Footnotes
Cole et al., Encyclopedia of Modern Everyday Inventions, 22; Edelman, “Brief History of Tape,” 45–46.
Cole, David J., Eve Browning, and Fred E.H. Schroeder. Encyclopedia of Modern Everyday Inventions. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.
Edelman, Jonathan. “A Brief History of Tape.” Ambidextrous 5 (Falling in 2006): 45–46.
Historian’s Office, Journal, 7 June 1853; Wilford Woodruff, Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to George A. Smith, 30 Aug. 1856, in Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybooks, vol. 1, p. 364.
Historian’s Office. Journal, 1844–1997. CHL. CR 100 1.
Historian’s Office. Letterpress Copybooks, 1854–1879, 1885–1886. CHL. CR 100 38.
Bitton and Arrington, Mormons and Their Historians, 48–55.
Bitton, David, and Leonard J. Arrington. Mormons and Their Historians. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988.
“Letters to and from the Prophet,” ca. 1904, [4], Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL. The JS Collection includes five letters that Orson Hyde wrote in 1844. The circa 1904 inventory does not specify whether the letter received from Hyde is this one, dated 25 April 1844, or the one dated 26 April 1844. The letters were docketed and processed similarly, so the inventory may refer to both letters. (See Letter from Orson Hyde, 26 Apr. 1844.)
Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.
See the full bibliographic entry for JS Collection, 1827–1844, in the CHL catalog.
Footnotes
Council of Fifty, “Record,” 26 Mar. 1844. The memorial Hyde presented to Tyler is nearly identical to the one the council wrote to Congress. However, it asked the president to use executive power to grant the memorial, while the memorial to Congress requested that Congress pass the memorial as a bill. (JS, Memorial to John Tyler, 30 Mar. 1844, copy, JS Collection, CHL; Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 24–26 Mar. 1844.)
When the council approved the memorial to Congress on 26 March, Hyde “felt as though he could prophecy that Congress would grant our memorial.” (Council of Fifty, “Record,” 26 Mar. 1844.)
JS, Journal, 31 Mar. and 4 Apr. 1844; Letter of Recommendation for Orson Hyde, 30 Mar. 1844, draft, in Letter of Recommendation for Orson Pratt, 12 Mar. 1844, draft, JS Collection, CHL; see also Orson Hyde, Washington DC, to “Dear Brethren,” Nauvoo, IL, 9 June 1844, JS Collection, CHL.
Nauvoo City Council Rough Minute Book, 12 Feb. 1844, 2. The city council selected Pratt to present a memorial to Congress that outlined the persecutions and property losses the Saints experienced in Missouri in the 1830s and that petitioned the government to grant the city of Nauvoo territorial status. (See Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 16 Dec. 1843–12 Feb. 1844.)
In a pamphlet detailing his presidential platform, JS stated his belief that the United States was entitled to the entirety of the Oregon territory. (See General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, ca. 26 Jan.–7 Feb. 1844.)
In spring 1844, Lyman Wight and Heber C. Kimball, who shared Hyde’s hope that the Saints could relocate to uninhabited land, submitted a petition to Congress asking the federal government to let the Saints purchase public lands in a federal territory on a friendly repayment schedule. (See Journal of the Senate of the United States, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., 7 June 1844, 331; and Lyman Wight and Heber C. Kimball, Petition to U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 1844, Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives, Washington DC.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the Third Session of the Twenty-Seventh Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 5, 1842, and in the Sixty-Seventh Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Thomas Allen, 1842.
Wight, Lyman, and Heber C. Kimball. Petition to U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 1844. Petitions, Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Public Lands during the 28th Congress. Petitions and Memorials, 1816–1948. Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, 1789–2015. National Archives, Washington DC.
Council of Fifty, “Record,” 11 and 19 Mar. 1844; “List of Letters,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 17 Jan. 1844, [3]. As a postmaster, Rigdon was entitled to franking privileges, meaning he could receive mail for free.
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
Council of Fifty, “Record,” 13 May 1844. Hyde was not in Washington when Wight and Kimball arrived, but he received the letter on 8 June 1844 upon his return to the capital. This letter censured Hyde for taking matters into his own hands by revising the memorial. (Kimball, Journal, 2 and 8 June 1844; Orson Hyde, Washington DC, to “Dear Brethren,” Nauvoo, IL, 9 June 1844, JS Collection, CHL; see also Letter to Orson Hyde and Orson Pratt, 13 May 1844.)
