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Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844

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Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844

Source Note

, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to city mayor [JS] and Nauvoo City Council, [, Hancock Co., IL], 22 June 1844; handwriting and signature of ; eight pages; JS Collection, CHL. Includes docket and redactions.
Two bifolia measuring 12⅜ × 7⅝ inches (31 × 19 cm). Each page is horizontally lined with thirty-seven thin lines. An embossment reading “AMES” with a decorative octagonal border is on the first page of both bifolia. The document was folded in half twice horizontally. There are three sets of pin holes in the upper left corner of the bifolia, indicating various efforts to keep the entirety of the document together.
The letter was docketed on the fourth page by , who served as JS’s scribe from December 1841 until JS’s death in June 1844 and served as church historian from December 1842 until his own death in March 1854. At some later point, an unknown scribe made insertions in graphite. The letter was copied into JS’s history sometime in 1856. The document was listed in an inventory that was produced by the Church Historian’s Office (later Church Historical Department) circa 1904. By 1973 it had been included in the JS Collection at the Church Historical Department (now CHL). The document’s early docket, its inclusion in JS’s history, its inclusion in the circa 1904 inventory, and its later inclusion in the JS Collection indicate continuous institutional custody.

Footnotes

  1. JS, Journal, 13 Dec. 1841 and 21 Dec. 1842; Orson Spencer, “Death of Our Beloved Brother Willard Richards,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 16 Mar. 1854, [2].

    Deseret News. Salt Lake City. 1850–.

  2. JS History, vol. F-1, 140–143; Source Note for History, 1838–1856, vol. F-1.

  3. “Letters to and from the Prophet,” ca. 1904, [4], Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL.

    Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.

  4. See the full bibliographic entry for JS Collection, 1827–1844, in the CHL catalog.

Historical Introduction

During the early afternoon of 22 June 1844, governor wrote a letter to JS and the city council of , Hancock County, Illinois, urging JS and seventeen others to submit to arrest and come to , the Hancock County seat, to answer a charge of . Ford had traveled from , Illinois, to Carthage to investigate the circumstances surrounding the city council’s ordering the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor’s press. Soon after arriving on 21 June, Ford sent a letter to JS informing him of the investigation and inviting JS to send representatives to Carthage to relate the perspectives of JS and the city council regarding the circumstances in question. In response, JS sent and to Carthage carrying a short letter, fifteen affidavits detailing threats made against the Latter-day Saints, and some other documents. The next day, 22 June, Taylor and Bernhisel delivered the documents to Ford at about ten o’clock in the morning. After perusing the documents, Ford told Taylor and Bernhisel that he wanted JS and the others named in the arrest warrant to come to Carthage and answer the charge of riot. By doing so, they could “prove to the people, what . . . [they] professed, that . . . [they] wished to be governed by law.” Ford stated that he believed such actions “would have a tendency to allay public excitement.” When Taylor and Bernhisel countered that it would be unsafe for JS to travel to Carthage “with out an armed force,” Ford “strenuously advised” the “not to bring any arms and pledged his faith as Governor and the faith of the State that [they] should be protected, and that he would guarrantee [their] perfect safety.”
Upon the conclusion of his meeting with and , wrote his 22 June 1844 letter to JS and the City Council, explaining that he believed the uproar in stemmed directly from the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor and the apparent unwillingness of JS and the others named in the warrant to be tried by any court other than the Nauvoo Municipal Court. Ford ignored the arguments that JS had presented and instead proceeded with his own analysis of why the city council had acted inappropriately in ordering the press’s destruction. Ford, who had been an attorney and a judge for several years—and had even served on the Supreme Court—also lectured JS on the Illinois state constitution and how JS had violated its principles. Ford wrote that unless those charged with answered the charges in , he would be forced to call out the state militia to arrest them. He expressed that he was not confident he could control the militia or guarantee the safety of Nauvoo against an attack and warned JS that if he and the others accused did not surrender themselves and come to Carthage, dire consequences would likely result. Ford evidently finished writing the letter sometime around five o’clock in the afternoon.
Upon finishing the letter, gave it to Christopher Yates, captain of the militia, and a posse of between ten and thirty men, who accompanied and back to . After arriving in Nauvoo that night at around ten o’clock, Yates gave the letter to JS. Around midnight, JS wrote a response to Ford.

Footnotes

  1. John Taylor, Statement, 23 Aug. 1856, 24, Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, CHL; Letter from Thomas Ford, 21 June 1844.

  2. Letter to Thomas Ford, 21 June 1844; Minutes, 21 June 1844; JS, Journal, 21 June 1844. The other documents included, among other items, copies of JS’s 14 and 16 June letters to Ford, the sent copies of which had arrived in Springfield after Ford's departure for Carthage. (Letter to Thomas Ford, 14 June 1844; Letter to Thomas Ford, 16 June 1844.)

  3. John Taylor, Statement, 23 Aug. 1856, 20–24, Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, CHL.

  4. JS offered defenses of the destruction of the Expositor in his 14 June letter to Ford, a copy of which Taylor and Bernhisel provided Ford after they arrived in Carthage. (Letter to Thomas Ford, 14 June 1844; John Taylor, Statement, 23 Aug. 1856, 22, Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, CHL.)

