On 17 December 1842, governor wrote a letter to JS in , Illinois, concerning ’s extradition request, counseling him to submit to arrest and come to , Illinois, for a hearing. Some of JS’s close associates spent nearly four days lobbying in the state capital, and this letter was the culmination of their efforts. On 9 December, JS’s brother , JS’s clerks and , and five other Latter-day Saints left Nauvoo to attend to urgent legal business in Springfield. On 14 December, one day after their arrival in the city, several members of the party met with state supreme court justice and , an influential lawyer and the attorney for Illinois who was also reviewing JS’s and Hyrum Smith’s ongoing bankruptcy petitions. Both Douglas and Butterfield independently counseled the men to petition Governor Ford to “countermand the writs” ordering JS’s arrest and his extradition to Missouri on charges that he had been an accessory before the fact to the attempted assassination of . The group then engaged Butterfield as JS’s attorney in the matter, and Butterfield prepared a formal petition to Ford, which he and the delegation delivered that afternoon. At the meeting with Ford, Butterfield argued that the attempt to extradite JS to Missouri was illegal because JS had been in Illinois when the assassination attempt occurred and therefore was not a fugitive from justice. At the conclusion of the meeting, Ford promised to review the matter with members of the state supreme court.

The next afternoon, 15 December, , acting as JS’s attorney, met with and the six state supreme court justices, of nine total, then in . The judges unanimously agreed that the extradition request for JS lacked legal standing and that it should be dismissed. That evening Butterfield met with JS’s associates and informed them of these developments. On the morning of 16 December, the men again met to discuss the bankruptcy cases. Afterward, visited the secretary of state’s office and made copies of legal documents relating to JS’s extradition. That evening, met with the delegation and discussed his and the other supreme court judges’ meeting with Ford. He again counseled JS to come to Springfield and promised that the supreme court would discharge him on a writ of .

Although they had heard from both and about the results of the meeting between and the supreme court justices, the delegation members remained in until 17 December 1842, when Douglas accompanied the men to another meeting with Ford, in which Ford gave his opinion that JS should submit to arrest and come to Springfield to obtain a writ of habeas corpus. requested that the governor put this statement in writing, and Ford then wrote JS the letter featured here. The delegation showed Ford’s letter to Butterfield and other allies in the city and then around eleven o’clock that same morning started the return journey home. They arrived in in the afternoon of 20 December, and, “after resting a little,” Clayton, , , and two other delegation members met with JS and presumably delivered this letter to him along with letters from Butterfield and .