Joseph Smith Documents
from
February 1833 through March 1834
On 20 July 1833, over four hundred residents of , Missouri, and the surrounding area demanded that members of the evacuate the county immediately and resolved that the Mormons’
“printing office should be razed to the ground.” Mormon
described the scene that followed: “In a short time, hundreds of
the mob gathered around the , (which was a,
two story brick building,) which they soon threw down. The press was thrown from the
upper story, and the aparatus, book work, paper, type, &c. &c. scattered
through the streets.”
Among the paper strewn about the streets by the crowd of self-appointed arbiters of
the public good was the nearly completed work titled A Book of Commandments,
for the Government of the Church of Christ, which would have contained as
many as seventy-eight of Joseph Smith’s revelations. Printing the
Book of
Commandments was the first attempt to publish a collection of Joseph Smith’s
papers—an attempt that was abruptly ended by this act of destruction. The leveling of the
printing office in marked the beginning of an era of concerted and sometimes violent
opposition to the Church of Christ and its members.
The documents of Joseph
Smith featured in this volume of
The Joseph Smith Papers
cover this formative, and at times chaotic, period between February 1833 and March 1834. The volume features
primarily minutes of meetings, letters, and revelations but also includes city
plats,
, a
warrant, a
deed, and an attempt to
classify the
scriptures by topic. All the documents were created during a time when
hundreds of church members were gathering to the newly designated in and dozens of others were continuing to move to , Ohio, where, as an 1831
revelation
declared, the Lord wanted the church “to retain a strong hold . . . for the space of
five years.” In
Kirtland, the growth of church membership necessitated the purchase of new lands,
the cost of which became a major concern, as did beginning construction on the . In , problems gathering church members to
Jackson County were compounded by the vast distance separating Missouri members from
Joseph Smith, resulting in intermittent and delayed communication. As membership
grew in the separate locales, Joseph Smith and other church leaders had to make
decisions regarding how best to accommodate the expansion through the purchase and
distribution of lands. In addition, the growing complexity of church governance gave
rise to new religious questions. The documents featured in this volume reflect
Joseph Smith’s desire to construct an orderly society in both and Missouri before the
imminent second coming of Christ.
Many of the documents
in this volume are minutes of meetings led by Joseph Smith. Nearly all of
these minutes were created in the area, where Joseph Smith lived
throughout this period. The meetings Smith led or attended ranged from of
or to
disciplinary courts that determined the membership status of those who were believed
to have seriously transgressed. Though regular church worship services were also
held during this period, there are no surviving minutes of those meetings, and it is
unknown if any were ever taken. The minutes that do exist reflect many of the
concerns and ideas, both temporal and spiritual, that occupied Joseph Smith and
other church leaders during these often-tumultuous months. These concerns included
various organizational and administrative matters that confronted the Church of
Christ in as
its membership increased.
Many of the minutes
directly relate to the growth of the church in . For instance, in March 1833, Joseph Smith and his fellow leaders undertook
a major effort to expand the church’s landholdings in Kirtland to accommodate the
increasing numbers of church members arriving in . The first large group of church
members migrated to Ohio from in early 1831. For the next two years, Mormon holdings in
Kirtland were primarily limited to ’s farm
and ’s property. In 1833, ’s property, especially his , became the central location of Smith’s activities in Kirtland.
Smith, along with his wife and two young children, lived in
the upper level of the small store. There he dictated revelations, held meetings
with other church leaders, conducted a school known as the to educate members of the ministry, and completed his
years-long work of making inspired corrections to various portions of the Old and
New Testaments.
To expand the church’s
landholdings, church leaders focused on obtaining properties adjacent to or near
’s . Though Joseph Smith endorsed the plan to purchase
several of the expensive farms in the area, the primary property acquired in 1833 was the 103-acre farm owned by , located just
north of ’s land and west of Whitney’s store.
To help pay the farm’s $5,000 purchase price, church leaders sent over a dozen men
on missions to raise funds as well as proselytize. The acquisition of, payment for, and
administration over this farm and other lands were major concerns for Joseph Smith
in in mid-1833 and led to the creation of
multiple documents featured in this volume.
