Part 1: 16 May–6 June 1844
Political endeavors, legal matters, and financial concerns
occupied much of JS’s attention in the latter half of May and
early part of June 1844. JS’s political activities
focused on his running for the presidency of the . On
16 May, JS wrote to members of the Central Committee of the National
Reform Association to explain what action he would take regarding
public lands if he were elected president. The next day,
delegates from an state convention held in nominated JS
as their presidential candidate, and a few days later,
electioneering missionaries left Nauvoo to stump for him in the
eastern United States. On 20 May a man surnamed —unaware that JS was already running for
president—wrote a letter from encouraging JS to seek the nation’s highest
office.
JS’s position as standing chairman
of the afforded him
additional support for his political aims. Organized in March 1844, the council endeavored to
assist JS with his presidential campaign and to explore the
possibility of establishing new settlements for the beyond the borders of the . Council
members considered the and
the as possible
settlement locations, even petitioning the federal government to make JS a member of
the army and give him authority to raise one hundred thousand
volunteers to protect Americans emigrating to those areas.
Council member left on 4 April
and traveled
to with
copies of the petition for both houses of Congress and the United
States . Hyde reported on his activities
to JS and the council through a series of letters, one of which the
council received and responded to on 25 May. That same
day, Congressman wrote a letter to JS to explain that he had tried, but failed, to
submit the memorial to the House of Representatives.
JS’s time was also occupied with
legal concerns as some of his adversaries sought to inundate him
with criminal and civil litigation during the May 1844 term of the , Illinois,
circuit court, which was held from 20 to 30
May in the county seat of .
As a result of some of his adversaries’ actions, the grand jury for
the May term of the circuit court
submitted two criminal indictments against JS. The first indictment
was for adultery and fornication—stemming from allegations
associated with JS’s practice of plural marriage. The second
indictment was for perjury based on JS’s involvement in a
prosecution before Hancock County justice of the peace in January 1844 against a man named , who was not a
member of the church, for robbery and attempted murder.
JS spoke about these indictments during a discourse delivered on 26 May 1844.
JS’s opponents also brought five
civil suits against him for wrongs allegedly committed during the
execution of his responsibilities as ’s mayor. Part
1 features documents that JS’s attorney produced on his
behalf for three of these lawsuits. The first was Alexander Sympson v. JS, which was the
civil component of ’s allegation that JS had
lied under oath during Sympson’s prosecution. The second was Charles A. Foster v. JS and Joseph W.
Coolidge, based on ’s claim that JS had
falsely imprisoned him on 26 April 1844. The third was Francis M. Higbee v. JS–B, which
stemmed from ’s claim that JS had
slandered him in a city council meeting in January 1844.
Despite these legal attacks in the circuit court in , JS
remained in Nauvoo for most of the May 1844 court term. Finally, on 27 May he traveled to Carthage in
hopes of answering the allegations against him.
JS’s legal obligations also
included his responsibilities as city mayor and chief justice of the
Municipal
Court. On 30 May he presided at two hearings for , a miller from who had been
indicted by a federal court for illegally taking money from the government.
Though Smith’s case fell under federal jurisdiction, the Nauvoo
Municipal Court convened for habeas corpus hearings on 30 May and
discharged Smith from both arrests. , an Iowa Territory
physician who had been deputized to pursue Smith, disregarded the
court’s decision and took Smith to , Illinois, to appear before Judge , who had issued the
warrant that Hickok carried. ,
a federal agent who had been likewise appointed to pursue Smith,
also traveled to Springfield, intending to obtain an indictment
against members of the municipal court from a federal grand jury for
their participation in Smith’s hearings. Hickok sent JS a letter informing him of Johnson’s plans, as did Jeremiah
Smith’s attorney .
During this period, JS also oversaw a
range of financial matters. In mid-May,
, who had agreed to purchase land held by JS
as trustee-in-trust of the church, asked—in the form of a pay
order—that the land he had arranged to buy be transferred
to and . In late May
attorneys representing JS brought litigation against Marvin B. and Charles B. Street for an unpaid
promissory note. JS and several associates had purchased a steamboat
from the government in
1840,
renamed it the Nauvoo, and then sold it to
the Streets. JS and his partners were still struggling to pay off
the steamboat debt years later. This note represented a portion of
the payment the Streets promised in exchange for the boat. In early June
1844, JS responded to the fact that notes for the , an
financial institution in which JS had been deeply
involved in 1836 and 1837, were
apparently in circulation, even though it had closed by fall 1837. On 6 June, JS issued a notice in the local newspaper, Nauvoo
Neighbor, informing the public that such notes were
fraudulent.
Part 1 consists of twenty-nine documents, over half of
which deal with the events already described. The other featured
documents include an assortment of letters to JS, such as a report from , who was
serving a mission in the eastern ;
a request from B. G. Weedgil in , Alabama, for
more information about the ; an appeal from Wall Southwick for
funding to travel from , Kentucky, to ; and information from in
, Indiana,
about an 1838 hearing in . The letters that JS
sent during this period include a response to an offer from in to assist
JS with military and civic endeavors, an invitation for in Boston to rejoin the church, and a letter to
in ,
Pennsylvania, thanking him for sending JS a copy of Rupp’s book of
histories of American religious denominations, which included a chapter on
the Latter-day Saints under JS’s name. An account of
a meeting with a delegation from the Sauk and Meskwaki
nations (designated by Euro-Americans as the Sac and Fox) also
appears in this part of the volume.