Introduction to Documents, Volume 8: February–November 1841
Joseph Smith Documents from February through
November 1841
On 19 January 1841, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation that guided the spiritual development of the
and the physical
development of the city of , Illinois, the designated gathering place for members
of the church. Among its many instructions, the revelation called on
the Saints to build a where both doctrine and ritual could be expanded
and to construct a boardinghouse called the to accommodate visitors to the burgeoning city. These construction projects promised to
strengthen the church and enhance the city—the temple would contain
the first font for proxy , and the boardinghouse
would create a welcoming place for visitors and new arrivals,
including curious travelers and immigrating converts, who were
already beginning to pour into Nauvoo.
From February through November 1841,
hundreds who were not church members visited the city and witnessed
its impressive growth as they interacted with Latter-day Saints and
their leader, Joseph Smith. One of these observers, Thomas
Wentworth Storrow, a sixty-one-year-old merchant
on a leisure journey to the West, left a detailed account of his
July 1841 visit to . With an
attentive eye, Storrow described a blossoming city led by Joseph
Smith, “the only one who openly exercises the gift of prophecy and
professes to have revelation direct with the Deity.” Entries in Storrow’s
journal provide a revealing snapshot of Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo. He
arrived at a time filled with optimism, but problems were brewing
under the calm surface, particularly with neighbors not of the
faith.
Covering ten months in 1841, the documents in this volume of The Joseph
Smith Papers illustrate both the growth and the mounting
tensions of the time. The documents also highlight related topics,
such as city building and urban planning, land and financial transactions, the gathering of the
Saints, and important doctrinal developments. Managing the church
and city spurred an increase in documentary production during
1841—the extant documentary record of Joseph Smith
from February through
November 1841 includes more than 450 documents. Because
of this large number and because most of the documents are routine
in nature, this volume of The Joseph Smith Papers is
selective, including only ninety-nine documents. The volume is divided
into four parts, each containing about twenty-five documents. Nearly
every document genre from this period is represented. For example,
dozens of receipts from the
building committee to Joseph Smith as the trustee-in-trust for the
church are extant, and one is featured herein as a representative
sample. Other genres represented include ecclesiastical licenses,
land deeds, business documents, and legal documents. In addition, a
wide variety of unusual document types are reproduced in this
volume, including a religious proclamation, a Nauvoo City Council committee
report, a memorandum, an interview, and the benediction for the southeast cornerstone of the Nauvoo
temple. This volume also contains a selection of meeting minutes.
Joseph Smith played a major role in a variety of organizations,
including the Nauvoo City Council and the , and minutes of meetings in which he
participated in significant ways are included herein. Finally, this
volume presents from this period fifteen of Joseph Smith’s extant
discourses, all forty-six extant letters, and all three extant
revelations.
In 1841
Joseph Smith was busily engaged in
managing lands and encouraging the construction of major buildings
in the growing city of . Visitors sent observations of Nauvoo to their
hometown newspapers, estimating the population (ranging from three
thousand to ten thousand Latter-day Saints) and commenting on the
hundreds of buildings dotting the bank of the . “Before us,”
noted one visitor, “is the beginning of a great city—a noble bottom
land, already half covered with cabins.” The Nauvoo
received the most attention. One observer declared that it was “a
fac simile of that Temple which was built by Solomon, and trod by
the Savior.” Storrow remarked that it promised to be “a very large
edifice,” and another account gave its measurements as 127 by 88
feet.
By early April the
foundation was ready for the celebratory placement of the
cornerstone. Joseph Smith invited many outside
the faith from surrounding communities, including , the editor of the
Warsaw Signal, to attend the 6 April ceremony.
Observers speculated on the cost of building such a structure.
Storrow estimated “about $20,000,” while Joseph Smith reportedly
told a visitor that he thought it would ultimately be “$200,000 or
$300,000.”
To lessen the financial burden, Latter-day Saints, both male and
female, donated a tenth of their labor, cash, or other resources,
directing their contributions to Joseph Smith, the church’s
trustee-in-trust, so he could purchase supplies for the temple’s
construction. Joseph Smith and other
church leaders encouraged Latter-day Saints to gather to to aid in the
ongoing work on the temple and on other public buildings, especially
the .