While the minutes of
various meetings in which Joseph Smith participated provide insights
into the administrative function of the young church, they also have certain
limitations. They are usually brief, with hours of meetings often distilled into a
few short sentences. When inscribing the minutes, the clerk summarized what he
considered to be the major points of the meeting generally, without elaboration on
the conversations, ideas, and disagreements incident to the discussion. Though
meeting attendees are sometimes listed, the minutes usually reference a participant
only if he or she took an active role in some part of the meeting. The minutes are
generally a bare-bones, matter-of-fact commentary on the actions and decisions made
during the meetings rather than a descriptive, inclusive account of events.
For example,
minutes from a March 1833 meeting of the School of the Prophets, held
just over a month after the school was organized, briefly refer to a shared
visionary experience. , the clerk, recorded,
“Many of the brethren saw a heavenly vision of the saviour and concourses of
angels.” Without elaborating, the minutes close by simply stating that the
participants each had “a reccord of what they saw.” Unfortunately, no extant
contemporary records describe this shared vision. Nevertheless, , one of the attendees at the meeting, later described the experience
in great detail. He remembered that while the group was praying, “a personage walked
through the room from east to west, and Joseph asked if we saw him. I saw him and
suppose the others did, and Joseph answered that is Jesus, the Son of God, our elder
brother.” Coltrin continued: “Afterwards Joseph told us to resume our former
position in prayer; which we did. Another person came through; He was surrounded as
with a flame of fire. . . . The Prophet Joseph said this was the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. I saw Him.”
One of the more
notable exceptions to the usual brevity of the minutes is the record of a
meeting held on 19 February 1834. Here Joseph Smith presented his
revision to an earlier document that established the high council of the church and
that outlined the duties of high counselors. This newly formed administrative and
judicial body played a major role in church governance and was also an
ecclesiastical precursor to the “traveling high council,” or the , which was organized the following year. The relatively
detailed record of the revised document presented at this 19 February meeting was later published as one of the first sections of the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.
While minutes make up
a substantial portion of this volume, nearly three dozen of the documents featured
herein are letters. In these letters Joseph Smith corresponded with various of the
church, whose members sought explanations on church disciplinary matters,
clarification of doctrine, or instructions regarding a pending migration to or . For
instance, when wrote to expressing concern about a revelation
purportedly received for the church by one of the members in where he lived, Smith
wrote back with
counsel and instruction. He told Carter, “As it respects the vision you speak of we
do not consider ourselves bound to receive any revelation forom [from] any one man
or woman without being legally constituted and to that authority and given
sufficien[t] proof of it.” Smith expounded further: “I will inform you that it is
contrary to the economy of God for any member of the Church or any one to receive
instruction for those in authority hig[h]er than themselves, therefore you will see
the impropriety of giving heed to them.” Most of Smith’s letters
directed to members in the various branches of the church contained similar types of
counsel on religious matters.
Like the minutes, the
majority of the letters in this volume originated in . The letters were often directed to
church members and leaders approximately one thousand miles away in . Between 1831 and 1833, hundreds of Mormons
had moved to , a place that previous
revelations had designated as Zion and the future site of the , a temple-centered
city of refuge whose construction would precede the second coming of the Messiah.
Following the violence directed at church members and the destruction of the in , Jackson County, Smith
carried on an increasingly regular correspondence with the church members in
Missouri. This long-distance correspondence presented some difficulties, however. In
the early 1830s a letter sent via regular
mail service between Independence and Kirtland took approximately three to four
weeks to arrive. Thus, for the
Kirtland-based (the highest
governing body of the church, composed of Joseph Smith, , and ), advising and interacting with church leaders in
Missouri in a timely manner was a significant obstacle, especially in times of
crisis. In some cases, events moved so rapidly that by the time letters arrived in
either place, the information contained on their pages was mostly obsolete.
