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.
On 25 May 1844, Congressman Wentworth attempted to do precisely as Hyde here suggested. He asked to have the clerk of the House of Representatives read the memorial from JS to the assembled House. Before completing the reading, however, the clerk was interrupted by Joseph R. Ingersoll, a Pennsylvania Whig who opposed the Democratic Party’s aggressive stance toward Great Britain over the Oregon territory. Wentworth then moved for a “suspension of the rules, to enable him to have the paper read” and for the House to go into the Committee of the Whole to debate the “Oregon bill,” directly linking JS’s memorial with the wider controversy over Oregon. Wentworth’s motion to suspend the rules, however, was voted down by a coalition of Whigs and Democrats opposed to provocative measures over Oregon that might lead to war with Britain. Congressmen Hoge, Hardin, and Douglas all voted with Wentworth in favor of the motion. (Congressional Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 624 [1844]; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1312.)
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.
A member of the Committee on Territories, Wentworth had a particular interest in Oregon. Early in the legislative session, he introduced a resolution requesting that the president deliver “all the correspondence between this Government or any other power in relation to the discovery, possession, title, and boundary of the Oregon Territory.” He later presented joint resolutions from the Illinois legislature that called for an annulment of the treaty with Great Britain and the creation of a territorial government in Oregon. (Congressional Globe, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 29, 54, 336 [1844].)
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
Douglas frequently suffered from poor health. About a week before Hyde wrote the featured letter, the 19 April issue of New York City’s Evening Post reported that “Mr. Douglass has just recovered from a long fit of sickness.” (See Stevens, Autobiography of Stephen A. Douglas, 9, 11; and “Correspondence of the Evening Post,” Evening Post [New York City], 19 Apr. 1844, [2].)
Stevens, Frank E., ed. Autobiography of Stephen A. Douglas. Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1913.
Evening Post. New York City. 1801–.
Secretary of State Abel Upshur began secret annexation negotiations with the Republic of Texas in 1843. After Upshur’s untimely death, President Tyler’s new secretary of state, John C. Calhoun, finalized the treaty with Texas in April 1844. Because it was a treaty, the annexation agreement still needed the approval of the United States Senate. (See Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 679.)
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. The Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Possibly a reference to A Bill to Organize a Territorial Government in the Oregon Territory, and for Other Purposes, H.R. no. 21, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. (1844); and A Bill to Facilitate and Encourage the Settlement of the Territory of Oregon, S. no. 23, 28th Cong., 1st Sess. (1844). Both bills authorized the president to erect forts in Oregon to protect migrating settlers.