New construction signaled population
growth and reflected the Saints’ awareness of the call to in . The gathering of the
Latter-day Saints to the
area emerges frequently as a topic in Joseph Smith documents from February through
November 1841. As early as May 1839, Nauvoo had
become a gathering place for the Saints, and further instruction to
build up the city came in January 1841. A March 1841
revelation directed the Saints to “gather themselves
together unto the places which I shall appoint unto them by my
servant Joseph, and build up cities unto my name” along the near Nauvoo. At the church’s April 1841
, church leaders again spoke strongly
about the need for the Saints to come to Nauvoo.
On 24 May 1841, Smith wrote an open
letter addressed to all church members residing outside
the Nauvoo area, directing them to relocate primarily to ,
Illinois. During his visit in
July 1841, Storrow noted in his
journal that Joseph Smith “came to this country for the purpose of
gathering in the Saints at the latter day.” Even outsiders could see
that Smith and other leaders
urged the faithful to move to Nauvoo to build the ,
advance the city’s industries, and support the poor.
Thousands of Latter-day Saints heeded
the call. The Cleveland Daily Herald reported that a
wagon train from Oswego County, New York,
“well rigged for journeying, passed our office yesterday, containing
over 100 Mormons, big and little, bound for the Promised Land.” The
Herald commented further that the people of the
company “appeared to be intelligent and in very comfortable
circumstances . . . and that unshaken faith in Joe Smith was enjoyed by all.”
Although many followed the counsel to gather, others did not.
Smith’s 24 May 1841
letter disbanded all organizations except those
in and in , Iowa Territory,
directly across the to the west of
. Yet not all
stakes ceased their activities. ,
the president of the , Ohio, stake, for instance, not only kept the
Kirtland stake in operation but also actively encouraged those
traveling west through Kirtland to stay and build up the church
there instead. Babbitt’s
reluctance to comply exemplifies the difficulties Joseph Smith faced
in managing the gathering of a large number of people in an
ever-expanding church organization.
To aid in the gathering, missionaries
were sent to preach, baptize, and bring converts back to . In July 1838 the had been directed to “go over the great
waters” and proselytize in the British
Isles. Those apostles who went arrived in early 1840 and
continued their work into April 1841. Through their efforts,
thousands in converted to the
Latter-day Saint faith, and many of those converts then relocated to
Nauvoo. By 1841 those converts were steadily
streaming into Nauvoo. More than one hundred arrived in Nauvoo in
the winter of 1840 and
hundreds more were on the way. In January 1841 the called on the British Saints to “dispose
of their effects . . . and remove to our city and county.” In
response, over eight hundred
Saints migrated from the British Isles to Nauvoo by mid-July 1841. As Storrow noted, the
Saints in Nauvoo had “chosen a delightful residence in & their numbers are increasing, by converts
in this country, besides many who frequently come from
England.” The New-York
Tribune also commented in April 1841 that “the Mormons,
at Nauvoo, Illinois, recently had an accession of two hundred
disciples from England, via .”
Only men served as Latter-day Saint
missionaries during this period; rarely did a wife or family
accompany them. When
and left for , their wives, Mary Ann Angell Young and , remained
in to help build
the ,
provide for their families, and situate the incoming English
converts and others arriving in the city. This arrangement was
typical of most missionaries and their families, though and his wife,
,
were a notable exception. While serving his mission in 1840, Pratt sailed from England to , gathered Mary Ann and their children, and sailed back to
England with them to resume his mission.
By spring 1841 many of the
apostles had ended their proselytizing in England and returned to
assist Joseph Smith in managing the
growing church in Nauvoo, while Pratt remained in Britain to preside
there.
Missionaries were also sent throughout
the . Letters
written to Joseph Smith from locations such as
, , , and elsewhere illustrate the expansion of
proselytizing in the eastern United States. For example, became
the first Latter-day Saint missionary to
Louisiana. Sagers was assigned to
after church members
and Elam Ludington petitioned Joseph Smith in
January 1841 to “send help to this
city before the people perish, for it is a time of great excitement
here, send us a Peter, or an apostle to preach unto us Jesus.” In a letter to Joseph Smith, Sagers
reported good prospects for growth among crowded congregations who
were interested in hearing about the church.
