, May 1840, 1:99; Advertisement, Times and Seasons, 1 Jan. 1841, 1:272.

    Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.

  4. [4]

    Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 1:103–104.

    Crawley, Peter. A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. 3 vols. Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997–2012.

Asterisk (*) denotes a "featured" version, which includes an introduction and annotation. *Statement, circa 1 November 1839–B *Affidavit, 5 September 1838 [ State of Missouri v. JS et al. for Riot ]

Page 26

appearance at the circuit court. Thus were the laws of the land put at defiance, to save from punishment a mob[b]er and plunderer, and that by the judge of the circuit court, who was bound by oath to do otherwise. There were three persons arrested, the principal of which was , the others were only hired in his service.
This arrest took place on the 9th day of September, 1838, on the first day of the week, and it was in the same week that Generals , and , went with their troops to . It was during the operation of this mob the Saints had a fair oportunity of trying the honesty of the civil officers of . An old gentleman from by the name of Hoops was moving into ; he had to pass through Millport, the residence of the principal leaders of the mob; , whose name has been mentioned before, stopped his team forcibly in the road, abused and insulted the family. Mr. Hoops was an entire stranger in the —he was detained a number of hours before he could get away from them. The old man went to a justice of the peace and got a states warrant for him, gave it to an officer, and had it served on him as they said, and had a day appointed for the trial.—When the day came was not there, but another man was permitted to answer for him—and after the witnesses were all sworn, and the facts of the unlawful detention proven, the justice pronounced no cause of action. , in the meantime, had gone to Carroll county to join another mob, which had met to drive out a settlement of the Saints which had settled in that county. The name of the justice was Covington. It was found that in every county in upper the laws would not be put in force against the mob. The civil officers would not regard their oaths, but in open violation of them, would acquit the mob, notwithstanding the mob would boast of their crimes in their presence. Up till this time, there was not a military or civil officer in who had been called upon to quell this gang of plunderers, that would abide by his oath of office, from the down. When the civil officers were called upon they would give decisions the most barefaced violations of law ever given by mortals, so much so that they knew they were violating their oaths when they did it. When the military were called upon, instead of bringing the mob to justice, they would call them militia; which could be for no other purpose but to keep them from the punishment justly due to their crimes. After the mob had been honorably dismissed as militia and ordered home, they took up their line of march directly to , in Carroll county, to drive out a settlement of the Saints in that place; the history of which settlement we shall hereafter give.
Part of the mob which was at was from Carroll county. Their principal leader was , commonly called —he was a Presbyterian preacher. There was another Presbyterian preacher with the Carroll county mob by the name of Hancock. After the mob had departed for Carroll county, the inhabitants of that had belonged to the mob, began to make proposals to the Saints, either to sell or buy. Two committees were appointed for this purpose, one on each part; after some arrangement in relation to the matter, the committee on the part of the Saints agreed to buy out all the possessions which the mob had in , [p. 26]
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Editorial Title
Sidney Rigdon, Appeal to the American People, 1840, Second Edition
ID #
7509
Total Pages
62
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