Administrative Records, Volume 1, Part 2 Introduction: February–May 1845
Part 2: February–May 1845
Early in the morning on 28 June 1844,
arrived
in with the news
that JS and had been killed the previous day at . The news
devastated the Latter-day Saints.
recorded that “sorrow & gloom was pictured in every countenance
and one universal scene of lamentation pervaded the City.” On 3 July, Clayton retrieved the
records of the Council of Fifty that he had buried more than a week
earlier according to JS’s instructions and discovered they had been
damaged. The next day, Independence Day, Clayton wrote that American
“liberty is fled” and that the nation was “stained with the blood of
innocence.” Notwithstanding their shock and
grief over the loss of the Smith brothers, Latter-day Saints
reorganized the church under the leadership of the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles in August 1844. The
reorganization of the Council of Fifty did not take place until
February 1845. Events during the
intervening months provide essential context for understanding the
council’s activities from February to May 1845.
At the time of the murders of JS and , most members of the Council of Fifty were on
electioneering missions, primarily in the eastern . As these
scattered members of the council learned the news over the next few
weeks, most immediately returned to , including a
majority of the Quorum of the Twelve. Indeed, on 28 June a small group in Nauvoo
decided to send and , both
members of the Council of Fifty, to the eastern states to call “the
twelve home immediately.”
Although there had been rumors earlier, apparently the first any of the
apostles in the East learned of the murders was on 9 July, when and obtained copies
of a Boston Times account “containing the solumn
& awful information,” though they remained unsure of its
truthfulness. On 12
July, Kimball, then in , learned in a letter from his wife that JS and had traveled to , and he was thus convinced “that the Brethren
ware dead O Lord what feelings we had.” On 16
July, Woodruff received letters from confirming the
deaths, and by then some of the apostles had heard also from either
or .
, who was in , New Hampshire, with , had heard rumors but did not credit them
until he received a letter on 16
July. Young later recounted the shock: “I felt then as I
never felt bef[ore] . . . I felt as tho my head wo[ul]d. crack.” He momentarily wondered if
the deaths of JS and Hyrum Smith meant that “the P[riesthood] [was]
taken from the Earth.” An answer to his question, Young recalled,
came “like a clap— the keys of the K[ingdom] r [are] here,” meaning
with him and the other apostles.
and left for where, on
18 July, they joined , , and . Woodruff wrote an “Epistle of the Twelve” to
be published in the Prophet, a church newspaper,
instructing “the Elders who have families in to go
immediately to them & for all the authorities of the church to
assemble at Nauvoo for a council.”
Later that day Young gave perhaps his first public comments on JS’s death: “be of good cheer. . .
. When God sends a man to do a work all the devils in hell cannot
kill him untill he gets through his work, So with Joseph He prepared
all things gave the keys to men on the earth and said I may be soon
taken from you.”
After apostle joined the other men, the six
apostles started for
on 24 July. left the company to visit family in , Ohio, but the others arrived in Nauvoo on 6 August.
’s party joined the four apostles
already in Nauvoo— and , who had been with
the Smiths in jail, and
and , both of whom had
already returned from electioneering missions. Before the arrival of Young’s
company, the apostles in Nauvoo had counseled the Saints to wait for
the Twelve to return before making decisions regarding the
leadership of the church. Among those requesting action was Council
of Fifty member , who urged the
apostles in Nauvoo to call together the council to organize the
church soon after JS’s death. In addition to attending
to the business of the church, Richards helped fulfill an
assignment given him by the council by drafting a letter in mid-July to president asking for resumption of negotiations for a
Mormon colony in Texas and sending him copies of the Book of
Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and Parley
P.
Pratt’s Voice of
Warning.
On 3 August, three days before the
arrival of ’s company, arrived in from ,
where he had moved in late June on assignment from the
Council of Fifty to establish his residency so that he could be the
vice presidential candidate in JS’s presidential
campaign. At a public meeting
the next day, Rigdon proposed that he be the “guardian” of the
church in JS’s stead. Nauvoo stake president , sympathetic to Rigdon’s claims, appointed
a conference for 8 August to vote
on the guardianship proposal. Though an active participant in the
Council of Fifty, Rigdon had largely been out of public view for
much of the Nauvoo era, had generally not functioned in his role as
a counselor in the First Presidency, and was not included in other
regular councils of church leaders. By contrast, for the previous
three years—from the time JS had called a “special conference” on
16 August 1841, soon after
many of the apostles returned from their quorum mission to the
British Isles—the apostles had worked
increasingly closely with JS and to oversee the
“business of the church.”