While the letters from missionaries in
the and
Britain mentioned converts, the letters
from apostle en route to had a
different focus. At a church conference
in April 1840, apostles Orson Hyde and
were called to serve a
unique mission—rather than being assigned to proselytize, they were
asked to collect information regarding the gathering of the Jews.
Hyde and Page were officially appointed to travel to “, , Constantinople and
Jerusalem” to converse with “Elders of the Jews” and to publish
their findings “throughout the United States.”
Sometime in late
August 1840, the two apostles separated in , with
Page attempting to raise funds for the mission and Hyde venturing on
to
before sailing overseas alone. Page, meanwhile,
traveled through , , and other locations in
the eastern United States before spending time in and New York City. Page ultimately abandoned
the mission abroad and wrote to Joseph Smith to
explain the situation; church members in vouched for his proselytizing efforts and advocated
on his behalf to Joseph Smith, who was displeased with Page’s
failure to complete his assignment.
While remained in the , arrived on 3 March 1841 in , England, where he began sending intermittent
reports to Joseph Smith in . Following the
directives given in his original appointment, Hyde sought
information regarding the “views and movements of the Jewish
people.” He
attempted to visit the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, . However, when he
called on Hirschell at the Great Synagogue of , Hyde was informed that the rabbi had suffered
injuries from a recent accident and was unable to grant him an
audience. Hyde then wrote Hirschell a letter concerning the
gathering of the Jews and copied it into his correspondence with
Joseph Smith. Undeterred,
Hyde pressed on to the Netherlands, , and Turkey before
eventually reaching , where on 24 October 1841 he prayed over the
land, dedicating Palestine for the “gathering together of Judah’s
scattered remnants.” Throughout his journey, Hyde sought
opportunities to gather
information and to compose and translate materials on church
doctrine and history. His writings were among the first church
materials published in languages other than English.
As the success of the missionaries
brought an influx of Saints to , Joseph Smith and other leaders
faced the challenge of managing land purchases and distributing land
to new arrivals. A major part of this land management involved
handling impending debt payments owed by Joseph Smith and the
church. Debts incurred in
from 1835 through 1838 periodically
resurfaced as debtors and collectors sought out Joseph Smith, but
most pressing in 1841 was the debt on the “Hotchkiss Purchase.” In August 1839, , , and —land
speculators from —sold Joseph Smith, , and nearly five
hundred acres in the , Illinois, area (later Nauvoo). The agreement
with Hotchkiss stated that annual interest payments of $3,000 were
due beginning in 1840.
Apparently, Hotchkiss agreed to defer the 1840 payment for a year,
which brought the first interest payment due in August 1841.
Because church members in western lacked liquid assets, Joseph Smith formulated a plan
whereby members in the eastern
could help ease the church’s land debt and support the growth of
. The same
19 January 1841
revelation that called for the gathering of the Saints to
Nauvoo also directed and to “accomplish the work my servant Joseph
shall point out.” In February, Joseph Smith gave them
written authorization to collect donations, to sell stock in the
, and to promise church members in the eastern United
States land in , Illinois, in
exchange for their land in the East. The deeds to those
eastern lands were then to be used as payment toward the debt owed
to and his partners.
Documents reveal that and left in March 1841 to acquire land in the
eastern that could then
be transferred to as debt payment. For
unknown reasons, however, Hyrum returned to
in late
April. Galland also failed to meet with
Hotchkiss or transfer any property; it is unknown why Galland did
not meet with Hotchkiss, but Joseph Smith
mentioned that Galland might have been suffering from partial
blindness. In June, Hyrum was sent again from
Nauvoo, this time with , to procure
land and settle with Hotchkiss, but no apparent progress was made
from this second initiative. Illness forced Hyrum to return to
Nauvoo in August. After his second return
to Nauvoo, Hyrum informed JS that he had left Galland with “nearly
enough” real estate to settle with Hotchkiss. Without having settled
any of the debt, however, Galland informed Hotchkiss in July that he was returning to the
West; he referred Hotchkiss to for
payment on the debt.
