According to notes made by , JS attended a meeting on “Tuesday the 12th,” apparently in , Illinois. McIntire provided no further information on the date of the meeting, but he was presumably describing a gathering that occurred on 12 January 1841, a Tuesday. According to McIntire, the meeting was held at the home of a Mr. Davis, who may have been , a merchant residing in Nauvoo. The meeting was likely an installment of a weekly lyceum at which attendees gathered to discuss secular and religious topics. At the meeting, , , and one or two others addressed subjects that were apparently predetermined. In response to these speeches, JS remarked on vice, war, the role repentance and will play in God’s eternal judgment of humankind, and the varied durations of time that humans will suffer before being granted salvation. McIntire apparently took his notes during the meeting.
McIntire’s account of this meeting held “Tuesday the 12th” directly follows another account describing a Nauvoo meeting in January 1840, but 1840 appears to be an incorrect year because JS was in the Philadelphia area in January 1840 and McIntire did not live in Nauvoo at that time. McIntire, recording at the first of a new year, may have meant to write 1841 instead of 1840. (Historical Introduction to Letter to Emma Smith, 20–25 Jan. 1840.)
According to records associated with the store he operated in the area, Davis resided in the vicinity of Commerce, Illinois, as early as 1836. (Lyon, “Account Books of the Amos Davis Store at Commerce, Illinois,” 241.)
1st. subject education by Mr. [blank] he said a people whose minds were Culavated [cultivated] & Man[n]ers Refined By Education that they had Great & precious E[n]joyment that Ignorant had Not
2d. subject was Vice by he said Murder theft & the Like come from indulgances in this principle—
Joseph— said that some things ware Eavils that did not come under the Head of vise; for instance one Nation would Come against [an]other it would be an Eavil on the Nation was Come aganst yet it would not be a vice for [p. [5]]