JS, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to , , New Haven Co., CT, 13 May 1842; handwriting of ; three pages; Joseph Smith Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, Springfield, IL. Includes address, postal stamp, and postal notation.
Bifolium measuring 7⅞ × 9¾ inches (20 × 25 cm). The document was trifolded twice for mailing, addressed, and sealed with wax. A trace of the wafer is visible on the verso of the second leaf. The second leaf has numerical calculations and notes in graphite that were made later in unidentified handwriting. The second leaf has separation and tearing along the length of the top fold.
After the document was received by , its subsequent custodial history is unknown until 1937, when the Illinois State Historical Library purchased it from Goodspeed’s Bookshop (Boston, MA). After 1972, the library placed the letter and other documents to or from JS that were acquired over approximately thirty years into an artificial collection called the Joseph Smith Papers. In 2004, the Illinois State Historical Library was renamed the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
Correspondence between editors and manuscripts curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL, 15 May 2017, copy in editors’ possession.
Correspondence between editors and manuscripts curator at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL, 15 May 2017, copy in editors’ possession.
Historical Introduction
On 13 May 1842, wrote to on behalf of JS, responding to a letter Hotchkiss had sent in April regarding the payment of debts owed to him and his business partners. The 13 May letter was sent from , Illinois, to , Connecticut, which was close to where Hotchkiss resided. In JS’s letter, he informed Hotchkiss that he had decided to personally petition for bankruptcy under the nation’s bankruptcy act of 1841. This act, passed by the Congress in August 1841 to help alleviate the burden of debt that resulted from the financial panics of 1837 and 1839, allowed voluntary bankruptcy, which was initiated by the debtor rather than his creditors. JS had amassed significant debts because of endeavors in , Ohio, including the construction of the . Additional debts resulted from the confiscation of property and expulsion of the Latter-day Saints from and the purchase of land for the church in and from Hotchkiss and other land speculators. The ability to personally file for bankruptcy offered JS a means to have these debts forgiven.
Although JS may have heard about the bankruptcy act after it was passed in 1841, he apparently did not decide to file for bankruptcy until April 1842, after he met with , a lawyer from , Illinois, and partner in the firm Ralston, Warren & Wheat. JS’s journal recounts that he met with Warren on Thursday, 14 April 1842, and then spent the next two days “busily engaged in making out a list of Debtors & invoice of Property to be passed into the hands of the assignee.” On the following Monday, 18 April, JS, in company with his brothers and and several other Latter-day Saints, traveled to , Illinois, to file the necessary petitions and depositions for their respective bankruptcy proceedings. A notice of JS’s petition for bankruptcy, likely submitted by his attorney, first ran in the 6 May 1842 issue of the Sangamo Journal and then in the 7 May 1842 issue of the local newspaper, the Wasp. After his intention to apply for bankruptcy was made public, JS likely recognized the need to inform of his decision. According to the new bankruptcy law, those who filed for bankruptcy were required to cease payments to creditors, which would obviously alter JS’s plan to settle his debts to Hotchkiss.
In his 13 May letter to , JS noted that he had decided to apply for bankruptcy under financial duress and only after other options had been exhausted. JS reassured Hotchkiss that he was not attempting to defraud him or avoid payment and indicated that JS owned sufficient property to meet his creditors’ demands. But JS also emphasized that his creditors would be treated equally, as outlined by the bankruptcy act: each would be given a proportional amount of the funds raised from the sale of JS’s assets—and no creditor would be favored over another.
This letter was mailed on 14 May 1842 and was likely received by shortly before he replied to JS on 27 May 1842 to express his concerns regarding repayment and JS’s decision to file for bankruptcy.
See An Act to Establish a Uniform System of Bankruptcy [19 Aug. 1841], Public Statutes at Large, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., chap. 9, pp. 440–449.
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 firm of Ralston, Warren & Wheat was composed of partners James H. Ralston, Calvin A. Warren, and Almeron Wheat. A 5 April 1842 notice from the firm stated that one of the partners would be at Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois, around 14 April 1842 and would take applications for bankruptcy. (“Ralston, Warren & Wheat, Attorneys at Law,” Wasp, 16 Apr. 1842, [3].)