Even so, Joseph
Smith’s letters to were important, providing vital
information and reflecting his concern for those gathering there. The letters
contained announcements of new revelations, references to events in ,
plans for the construction of the city of Zion, instructions for church leaders and
members living in Missouri, and explanations of key doctrines. In turn, the letters
Smith received from detailed the difficulties of
building a city as a gathering place on the frontier of organized territory, far removed from the headquarters of the church in
Kirtland.
The revelations Joseph
Smith dictated to his scribes during this period are the third-most
prevalent type of document found in this volume. While the letters and minutes of
meetings give insight into Smith’s personal views and reactions to events, Smith
maintained, and his followers believed, that the revelations were from Jesus Christ
and represented the Lord’s will and instruction rather than Smith’s. In many
cases these revelations led to the creation of other documents. For instance, after
a
revelation
instructed Joseph Smith to take on new responsibilities as soon as he completed his
translation of the Old and New Testaments, he inquired whether he should translate
the Apocrypha as well. In response, another
revelation informed
him it was “not needful that the Apocrypha should be translated.” He therefore made
no revisions to the text of those books and wrote to members of the church in informing
them of the direction to leave the Apocrypha untranslated.
Many of the
revelations dictated by Joseph Smith in the early 1830s concerned his efforts to revise, or , the
Bible. This project—begun in 1830 and completed on
2 July 1833—was not a translation in the
traditional sense. Rather than attempting to create a more accurate English text of
the Bible by retranslating early Hebrew, Greek, or Latin manuscripts into English,
Smith revised the text of the King James Bible as he felt inspired to do so. Smith’s
changes were sporadic and often minor; he passed over some of the smaller books in
the Old Testament without making any revisions at all. At times, however, revisions
substantially changed and expanded the King James text. By early February 1833, Smith had completed his
revision of the New Testament and was working on the books in the latter half of the
Old Testament. His intensive study of the Bible may have also
influenced his personal writing: most of Smith’s letters in this volume contain
phrases and words from the Bible.
Some of the
instructions contained in the revelations immediately influenced the way and the city of Zion in were
being planned and organized. In December 1832, for
instance, a
revelation called on members of the Church of Christ to “establish, an
house, even an house of prayer an house of fasting, an house of faith, an house of
Learning, an house of glory, an house of order an house of God.” This
house eventually became the church’s first , later known as the Kirtland temple. Though a conference
of high priests had appointed a building committee to begin work on the house in
May 1833, a 1
June
revelation chided
members in the voice of the Lord for having “sinned against me a verry grievous sin
in that ye have not considered the great . . . concerning the building of
mine house.” The revelation promised members that if “ye keep my commandments ye
shall have power to build it” but also warned, “If ye keep not my commandments the
love of the father shall not continue with you therefore ye shall walk in darkness.”
This revelation also provided information essential for the planning and
construction of the temple.
Building the became a top priority thereafter for church members
living in . The 1 June
revelation declared
to members that it was the “wisdom and the mind of the Lord” that the “house be
built not after the manner of the world.” Instead, the revelation directed, “Let it
be built after the manner which I shall show unto three of you whom ye shall appoint
and ordain unto this power.” In early June 1833, a conference of high priests appointed
the three members of the presidency of the high priesthood— Joseph
Smith, , and —as those to whom God
would reveal the architectural plan for the temple. As the men collectively prayed,
the building reportedly appeared to them in a vision, and they viewed the exterior
and interior, which allowed them to craft their plans. The work on the House of the Lord
commenced and progressed, with some interruption, throughout the period covered in
this volume.
Not long after seeing
the
in a vision, drafted
detailed plans for the expansive in and for another House of the Lord to
be built in . On 25 June 1833, the presidency sent the plans to
Missouri and directed church leaders to build the House of the Lord “immediately in
Zion” according to the patterns sent. Shortly
thereafter, another
revelation called for Kirtland to be developed as the “city of the stake of
Zion,” according to “the pattern which I have given unto you,” which referred to the
plats and plans previously sent to Missouri in late June. The
creation of these plats and plans represented the Church of Christ’s first organized
efforts to physically build the kingdom of God through urban development.