Church leaders met on 7 August in the
before the planned public meeting the next day. , speaking first, declared: “It was shewn to me
that this church must be built up to Joseph, and that all the blessings
we receive must come through him. I have been ordained a spokesman
to Joseph, and I must come to
and see that the church was governed in a proper manner. . . . I
propose to be a Guardian to the people.” responded by saying he did not care who led the
church, “but one thing I must know, and that is what God says about
it. I have the keys and the means of obtaining the mind of God on
the subject. . . . Joseph conferred upon our heads all the keys and
powers belonging to the Apostleship, which he himself held before he
was taken away, and no man or set of men can get between Joseph and
the Twelve in this world or the world to come. How often has Joseph
said to the Twelve, I have laid the foundation; and you must build
thereon, for upon your shoulders the kingdom rests.” The meeting
ended with an agreement that the Saints and the quorums of the
priesthood would assemble on 13
August for a special conference.
The Twelve now saw the 8 August meeting,
held in a near the , as a prayer meeting and most did not attend.
, however, used the occasion to present his case.
After Rigdon’s unexpected remarks, stood. Saying that he regretted the spirit of being
in a hurry, Young commented, “I wanted to sit and weep 30 days
before the priesthood do business.” He called for all the Saints to
reassemble in the afternoon to address the church business that had
been scheduled to occur five days later.
In the afternoon session, argued that the apostles stood
next in authority to JS, from whom they
had received the necessary authority for church governance. He
pledged that the apostles would build on the foundation laid by JS.
Young wrote in his journal that he “lade before them the order of
the church and the Power of the Preasthood, after a long and laboras
talk of a bout two [h]ours in the open air with the wind blowing,
the church was of one hart and one mind they wanted the twelve to
lead the church as Br Joseph had dun in his day.” When Young moved for a vote regarding
’s proposal, Rigdon insisted that
a vote for the Twelve come first. outlined
the proposition before the congregation: “do the Saints want the
Twelve to Stand as the head, the first Presidency of the church and
at the head of this Kingdom in all the world, Stand next to Joseph,
walk up into their Calling, hold the Keys of this Kingdom All that
are in favor of this in all the congregation of the Saints manifest
it by holding up the right hand.” Woodruff recorded, “Their was [a]
sea of hands a universal vote.”
At first seemed to accept this decision.
Though invited, he did not attend any of the councils of the Twelve
and other church leaders, but he preached at public meetings. The
apostles received reports, however, that he was privately seeking to
“draw off a party.” In late August they summoned Rigdon and
, perhaps his most
prominent supporter, to a council. Rigdon declined to attend, but
Marks insisted that many of the things the apostles had heard were
not true. In early September, when pressed by in a private meeting, Rigdon stated that “he had
Power and authority above the twelve did not concider him self bound
to thir councel.” When three of the apostles then visited
him to demand his ministerial license, Rigdon threatened to “expose
the Counsels of the Church and Publish all he knew against us he
knew the Church had not Been Led By the Spirit to [of] God for Long
time.” The Council of Fifty was presumably one
of the councils Rigdon was threatening to “expose,” since it was the
only council meeting in the last months of JS’s life that Rigdon regularly
attended.
On 5 September, and both denounced
at separate public
meetings. By then the Quorum of the Twelve had
decided to bring charges against Rigdon in a public ecclesiastical
trial. When the trial convened on 8
September, Young explained that the apostles would act as
witnesses, not judges; the case would be tried by a council under
Bishop . Young and
other apostles charged Rigdon with setting up a rival church
organization and with performing unauthorized ordinations and
temple-related rituals. Young, Hyde, , , , and —all members
of the Council of Fifty—testified against Rigdon. Hyde stated that
JS had given the apostles “all the
keys, and all the ordinances . . . and now says he on your shoulder
will the responsibility of leading this people rest, for the Lord is
going to let me rest a while.” Rigdon declined to appear at the trial,
but , after noting that church trials
always provided an opportunity for someone to speak in defense of
the accused, addressed some of the accusations. At the conclusion of
some six hours of meeting, Rigdon and several of his followers
(though not Marks) were unanimously excommunicated. Two days later
Rigdon left for .
and the Quorum of the Twelve were not the only
claimants to authority. In late August, Moses
Smith arrived in
from
with information about , who
claimed that shortly before his death JS had, in response to revelation,
written a letter appointing Strang as JS’s successor. Presenting
himself as a new prophet with new revelations, Strang was gathering
followers in Voree, Wisconsin. The apostles denounced
Strang’s letter as a forgery and published a notice announcing
Strang’s excommunication and warning of his attempts at “leading the
saints astray.”
and his followers had little impact in through 1844. But his movement gained strength in
some outlying areas, and in 1845
several of his adherents sought followers in the Mormon heartland.
and his followers also had less
influence in Nauvoo than they had in some of the eastern branches.