JS, Journal, 18 Apr. 1842. The bankruptcy act of 1841 granted primary authority over bankruptcy proceedings to the federal district court, which for JS and other residents of Nauvoo was in Springfield, Illinois. However, the act stipulated that petitions and depositions could be filed before any commissioner appointed by the federal district court. This rule allowed the Saints to begin their application for bankruptcy in Carthage, about 25 miles away, instead of traveling to Springfield, which was 130 miles away. (An Act to Establish a Uniform System of Bankruptcy [19 Aug. 1841], Public Statutes at Large, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., chap. 9, pp. 445–446, sec. 5; Letter from Calvin A. Warren, ca. 23 June 1842.)
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 notice was dated 28 April 1842. It ran only once in the Sangamo Journal but was published weekly for six consecutive weeks in the Wasp, from 7 May to 11 June 1842.
See An Act to Establish a Uniform System of Bankruptcy [19 Aug. 1841], Public Statutes at Large, 27th Cong., 1st Sess., chap. 9, p. 442, sec. 2.
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.
I proceed without delay to give a hasty reply to yours of the 12[th] ultimo. Just received. My engagements will not admit of a lengthy detail of events & circumstances which have transpired to bring and about that state of things which now exists in this place, & as before you receive this you will probably be apprized of the failure of myself & brethren to execute our designs, or in paying off our contratcts, or in other words that we have been compelled to pay our debts by the most popular method, (I.E.) by petioning for the priviliges of General Bankruptcy, a principle so popular at the present moment throughout the .
A presure of business has been sufficient excuse for not giving you earlier notice; although it could [have] been of no real use to you, yet I wish you to understa[nd] our intentions to you & your company.— & why we have taken the course we have. You are aware, Sir, in some measures of the embarrassments under which we have labord through the influence of Mobs & designi[n]g men. & the embar disadvantagious circumstances under which we have been compelled to contract debts in order to our existinc both as Individuals & as a Society, & it is on account of this as well as a pressure on us for debts absolutelyunjust. in themselves [p. [1]]
The bankruptcy act of 1841 was very popular. More than 41,000 individuals in the United States filed petitions under the act; 1,592 petitions were filed in Illinois from February 1842 to March 1843, when the act was repealed. (Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 124, 172.)
Balleisen, Edward J. Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Although the Saints experienced earlier mob violence in both Ohio and Missouri, JS was likely referencing the more recent and financially devastating 1838 conflict in Missouri, which resulted in his imprisonment and the forced expulsion of the Saints from the state. (See Introduction to Part 3: 4 Nov. 1838–16 Apr. 1839.)
One of the “unjust” debts to which JS may have been referring was a $4,866 debt that he, Hyrum Smith, Peter Haws, George Miller, and Henry W. Miller owed the United States government for their 1840 purchase of the steamboat Des Moines, which they had renamed Nauvoo. The steamboat operated for two months before it was run aground—allegedly by its pilots—and badly damaged, rendering it inoperable. Unable to repay the debt with the income the steamboat was meant to generate, JS and his cofinanciers attempted to sue the pilots, but the two men could not be located and the lawsuit was withdrawn on 7 May 1841. Payment for the steamboat was due in May 1841 and remained unpaid into 1842. The United States government appointed Justin Butterfield, United States Attorney for Illinois, to litigate the debt; he initiated a lawsuit on 3 April 1842 against JS and his cofinanciers to reclaim the money they owed to the federal government. (Oaks and Bentley, “Joseph Smith and Legal Process,” 735–782; Hancock Co., IL, Circuit Court Records, 1829–1897, vol. C, p. 84, microfilm 947,496, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL.)
Oaks, Dallin H., and Joseph I. Bentley. “Joseph Smith and Legal Process: In the Wake of the Steamboat Nauvoo.” Brigham Young University Law Review, no. 3 (1976): 735–782.