See JS, Draft Letter to Presidential Candidates, 4 Nov. 1843, JS Collection, CHL; and Letter from Henry Clay, 15 Nov. 1843.

In General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, JS used similar language to lament the decline of the United States. (See General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, ca. 26 Jan.–7 Feb. 1844.)

See Letter from Henry Clay, 15 Nov. 1843.

“The goddess of good luck” refers to Tyche, the Greek goddess of fortune, or her later Roman incarnation, Fortuna. She was usually depicted holding a cornucopia. (Matheson, Obsession with Fortune, 19–26.)

Matheson, Susan B. An Obsession with Fortune: Tyche in Greek and Roman Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Art Gallery, 1994.

In 1814 Clay helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 between the United Kingdom and the United States. (Klotter, Henry Clay, 35–37.)

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

This is a reference to the dispute between the United States and the United Kingdom over the boundary of the state of Maine and the province of New Brunswick. In 1839 militias from the state and province nearly fought over the disputed border. The disagreement was not successfully negotiated until 1842. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 674–675.)

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.

Both the United States and the United Kingdom had claimed the Oregon territory (now Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and British Columbia) since 1818. The territorial dispute grew more divisive in the 1840s as more Americans moved there. In February 1844, JS publicly called for the United States to exert control over the entire Oregon territory. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 96–97, 712–714; General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, ca. 26 Jan.–7 Feb. 1844.)

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.

In the presidential election of 1824, Clay finished third behind John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. No candidate won a majority of electoral votes. Accordingly, the election was decided by the House of Representatives. Because Adams’s political platform was similar to Clay’s platform, Clay supported Adams over Jackson. Adams became president and subsequently appointed Clay secretary of state. Jackson and several of his supporters alleged that Adams’s victory (and thus Jackson’s defeat) and Clay’s appointment were the results of a corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 208–211.)

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.

In an 11 April 1844 meeting of the Council of Fifty, JS stated that the slogan for his presidential campaign was “Jeffersonianism, Jeffersonian Democracy, free trade and Sailors rights, protection of person & property.” Several phrases in the slogan were commonly associated with the War of 1812, and in the years after the war Americans used them to advocate for a government designed to uphold individual freedom and property. (Council of Fifty, “Record,” 11 Apr. 1844, underlining in original; McBride, Joseph Smith for President, 76–77, 172.)

McBride, Spencer W. Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2021.

Politicians in nineteenth-century America often used the phrase “an honorable war is better than a dishonorable peace” in advocating for the use of force to obtain disputed territory that they believed rightly belonged to the United States. (See, for example, Acts and Resolves of the State of Maine, 4:630.)

Acts and Resolves of the State of Maine, from 1840 to 1841 Inclusive. Vol. 4. Augusta, ME: Wm. R. Smith, 1842.

This is a reference to the expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from Missouri in 1838 and 1839. (See “Part 3: 4 November 1838–16 April 1839”; and Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.)

At some point in December 1839 or January 1840, JS met with Clay in Washington DC and asked him to support the church’s petitions for redress and reparations from the federal government for lost property in Missouri. While Clay supported the submission of the church’s memorial to Congress in the United States Senate and advocated for it to be considered by the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, he never openly advocated for reparations for the Latter-day Saints. (See JS History, vol. D-1, 1552.)

See Luke 6:44.

See Letter from Henry Clay, 15 Nov. 1843.

See Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, bk. 2, in Hazlitt, Select British Poets, 468.

Hazlitt, William, ed. Select British Poets; or, New Elegant Extracts from Chaucer to the Present Time, with Critical Remarks. London: Wm. C. Hall, 1824.

In 1820 Clay helped orchestrate the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Missouri to the United States as a slave state, admitted Maine as a free state, and established the Mason-Dixon surveying line as the line of latitude that would help determine the legality of slavery in any states admitted to the union thereafter. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 151–155.)

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.

Clay ran for the presidency unsuccessfully in 1824 and 1832 and failed to win his party’s nomination in 1840. (Klotter, Henry Clay, chaps. 5, 8, 11.)

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Brag (an ancestor of poker) was a traditional British card game of bluffing. Clay’s fondness for playing games of chance was well known to the public in the 1840s. (“Brag,” in Parlett, Dictionary of Card Games, 31; Klotter, Henry Clay, 62–64.)