Both Rigdon and Strang also later sent emissaries to , which had the largest
concentration of Latter-day Saints outside . Church members who supported JS’s late Nauvoo initiatives and
teachings tended to support the Twelve, while those who opposed some
of his measures tended to seek alternatives. A key issue for
detractors of the Twelve—including Rigdon, Strang, and many of their
followers—was plural marriage. The apostles and other church leaders
refused to acknowledge plural marriage publicly even as the practice
expanded, under the direction of the Twelve, among the Latter-day
Saints between JS’s death and the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo.
As events unfolded with and his supporters, two other
members of the Council of Fifty also showed themselves unwilling to
act in concert with the Twelve. Both and rejected
the priority of finishing the
,
insisted that the best path was to leave the city, and drew off
people and resources from Nauvoo against the counsel of the Twelve.
Despite ’s public denunciation of Wight’s
plans, he and the other apostles authorized Wight to leave Nauvoo
“with his compa[n]y . . . and carry out the instructions he has
received from Joseph,” a reference to Wight’s
council-approved plan to lead a company from the
to . On 24 August the Twelve and others
decided that Wight’s company should go “north into the Colder
Country to build a branch” rather than to . Young warned that aside from
the “Pine Company . . . not any other soul has the consent of the
Twelve to go with them.” Taking more men and supplies with
him than the Twelve had authorized, Wight left Nauvoo on 28 August with plans to winter in
before
traveling to Texas the next spring. When a messenger from Young
warned Wight in September that he
had violated his instructions, Wight dismissed the authority of the
other apostles and stated that “the Lord would not accept of the
Temple when it was built.” Although
Young did not at that time censure Wight, the Twelve withdrew
fellowship from Emmett, who likewise may have seen his plan to take
a party from Nauvoo “into the wilderness” as fulfilling an
assignment he had received in the Council of Fifty or from JS. Later in September, Emmett and his recruits
departed from Nauvoo, contrary to the instructions of the Quorum of
the Twelve.
In the days, weeks, and months after the 8
August sustaining vote of the Saints, and the Twelve moved vigorously to set the church
in order. On 9 August the Twelve
appointed bishops and , both members of the Council of Fifty, to
act as trustees-in-trust for the church, overseeing temporal affairs
so the Twelve could “attend to the spiritual affers.” Young also
proposed “righting up the quorums, giving every one his place.” JS’s presence “super[c]eded the
necessity” of a more perfect organization, Young explained, but in
his absence all the quorums must be put in order. Soon after, church
leaders discussed establishing better oversight of branches in the
outside of
Nauvoo and assigned to
travel to to oversee church
affairs in the British Isles. These councils indicated that Young
would be less formally involved in political and financial matters
than JS had been; whereas JS served as mayor and as
trustee-in-trust, Young would do neither.
These meetings also established the pattern that the church would be
administered through councils, some involving only the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles and others consisting of the Twelve and other church
leaders. saw the 8 August vote as authorizing the
quorum to govern the church. He wrote in
his journal in August something that
would be true for months to come: “we continued our councels from
day to day to regulate the Buisness of the Church.” Because of his role as
recorder, frequently attended
the weekly councils consisting of members of the Twelve, the two
trustees, and the temple committee. On 15 August he noted that “a very good feeling prevails in
the breasts of the brethren.” Three days later Clayton began to copy
the minutes of the Council of Fifty into a small leather-bound
volume.
Gathering resources for construction of the and
pushing the project forward remained a central focus of the Twelve
over the next several months. The 1
October issue of the Times and Seasons
contained an epistle from the Twelve to the church that affirmed the
necessity of completing the temple because it touches “our salvation
and exaltation, and that of our dead.” The
Twelve also continued organizing the priesthood quorums. On 24 September, , senior president of the Seventy, joined six
of the Twelve in selecting presidencies of seven to preside over ten
quorums of seventies, each to be composed of seventy men.