  5. John Taylor, Statement, 23 Aug. 1856, 24, Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, CHL.

  6. 1850 U.S. Census, Hancock Co., IL, 294[A]; John Taylor, Statement, 23 Aug. 1856, 24–25, Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, CHL. In a December 1844 message to the Illinois state legislature, Ford reported that he had dispatched “a force of ten men” to deliver the letter and make the arrests. William Clayton recorded that the posse numbered thirty men. (Message of the Governor, 9; Clayton, Journal, 22–23 June 1844; see also Ford, History of Illinois, 332.)

    Census (U.S.) / U.S. Bureau of the Census. Population Schedules. Microfilm. FHL.

    Message of the Governor of the State of Illinois, in Relation to the Disturbances in Hancock County, December, 21, 1844. Springfield, IL: Walters and Weber, 1844.

    Clayton, William. Journals, 1842–1845. CHL.

    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.

  7. Richards, Journal, 22 June 1844. Taylor later recalled returning to Nauvoo around eight or nine o’clock in the evening, but his recollection was written approximately twelve years later. (John Taylor, Statement, 23 Aug. 1856, 25, Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, CHL.)

    Richards, Willard. Journals, 1836–1853. Willard Richards, Papers, 1821–1854. CHL. MS 1490, boxes 1–2.

  8. Letter to Thomas Ford, 22–23 June 1844.

Asterisk (*) denotes a "featured" version, which includes an introduction and annotation. *Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844 Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844, John McEwan First Copy Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844, John McEwan Second Copy Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844, as Published in Warsaw Signal History, 1838–1856, volume F-1 [1 May 1844–8 August 1844] “History of Joseph Smith”
as a nuisance. In no other State, county, city Town, or Territory in the , has ever such a thing, been thought of before. Such an act at this day, would not be tolerated, even in Just such another act in 1830 hurled the King of from his throne and caused the imprisonment of four of his principal ministers for life No civilized country can tolerate such conduct; much less can it be tolerated in this free country of the
The result of my diliberations on this Subject is that I will have to require you and all persons <​in ​> accused or sued in to submit in all cases implicitly to the process of the courts and to interpose no obstacles to an arrest either by writ of or otherwise; and that all of the people of the city of Shall make the most comp and continue the most complete Submission to the laws of the and the process of the courts and justices of the peace.
In the particular case now under consideration I require any and all of you who are a or shall be accused to Submit yourselves to be arrested by the Same , by virtue of the same warrant and be tried before the same whose authority has heretofore been resisted Nothing Short of this can vindicate the dignity of violated law, and allay the just excitement of the people
I am anxious to preserve the peace. A Small indescretion may bring on a war. The whole country is now up in arms; and a vast number of people are ready to take the matter into their own hands Such a state of things might force me to [p. [5]]
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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Letter from Thomas Ford, 22 June 1844
ID #
1959
Total Pages
8
Print Volume Location
Handwriting on This Page
  • Thomas Ford

Footnotes

  1. Common law at the time allowed municipal entities to abate public nuisances without formal legal hearings. It is unclear, however, whether this power had been used as a justification by any cities to abate a newspaper before this time. Offending newspapers were generally destroyed by mobs rather than municipal governments. Participants usually defended their actions on the grounds that the offending newspapers had created a “public nuisance” and were generally acquitted by the courts on those grounds. (Oaks, “Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor,” 885–902; Kielbowicz, “Law and Mob Law,” 559–596.)

    Oaks, Dallin H. “The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor.” Utah Law Review 9 (Winter 1965): 862–903.

    Kielbowicz, Richard B. “The Law and Mob Law in Attacks on Anti-Slavery Newspapers, 1833–1860.” Law and History Review 24, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 559–600.

  2. In July 1830 revolutionaries in France overthrew King Charles X, replacing him with his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans. Primary catalysts of the revolution were the crown’s attacks on newspapers that opposed it and its curtailment of freedoms of the press, which were contrary to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. (Pilbeam, French Revolution of 1830, 1–6; Popkin, Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 3, 182–183.)

    Pilbeam, Pamela M. The French Revolution of 1830. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

    Popkin, Jeremy D. Press, Revolution, and Social Identities in France, 1830–1835. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.

  3. These terms matched the demands of JS’s critics in Hancock County. In an affidavit given on 19 June 1844, Anson Call, David Evans, and William E. Horner testified that on 17 June an unnamed individual from Hancock County informed them that “nothing else would do, but for him [JS] to be taken upon the old Writ, and by the same person who took him in Custody before, and tried at the place where the writ was issued.” (Anson Call et al., Affidavit, Nauvoo, IL, 19 June 1844, JS Office Papers, CHL.)

  4. On 21 June, Ford wrote to JS that he had come to Hancock County because he had determined “that my presence here might be necessary to preserve the peace and enforce the laws.” (Letter from Thomas Ford, 21 June 1844.)

  5. Ford later stated that while he was in Hancock County, “the force assembled at Carthage amounted to about twelve or thirteen hundred men,” with “four or five hundred more . . . assembled at Warsaw.” (Ford, History of Illinois, 339.)

    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.

  6. Two of the affidavits JS sent to Ford on 21 June reported that if JS’s opponents did not secure Ford’s help and approval, they were willing to act independently of his orders in dealing with JS. (See Anson Call et al., Affidavit, Nauvoo, IL, 19 June 1844; Allen Wait, Affidavit, Nauvoo, IL, 20 June 1844, JS Office Papers, CHL.)

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