Sidney Rigdon, JS, et al., Petition Draft (“To the Publick”), circa 1838–1839
Source Note
, JS, et al., Petition Draft (“To the Publick”), ca. Sept. 1838–ca. Oct. 1839; handwriting of , , , , and two unidentified scribes; 112 inscribed pages with eight inserted slips of paper; JS Collection, 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 knoledge of all the facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them by the people of this state.” 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 beginning in 1838. The fifth and seventh installments reprinted passages from ’s History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons (Detroit: Dawson and Bates, 1839). In May 1840, the sixth installment drew upon ’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 the Barbarities Inflicted on Them by the Inhabitants of the State of Missouri (Cincinnati: Glezan and Shepard, 1840), a draft of which is presented here. Though no author is named on the title page of the pamphlet, Rigdon was acknowledged as responsible for that publication when it was advertised in the Times and Seasons in 1840 and 1841. Also, much of this draft is in Rigdon’s hand. 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.
The manuscript version of ’s Appeal to the American People presented here is referred to as the “petition draft” titled “To the Publick”. On 1 November 1839, Rigdon’s recently completed petition draft, endorsed by JS, Rigdon, and , was read to a conference of Saints in , Illinois, who then 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.
Although many of the events reported in ’s draft and pamphlet can be corroborated from other sources, his chronology is often inaccurate. (Consult the annotation in Histories,Volume 2 for corrections 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 his 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.
sleep in the prairies or under the rocks, in the month of November, without food or covering; and there wait and <ask> see what a kind providence might do for them. while their robbers and plunderers, were glutting themselves upon the food they had left in their houses, and gratifying their brutality by throwing it to the beast, and carrying it home home for their own use and that of their families families, and by distroying their household stuff, or rather stealing it, while the little ones whose fathers had laid layed it up carefully for their sustenance, were bewailing their condition in the open prairie without a morsel to comfort them, or a blanket to cover them.
However incredible it may appear to a civilized people, it is a fact, that there were at one time one hundred and ninety women and children, crossed a prairie of nine miles, aided by three men only; the rest having been driven away by the violence of the mob. The saints being unarmed, and the mob armed, they fell an easy prey to them
The women and children were without food or nearly so. After crossing the prairie they traveled a number of miles, in all probably about from twelve twelve miles to fifteen, miles and there stopped and waited, till their husbands and fathers found where they were and got to them them. They there built houses to winter in, but before they had continued long, the mob found and where they were, and went and drove them away, and burned their houses.
A company consisting of about two hundred, nearly all of them women and children, The got to the late in the afternoon, and could not get across that night. It commenced raining and freezing most violintly, in this deplorable condition, some of them took shelter shelter under some rocks, and the remainder of them, both small and great, had to lie out in the open prairie prairie, with nothing but the heavens to cover them, while the storm beat upon them [p. 4[a]]