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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 41

recollect, were as follows: , Levi Merrick, , Josiah Fuller, , Alexander Campbell, , Sardius Smith, George Richards, Mr. [William] Napier, Mr. Harmer [Austin Hammer], Mr. [Simon] Cox, , , Wm. Merrick, a boy 8 or 9 years old, and three or four more whose names I do not recollect, as they were strangers to me. Among the wounded who recovered were Isaac Laney [Leany], who had six balls shot through him, two through his body, one through each arm, and the other two through his hips. Nathan K. Knight shot through the body, Mr. [William] Yokum, who was severely wounded, besides being shot through the head; , —— [George] Myers, , , and several others. Miss Mary Stedwell, while fleeing, was shot through the hand and fainting, fell over a log, into which they shot upwards of twenty balls.
To finish their work of destruction, this band of murderers, composed of men from , , , , and Carroll counties, led by some of the principal men of that section of the upper country, proceeded to rob the houses, wagons and tents, of bedding and clothing; drove off horses and wagons, leaving widows and orphans destitute of the necessaries of life; and even stripped the clothing from the bodies of the slain!
According to their own account, they fired seven rounds in this awful massacre, making upwards of fifteen hundred shots at a little company of about thirty in number!
I certify the above to be a true statement of facts relative to the above mentioned massacre, according to my best recollection.
(Signed) .
.
’ CERTIFICATE OF THE MASSACRE.
A short time previous to the massacre at , we made peace with the mob characters living near us, as declaration had been made by the leaders of the band that all persons who would not take up arms against the society should, with the Mormons, be driven out of the ; and thus drawing the division line so close that we thought it necessary to ascertain the feelings of our neighbors around us. We met them, and an agreement was entered into between us that we would live in peace let others do as they would. A large number of our company living at the at that time were emigrants who had just come into the place. On the 30th of October, 1838, without apprehending any danger whatever from the mob, we were visited by about three hundred mounted men, coming with great speed, and fell upon us with the ferocity of tigers. They were not discovered until within one hundred and fifty yards of us. They immediately commenced firing upon us, without asking us to surrender, or even giving us to understand what they wanted, only as we were taught by the sound of guns, the groans of the dying, and the screams of the women and children, being only about forty in number, and wholly unprepared to engage in any contest whatever. We were forced to take shelter under cover of an old log building, used as a blacksmith-shop, which was neither chincked or mudded. [p. 41]
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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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