During the evening of 14 May 1843, Joseph Smith conversed with a small group of Latter-day Saints in , Illinois. Reflecting on his eventful day-to-day life, he remarked, “Excitement has almost become the essens of my life[;] when that dies away I feel almost lost.” He reflected further that “when a man is reigned up continually by excitement he becomes strong & gains power & knowledge.” This introspective comment provides insight into Joseph Smith’s experiences from March through July 1843. During these months, demanding civic and ecclesiastical responsibilities occupied his attention, as did ongoing legal entanglements with the state of . Even with these considerable claims on his time, though, Smith found opportunities to engage in what he viewed as his most urgent task: instructing the on the principles of salvation and exaltation. Joseph Smith’s documentary record from March through July comprises approximately four hundred documents, excluding duplicates of correspondence and civic records, which were often reproduced several times. This volume of The Joseph Smith Papers features ninety-six of those documents, representing the core of Joseph Smith’s documents from this period, including his correspondence, accounts of his discourses, and his last major written revelation. The volume also features a representative selection of his more routine documents such as deeds, ecclesiastical authorizations, and financial and legal records.

One of Joseph Smith’s pressing concerns during the months covered by this volume was his ongoing trouble with the state of . In the 1830s, thousands of Latter-day Saints settled in Missouri in response to Smith’s 1831 revelation designating it as “the land of promise & the place for the City of Zion.” Citing political, cultural, and religious differences, the church’s antagonists in Missouri violently forced the Saints from multiple counties during the decade. In fall 1838, after it became apparent that civil and military authorities would not protect the Saints, church members targeted settlements they believed to be vigilante havens, burning buildings and confiscating goods. The vigilantes responded in kind, and hundreds of individuals on both sides lost their homes. During this conflict, approximately forty Latter-day Saints were killed, as was one individual who was not a member of the church. In October 1838, Missouri governor ordered that church members “be exterminated or driven from the state,” resulting in the Saints’ exodus out of Missouri and Joseph Smith’s winter imprisonment in the in , Missouri.

After his guards allowed him to escape custody in April 1839, Smith rejoined the Saints in , where they had taken refuge. Soon after Smith arrived, he and many church members began settling in and around , Illinois—later renamed . As they struggled to rebuild, the dispossessed and impoverished Saints sought redress for their losses in at the federal level, even as Missouri officials worked to impede their efforts. In addition, these officials attempted to have Smith extradited from Illinois to stand trial for charges stemming from the 1838 conflict. Smith appeared in June 1841 before an Illinois judge, who discharged him on a writ of , a common law remedy that permitted an authorized judge to review the legality of a prisoner’s detention.

In May 1842, an unknown assailant shot in his home in , Missouri. Allegations quickly circulated that Smith had directed his longtime associate , a Latter-day Saint, to assassinate Boggs as revenge for his role in the 1838–1839 conflict and expulsion. In July 1842, officials initiated procedures to have Smith and Rockwell extradited from to to stand trial for the alleged crimes, and Illinois officials complied with the demand. The two men, however, avoided arrest the next month and went into hiding. In January 1843, Smith appeared before the United States Circuit Court for the District of Illinois, which held that Missouri officials had failed to provide sufficient evidence to support the extradition. The court accordingly discharged him from custody.

spent the winter in hiding around . For reasons that remain unclear, he attempted to return to in early 1843. While traveling under an assumed name through , Rockwell was recognized, apprehended, and incarcerated. Because the court system had proven hostile to the Latter-day Saints during the previous decade, Joseph Smith sought to ensure that Rockwell’s rights were protected. Smith corresponded with several attorneys in an effort to develop legal strategies for Rockwell’s defense. Despite this flurry of correspondence, Rockwell remained imprisoned awaiting trial during the months covered in this volume.

Conflict with returned in early June 1843, when a grand jury in , Missouri, indicted Joseph Smith in absentia for allegedly committing treason during the 1838 conflict. Missouri officials again initiated extradition proceedings, sending Sheriff as the agent authorized to transport Smith, once apprehended, out of . In mid-June, Illinois governor issued a warrant for Smith’s arrest. Later that month, while Smith and his family were visiting relatives near , Illinois, Constable of , Illinois, arrested Joseph Smith and transferred custody to Reynolds, who had accompanied Wilson during the arrest. The two lawmen quickly attempted to move Smith out of Illinois. However, he secured legal counsel in Dixon and employed several legal strategies to impede the extradition, including obtaining a writ of habeas corpus. He also filed a civil suit against the two officers for false imprisonment and personal injury, which in turn led to the arrest of Wilson and Reynolds by James Campbell, sheriff of , Illinois.

