Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 December 1839
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Source Note
JS and , Letter, , to and Nauvoo high council, [, Hancock Co., IL], 5 Dec. 1839. Featured version copied [between Apr. and June 1840] in JS Letterbook 2, pp. 85–88; handwriting of ; JS Collection, CHL. For more complete source information, see the source note for JS Letterbook 2.
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Historical Introduction
On 5 December 1839, JS and wrote to —the remaining member of the in , Illinois—and the to inform them of their safe arrival in a week earlier. JS and Higbee apprised Smith and the high council of their recent efforts to obtain redress from the federal government for the persecutions members experienced in and described their meeting with President , in which the president declined to help the Saints.JS and , accompanied by representative , went to the President’s House on 29 November seeking a meeting with . In the 1830s, visitors commonly arrived at the President’s House without an appointment. Many Americans, including legislators and office seekers, discussed their business with the president in social settings, and Van Buren frequently met with guests in the parlor outside his office for hours at a time. In this setting, JS and Higbee would have had to compete with other visitors for the president’s attention, which may explain why Reynolds introduced them.It is unclear what JS and asked to do to support their petitioning efforts. They may have requested an executive order that would result in redress and reparations for church members’ losses, but no documentary evidence exists to support this possibility. It is unlikely that Van Buren would have considered executive action to force , a state led predominantly by Democrats, to restore the Saints’ property rights. Van Buren was a staunch advocate of states’ rights and was at this time widely considered the architect of the Democratic Party, which had elected his predecessor, Andrew Jackson, to two consecutive presidential terms. However, JS and Higbee possibly believed Van Buren was amenable to lending his political influence to the church’s memorial for redress to Congress. Evidence suggests they tried to enlist him to assist in their appeal. In their ongoing correspondence while in , members of the church’s delegation indicated they were awaiting publication of the president’s annual message to Congress, hoping that Van Buren would therein urge Congress to act in the Saints’ behalf.JS and also described their plan to meet with all the congressional delegates the following day, mentioned the delayed travel of and , and asked and the high council to help expedite financial arrangements for the delegation. They then requested that the Saints continue their efforts to encourage influential men in Illinois and to write letters to Congress in support of the church. After closing by asking that the letter be forwarded to their wives, JS and Higbee included a postscript that criticized the behavior of Congress and recounted more of their travels.received the letter by 2 January 1840. The original letter is not extant. The version featured here was copied into JS Letterbook 2 by between April and June 1840.
Footnotes
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1
An account of an April 1840 JS discourse states that JS met with Van Buren at the President’s House over two successive days, whereas according to this letter to Hyrum Smith—the earliest extant account of the meeting—and a March 1840 discourse, the parties met at the President’s House only once. All three of these accounts, however, reported the same sentiment in Van Buren’s response. (Discourse, 7 Apr. 1840; Discourse, 1 Mar. 1840.)
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2
See Allgor, Parlor Politics, 76–79, 232.
Allgor, Catherine. Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
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3
Reynolds, My Own Times, 575. According to Lucy Mack Smith’s account of this meeting between JS, Higbee, and Van Buren, the parlor in which these men met was filled with several other visitors. (Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, bk. 17, [12].)
Reynolds, John. My Own Times: Embracing Also, the History of My Life. Belleville, IL: B. H. Perryman and H. L. Davison, 1855.
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4
Presidents rarely issued executive orders during this period. Van Buren’s seven predecessors in office had issued a combined total of thirty executive orders over forty-three years. Van Buren issued ten executive orders during his term as president. (Peters and Woolley, “Executive Orders,” in American Presidency Project.)
Peters, Gerhard, and John T. Woolley. “Executive Orders.” In The American Presidency Project, 1999–. Hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php.
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5
Silbey, Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics, chaps. 3–4.
Silbey, Joel H. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
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6
A report of JS’s discourse at an April 1840 general conference of the church states that JS and Higbee were seeking Van Buren’s assistance with their plan to petition Congress and makes no mention of a possible executive order. (Discourse, 7 Apr. 1840.)
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7
Letter to Seymour Brunson and Nauvoo High Council, 7 Dec. 1839; Letter from Robert D. Foster, 24 Dec. 1839. At this time, the president’s annual message to Congress (later known as the State of the Union address) was not delivered as a speech but instead was sent to Congress as a letter. (Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 1–7.)
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
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8
According to this letter and others that JS, Rigdon, and Higbee wrote to Commerce during the ensuing months, the delegation was constantly concerned about insufficient funds during their travels. (Letter from Jacob W. Jenks, 31 Dec. 1839; Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–B; Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 3 Apr. 1840.)
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9
This campaign to have influential men write to Congress was apparently an extension of the petitioning plan Rigdon set forth in April 1839. (Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 10 Apr. 1839.)
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11
Coray, Autobiographical Sketch, 17, 19.
Coray, Howard. Autobiographical Sketch, after 1883. Howard Coray, Papers, ca. 1840–1941. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2043, fd. 1.
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