While the church’s worked to secure payment, Joseph Smith and corresponded, each
expressing frustration with the lack of payment on the looming debts
and each declaring his hope that arrangements could be made to
facilitate payment. Despite the
correspondence and Joseph Smith’s continued efforts to send agents,
the interest payment was still outstanding in August when arranged to meet and facilitate the
transfer of property in , New Jersey, that had belonged to church
members and . Hotchkiss agreed on 11 October to accept the property
in New Egypt to settle the interest payment. At the conclusion of 1841,
the payment had not been made to Hotchkiss, but negotiations were
underway to determine the value of the Ivinses’ property in and whether it would be sufficient to cover the
first interest payment.
Even while he struggled to pay for real estate the
church had purchased, Joseph Smith began
looking for new land on which incoming Saints could settle. On 16 August, Smith convened a special
church conference during which he announced that the church would
build up a number of new settlements, including a town just south of
that was to be
named ,
Illinois. The
Warsaw Signal reported on the Latter-day Saints’
efforts to buy land for the settlement and commented, “We sincerely
hope, this curse will be spared us.” Due to opposition
from neighboring citizens, the Warren settlement ended almost as
soon as it began, but Joseph Smith, the apostles, and other church
leaders continued to plan how best to accommodate the influx of
Latter-day Saints in 1841.
At the same 16 August 1841 conference, weary of
his multiplying responsibilities, Joseph Smith altered
the management of the church’s temporal affairs. Members of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles had recently returned from their
successful mission to , and
Smith was eager to have them help with the church’s administrative
and financial business so that he could focus more on spiritual
matters.
Since at least June 1840, Smith
had sought to be relieved from his duties in the development of the
city of , including
land sales. At
the 16 August conference, which was held in part so that Nauvoo
Saints would understand and sustain the new administrative
responsibility of the apostles, Joseph Smith gave the apostles
direct responsibility to “manage the affairs of the kingdom” in
Nauvoo.
Though he eventually shifted some of
his church administrative responsibilities, Joseph Smith was active in civic
affairs and played a significant role on the city council. The City Council
began work two days after the first general election in Nauvoo on
1 February 1841. He introduced numerous city ordinances and shaped many
of the debates found in the minutes of the council’s meetings. In a
1 March 1841 city council meeting,
for instance, Smith proposed an ordinance “in relation to religious Societies,” providing
for “free toleration and equal Privilieges” for all religious sects
and denominations. This ordinance, which the council passed,
highlighted his and the council’s commitment to guarantee civil,
political, and religious liberty to all in Nauvoo.
Other city ordinances had far-reaching implications. For example, in
the city council’s first meeting, Smith presented an ordinance to organize the , a militia body authorized in the Nauvoo
charter. This independent municipal militia met for the first time
on 4 February 1841, and Joseph Smith
was appointed lieutenant general, the highest rank in the
legion.
Independent of the greater state militia, yet still subject to the
governor, the legion was a symbol of empowerment for the city.
That symbolism was not lost on visitors
and commentators outside the faith. Thomas
Storrow wrote at length in his journal about the
Nauvoo Legion:
The Mormons have suffered in their formation and progress
so much from open violence that they have been forced to
enrol themselves into a “Mormon Legion” which numbers 1500
men all armed and subject to monthly drills. . . . The
officers seemed to know their military duty and the men were
evidently under better discipline than any of the militia at
the East. The Mormons do not depend wholly on spiritual
weapons, but are preparing to use the arm of flesh for
defense, and some people think, even for attack, tho this
assertion may be a calumny raised by their enemies, who are
rather numerous.
The Daily National
Intelligencer, a newspaper, reported that the legion was a protective
measure because the Latter-day Saints did “not intend to be driven
out of as they were from .” The New-York Tribune
similarly reported: “What appears to excite particular aversion or
alarm, is the organization of what is called the Nuuvoo Legion—who
muster every few days, ‘all harnessed for war.’ . . . Our belief has
been, that the Mormon Legion has been organized for defence, as in
case of an attack, as in Missouri.” Though
Joseph Smith and others worked to
ensure the security of the Saints’ growing gathering place, the
potential power of the independent municipal militia raised concern
among neighbors outside the faith, including the outspoken editor of
the Warsaw Signal,
, who would become a
primary antagonist of Smith and the church.
