Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 February 1840–A
-
Source Note
, Letter, , to JS, [, Hancock Co., IL?], 20 Feb. 1840. Featured version copied [between Apr. and June 1840] in JS Letterbook 2, pp. 97–100; handwriting of ; JS Collection, CHL. For more complete source information, see the source note for JS Letterbook 2.
-
Historical Introduction
While in on 20 February 1840, wrote two letters to JS. This first letter of the day commenced a series of seven extant letters written over the course of several weeks apprising JS of the actions of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which was considering the ’s memorial to Congress. Higbee was the only member of the church’s delegation to the federal government present in Washington DC at this time and was the sole representative of the church before the committee. On 28 January, Senator of presented the church’s memorial to the Senate. The Senate then tabled the memorial until 12 February, when it was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee for further consideration. In this letter, Higbee provided a detailed account of his testimony at a special meeting of the committee that he had requested, at which he explained that many of the difficulties in occurred because of church members’ religious beliefs. Based on Senate records, on Higbee’s account of the hearing, and on the report the committee created in response to the memorial, it appears that the committee was supposed to first determine whether the case fell under the jurisdiction of Congress before judging the memorial’s merits.presumably sent this letter by post to , Illinois, where JS would have received it after he returned from on or before 29 February 1840. The concluding line of the letter suggests that Higbee expected JS to share the letter’s contents with the Saints in Commerce and . The original letter is not extant. copied the version featured here into JS Letterbook 2 sometime between April and June 1840.
Footnotes
-
1
JS left the capital for Illinois shortly after the church’s memorial was presented to the Senate on 28 January 1840. Sidney Rigdon was ill in Philadelphia when Higbee wrote this letter and remained there until he left for New Jersey on 5 March 1840. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 14 Jan. 1840, 2; Letter from Elias Higbee, 9 Mar. 1840.)
-
2
Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. and 12 Feb. 1840, 138, 173; Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 149 (1840).
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
-
3
Letter from Elias Higbee, 22 Feb. 1840; Historical Introduction to Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 Mar. 1840.
-
4
John Smith, Journal, 1836–1840, 29 Feb. 1840, [58].
Smith, John (1781-1854). Journal, 1833–1841. John Smith, Papers, 1833-1854. CHL. MS 1326, box 1, fd. 1.
-
5
Coray, Autobiographical Sketch, 17, 19.
Coray, Howard. Autobiographical Sketch, after 1883. Howard Coray, Papers, ca. 1840–1941. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2043, fd. 1.
-
1
Document Transcript
Footnotes
-
1
“The committee room” presumably refers to one of several committee rooms in the United States Capitol.
-
2
At this time, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary consisted of five senators: Garret D. Wall of New Jersey, Thomas Clayton of Delaware, Robert Strange of North Carolina, John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and Oliver H. Smith of Indiana. According to one of Higbee’s later letters, Crittenden and Strange were absent on this date. (Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 835–836, 894–895, 1937, 1990, 2107; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 16 Dec. 1839, 11; Letter from Elias Higbee, 21 Feb. 1840; see also Introduction to Part 3: 27 Jan.–8 Apr. 1840.)
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005, the Continental Congress, September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States, from the First through the One Hundred Eighth Congresses, March 4, 1789, to January 3, 2005, inclusive. Edited by Andrew R. Dodge and Betty K. Koed. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
-
3
In 1840 the Missouri delegation to the United States Congress consisted of two Democratic senators, Thomas Hart Benton and Lewis F. Linn, and two Democratic representatives, John Jameson and John Miller. (Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 120, 646, 1324, 1452–1453, 1586.)
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005, the Continental Congress, September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States, from the First through the One Hundred Eighth Congresses, March 4, 1789, to January 3, 2005, inclusive. Edited by Andrew R. Dodge and Betty K. Koed. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.
-
4
“15,000 souls” likely refers to the total number of Saints driven from Missouri but may refer to the estimated total membership of the church at this time. According to contemporary letters and the estimates of historians, between eight and ten thousand Saints were expelled from Missouri. (Elias Smith, Far West, MO, to Ira Smith, East Stockholm, NY, 11 Mar. 1839, Elias Smith, Papers, CHL; Heber C. Kimball, Far West, MO, to Joseph Fielding, Preston, England, 12 Mar. 1839, typescript, Heber C. Kimball Family Organization, Compilation of Heber C. Kimball Correspondence, 1983, CHL; LeSueur, 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 35–36; Leonard, Nauvoo, 31, 671n33.)
Smith, Elias. Correspondence, 1834–1839. In Elias Smith, Papers, 1834–1846. CHL.