On 26 June 1843, Joseph Smith, his attorneys, his captors, and Sheriff Campbell all left together. Their stated destination was , Illinois, for a hearing before Judge . However, Smith and his attorneys decided to instead go to and appear before the city’s municipal court on a writ of habeas corpus. The party grew as groups of troops—who had mobilized to protect Smith—found and joined them. Despite ’s protestations, the group entered Nauvoo on 30 June. The next day, Smith appeared before the municipal court at a habeas corpus hearing. After hearing testimony regarding the Saints’ sufferings during the 1838 conflict as well as arguments detailing the legal deficiencies in the extradition documents, the court discharged Smith. and Reynolds then appealed to to send the state militia to detain Joseph Smith again, arguing that he had resisted arrest and that the Nauvoo Municipal Court had exceeded its jurisdiction in the case. For much of July 1843, Smith’s time was consumed with defending himself and the court from these charges by preaching discourses explaining his arrest, by dispatching missionaries throughout the state to address misunderstandings about the legal proceedings, and by forwarding petitions, affidavits, and other evidence to the governor.

While the drama of ’s arrest in and the attempt to extradite Smith from demanded much of Smith’s time and attention, he was also occupied with more mundane civic responsibilities. The Illinois legislature had incorporated in 1840 and granted the city a charter with significant powers. In 1842, the city council elected Joseph Smith mayor of Nauvoo to complete the term of his predecessor, former Latter-day Saint , and in February 1843, Smith was elected in a general election to a full term. From March through July 1843, Smith participated in city council meetings and signed ordinances that regulated the local economy, including one that authorized him to operate a ferry on the . He also presided in the mayor’s court, in which he adjudicated alleged breaches of city ordinances. In addition, he served as a justice of the peace, allowing him to hear civil cases involving minor disputes and alleged violations of state statutes. In the latter capacity, Joseph Smith sat as judge in a breach-of-contract suit, Charles Dana v. William Brink, involving the wrongdoing of a local physician. With the assistance of his scribe , Smith prepared a lengthy ruling in favor of the plaintiff and delivered that ruling on 10 March. Later that month, Nauvoo’s city newspaper, the Wasp, printed his decision—his only published trial report.

The charter also allowed the city council to organize an independent military unit within the state militia. In February 1841, the court-martial of the newly formed appointed Joseph Smith lieutenant general and commander of the legion, a position he continued to hold throughout the months covered in this volume. On 6 May 1843, Smith led the legion on parade and delivered a discourse pledging to use the military strength of the legion to defend the rights of the oppressed.

Joseph Smith also continued to be heavily involved in land transactions in . In 1839, he and other church leaders purchased on credit the rights to approximately four hundred acres of land in the area that became Nauvoo from land speculators , , and . In February 1841, a of the church appointed Smith as trustee-in-trust for the church, giving him primary responsibility over the church’s financial assets and obligations, including its land holdings. The same year, in the midst of a national financial recession, the Congress passed bankruptcy legislation to relieve debtors. Partly because of the church’s substantial losses resulting from the 1839 expulsion from , Smith applied for bankruptcy in 1842. Although Smith intended to honor his agreement with Hotchkiss, the sale of Smith’s assets as part of his bankruptcy proceedings introduced the possibility that Smith might lose his claim to the land and that it would then revert to Hotchkiss and his partners. Hotchkiss wrote to Smith in April 1843 and assured him that, in the event default occurred, the Latter-day Saints living on the property would not be evicted but would instead be considered rent-paying tenants. In July 1843, Tuttle and Gillet visited Nauvoo to renegotiate the terms of the 1839 agreement, ultimately allowing the church to retain forty-seven acres in fifty lots—primarily located to the west of the church’s unfinished —while returning the rights to the remaining property to the land speculators. Additionally, several individuals wrote letters to Smith during the months covered in this volume requesting assistance in completing land transactions or settling property disputes in and .

From March through July 1843, Joseph Smith devoted considerable time and attention to his ecclesiastical responsibilities as president of the church. In late March, he considered removing his longtime associate as a counselor in the , largely because of his lingering suspicions that Rigdon was secretly conspiring with to undermine him. Rigdon denied the allegation. In early April 1843, Joseph Smith presided at the church’s special conference in , where he presented himself and his counselors in the First Presidency “for trial,” allowing church members to either sustain or oppose their standing. Smith was overwhelmingly sustained, as was his other counselor, . Rigdon too was sustained, but only after responding to questions regarding his connections with Bennett.