In addition to military and
governmental advances in , the documents in this volume present developments in
Latter-day Saint doctrine and religious instruction. Nearly
one-fifth of the documents featured in this volume are discourses
delivered by Joseph Smith. None of these
discourse texts capture a complete sermon, word for word, nor do any
derive from speaking notes created by Smith himself. Rather, various
individuals recorded portions or summaries of the discourses, and
Smith most likely did not oversee or review these written accounts.
The resulting texts reflect only a fraction of the words spoken or
ideas put forth by Joseph Smith. These incomplete sermon texts are
further filtered by what the scribes decided was worth recording,
the length of time between when the words were spoken and when the
scribe recorded them, and the purpose for which the notes of the
sermon were produced and preserved. Thus, there is no complete
discourse—one that captures all or nearly all of the church
president’s spoken words at any given meeting—featured in this
volume. In fact, no record survives for most of the discourses
delivered by Joseph Smith. He frequently
lectured and preached in diverse settings throughout 1841, but this volume is limited to those for which a
record survives.
One of the more extensive discourse
texts featured in this volume is the account of a May 1841 sermon that was printed in
the church newspaper Times and Seasons. Though the
paper provided nearly nine hundred words of Joseph Smith’s sermon, the account
was only a brief, “imperfect sketch” of what Smith had said in the
discourse, which reportedly lasted more than two hours.
The balance of this sermon,
undoubtedly thousands more words, has been lost to history. Despite
these limitations, the fragments of these sermons provide an
invaluable glimpse not only of Joseph Smith’s beliefs but also of
how he instructed his listeners.
Throughout the period covered in this
volume, Joseph Smith spoke on a variety of
religious, political, and economic matters. Eleven of the fifteen
discourse texts featured in this volume were recorded by church
member . Smith participated in
lyceum meetings in , in which
people gathered to learn about and discuss social, scientific,
political, and religious ideas. McIntire provided accounts of
several lyceum meetings, briefly noting the topics and occasionally
some of the words spoken by the presenters. For example, in one
meeting, Joseph Smith lectured about the Millennium, teaching that
not every wicked person would be destroyed at the second coming of
Christ. He also taught that “ cannot seduce us By his
enticements unless we in our h[e]arts Consent & yeald— our
organization [is] such that we can Resist the Devil If we were Not
organized so we would Not be free agents.” He delivered other
sermons in church conference settings or at weekly Sunday meetings.
One of the discourses in this volume was delivered at a celebration
of Independence Day, though very little of what was apparently an
extensive speech was recorded.
For followers of Joseph Smith, one form of
communication proved more authoritative than sermons delivered by
their prophet: revelations. For the period covered by this
volume, the revelations dictated by the church president are both
few and brief. Two revelations in March dealt with practical
considerations about settlement and the financing of construction
projects in . Another revelation was directed to , commending him for his years of missionary
service. As with sermon texts, Joseph Smith may
have dictated more revelations than these three, but no other texts
are known. Two of the revelations found herein were later canonized
and widely published among Latter-day Saints.
Doctrinal developments emphasized the
binding of families together in eternity, particularly through
baptisms for the dead. In August 1840, Joseph Smith taught about and later
authorized the performance of baptisms for the dead, in which living
male and female church members could be baptized vicariously for deceased individuals. At the October 1840 general conference,
Joseph Smith taught the Saints about the opportunity they had to
“liberate their friends from bondage” and provide their dead
ancestors “the privilege of comeing forth in the first
resurrection.”
Latter-day Saints praised this new doctrine and, as and observed, church members went often into
the waters of the to perform vicarious
baptismal ordinances.
The practice of baptism for the dead
made national news in the summer of 1841 when
the New-York Tribune, among other papers, reported
that Latter-day Saints had performed a vicarious baptism for the
nation’s first president, George Washington,
and for its most recently deceased president, William
Henry Harrison, who died on 4 April 1841. The Ohio
Observer commented:
The Mormon doctrine is, that
all who are so unhappy as to leave the world without
embracing the fulness of the gospel, or the Mormon faith,
will have a second probation after death, and have the
gospel preached to them again. . . . Many of the spirits in
prison do repent and believe, but being disembodied they
cannot literally comply with the command of our Savior to be
baptised.— Hence if they have living friends in the body,
the duty of these friends is to come and be baptised in
their stead. Neither is this an idle speculation or dead
faith among them.— Many have actually been baptised for
their deceased friends.
