Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844, as Published in Nauvoo Neighbor
Source Note
JS, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to , Fort Hill, Pickens Co., SC, 2 Jan. 1844. Version published in “Correspondence of Gen. Joseph Smith and Hon. J. C. Calhoun,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 10 Jan. 1844, vol. 1, no. 37, pp. [2]–[3]. For more complete source information, see the source note for Notice, 26 Aug. 1843.
man, who had firstly ordered the deed to be done, and made a covenant not to pay for the cruel deed, but to keep the spoil, and never let those meek men set their feet on that soil again, neither recompence them for it. Now these meek men, in their distress, wisely sought redress of those wicked men in every possible manner and got none. They then supplicated the chief men, who held the vineyard at pleasure, and who had the power to sell and defend it, for redress and redemption, and those men loving the fame and favor of the multitude, more than the glory of the lord of the vineyard, answered, your cause is just, but we can do nothing for you, because we have no power. Now, when the lord of the vineyard saw that virtue and innocence was not regarded, and his vineyard occupied by wicked men, he sent men and took the possession of it to himself, and destroyed those unfaithful servants, and appointed them their portion among hypocrites.
And let me say, that all men who say that Congress has no power to restore and defend the rights of her citizens, have not the love of the truth abiding in them. Congress has power to protect the nation against foreign invasion and internal broils, and whenever that body passes an act to maintain right with any power; or to restore right to any portion of her citizens, IT IS THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND, and should a state refuse submission, that state is guilty of insurrection or rebellion, and the president has as much power to repel it as Washington had to march against the ‘whiskey boys of ,’ or General Jackson had to send an armed force to suppress the rebellion of !
To close, I would admonish you, before you let your ‘candor compel’ you again to write up on a subject, great as the salvation of man, consequential as the life of the Savior, broad as the principles of eternal truth, and valuable as the jewels of eternity, to read in the 8th section and 1st article of the constitution of the , the first, fourteenth and seventeenth ‘specific’ and not very ‘limited powers’ of the federal government, what can be done to protect the lives, property and rights of a virtuous people, when the administrators of the law, and law makers, are unbought by bribes, uncorrupted by patronage, untempted by gold, unawed by fear, and uncontaminated by tangling alliances—even like Caesar’s wife, no[t] only unspotted but unsuspected! and God, who cooled the heat of a Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, or shut the mouths of lions for the honor of a Daniel, will raise your 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.
With great respect, I have the honor to be your obedient servant,