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Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844

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Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844

Source Note

JS, Letter, , Hancock Co., IL, to , Fort Hill, Pickens Co., SC, 2 Jan. 1844. Featured version published in Times and Seasons, 1 Jan. 1844, vol. 5, no. 1, 394–396. For more complete source information, see the source note for Letter to Isaac Galland, 22 Mar. 1839.

Historical Introduction

On 2 January 1844, JS wrote a reply to in which he debated Calhoun’s opinions on the federal government’s role in protecting religious minorities. Calhoun was a prominent politician from who had served in both chambers of the Congress and as vice president to both and Andrew Jackson. JS and Calhoun first met in 1839 or 1840 when JS was in to petition the United States Senate for redress and reparations for the property members had lost in during the 1830s. Calhoun apparently declined to support the church’s petitioning efforts at that time. In November 1843, JS wrote to Calhoun and four other prospective presidential candidates to ask, “What will be your rule of action, relative to us, as a people, should fortune favor your ascension to the Chief Magistracy?” Calhoun responded to JS’s letter on 2 December 1843. He explained that, as president, he would give all men and women equal protection under the law regardless of religious affiliation, but he stated that, in his opinion, the Latter-day Saints’ case “does not come within the Jurisdiction of the Federal government, which is one of limited and specific powers.” Calhoun’s response was similar in tone and substance to that of , another presidential hopeful. Cass wrote to JS, “I do not see what power, the President of the United States can have over the matter, or how he can interfere in it.”
On 27 December 1843, JS assigned one of his clerks, , to draft responses to and and instructed him on the content of those replies. Phelps apparently drafted the letter sometime over the next week. He dated the response to Calhoun 2 January 1844, which suggests that JS had reviewed and approved the letter by that date. On 5 January, JS invited Phelps to read him the response.
The letter frequently quotes passages of ’s December 1843 letter and then rebuts Calhoun’s ideas. JS argued that the devotion of Calhoun and other members of Congress to the philosophy of states’ rights negatively affected religious minorities in the . He asserted that without a federal government empowered to redress the persecution of such groups within individual states, mobs would continue to persecute religious minorities without legal consequences. JS maintained that the remedy was a strong federal government enabled to intervene on behalf of such groups.
JS does not appear to have sent the letter directly to but rather had it published as an open letter to Calhoun in the newspapers. It was published in the 1 January 1844 issue of the Times and Seasons, which was evidently published after 2 January, and in the 10 January issue of the Nauvoo Neighbor. Several newspapers reprinted the text of the letter, including the Niles’ National Register—a prominent national newspaper published in —which featured the letter in its 3 February 1844 issue. JS retained a draft of the letter written by and a copy made by . Because JS apparently intended the letter to be a public response to Calhoun, the version from the Times and Seasons is featured here as the earliest published version of the letter. There is no known response from Calhoun.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 770.

    Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–1989: The Continental Congress September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States from the First through the One Hundredth Congresses March 4, 1789, to January 3, 1989, Inclusive. Edited by Kathryn Allamong Jacob and Bruce A. Ragsdale. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989.

  2. [2]

    Letter from John C. Calhoun, 2 Dec. 1843; see also Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839.

  3. [3]

    Letter to John C. Calhoun, 4 Nov. 1843, underlining in original; see also JS, Draft Letter to Presidential Candidates, 4 Nov. 1843, JS Collection, CHL. The other prospective candidates to whom JS wrote were Lewis Cass, Henry Clay, Richard M. Johnson, and Martin Van Buren.

  4. [4]

    Letter from John C. Calhoun, 2 Dec. 1843.

  5. [5]

    Letter from Lewis Cass, 9 Dec. 1843.

  6. [6]

    JS, Journal, 27 Dec. 1843. If Phelps drafted a response to Cass, that letter is not extant. Because Cass’s reply echoed Calhoun’s and because JS apparently intended to publish the response to Calhoun as an open letter, a response to Cass may have been deemed superfluous. (McBride, Joseph Smith for President, 84–87.)

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

  7. [7]

    JS, Nauvoo, IL, to John C. Calhoun, Fort Hill, SC, 2 Jan. 1844, draft, JS Collection, CHL.

  8. [8]

    JS, Journal, 5 Jan. 1844.

  9. [9]

    “Correspondence of Gen. Joseph Smith and Hon. J. C. Calhoun,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 10 Jan. 1844, [2]–[3]. The inclusion of this 2 January letter in the 1 January 1844 issue of the Times and Seasons indicates that the issue was published sometime after the issue date.

  10. [10]

    “Correspondence of Gen. Jos. Smith and Hon. J. C. Calhoun,” Niles’ National Register (Baltimore), 3 Feb. 1844, 357–358.

    Niles’ National Register. Washington DC, 1837–1839; Baltimore, 1839–1848; Philadelphia, 1848–1849.

  11. [11]

    JS, Nauvoo, IL, to John C. Calhoun, Fort Hill, SC, 2 Jan. 1844, draft; JS, Nauvoo, IL, to John C. Calhoun, Fort Hill, SC, 2 Jan. 1844, copy, JS Collection, CHL.

Asterisk (*) denotes a "featured" version, which includes an introduction and annotation. Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844, Draft Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844, Thomas Bullock Copy *Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844 Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844, as Published in Nauvoo Neighbor Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844, as Published in New York Herald History, 1838–1856, volume E-1 [1 July 1843–30 April 1844] “History of Joseph Smith”
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Page 396

and purchased with money from some of these chief men that labored at pleasure, a portion of land in the vineyard, at a very remote part of it, and began to improve it, and to eat and drink the fruit thereof; when some vile persons, who regarded not man, neither feared the lord of the vineyard, rose up suddenly and robbed these meek men, and drove them from their possessions, killing many. This barbarous act made no small stir among the men in the vineyard, and all that portion who were attached to that part of the vineyard where the men were robbed, rose up in grand council, with their chief 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 broil, 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 upon 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, not 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,
JOSEPH SMITH.
Hon. (‘Mr.’!) ,
Fort Hill, S. C. [p. 396]
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Editorial Title
Letter to John C. Calhoun, 2 January 1844
ID #
10869
Total Pages
3
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Footnotes

  1. [30]

    See Historical Introduction to Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.

  2. [31]

    See Matthew 24:51.

  3. [32]

    See U.S. Constitution, art. 1, sec. 8.

  4. [33]

    See U.S. Constitution, art. 6, clause 2.

  5. [34]

    “Whiskey boys of Pittsburg” is a reference to the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, in which distillers in Pennsylvania refused to pay federal taxes levied on the production of whiskey. In response, President George Washington marched against them at the head of an army of over twelve thousand militiamen with the intention of using military force, if necessary, to ensure that federal laws were obeyed. (See Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 3–8, chaps. 11–13.)

    Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

  6. [35]

    During the Nullification Crisis in 1832–1833, Jackson reinforced federal army bases in South Carolina to enforce the tariff of 1832, if necessary. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 405–406.)

    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.

  7. [36]

    Letter from John C. Calhoun, 2 Dec. 1843.

  8. [37]

    The first clause in article 1, section 8, of the United States Constitution states, “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

  9. [38]

    The fourteenth clause in article 1, section 8, of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power “to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.”

  10. [39]

    The seventeenth clause in article 1, section 8, of the United States Constitution grants Congress the power “to exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings.”

  11. [40]

    See Daniel 3:19–28.

  12. [41]

    See Daniel 6:22.

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