In addition to having
immediate application to church members in the 1830s, the revelations in this volume have also become some of the most
widely recognized documents relating to Mormon culture and theology. The
revelation dictated on
27 February 1833, for example, provided dietary
instructions that eventually became a distinguishing characteristic of church
membership. The revelation, given “not by commandment or Constraint, but by
Revelation & the word of wisdom,” provided “a principle with promise” as it
instructed members to abstain from tobacco, alcoholic beverages, and “hot drinks,”
as well as to limit their consumption of meat. In addition, members were counseled
to consume grain and “every herb in the season thereof & every fruit in the
season thereof,” all of which were “to be used with prudence & thanksgiving.” In
return, the revelation promised that “all saints who remember to keep & do these
sayings” would be blessed with health, wisdom, and knowledge, and “shall run &
not be weary & walk & not faint. And I the Lord give unto them a promise
that the destroying Angel shall pass them by as they did by the Children of Israel
& not slay them.”
Another
revelation, dictated
in May 1833, provided a distinct theology in its
explanation of the nature of Christ and the relationship between God and humankind.
Rather than embracing the Protestant and Catholic belief “that in Christ two
distinct natures were united in one person, without any change, mixture, or
confusion,”
this revelation described Jesus as having “received not of the fulness [of the
Father] at the first but received grace for grace and he received not of the fulness
but continued from grace to grace until he received a fulness.” In an even more
radical teaching, this revelation challenged traditional Christian notions of
humankind’s relationship to God. Instead of accepting an ex nihilo creation of
humanity, the revelation asserted that men and women not only possess premortal
spirits but also were “in the begining with God.” Furthermore, it explained that the
“elements are eternal” and “inteligence or the Light of truth was not created or
made neith[er] indeed can be.”
Joseph
Smith later expanded upon these teachings, and belief in a premortal,
coeternal existence of humankind with God became a central tenet of the religion’s
theology.
All the documents in
this volume were written during a time of expansion and transition in both and , but the
documents created after midsummer 1833 were
also composed at a time of growing opposition to members of the Church of Christ
that took various forms in the two communities. In the area, soon after the first
missionaries arrived in fall 1830,
multiple newspaper articles antagonistic toward Joseph Smith and the church
were published, and their frequency increased as more people embraced Smith’s
teachings and revelations. Foremost among the publishers printing diatribes against
Mormons was , the editor of the Painesville Telegraph.
Howe—who may have had some personal animosity toward the religion because his sister
had joined the Church of Christ by 1832, as did his
wife
by early 1834—generally denigrated what he
termed “Mormonism” for being farcical, illogical, and invented. When members of the
church from , New York, arrived in the Kirtland
area in May 1831, Howe mused, “It is surely a
melancholy comment upon human nature to see so many people at this enlightened age
of the world, truckling along at the car of a miserable impostor, submitting
themselves, both soul and body, to his spiritual and temporal mandates, without a
murmur, or presuming to question that it is all a command direct from Heaven.”
Despite continuing
rhetorical attacks from antagonists like , in 1833 no
violent altercations or mobbings took place in like the brutal tarring and feathering and
apparent attempt to poison Joseph Smith that had occurred in the previous year. Even so, the
growing Mormon presence in caused considerable alarm. When he
later reflected on the circumstances that led to confrontations between Mormons and
other residents of Kirtland, Howe explained that the conflict was primarily
political, rather than religious, in nature. Because of Mormon “boasts that in a
short time they would control all the county offices and elect a member of Congress
from their own ranks . . . many of our citizens thought it advisable to take all the
legal means within their reach to counteract the progress of so dangerous an enemy
in their midst, and many law suits ensued.” One of the “legal means” used was
an apparent attempt to delay granting or indefinitely deny legal residency and
accompanying voting rights in the township to immigrating Mormon settlers. Multiple
warrants were issued to local constables to “warn out” members of the Church of
Christ on the pretext that they were liable to be a financial burden on the
township’s poor fund.
