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Sidney Rigdon, Appeal to the American People, 1840

Page 73

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; 1–84 pp.; Cincinnati, OH: Glezen and Shepard, stereotypers and printers, 1840. The copy used herein is held at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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 knoledge of all the facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them by the people of this .” Edward Partridge responded with an account that became the three opening installments of “A History, of the Persecution, of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints in Missouri,” an eleven-part series published in the church’s newspaper, Times and Seasons, between December 1839 and October 1840. “A History, of the Persecution” receives comprehensive treatment in volume 2 of the Histories series of The Joseph Smith Papers and is available on this website.
may have intended to tell the entire story himself, but he fell ill shortly after publication of “A History, of the Persecution” began and died on 27 May 1840. Prompted by Partridge’s illness and subsequent death, the editors of the Times and Seasons, and , sought elsewhere for source materials to continue the series. It is probable that they composed the fourth installment to provide a brief transition from Partridge’s account, which ends in 1836, and the conflicts in and adjoining counties in 1838. The fifth and seventh installments reprinted passages from ’s History of the Late Persecutions Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons (Detroit: Dawson and Bates, 1839). In May 1840, the sixth installment reprinted passages from ’s eighty-four page 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: Glezan and Shepard, 1840). More of Rigdon’s work was reprinted in the eighth through tenth installments, published from July to September 1840. The series concluded with an eleventh installment in the October 1840 issue, featuring General ’s callous speech to the Saints after their surrender at , Missouri, in November 1838.
A manuscript version of ’s Appeal to the American People, referred to as the “petition draft” titled “To the Publick” and endorsed by JS, Rigdon, and , was read to a conference of Saints in , Illinois, on 1 November 1839. The conference voted to approve its publication in the name of the church. and then collaborated to arrange for publication of the text in late 1839 and early 1840. Though no author is named on the title page, Rigdon was acknowledged as author when the pamphlet was advertised in the Times and Seasons in 1840 and 1841. JS and Elias Higbee had some expectation that funds from the sale of the publication would help defray costs of their trip to in late 1839. In July 1840, a second edition was printed by Shepard & Stearns in to raise funds for Orson Hyde and ’s mission to .
Although many of the events reported in ’s pamphlet can be corroborated from other sources, his chronology is often inaccurate. (Consult the annotation in Histories, Volume 2 for correction to portions published as part of “A History, of the Persecutions.”) However, his account contains the text of several significant documents. Among these are JS’s 5 September 1838 affidavit concerning the 7 August 1838 visit to and those of and and regarding the massacre. Consequently, though in many respects Rigdon’s document is more advocacy than history, it offers access to some 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]

    Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 103–104, 124.

    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 50

Scott. Guns were snapping in every quarter. The yellings, the howlings, the screamings, we think, were never equalled! We thought, at the time, that we might perhaps, hear something like it, if we were at the gates of perdition; hearing the howlings of the miserable; but we think, except that could exceed it, it never was equalled. After they got into the camp, there was a strong guard placed around them. It will be seen by this, how much reliance could be placed in the sacred honor of these Generals. We generally expect to find men of so high office, abide by their word, even at the risk of life. , confessed, that the persons thus betrayed, were to be let return, the next morning. Let so much suffice, for their word and their sacred honor.
The next day after they were betrayed into the camp, ordered all the persons in the County of , to give up their arms. After the arms were given up, the men were kept under guard; and all property holders, compelled to sign a Deed of Trust, signing away all their property, to defray the expenses of the war; and then they were all commanded to leave the , under pain of extermination, between that and corn-planting the next spring.
At the time of giving up the arms, there again followed another scene of brutality. The troops ran from house to house, taking all the arms they could find, from old men, that never thought of going into the field of battle; but there must not be left a single gun in the ; so the troops ran as before described, like a parcel of ravenous wolves; but their great object, in the pursuit of guns, was, to find plunder. They wanted to get into the houses, to see if there was not something they could carry off. Thus they plundered houses until they got satisfied. To secreet their property from their ravages, the people had to go and hide it in the bushes, or any where they could find a place of concealment. The troops found some of the property that had been hid. This, produced another savage operation. Those wild creatures, tearing like mad men through the bushes, ran from place to place, searching under hay-stacks—tearing up floors, hunting, pretendedly after arms; but the abundance of property plundered, testifes that they had another object in view. [p. 50]
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Editorial Title
Sidney Rigdon, Appeal to the American People, 1840
ID #
7830
Total Pages
84
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