Letter from Elias Higbee, 21 February 1840

Presumably one of several committee rooms in the United States Capitol.  

This parenthetical phrase may refer to the differences between the way business was conducted in the Senate and in the House. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that whereas the Senate conducted itself in a dignified manner, “on entering the House of Representatives of Washington, one is struck by the vulgar demeanour of that great assembly.” (Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2:54.)  

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve. 2 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, 1835.

See Document Containing the Correspondence, 1–14.  

Document Containing the Correspondence, Orders, &c., in Relation to the Disturbances with the Mormons; and the Evidence Given before the Hon. Austin A. King, Judge of the Fifth Judicial Circuit of the State of Missouri, at the Court-House in Richmond, in a Criminal Court of Inquiry, Begun November 12, 1838, on the Trial of Joseph Smith, Jr., and Others, for High Treason and Other Crimes against the State. Fayette, MO: Boon’s Lick Democrat, 1841.

The 1833 declaration of the citizens of Jackson County, Missouri, was reprinted in the first pages of Parley P. Pratt’s history of the Saints’ experiences in Missouri. (Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 7–10.)  

During the 1838 “Mormon War” in Missouri, leaders of the Danites, a military society organized among the Mormons, apparently taught that a February 1831 revelation granted them license to “take to your selves spoils of the goods of the ungodly Gentiles for it is written the riches of the Gentiles shall be consecrated to my people the house of Israel.” Higbee had been the captain general in the Danite organization during the conflict in Missouri. In October 1838, some church members organized into militia companies and attacked settlements that harbored anti-Mormon vigilantes. Some members confiscated livestock and other goods for the Saints’ use, and church members defended the practice as in keeping with generally accepted practices of war. Church leaders had previously denied allegations that they directed church members to steal from their neighbors or to willfully act against Missouri laws. (Phelps, Reminiscences, 6–7; Revelation, 9 Feb. 1831 [D&C 42:39]; see also LeSueur, 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, chap. 7; Baugh, “Call to Arms,” chap. 7; Letter from Elias Higbee, 16 Apr. 1839; Reed Peck, Quincy, IL, to “Dear Friends,” 18 Sept. 1839, p. 48, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA; Foote, Autobiography, 30; Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839; and Bill of Damages, 4 June 1839.)  

Phelps, Morris. Reminiscences, no date. CHL. MS 271.

LeSueur, Stephen C. The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.

Baugh, Alexander L. “A Call to Arms: The 1838 Mormon Defense of Northern Missouri.” PhD diss., Brigham Young University, 1996. Also available as A Call to Arms: The 1838 Mormon Defense of Northern Missouri, Dissertations in Latter-day Saint History (Provo, UT: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History; BYU Studies, 2000).

Peck, Reed. Letter, Quincy, IL, to “Dear Friends,” 18 Sept. 1839. Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

Foote, Warren. Autobiography, not before 1903. Warren Foote, Papers, 1837–1941. CHL. MS 1123, fd. 1.

Declaration on Government and Law, ca. Aug. 1835 [D&C 134].