The work of reorganizing the church continued during the church’s 6–8 October
general conference. set the tone on
the first day by proclaiming it a “test of our fellowship to believe
and confess that Joseph lived and died a prophet of
God in good standing.” During the second day, church members voted
unanimously “to carry out the principles and measures heretofore
adopted and laid down by Joseph Smith.” The officers of the church
were then presented for a sustaining vote, beginning with Young and
the Twelve. After Young was sustained as “president of the quorum of
the Twelve, as one of the Twelve and first presidency of the
church,” each of the apostles was sustained unanimously. This
included the absent , though only
“after some discussion.” was sustained
as president of the stake in the
place of , but Marks retained his
church membership.
A week after the conference, , , and left for two weeks,
and “no one knew whare we ware gon.” They visited outlying branches
as far as two hundred miles from
“and located another place of gathering for the Saints of God.”
Perhaps they sought a nearby place of refuge in case of emergency,
but the clerk keeping Young’s journal saw it as one of many future
places of gathering, while Nauvoo would remain “the head stake for
the Saints to come” to participate in the temple rituals.
During September and
October some areas in
were in turmoil because of efforts to arrest those believed to be
responsible for the June murders in
. Governor
had vowed to see justice done
despite the depth of anti-Mormon feeling. Anticipating violence, he
informed leaders on
8 September that his request
for a detachment of troops to be stationed
in the county had been declined, leaving him to rely on the support
of an uncertain militia. Nonetheless, he was prepared to sustain the
laws and “ascertain how far I will be seconded by the Militia.” Ford
insisted that he could do nothing directly until after civil process
began and then only if arrests were resisted. He advised Mormon
leaders to seek warrants from a justice of the peace outside of
Nauvoo or to take complaints to the grand jury for indictments that
could be tried by the circuit court. Despite this advice, on 21 September, swore out an affidavit before , a justice of the peace
in Nauvoo, accusing prominent anti-Mormons and of murder; Johnson issued a warrant for
their arrest. Sharp
resisted attempts to arrest him, and his supporters swore “they
would not let them be taken law or no law[,] governor or no
governor.” Sharp and Williams fled to , and messengers were sent to raise a force
sufficient to prevent the execution of the law. Faced with such threats, Ford
traveled to Nauvoo to assess the situation and began sending state
militia to Hancock County to uphold the law. In September, Ford and church leaders
agreed to reorganize the Nauvoo Legion to defend Nauvoo and assist
in arrest efforts if necessary. had earlier been
elected by the troops as lieutenant general of the Legion, a
position earlier held by JS, and he now
received his commission.
Seeking to defuse an increasingly hostile situation, on 30 September
proposed favorable terms for the surrender of and , offering to arrange for their protection and
guaranteeing that they would be released on bail. They accepted the offer and
agreed to appear at the next term of the circuit court in October.
Fearing additional conflict, Ford ordered as commander of the Nauvoo Legion to hold in
readiness a force to act under the direction of the sheriff if
needed to protect the court and witnesses or even Mormon settlements
if they were attacked by those opposed to prosecuting the accused
murderers. A
grand jury handed down indictments in late October against Sharp, Williams,
and seven other men without the eruption of open violence. The grand jury also indicted
eleven of the eighteen men who had been arrested for destroying the
printing office of the Nauvoo Expositor in June 1844. The trials for those
indicted for the murders and those indicted for destroying the
printing office were ultimately pushed to the spring session of the
court.
In late 1844 and early 1845, and other church leaders faced two other
challenges: reports of division and disorder among church branches
in the eastern states and a legislative effort to repeal ’s charter. En
route to his mission in , spent several weeks
visiting church branches and sending reports to Young, one of which
stated that apostle and
, both
members of the Council of Fifty, had instigated much of the
division, in part through participation in unauthorized plural
marriages. Woodruff advised Young to replace Smith as the presiding
authority in the eastern states. Even as Woodruff was writing, was on his way
to the East, having been appointed by the Twelve to “take the
presidency of all the eastern churches.” As soon as his ailing
wife could travel, William Smith, the only
surviving Smith brother, was expected back in Nauvoo to be ordained
as patriarch to the church in place of his brother .
Early in December,
, a member of the
Council of Fifty and representative from to the legislature, alerted of efforts to repeal the charter. The
expansive city charter, approved in December 1840, had granted authority to form an
independent militia (the Nauvoo Legion) and empowered city courts to
issue writs of habeas corpus. Without the charter, residents
would lack a city government, militia, local court system, and
police force. Babbitt reported rumors that intended to recommend repeal of the
charter—or at least the right to maintain a militia. Ford apparently
believed that the Mormons could form a separate brigade of the
Hancock County militia, since the existence of the Nauvoo Legion
terrified “the more ign[or]ant part of community.” On 17 December, Ford issued a special
message advocating repeal of the authorization for the legion and
other “obnoxious parts” while retaining the charter as a whole. “I
do not see how, ten or twelve thousand people, can well do in a
city, without some chartered privileges,” he argued. The Saints
should be placed “upon grounds of some equality with other citizens.