While some baptisms took place in other
locations, including in under ’s
leadership, the vast majority were performed in the , where such proxy
baptisms continued for most of 1841.
Although baptisms for the dead were
performed at a rapid pace—more than six thousand occurred in the
in 1841 alone—Joseph Smith
sought to move the practice
to the location he taught was its proper place: the . According to a January 1841
revelation, the of baptism for the
dead belonged in the temple, and the Saints would be allowed to
perform the ordinance outside the temple for only a limited time.
Joseph Smith declared at the October 1841 general conference,
“There shall be no more baptisms for the dead, until the ordinance
can be attended to in the font of the Lord’s House; and the church
shall not hold another general conference, until they can meet in
said house.” Church members
were thus counseled to direct their energies to completing the
baptismal font. The visitor Storrow commented
on components of the font’s physical appearance. He wrote that a
large well in the temple’s basement would supply the water source
for the font, which he noted was made in the imitation of the
“brazen sea in Solomon’s temple which is to be supported by twelve
golden oxen.” The New-York
Tribune also noted that the Latter-day Saints were
“engaged in building a large temple, containing a baptismal font
supported by twelve oxen overlaid with gold!” Indeed, Latter-day Saint carved twelve oxen,
which were then leafed with gold, as the foundation for the font. On
8 November 1841, though the temple
was not yet completed, this font was placed in the temple basement
and dedicated. Baptisms for the dead began again on 21 November in the Nauvoo
temple.
Another, more controversial doctrine
that developed in 1841 was plural marriage. Although no documents in this
volume address it, later documents attest that Joseph Smith married two plural
wives during the months covered in this volume. Joseph Smith’s
understanding of plural marriage seems to have developed over time,
perhaps beginning as early as 1831 in . There is evidence that Smith began discussing
with close associates some form of plural marriage in the early 1830s and that he first married a
plural wife, , sometime in the mid-1830s. However, Smith
did not begin practicing it extensively until the church was
headquartered in . It appears
that plural marriage was part of a broader restoration of Old
Testament concepts and practices that included covenants,
priesthoods, and temples. Although he had already been married to his wife for fourteen years, Joseph Smith
privately married on 5 April 1841 and on 27 October 1841. Although few knew of Smith’s practice of
plural marriage in 1841, his introduction of it eventually led to tensions
within his inner circle of church leaders and confidants, within
church society generally, and with neighbors and observers outside
the church.
While
appeared to be a place of relative security, calm, and optimism,
friction and unrest—from sources other than plural marriage—were
building as early as 1841. According to
Thomas Storrow, the Saints in Nauvoo and
their neighbors were “at perpetual feud, they accuse each other of
all sorts of crimes, rob each other when good chances occur &
vary the monotony of their lives by an occasional fight.” Indeed, as documents
in this volume attest, theft committed by some Latter-day Saints led
to conflict in 1841. One document in particular
highlights Joseph Smith’s efforts to disavow
thefts and other crimes.
Disputes between Latter-day Saints and
their neighbors arose for a variety of reasons but can perhaps be
distilled into the categories of legal entanglements, politics, and
power. The first evidence in this volume of Joseph Smith’s legal trouble arose
from charges dating back to 1838, when Smith was arrested and incarcerated following
the conflict between Latter-day Saints and Missourians antagonistic
to the church. Since his escape from custody in 1839, officials had hoped to extradite
Smith and try him for treason and other criminal charges stemming
from the conflict. On
5 June 1841, Smith was arrested at
the Heberlin Hotel in , Illinois, on a September 1840 extradition writ from
Missouri.
Smith was conveyed to ,
Illinois, where , a Democrat
and member of the State Supreme Court, agreed to hear
his case, though Douglas changed the venue to , Illinois,
some forty miles northeast of . The judge had visited Nauvoo approximately
one month earlier, in May 1841, and had spoken favorably
about the Saints, their industry, and the development of the city.
Smith had conferred the “freedom of the city” upon Douglas because
he had “proved himself friendly to this people” in direct contrast
to the officials of Missouri.