Parlett, David. A Dictionary of Card Games. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

See Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 235.

Watts, Isaac. Hymns and Spiritual Songs. In Three Books. London: L. How, 1805.

Letter from Henry Clay, 15 Nov. 1843.

See Genesis 9:6.

In 1826, while serving as secretary of state, Clay challenged Congressman John Randolph to a duel after Randolph insulted him in a speech. Neither man was injured in the subsequent duel, but the event elicited strong criticism of Clay from some Americans, as the social acceptability of dueling was waning in parts of the United States. Nevertheless, violent conflict between members of Congress was common at this time. Between 1830 and 1860, there were more than seventy such incidents. (Klotter, Henry Clay, 64–67; Freeman, Field of Blood, 5, 64.)

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Freeman, Joanne B. The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2018.

“The sanctum sanctorum of American glory” is probably an allusion to the United States Capitol, in which Clay and other congressmen met to conduct the nation’s legislation.

In 1772, on the second anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Joseph Warren referred to Great Britain’s North American colonies as the “asylum of the oppressed.” Americans applied that descriptor patriotically to the United States following the American War of Independence. (Warren, Oration, 18.)

Warren, Joseph. An Oration Delivered March 5th, 1772. At the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; To Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770. Boston: Edes and Gill, 1772.

See Matthew 23:14.

See Genesis 4:1–16; Numbers 16:1–35; and Jude 1:11.

This is a reference to a mourning practice in the Old Testament. (See, for example, Lamentations 2:10.)

When God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, he “placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:24.)

Jesus castigated the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites for donating mint and other herbs at the temple while neglecting more important matters such as judgment, mercy, and faith. He negatively referred to the Roman tetrarch Herod Antipas, another authority figure, as a fox. (See Matthew 23:23; and Luke 13:31–32.)

Vox reprobi, vox Diaboli is Latin for “the voice of reprobates is the voice of the devil.”

This is a reference to the Nullification Crisis of 1832–1833. (See Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 395–410.)

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.

On 6 April 1844, Clay spoke in Charleston, South Carolina, on the topics of tariffs and a national bank. According to a newspaper report of the speech, Clay professed his support for “incidental protection” through tariffs and “denounced ultraism in all its forms.” He also affirmed his longstanding support for a national bank but added that “he was willing to leave this subject to public opinion, content to be guided by its voice and governed by its dictates.” (“Mr. Clay in Charleston. His Abandonment of the High Tariff System,” New York Herald [New York City], 12 Apr. 1844, [2], italics in original.)

New York Herald. New York City. 1835–1924.

From December 1843 to May 1844, Clay traveled through the southern United States on a quasi campaign trip, as he had done in western states such as Indiana and Ohio in 1842. As a prominent senator, he was inevitably invited to dine with local political leaders wherever he traveled, and he would often give impromptu speeches on such occasions. In private conversations associated with these events, he frequently spoke about the question of the proposed annexation of Texas. (Klotter, Henry Clay, 295.)

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

“Confidential letters for the north” may be a reference to the “Raleigh letter,” an April 1844 letter Clay wrote in Raleigh, North Carolina. In the letter, he expressed concern over the proposed annexation of Texas by the United States, as it would reopen the slavery issue in the country while signaling to the world that the United States had “an insatiable and unquenchable thirst for foreign conquest.” The letter was published in a Washington DC newspaper, and many Americans saw it as an appeal to antislavery Whigs in the northern states. In July 1844, fearing the loss of electoral support in the southern states because of his “Raleigh letter,” Clay explained his position to southerners in two letters published in Alabama newspapers. (Klotter, Henry Clay, 296–297, 310–312; Henry Clay, Raleigh, NC, 17 Apr. 1844, Letter to the Editor, Daily National Intelligencer [Washington DC], 27 Apr. 1844, [3].)

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.

In 1824 Clay campaigned for president on his “American System,” an economic plan that included a national bank, a tariff to protect American industry, and federal subsidies for internal improvements such as roads and canals. (Klotter, Henry Clay, 109; Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, 2; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 270–271.)

Klotter, James C. Henry Clay: The Man Who Would Be President. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

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.

See Mother Goose’s Melody, 39.