At this same conference, Joseph Smith addressed ’s two major church-sponsored building projects: the and the . An 1841 revelation had designated Nauvoo as a “corner stone of ” and commanded the Saints to construct a house “for the Most High to dwell,” where sacred temple ceremonies would be performed and “the fulness of the ” would be revealed. The revelation further commanded church members to build the Nauvoo House, a building where “the weary traveller may find health and safety, while he shall contemplate the word of the Lord” and “the glory of Zion.” Construction on the two edifices had progressed slowly, however, and Joseph Smith announced at the April 1843 conference that the Saints should prioritize the Nauvoo House, as the city lacked a suitable hotel for prominent visitors. He also indicated that the previous method of allowing any traveling to collect donations from Saints living outside of Nauvoo was discontinued. He instead designated the members of the as the only agents authorized to receive contributions and indicated that the apostles would raise funds in the eastern states later that year.

Also during the April conference, Joseph Smith announced that the minutes of the conference were to be published and distributed among the Saints outside of . Smith subsequently reviewed the minutes kept by the conference clerk, , and determined they were inadequate. Under Smith’s guidance, his scribes prepared new drafts of the minutes amalgamated with the notes that had taken during the conference; the revised minutes appeared in the 1 May 1843 issue of the Times and Seasons, the church’s religious newspaper in Nauvoo. The extant documentation of this publication process provides a rare window into print culture in Nauvoo and Smith’s involvement in it.

Joseph Smith continued to participate in church councils during these months. Nearly a decade earlier, in 1834, he organized composed of priesthood holders who convened when necessary to assist him in church governance, to discipline wayward church members, and to resolve disputes among the Saints. Members could appeal decisions of the high councils to the First Presidency. In April 1843, the First Presidency heard on appeal a property dispute between and , and it ultimately reversed the high council’s decision and ruled in favor of Mathews. Scribes and kept detailed minutes, a rare example of such an appeal to the First Presidency.

Joseph Smith met with the in on at least two occasions between March and July 1843. On 19 April 1843, he convened the apostles who were in the area and helped make missionary proselytizing assignments and plan the apostles’ fund-raising mission for the and the . Smith met again with the on 27 May 1843 to consider the conduct of , a key—albeit divisive—figure in the church in during the early 1840s. The Philadelphia of the church had become divided because of contention created under Winchester’s influence. Under Smith’s direction, the May council of apostles stripped Winchester of his priesthood —his authorization to preach and represent the church publicly—and ordered him to relocate with his wife and children to Nauvoo.

Other branches outside similarly required Joseph Smith’s attention. Despite the presence of a branch of substantial size in , the church suffered from a poor public image in the city. Recognizing the need to improve perceptions of the church, Smith assigned scribes and to write a series of letters to the Boston Daily Bee. Following a common nineteenth-century literary convention, Richards and Phelps wrote under a pseudonym—“Viator,” a purported visitor to Nauvoo who was not a member of the church—describing Joseph Smith, the Saints, and their city in a positive light. Smith was also kept apprised of the status of other branches in the church as members and missionaries in Boston, , , and elsewhere in the sent letters to him reporting on the church’s situation in those areas.

Documents in this volume demonstrate how Smith and other church leaders managed expansion of the church outside North America. In 1837, Latter-day Saint missionaries began preaching in , and over the next several years, thousands in the British Isles converted to the church. Two documents featured in this volume are letters from church leaders in England reporting on church administration and requesting direction on emigration and other challenges. Smith also envisioned further international expansion of the church, enjoining church leaders not to “let one single corner of the earth go witho[u]t a mission.”

Joseph Smith also dealt with the challenges facing immigrants to . For example, Smith delivered a public discourse that sought to help new immigrants adjust to the exigencies of life in a new city and country. Smith also received a letter from an English immigrant who recounted his financial predicament—alleging that several prominent Latter-day Saints had defrauded him—and requested Smith’s help in resolving his debts.

In anticipation of the completion of the , Joseph Smith continued to teach temple-related concepts and ceremonies. In 1840, he first taught the Saints that living individuals could be on behalf of deceased relatives. The following year, he dictated a revelation that commanded the church to build the temple, indicating that although members were permitted to perform baptisms for the dead outside of the temple while it was under construction, church members should endeavor to finish the building because it was the proper place for proxy baptisms. The revelation also indicated that the administration of other ordinances—including and and an ceremony—would likewise be reserved for the temple upon its completion. During Sunday services on 11 June 1843, Joseph Smith emphasized the importance of the temple by elaborating on Matthew 23:37, a verse in which Jesus Christ lamented the failure of the Jews to gather to Jerusalem. Smith taught that the purpose of such a of the Lord’s people was to “build unto the Lord an house” and enjoined the Latter-day Saints to gather to Nauvoo, complete the temple, and receive sacred in the house of the Lord.