These substantial
antagonisms notwithstanding, perhaps the greatest threat to the progress of the
church in and
the surrounding areas came from a disgruntled religionist within its ranks rather
than from secular forces without. was ordained an elder
in March 1833 and was then sent on a mission to
eastern Ohio and western . By 3 June, however, a bishop’s court tried Hurlbut in absentia for
“unchristian conduct with the female sex while on a mission to the east.” The court
“decided that his commission be taken from him and that he be no longer a member of
the Church of Christ.” A few weeks later Hurlbut petitioned
Joseph
Smith and the other members of the presidency of the high priesthood for
reinstatement into the church. Though the presidency upheld the previous decision to
excommunicate him, they granted Hurlbut clemency and reinstated him into the church
after he importuned for mercy. This second chance at membership,
however, proved short lived. Only days later reports reached
that Hurlbut had publicly flaunted his reinstatement, claiming that he had made a
false confession of contrition for his guilt. In consequence of these new
allegations, another trial was held and Hurlbut was again excommunicated.
Following this second
expulsion, immediately undertook an aggressive
effort to discredit the Church of Christ in general and Joseph Smith and the Book of
Mormon in particular. He began a sporadic lecture circuit condemning the religion as
fraudulent. Joseph Smith’s journal recorded that Hurlbut “saught the distruction of
the sainst [Saints] in this place and more particularly myself and family.” Hurlbut’s efforts were
supported financially by others eager to stem the expanding influence of Mormons in
the area. later explained that during 1833 and 1834, “many leading citizens of and employed and defrayed
the expenses of Doctor Philastus Hurlbut,” sending him to , New York, and , Pennsylvania, “to
obtain affidavits showing the bad character of the Mormon Smith Family.” In January 1834, Howe’s newspaper published a notice from a self-appointed
committee of Kirtland residents who had determined to “take measures to avert the
evils which threaten the Public by the location in this vicinity, of Joseph Smith
Jun. otherwise known as the Mormon Prophet—and who is now, under pretence of Divine
Authority, collecting about him an impoverished population, alienated in feeling
from other portions of the community, thereby threatening us with an insupportable
weight of pauperism.” The committee funded Hurlbut’s endeavors and, as a result of
the affidavits he collected, concluded that the Book of Mormon was “a work of fiction and imagination, and written
more than twenty years ago, in Salem, Ashtabula County, Ohio,
by Solomon Spalding, Esq.”
This attempt to provide an alternative explanation for the origin of the Book of
Mormon endured for decades among detractors after Howe published many of Hurlbut’s
anti-Smith affidavits in an 1834 book titled
Mormonism Unvailed.
Even before ’s trip to and , his efforts to
discomfit the church were effective enough that on 18
August 1833
Joseph
Smith wrote to that the members in were “suffering great persicution on
account of one man by the name of Docter Hurlburt who has been expeled from the
chirch for lude and adulterous conduct and to spite us he is lieing in a wonderful
manner and the peapl [people] are running after him and giveing him mony to b[r]ake
down mormanism which much endangers our lives at preasnt [present].” Four
months later, on 21 December 1833, Smith filed a
complaint with a justice of the peace saying he feared Hurlbut “would wound, beat or
kill him, or destroy his property.” The judge
sustained the complaint, ordering Hurlbut to pay court fees and a bond guaranteeing
he would keep the peace with Smith for six months.
In , the opposition
against the growing Mormon community came solely from forces outside the church and
was more violent than the difficulties encountered in . By
1833 church members living in and around numbered over one thousand and had
reportedly accumulated more than two thousand acres of land. Not only did most local Missourians reject the Church
of Christ’s religious beliefs, but they also hailed primarily from the slave-holding
upper South while Mormon migrants to Missouri generally came from northern free
states. A clash of cultures between Mormons and other Missouri residents was
manifested as early as spring 1832 when
Missourians vandalized Mormon property and harassed individual church members.