Mother Goose’s Melody; or, Sonnets for the Cradle. In Two Parts. Part I. Contains the Most Celebrated Songs and Lullabies of the Good Old Nurses, Calculated to Amuse Children and to Excite Them to Sleep. Part II. Those of That Sweet Songster and Nurse of Wit and Humour, Master William Shakespeare. . . . 2nd ed. Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas, 1794.

The “Clay party,” the “National Republican party,” the “High Protective Tariff party,” and the “coon skin party” are all references to the Whig Party and the earlier political factions that coalesced in the party’s formal organization. Leading up to the 1824 presidential election, supporters of John Quincy Adams were often called the “Adams-Clay Party” or the “National Republicans.” One of the political ideas they rallied around was a tariff to protect American industry. One Ohio newspaper established solely for Democrat James K. Polk’s 1844 presidential campaign was titled the Coon Dissector. (Holt, Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, chaps. 1–2; Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 204, 210, 274–275, 390; Masthead, Coon Dissector [Dayton, OH], 20 Sept. 1844, [2].)

Holt, Michael F. The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

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.

Coon Dissector. Dayton, OH. 1844.

“Ultraism, ne plus ultraism,—sine qua non” is a string of Latin words and phrases that loosely translates to “other people, the ultimate, an essential condition.”

See Romans 9:21.

Shakespeare, The Tempest, act 4, sc. 1, line 151, in Wadsworth Shakespeare, 1680.

The Wadsworth Shakespeare, Formerly “The Riverside Shakespeare”: The Complete Works. Edited by G. Blakemore Evans, J. J. M. Tobin, Herschel Baker, Anne Barton, Frank Kermode, Harry Levin, Hallett Smith, and Marie Edel. 2nd ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 1997.

Texas had been widely populated by emigrants from Clay’s home state of Kentucky and other states in the South and old Southwest. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 671.)

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.

When Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836, Mexico refused to extend diplomatic recognition to the nascent republic, and relations between the two were unfriendly. At times warfare even broke out. In 1841 Texas launched an unsuccessful offensive against Santa Fe in present-day New Mexico, which resulted in the capture of the Texian expedition. In response, the Mexican Army twice invaded Texas and temporarily occupied San Antonio in 1842. That same year, a Texian force retaliated, invading Mexico and attacking the town of Mier. As at Santa Fe, these Texians were captured. Mexico and Texas later agreed to an armistice in June 1843, and representatives from the two sides met in February 1844 to draw up the agreement. (Dawson, “Army of the Texas Republic,” 129–134; Stevens, “Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic,” 271, 285, 289–290, 293.)

Dawson, Joseph G., III. “Army of the Texas Republic, 1836–1845.” In Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845, edited by Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, 113–147. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017.

Stevens, Kenneth R. “The Diplomacy of the Lone Star Republic, 1836–1845.” In Single Star of the West: The Republic of Texas, 1836–1845, edited by Kenneth W. Howell and Charles Swanlund, 271–303. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2017.

The debate in the United States over the annexation of Texas was fueled in part by fears that if Congress delayed in acting, the British would acquire Texas. (See Haynes, Unfinished Revolution, chap. 10; Roeckell, “British Opposition to the Annexation of Texas,” 257–278; and Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 672.)

Haynes, Sam W. Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010.

Roeckell, Lelia M. “Bonds over Bondage: British Opposition to the Annexation of Texas." Journal of the Early Republic 19, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 257–278.

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.

The debate over the annexation of Texas was influenced by the uneasy balance of free and slave states in the United States. Texas would enter the union as a slave state—and moreover as a large and influential state on the nation’s expanding frontier. Accordingly, politicians who supported annexation risked losing the votes of antislavery advocates in the northern states. (See Greenberg, Wicked War, 14–15; and Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 662, 670–671.)

Greenberg, Amy S. A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico. New York: Knopf, 2012.

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.

See Ecclesiastes 4:13.

This is a reference to the Rebellions of 1837–1838, in which two different groups, one in Upper Canada and the other in Lower Canada, led unsuccessful revolts against British rule. (See Ducharme, Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, chap. 6.)

Ducharme, Michel. The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838. Translated by Peter Feldstein. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014.

