Appendix: Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 March 1840
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Source Note
United States Senate, Report, , 4 Mar. 1840. Featured version published in Public Documents Printed by Order of the Senate of the United States, during the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the United States, vol. 5, Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840, [1]–2. Transcription made from digital images obtained from Oxford University by Google Books in 2006.The volume contains eighty-two documents, numbered 197–278, printed with an index on a total of 1,151 pages. The document featured here is number 247. The pagination restarts with each document.
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Historical Introduction
On 4 March 1840, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary wrote a report to the Senate containing the committee’s resolution to dismiss the ’s memorial to Congress. Senator of had submitted the memorial to the Senate on 28 January 1840, at which time it was read aloud. The Senate initially voted to table the memorial, but on 12 February it referred the memorial to its Committee on the Judiciary. Though accounts of congressional proceedings do not explicitly mention the judiciary committee’s tasks, this report and other documents related to the memorial suggest that the Senate assigned the committee to determine whether the case fell within the jurisdiction of Congress before it considered the memorial’s merits.Between 20 and 22 February, the committee heard testimony from at least four men: church representative , Senator of , Representative of Missouri, and a Mr. Corwin of . Higbee wrote to JS on 22 February that if the committee decided the Senate should consider the church’s memorial further, the church could send several witnesses to to testify. In this report, however, the committee stated that Congress had no jurisdiction over the church’s petitioning efforts and resolved that the committee—and by extension the Senate—should no longer consider the memorial. Even though this report is dated 4 March, Higbee reported that the committee had made its decision by 26 February.The report primarily summarized the church’s memorial to Congress. It is unclear which of the five Committee on the Judiciary members composed this report. An extant manuscript draft of the report written in unidentified handwriting contains numerous phrases and entire sentences that were canceled with new text inserted in their place. On 23 March 1840, the Senate received the report, voted in favor of the resolution, and ordered that the report be printed.Two copies of this report were apparently sent to JS—one by Senator John M. Robinson of and another by —although the report itself was not addressed to JS or any member of the church’s delegation to the federal government. An 1840 general of the church approved a resolution that declared this report “unconstitutional, and subversive of the rights of a free people.” This report and the conference’s official response to it were published in the March and April issues of the Times and Seasons, respectively. Later in 1840, the Senate published the final version of this report in a collection of other documents from the first session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. The report as published by the Senate is reproduced here as an appendix because it represents the Senate’s response to JS’s and his fellow delegation members’ petition to the federal government.
Footnotes
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1
Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. and 12 Feb. 1840, 138, 173; Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 149 (1840).
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
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2
Letter from Elias Higbee, 22 Feb. 1840; Historical Introduction to Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.
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3
Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–A; Letter from Elias Higbee, 21 Feb. 1840; Letter from Elias Higbee, 22 Feb. 1840.
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6
See Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.
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7
At this time, the Committee on the Judiciary consisted of five senators: Garret D. Wall of New Jersey, Thomas Clayton of Delaware, Robert Strange of North Carolina, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and Oliver H. Smith of Indiana. (Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 16 Dec. 1839, 11; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 835–836, 894–895, 1937, 1990, 2107.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989: The Continental Congress September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States from the First through the One Hundredth Congresses March 4, 1789, to January 3, 1989, Inclusive. Edited by Kathryn Allamong Jacob and Bruce A. Ragsdale. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989.
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8
Substantive differences between the published report and the manuscript draft are noted in the annotation herein. (“Report from the Committee on the Judiciary on the Memorial of the ‘Latter Day Saints’ Commonly Called Mormons,” 4 Mar. 1840, Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives, Washington DC.)
Memorial of Ephraim Owen, Jr. H.R. Doc. no. 42, 25th Cong., 3rd Sess. (1838).
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9
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 23 Mar. 1840, 259–260.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
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12
“Important from Washington,” Times and Seasons, Mar. 1840, 1:74–75; Minutes and Discourse, 6–8 Apr. 1840.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
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