Antagonists committed sporadic acts of hostility—such as stoning houses, breaking
windows, shooting into houses, burning hay, and lobbing insults—against church
members throughout 1832 and early 1833. By spring
1833, however, organized and widespread efforts to expel members of the
Church of Christ from the materialized. In July 1833, the Mormons’ continued population growth and
potential for increased political power in the county contributed to the further
deterioration of relations between the two groups. In particular, the Mormons were
accused of encouraging insubordination among Missouri slaves. , editor of the church’s newspaper, The Evening and the Morning
Star, published an article in July 1833
that opponents trumpeted as proof that Mormons intended to encourage free people of
color to move to Missouri. The idea that
Mormons were undermining delicate master-slave relations in Missouri, on top of the
general irritation over the growing Mormon political and economic presence, brought
matters to a decisive head.
Hundreds of citizens held a series of meetings in mid- to late July that resulted in the creation of two
important documents. The first,
circulated on 18 July 1833, enumerated the
citizens’ grievances against members of the Church of Christ and outlined a plan to
remove them from the county, either through the purchase of their properties or,
more ominously, by “such means as may be sufficient to remove them.” The document
stated the citizens’ intentions “to rid our society ‘peacably if we can, forcibly if
we must’” and defended the possibility of using violence if needed. The citizens
complained that Mormons “were of the very dregs of that society from which they
came” and expressed dismay that “they declare openly that their God has given them
this County of land, and that sooner or later they must and will have the possession
of our lands for an inheritance.”
The angry residents stated that they owed it to themselves, their families, and the
public good “to remove” the Mormons.
When hundreds of residents again convened on 20
July at the
, they adopted five resolutions listing specific actions to be
taken against the Mormons and appointed a committee that presented their demands to
local leaders of the Church of Christ. The resolutions insisted that immediately cease operations at the offending , that the be shuttered permanently, and, most sweeping,
that all Mormons precipitously leave the county altogether. The committee
immediately presented their demands to church leaders, granting them only fifteen
minutes to reply. The church leaders demurred, unwilling to submit to so drastic a
proposal without receiving instructions from Joseph Smith in . The gathering mob,
unwilling to wait for the Mormons in to counsel with one another, let alone
conduct a months-long inquiry with leaders in Ohio, rejected the Mormons’ request
for more time. The committee returned to the courthouse where the assembled
Missourians voted to immediately demolish the print shop. In the ensuing
violence, they also damaged the printing press and type, destroyed the printing
furniture, and threw the pages of the unfinished Book of Commandments into the
street. Not satisfied with this extralegal action alone, some of the group then
tarred and feathered Bishop and . Members of the
mob then gave notice that they would return on 23
July to expand their work of destruction, reportedly declaring that “the
mormons must leave the county, or
they or the mormons must die.”
In an effort to
prevent further violence, Mormon leaders agreed, in a document signed on 23 July 1833, that most of the church leaders and
half of the Mormon population would leave
by the first of January 1834 and the
remainder would leave by the first of April
1834. In return for the Mormons’ submission, the mob pledged “themselves to
use all their influence to prevent any violence being used so long as a compliance
with the foregoing terms is observed by the parties concerned.”
Despite initially
acquiescing to the mob’s demands to vacate the county, church members living in hoped that with time the antagonism toward them would abate, allowing
them to remain on their religiously consecrated and legally purchased lands as Joseph
Smith instructed them to do. They petitioned local and state
officials, including governor , for protection and guidance in
resolving their differences with the non-Mormon inhabitants of the county. Aside
from being advised by Dunklin to take legal action, however, they received little
assistance. Rather
than leaving as they had previously agreed, on 20
October 1833 church leaders publicly announced their intentions to remain
on and defend their lands in Jackson County. The next day, “the mob, or at least
some of the leaders began to move.” Renewed acts of violence, beginning on
31 October and lasting through
early November, resulted in the successful expulsion of Mormons from the
county by armed forces. By 19 November, most
members of the Church of Christ had been disarmed by the Jackson County militia and
forced to flee to surrounding areas, though they congregated primarily to the north,
in .