This is a reference to several revolutions in Latin America, including the nineteenth-century wars that led to independence in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru, among others. (See Maltby, Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire, 175–181.)

Maltby, William S. The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

This is a reference to the general decline of the Spanish Empire and the Spanish Inquisition. (See Maltby, Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire, chap. 8.)

Maltby, William S. The Rise and Fall of the Spanish Empire. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

See Isaiah 1:5.

This is a reference to the First Opium War (1839–1842), a naval war between Great Britain and China instigated by disputes over trade, including the British sale of opium to the Chinese that devastated Chinese society. (See Platt, Imperial Twilight, xxiii–xxviii.)

Platt, Stephen R. Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age. New York: Knopf, 2018.

This is possibly a reference to a smallpox epidemic in Calcutta, India, that occurred in 1843–1844. Disease was often transmitted along trade routes, and Calcutta was frequently visited by British traders. Despite the introduction of smallpox vaccination to parts of India in 1802, the disease remained a serious threat in the country until the mid-twentieth century. (Stewart, Report on Small-Pox in Calcutta, 3–4; see also Banthia and Dyson, “Smallpox in Nineteenth-Century India,” 678; “Small Pox,” Leeds [England] Intelligencer, 1 Feb. 1845, 6; and “Alarming Increase of Small-Pox,” Newcastle [England] Courant, 31 Jan. 1845, part 1, 3.)

Stewart, Duncan. Report on Small­Pox in Calcutta, 1833–34—1837–38—1843–44, and Vaccination in Bengal, from 1827 to 1844. Calcutta, India: G. H. Huttmann, 1844.

Banthia, J., and T. Dyson. “Smallpox in Nineteenth Century India.” Population and Development Review 25, no. 4 (1999): 649–680.

Leeds Intelligencer. Leeds, England. 1754–1866.

Newcastle Courant. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. 1711–1884.

See Jeremiah 8:22.

This may be an allusion to the Roman soldiers in charge of the Crucifixion, who stripped Jesus, “parted his garments,” and cast lots for them. (Matthew 27:35; Mark 15:24; see also Luke 23:34.)

See Letter from Henry Clay, 15 Nov. 1843.

This may be an allusion to the parable of the wicked husbandmen, who took over a lord’s vineyard and killed his heir in order to “seize on his inheritance.” (Matthew 21:33–41; see also Mark 12:1–9; and Luke 20:9–16.)

JS’s published political views included strong positions against prison conditions, incarceration generally, and slavery. (General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, ca. 26 Jan.–7 Feb. 1844.)

This verse is similar to a verse of a poem by William Cowper. (Cowper, “Verses,” in British Poets, 80:196.)

Prior, Matthew. The Poems of Matthew Prior. Vol. 2. In British Poets: Including Translations. Vol. 31. Chiswick, England: C. Whittingham, 1822.

In a parallel letter of reply to John C. Calhoun, JS concluded by stating that if Calhoun would read in the Constitution about “what can be done to protect the lives, property and rights of a virtuous people,” then God would raise his mind “above the narrow notion, that the general government has no power—to the sublime idea that congress, with the President as executor, is as Almighty in its sphere, as Jehovah is in his.” (Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 Jan. 1844.)

See James 5:16.

See Letter from Henry Clay, 15 Nov. 1843.

The Latter-day Saint refugees from Missouri, weakened by their expulsion, resettled in the area of Commerce, Illinois, in the Mississippi floodplain and soon suffered an outbreak of malaria. Further epidemics broke out in subsequent years. The cause of the sickness was frequently traced back to and blamed on the Missouri persecutions. In addition to the lives lost during the conflict in Missouri and the resettlement efforts, the Saints had been forced to abandon several thousand acres of land in Missouri. (See Reflections and Blessings, 16 and 23 Aug. 1842; Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, bk. 16, [2]; bk. 18, [1]; Discourse, 28 July 1839; Ivie and Heiner, “Deaths in Early Nauvoo,” 167–168; and Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.)

Ivie, Evan L., and Douglas C. Heiner. “Deaths in Early Nauvoo, 1839–46, and Winter Quarters, 1846–48.” Religious Educator 10, no. 3 (2009): 163–173.

