of the law because it is a whig government. The largest party will always take the law into their own hands, and as to expecting any favor under the hands of this or any other government I do not. The project of sending men to look out a location I am favorable to, where we can erect the standard of liberty. If my brethren say they will live under the governments I will do so to, but for my own feelings I would see them in hell as far as Sims’ [Symmes’s] hole before I would do it. I glory in the anticipation of seeing this company organized and start on the journey forthwith. As to the people being excited, they will not know it untill it is accomplished. They have a great many projects in view to get us away from here. If we accomplish the building of these houses it is all we ask, and this we will accomplish in spite of them, and we will go when we are ready. [p. [20]]
It is unclear whether Miller was denouncing the Whig political party or some broader set of political philosophies he tied to that party. However, because both the legislative and executive branches of Illinois and the federal government were controlled by the Democratic Party, it is possible that Miller was referring to the local actions of the Whigs in Hancock County and the surrounding area, where the Whigs were often closely aligned with actions against the Mormons. In his later history Thomas Ford described the hostility between the Whigs and the Latter-day Saints, noting that following the 1843 election the Whigs “now renewed their crusade against them, every paper was loaded with accounts of the wickedness, corruptions, and enormities of Nauvoo. . . . From this time forth the whigs generally, and a part of the democrats, determined upon driving the Mormons out of the State; and everything connected with the Mormons became political, and was considered almost entirely with reference to party.” (Ford, History of Illinois, 319.)
Ford, Thomas. A History of Illinois, from Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847. Containing a Full Account of the Black Hawk War, the Rise, Progress, and Fall of Mormonism, the Alton and Lovejoy Riots, and Other Important and Interesting Events. Chicago: S. C. Griggs; New York: Ivison and Phinney, 1854.
In April 1818 John Cleves Symmes sent out a circular declaring that “the earth is hollow, and habitable within, containing a number of solid concentrick spheres” with openings located at the poles, and he called for volunteers to join him on an expedition to the North Pole to prove his theories. (News Item, Daily National Intelligencer [Washington DC], 18 June 1818, [3]; see also Symmes’s Theory of Concentric Spheres; Demonstrating That the Earth Is Hollow, Habitable Within, and Widely Open about the Poles [Cincinnati: Morgan, Lodge and Fisher, 1826].)
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.