These events in directly
affected decisions made by Joseph Smith in . For instance, in response to the
destruction of the church-owned , he decided to transfer printing operations from Missouri
to Ohio, where would manage
the press until it could be reestablished in at some future date. was dispatched to in October to purchase a new printing press and accompanying type, and in
December 1833, church leaders began printing
The Evening and the Morning Star again, this time in .
Though Joseph
Smith addressed the practical considerations related to future publications,
he was far more concerned with the dispossessed Mormon families in . Shortly after the
forced eviction of church members from , church leaders
sought to obtain redress and protection from the Missouri state government. Still,
the prospects for government assistance seemed grim. Although Mormons remained
hopeful that the government would restore them to their lands, and though a few
authorities in the Missouri justice system were encouraging and supportive, neither
the executive nor the judicial branch of the Missouri government ultimately seemed
willing to protect the rights of this particular minority. and other Missouri church leaders maintained a faint hope that
they would receive justice through the state courts but believed the standard legal
process would take so long that it might be years before they could return to their
confiscated lands, if they ever did. Joseph Smith directed the church leaders in
Missouri to maintain ownership of their lands and to continue to seek redress and
protection from all levels of government, promising them that if such help was not
forthcoming, God would “not fail to exicute Judgment upon your enemies and to avenge
his own elect.” A mid-December 1833
revelation gave
further direction to church members about obtaining redress, restoration, and
redemption.
Even before church
members were violently expelled from the county—indeed, perhaps as early as ’s arrival in from on 9 August 1833—Joseph Smith and other church
leaders began discussing the merits of sending an armed body of men to protect
church members’ rights, homes, and properties in . On 16
August, the
Painesville Telegraph reported on the dictated
treaty between “the
mobors and the
mobees.” The
Telegraph’s editor, , opined that the
citizens of Jackson County had “no doubt brought disgrace upon themselves by
interfering with the legal rights of their fanatical neighbors” and reported that he
had received information that “some Davids or Golia[t]hs are to be dispatched
immediately by the prophet to the relief of the brethren in the wilderness.” Two days after
that report was published, Joseph Smith wrote to church leaders in Missouri and
declared that “the chirch in Kirtland concluded with one accord to die with you or
redeem you.” Smith’s 18 August
letter also
counseled the beleaguered Missouri members to “wait patiently until the Lord come[s]
and resto[res] unto us all things.” At the
end of August, the
Painesville Telegraph again reported that church members planned to
send reinforcements to Missouri.
Though Joseph
Smith and other church leaders may have begun discussing the idea of raising
an armed relief force in early
August 1833, only after the Mormons were violently expelled from did church leaders begin recruiting and preparing for an expedition
to assist in the “redemption of Zion.” A 24 February
1834
revelation
instructed church leaders that “the redemtion of Zion must needs come by
power.” Smith and seven other men were
appointed to recruit between one hundred and five hundred men and to solicit funds
to restore church members to their homes and properties in . On 26 February 1834 Joseph Smith “started from home to
obtain volenteers for Zion.” He returned to in late March 1834, and early the next month he resolved
to go to Missouri; the armed expeditionary force, called the and later known
as Zion’s Camp, departed on 5 May 1834.
While no documentary
edition can fully illuminate the events of the past, the documents contained in this
volume provide insights into Joseph Smith’s thoughts, demeanor, and
especially his reaction to the growing problems that stemmed from presiding over a
church whose members spanned distances of over a thousand miles. These records
demonstrate Smith’s efforts to establish the church more completely—in terms of both
property and organizational complexity—in while at the same time settling and
developing the New Jerusalem in preparatory to what church members
believed to be the impending second advent of the Messiah. All of the documents
were, to a greater or lesser degree, created amid the dual anxieties of responding
to the temporal needs of the church and its membership and to the spiritual concerns
incident to the belief that the coming of Jesus Christ was “at the doors.” While
the apostasies of men like and the violent eviction of church
members from caused great upheavals in the
young church, these documents reflect Joseph Smith’s undaunted faith in the
religious movement he founded and his belief that God would eventually prevail and
deliver to him and his followers their promised Zion.