In the church’s 1840 memorial to the United States Congress, JS, Sidney Rigdon, and Elias Higbee estimated the value of church members’ lost property in Missouri at $2 million. In March 1840, however, church leaders wrote that they thought that estimate was too low. (Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Letter to Elias Higbee, 7 Mar. 1840.)

By this time, church leaders and members had unsuccessfully petitioned state and national leaders several times in an effort to receive compensation for property losses stemming from vigilante violence against church members in Missouri during 1833 and 1838–1839. (For examples of these petitions, see “To His Excellency, Daniel Dunklin, Governor of the State of Missouri,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Dec. 1833, 114–115; Sidney Gilbert et al., Liberty, MO, to Andrew Jackson, Washington DC, Petition, 10 Apr. 1834, William W. Phelps, Collection of Missouri Documents, CHL; Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; and Elias Higbee et al., Memorial to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, 10 Jan. 1842, photocopy, Material relating to Mormon Expulsion from Missouri, CHL.)

The Evening and the Morning Star. Independence, MO, June 1832–July 1833; Kirtland, OH, Dec. 1833–Sept. 1834.

Phelps, William W. Collection of Missouri Documents, 1833–1837. CHL. MS 657.

Material Relating to Mormon Expulsion from Missouri, 1839–1843. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2145.

It is unclear to which two temples this statement refers. In 1831 church members laid stones for a temple in Jackson County, Missouri, that was never finished. In 1836 the church dedicated the House of the Lord in Kirtland, Ohio. In 1839 the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles laid the cornerstone of a temple at Far West, Missouri, but no additional construction occurred. In 1841 a revelation directed the Saints to construct a temple at Nauvoo, Illinois, and that building was still under construction in 1844. (“Part 1: Missouri, Summer 1831”; Minutes and Prayer of Dedication, 27 Mar. 1836 [D&C 109]; Historian’s Office, General Church Minutes, 26 Apr. 1839; Revelation, 19 Jan. 1841 [D&C 124:27].)

Historian’s Office. General Church Minutes, 1839–1877. CHL

There is no precise accounting of the total membership of the church in 1844. By fall 1839, there were approximately sixteen thousand church members worldwide. Thousands more had joined the church by 1844, but this estimate of hundreds of thousands of church members is exaggerated. One scholarly estimate suggests that there were at least thirty thousand members of the church in 1846, but during the 1840s sources frequently repeated the exaggerated claims of a church membership of more than one hundred thousand. (May, “Demographic Portrait of the Mormons,” 122–123; “Important from Washington,” Times and Seasons, Mar. 1840, 1:74; “Cold Comfort,” Times and Seasons, 15 Oct. 1842, 3:953; “The Mormon Prophet,” Times and Seasons, 1 Apr. 1845, 6:854; William Smith, “Patriarchal,” Times and Seasons, 15 May 1845, 6:904.)

May, Dean L. “A Demographic Portrait of the Mormons, 1830–1980.” In After 150 Years: The Latter-day Saints in Sesquicentennial Perspective, edited by Thomas G. Alexander and Jessie L. Embry, 38–69. [Provo, UT]: Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 1983.

Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.

“Aqua fortis” is an archaic name for nitric acid, a highly corrosive mineral acid. JS was familiar with aqua fortis as a poison. In 1832 a mob in Hiram, Ohio, tarred and feathered JS and tried to force a vial of aqua fortis into his mouth. (Cottrell, Manufacture of Nitric Acid and Nitrates, 39; Staker, Hearken, O Ye People, 352.)

Cottrell, Allin. The Manufacture of Nitric Acid and Nitrates. London: Gurney and Jackson, 1923.

Staker, Mark L. Hearken, O Ye People: The Historical Setting of Joseph Smith’s Ohio Revelations. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2009.

In 1839 JS met with President Martin Van Buren and requested his support for redress for the persecution the Saints experienced in Missouri. Van Buren reportedly responded, “What can I do? I can do nothing for you,— if I do any thing, I shall come in contact with the whole State of Missouri.” JS and other Saints repeatedly publicized Van Buren’s excuse for inaction. (Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839; Discourse, 1 Mar. 1840.)

See Isaiah 11:4.

See Daniel 2:44–45. Two months earlier, JS had helped organize the Council of Fifty, which he and its members viewed as the political kingdom of God on earth. (See “The Council of Fifty in Nauvoo, Illinois.”)