Joseph Smith’s temple-related teachings in this volume also include eternal marriage, or marital unions by authority that persist beyond death and through eternity. In contrast to one strand of traditional Christian belief—that familial relations cease after this life—during the nineteenth century an increasing number of people envisioned their familial relations continuing in the afterlife. Although they converged in some ways with these broader trends, Smith’s revelations and teachings on this subject were distinctive in that they explicitly outlined the eternal duration of marriages sealed in priesthood ceremonies. Although Smith evidently began instructing his followers as early as 1835 that their marital unions could be eternal,

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it was not until the 1840s that his teachings on the subject became more explicit. In multiple documents featured in this volume, Smith taught that marriage covenants that were not entered into under priesthood authority with a view toward eternity would end with death. He also adapted these teachings for individuals who had lost a spouse to death. In a blessing featured in this volume, Smith promised Latter-day Saint that he and his recently deceased wife, , would “be crowned and enthrowned to dwell together in a Kingdom in the in the presents of God.” In the blessing, Smith gave the same promise to Caroline Kingsbury, with Joseph Kingsbury acting “in her behalf . . . as though She was present herself.”

Joseph Smith also expanded the practice of plural marriage during the months covered in this volume. Although the origins of plural marriage among the Saints are obscure, later accounts state that sometime in the 1830s Smith received a commandment from God to enter the practice. The fragmentary nature of the extant evidence precludes a full reconstruction of the emergence of the practice and its development in the early 1840s. The small circle of Latter-day Saints who participated in the practice in understood plural marriage to be part of the “restitution of all things” that would occur in the “dispensation of the fulness of times.” This restoration would include not only the spiritual gifts of the New Testament and the church of Jesus Christ but also Old Testament practices, roles, and ideas, such as temple worship and priesthood, prophets and patriarchs, and the marital system of the biblical patriarchs. During the first half of 1843, Joseph Smith significantly broadened his practice of plural marriage, as he was sealed to about a dozen women during these months, bringing the total number of his plural unions to more than twenty. Featured in this volume is a blessing to , who was sealed to Smith as a plural wife in 1842. The blessing is a rare example of a contemporaneously recorded text, written in Smith’s own hand, that attests his personal practice of plural marriage.

This volume also features a lengthy revelation on eternal and plural marriage. In May 1843, reluctantly accepted her husband’s practice of plural marriage, conditioned on her ability to choose the women to whom he was sealed. This acceptance, however, was short-lived, and by late June 1843 she again opposed the practice.

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The following month, on 12 July 1843, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation that outlined the need for everlasting marriage covenants, the nature of the sealing power, and the biblical basis of plural marriage. Although initially dictated in the immediate context of the situation with Emma, the revelation explicated the divine origin of these teachings, providing the doctrinal and textual foundation of the Saints’ practice of plural marriage over the next half century.

Finally, this volume features accounts of about twenty discourses, including those previously mentioned, that Joseph Smith delivered from March through July 1843, usually at Sunday meetings, on themes such as the last days, Smith’s 1820 vision of Deity, and the doctrines of salvation and exaltation. Most of these discourses were delivered in , although Smith also visited and instructed members in branches of the church outside the city. Smith did not normally prepare his sermons in advance but instead delivered his orations extemporaneously without notes. Extant accounts of his discourses were made by attentive listeners who hurriedly sought to capture his words as they heard them. These notes were often expanded and polished after the fact. By 1843, an increasing number of individuals began making accounts of Smith’s sermons, meaning that most of the discourses featured in this volume have multiple versions, each of which is reproduced herein.

The documents featured in this volume illuminate Joseph Smith’s endeavors to fulfill the will of the Lord by building a , a city, and a people. During the five months from March through July 1843, Smith found himself “reigned up continually by excitement”—just as he had professed that evening in mid-May—due to his ecclesiastical and civic responsibilities as well as his persistent problems arising from antagonists in . But according to his own judgment, this excitement made him become “strong” and gain “power & knowledge,” which he in turn conveyed to the Saints in temple ceremonies, written revelations, and discourses. Taken together, the documents featured herein provide a window into Joseph Smith’s efforts to balance the competing demands on his time and attention as an individual, as a civic leader, and as church president.

Joseph Smith Documents from March through July 1843

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