This is republican and cannot be denied without injustice.”
Nevertheless, on 19 December the
state senate approved a bill repealing the entire charter.
’s Christmas Day lament “that the
Legislature has taken away all our Charters and laid us open to all
the raviges of mobs & murderers” was premature, as the rancorous
debate in
continued in the house of representatives for another month. During a leave of absence around
Christmas, Babbitt returned to Nauvoo with news that prospects had
brightened a little, and he was instructed to contend for the whole
charter “for we will never willingly consent to relinquish one jot
of it.”
In January the house of representatives
debated the bill for unconditional repeal that had passed in the
senate. The temporary arrest of ,
senator for who had been
indicted for the murders of JS and , intensified anti-Mormon feelings in the
legislature.
informed church leaders in that if repeal occurred, the Latter-day Saints
would immediately appeal in the courts, from lower to higher “until
it goes to the Federal Court of the before we give
it up.” By the time it had worked its way to the last court, “we
shall have accomplished all that the Lord designs for this place,”
implying that by then they intended to leave in any
event. On 23 January, reported to Young that
“the city charter was repealed also the Legion so that all acts done
from this time will be null and void.” The
next day the house approved the legislation repealing the
charter. On 29
January the bill was signed into law and went into
effect.
Though the news spread rapidly,
leaders had not received official notice of the repeal when convened on 30
January a “gen[eral] council” of church and city leaders
to decide next steps. Comments by church leaders suggested that the
repeal removed yet one more tie that had kept the Saints in the and that the
time was nearing when they should have a government of their own.
Young declared his desire to leave the nation: “Let the U. S. give
us the north part of , let us go
where we please, we have N. &
S. America
,
Ireland, Scotland,
& all the Eastern World.” In the meantime, though, the men
decided to proceed with city elections on 3 February in hopes that the repeal
would be overturned by the governor or the courts. The council also
appointed a committee to gather information—including by writing
prominent jurists and politicians for advice—that could be used in
an effort to overturn the repeal.
The repeal of the charter as well as renewed threats of violence in may have
prompted and his associates to again turn
their attention to the question of where they would go after the
was
finished—and when. In ’s
view, by late 1844
the seemed “filled with wrath against the saints.” The
anti-Mormons “are threatening hard again,” he wrote, vowing that “we
shall not put in another crop.” On 7 January, Young and the Twelve met
in council to discuss, perhaps for the first time since the Council
of Fifty ceased meeting in the spring of 1844, “sending to .” An expedition could be
sent in the spring, but church leaders believed that the temple must
be finished and the Saints endowed before large numbers could leave.
That plan would be tested if rumored threats by former Mormons and were realized.
reported that the
Laws were “endeaveri[n]g to Raise a fuss big Enough to Crush the
Saints in this C[o]unty they are Preachi[n]g to the mob that if the
Temple is done they Cannot Ever drive the Mormons.”
Church leaders now faced the possibility that if they stayed in to finish the
,
violence would be unavoidable. Since the death of JS, ’s statements about finishing the temple and
endowing the Saints had been unequivocal. But the prospect of
bloodshed concerned him enough that he noted in his journal the
threat and his prayer, offered with and , to seek an
answer: “I inquaired of the Lord whether we should stay here and
finish the templ the ansure was we should.” From that moment Young displayed no
doubt: they would leave Nauvoo, but not until the temple was
finished.
In this context of the repeal of the
charter, discussions to explore settlement sites in the West, and
the urgency to complete the , convened the
Council of Fifty on 4 February 1845. From
that meeting until 10 May 1845,
the council met on fifteen days in a total of twenty-two sessions.
The minutes in this period constitute the largest section of the
record, in part because the 1845
minutes tend to capture more details of discussion than do the
earlier minutes. The longer minutes meant that spent considerable time in
March and April
revising the minutes and copying them into the record books he had
begun in August 1844. The council
also appears to have functioned differently under Young’s leadership
in that members of the Quorum of the Twelve played an even larger
role than they had during 1844. In
their quorum meetings the apostles discussed some proposals in
advance that they then brought to the Council of Fifty for
ratification. In addition, during these months the Council of Fifty
took a much more active role in making decisions on temporal matters
than it had during JS’s lifetime.
After the council adjourned sine die in May, did not reconvene it until 9 September 1845.