On 10 June 1841, Douglas heard Smith’s
case and declared the writ of extradition void on a technicality. He
determined that the arrest was made on the same writ issued in
September 1840 even though that writ had been invalidated when it
was returned to the governor of Missouri unserved. Douglas discharged Smith;
critics, including vocal Whig ,
argued that the Latter-day Saint leader should have been delivered
to Missouri to be tried for treason and that Douglas had shown
preferential treatment to the Latter-day Saints, perhaps hoping to
make them his political allies.
The discharge of Joseph Smith was only one of many
issues on which , editor of the Warsaw
Signal, sparred with the Latter-day Saints. Initially
neutral in his approach to the Saints, Sharp shifted his rhetoric
and published increasingly negative and antagonistic articles
against the Latter-day Saints in 1841. Some of this vitriol may have originated in party
politics—Sharp was an ardent and devoted Whig, while Joseph Smith
and the Latter-day Saints vacillated in their party allegiance. But
Sharp also feared the growing social, political, economic, and
military power of the Saints and the consequences he believed could
result from such power. He wrote, “Whenever they,
as a people, step beyond the proper sphere of a religious
denomination, and become a political body, as many of our citizens
are beginning to apprehend will be the case, then this press stands
pledged to take a stand against them.— On religious questions it is
and shall remain neutral; but it is bound to oppose the
concentration of political power in a religious body, or in the
hands of a few individuals.”
Sharp and others believed that the Saints held concentrated
ecclesiastical, civil, and military authority and would use that
power to deprive others of their “dearest rights,” notwithstanding
the Nauvoo ordinance on religious freedom. He also believed that
Joseph Smith could instruct and control Latter-day Saints in all
aspects of their lives, and as evidence of this control, Sharp
pointed to Smith’s open letter instructing the Saints to gather to
. To oppose the “further progress of
political Mormonism,” Sharp organized an anti-Mormon political party
in . In the midst
of Sharp’s contemptuous campaign, Joseph Smith canceled his
subscription to the Signal, notifying its editor that
“its contents are calculated to pollute me, and to patronize the
filthy sheet—that tissue of lies—that sink of iniquity—is
disgraceful to any moral man.” Such an acerbic
statement did nothing to quell the growing animosity. Other
Latter-day Saints followed Smith’s example. In the fall of 1841, and
also discontinued their subscriptions to the Warsaw
Signal, Phelps having charged the paper with printing
“deliberate and wilful falsehood.”
The documents for the ten-month period
represented in this volume provide a window through which to view
and understand Joseph Smith, the Latter-day Saints
and their neighbors, and
and its environs in 1841. Many visitors from outside the church commented on
aspects of life in and around Nauvoo, providing significant material
for insight into Joseph Smith texts. Though some outside observers
expressed apprehension regarding the growing influence of Latter-day
Saints in the area, not all impressions were negative.
Thomas Storrow noted the “morality, piety,
virtue, honesty and righteousness” of the Saints. Whether curious or
antagonistic, an increasing number of outsiders began taking note of
Joseph Smith’s religious movement and its prosperity.
Compared to previous volumes of
The Joseph Smith Papers, this volume contains
fewer revelations from the man Latter-day Saints regarded as a
prophet. Nevertheless, his role as leader of the Latter-day Saints
remained firm as he led and managed the growing church, continued to
instruct its people, and supported the building up of as the
church’s gathering place. Progress on the ,
particularly the baptismal font, continued even as Joseph Smith engaged in shaping
Nauvoo city government and managing the gathering of the Latter-day
Saints to the Nauvoo area. Despite being heavily preoccupied with
civic and business matters, Joseph Smith persevered in his spiritual
leadership of the Latter-day Saints, preaching, blessing, and
receiving revelation for
members of the growing church. For Joseph Smith and the Saints, a
sense of optimism buoyed Nauvoo at the end of 1841 because of the
progress on the temple, the additional church administrative
responsibilities undertaken by the Twelve Apostles, and the
increasing number of members coming to the shores of the
Mississippi. But tensions—both among church members and with those
outside the church—continued to surface. Those pressures would
result in new challenges for Joseph Smith and the church in the
months and years to come.