Kimball, Heber C. Journal, Nov. 1845–Jan. 1846. CHL.
TEXT: Insertion in graphite.
Prior to going to Washington DC, Page preached in Pittsburgh. His wife, Mary Judd Page, remained in Pittsburgh following her husband’s 1843 appointment to serve a mission in Washington. (See Willard Richards, Nauvoo, IL, to Mary Judd Page, Pittsburgh, PA, 25 Nov. 1843, photocopy, CHL.)
Richards, Willard. Letter, Nauvoo, IL, to Mary Page, Pittsburgh, PA, 25 Nov. 1843. Photocopy. CHL. MS 74.
TEXT: Insertion in graphite.
In December 1843, Pratt was assigned by the Nauvoo City Council to deliver a memorial to Congress requesting that Nauvoo be granted all the powers and rights belonging to territories of the United States until the state of Missouri provided redress for the losses the Latter-day Saints sustained there in the 1830s. The memorial further requested that the mayor of Nauvoo (who at the time was JS) be authorized to call upon federal troops, when necessary, to help the Nauvoo Legion “repel the invasion of mobs, keep the public peace, and protect the innocent from the unhallowed ravages of lawless banditti.” In mid-February 1844, the city council signed the memorial and instructed Pratt to leave immediately for Washington DC. JS told Pratt to urge the congressional representatives from Illinois to support the memorial and to enlist the help of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, “and other prominet men.” Pratt left the following month, sometime soon after the organization of the Council of Fifty. He also carried an additional memorial from the city council and other Latter-day Saints requesting redress for losses in Missouri in the 1830s. This memorial was drafted by John Frierson in November 1843 and signed by JS and the Nauvoo City Council in December 1843. On 5 April 1844, James Semple, a Democratic senator from Illinois, presented the memorials to the United States Senate. Both memorials were referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. On 11 May 1844, Pratt wrote a letter to Senator John M. Berrien, a Whig from Georgia, urging action on the redress memorial. The committee, however, never considered either memorial. (Minutes, 21 Dec. 1843; Minutes, 8 Dec. 1843; Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 16 Dec. 1843–12 Feb. 1844; Nauvoo City Council Rough Minute Book, 12 Feb. 1844, 2; Authorization for Orson Pratt, 12 Mar. 1844; JS, Journal, 26 and 28 Nov. 1843; 8, 16, and 21 Dec. 1843; 12 Feb. 1844; JS et al., Memorial to U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 28 Nov. 1843, Record Group 46, Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives, Washington DC; Congressional Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 482 [1844]; Orson Pratt, Washington DC, to John M. Berrien, 11 May 1844, in Pratt, Prophetic Almanac for 1845, 18–19; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 648–649, 1887.)
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
Pratt, Orson. Prophetic Almanac for 1845. Being the First after Bissextile or Leap Year. Calculated for the Eastern, Middle and Western States and Territories, the Northern Portions of the Slave States, and British Provinces. New York: Prophet Office, 1845.
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.
The 1818 joint occupancy agreement between the United States and Great Britain over Oregon aimed to “prevent disputes and differences” over the expansive territory that both powers claimed but that was only sparsely occupied by citizens of either country. The treaty, which did not prohibit military forces from either nation from entering the disputed area, stated that all of the territory would be “free and open . . . to the vessels, citizens, and subjects, of the two powers.” The two nations negotiated an indefinite extension of the agreement in 1827, with the added clause that either country could terminate it after giving a one-year notice. As Americans asserted their claims over the whole territory, tensions mounted, and those who opposed taking aggressive measures speculated that even giving such a notice to Britain would lead to war. On 22 February 1844, Senator Rufus Choate, a Massachusetts Whig, responded to Democratic calls for an abrogation of the treaty—an effort led by Semple—by cautioning that “an imprudent step on either side” could result in conflict. A few days later, Illinois Democratic senator Sidney Breese disagreed, arguing that war would not be inevitable if the United States notified Great Britain that it intended to abandon the treaty. (Convention with Great Britain [20 Oct. 1818], Public Statutes at Large, vol. 8, p. 249, art. 3; Convention with Great Britain [6 Aug. 1827], Public Statutes at Large, vol. 8, p. 360, arts. 1–2; Congressional Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 306–307, 327–328 [1844]; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 702, 818.)
The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, from the Organization of the Government in 1789, to March 3, 1845. . . . Edited by Richard Peters. 8 vols. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1846–1867.
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
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.