Kimball, Heber C. Correspondence, 1837–1864. Private possession. Copy at CHL.
LeSueur, Stephen C. The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.
Leonard, Glen M. Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2002.
-
5
Higbee may have been estimating the number of Americans denied religious liberty at this time, but the source of his estimate is unclear. After the judiciary committee released its report on the church’s case, commentary in the church newspaper the Times and Seasons stated that “upwards of one hundred thousand American citizens, could not induce this magnanimous committee to put forth the helping hand, for a moment, to their relief.” The number of citizens mentioned in this commentary may have been the estimated total of Americans deprived of religious freedom but may also have been an estimate of the number of individuals who had supported the Saints’ petition to Congress. (“Important from Washington,” Times and Seasons, Mar. 1840, 1:74.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
-
6
In October 1838, Governor Lilburn W. Boggs issued orders to the state militia that the Mormons “must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state if necessary for the public peace.” (Lilburn W. Boggs, Jefferson City, MO, to John B. Clark, Fayette, MO, 27 Oct. 1838, copy, Mormon War Papers, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.)
Mormon War Papers, 1838–1841. MSA.
-
7
When conflict first broke out between Missourians and the Saints in summer 1833, non-Mormons in Jackson County, Missouri, presented church leaders with a declaration outlining their grievances against the Saints. Reprinted in the first pages of Pratt’s pamphlet, the declaration deemed the Missouri Saints “deluded fanatics” because they claimed “to hold personal communion and converse, face to face, with the most high God—to receive communications and revelations direct from Heaven—to heal the sick by laying on hands—and in short, to perform all the wonder working miracles wraught by the inspired Apostles and prophets of old.” The declaration also accused the Saints of being “the very dregs of society” because of their poverty and their alleged attempts to foment slave rebellions. (Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 7–10.)
-
8
Orrin Porter Rockwell, Affidavit, 3 Feb. 1840, Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives, Washington DC. While in Washington DC, Rockwell provided an affidavit stating that vigilantes told him and his father that they would be permitted to remain living in the county unharmed if they would “renounce their doctrine and religious faith as Mormons.”
Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives / Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Judiciary during the 27th Congress. Committee on the Judiciary, Petitions and Memorials, 1813–1968. Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789–2015. National Archives, Washington DC. The LDS records cited herein are housed in National Archives boxes 40 and 41 of Library of Congress boxes 139–144 in HR27A-G10.1.
-
9
This possibly refers to Uriah B. Powell’s affidavit, in which Powell claimed that a militia captain told him that the militia had “designs of getting the Mormons out of the State.” This affidavit, however, did not explicitly list religious faith as the primary motive. Powell swore his affidavit before James Adams on 9 November 1839 while Higbee was in Springfield, Illinois, making it highly likely that Higbee carried this affidavit to the capital and that it was included among those submitted with the memorial to the committee. (Uriah B. Powell, Affidavit, Springfield, IL, 9 Nov. 1839, Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives, Washington DC.)
Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives / Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Judiciary during the 27th Congress. Committee on the Judiciary, Petitions and Memorials, 1813–1968. Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789–2015. National Archives, Washington DC. The LDS records cited herein are housed in National Archives boxes 40 and 41 of Library of Congress boxes 139–144 in HR27A-G10.1.
-
10
“The documents” likely refers to the collection of documents the church delegation intended to publish and publicly distribute, including their memorial to Congress and the affidavits that accompanied it. (See Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; and Letter from Elias Higbee, 24 Mar. 1840.)
-
11
Robert Lucas, Iowa Territory, to Alanson Ripley, 4 Jan. 1840, in Times and Seasons, Jan. 1840, 1:40. The January 1840 issue of the Times and Seasons published the letter from Iowa territorial governor Lucas to Ripley, one of the church’s bishops. In the letter, Lucas reported that church members in northern Ohio had been “considered an industrious, inoffensive people” and stated that he had “no recollection of ever having heard, in that State of their being charged with violating the laws of the country.” Lucas also added that the Mormon families who had recently relocated to his territory were “generally considered industrious, inoffensive and worthy citizens.”
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
-
12
Higbee may have been referring to one of Young’s legal clerks or to the clerk of Pike County, Illinois.
-
13
On 30 October 1838, more than two hundred vigilantes attacked a group of church members living at the Hawn’s Mill settlement on Shoal Creek in Caldwell County, Missouri. Seventeen church members died as a result of this attack. The two boys killed in the massacre were Charles Merrick, age nine, and Sardius Smith, age ten. The memorial contained an account of the massacre at Hawn’s Mill, as did the pamphlets compiled by Pratt and John P. Greene. Several of the affidavits sent to Congress described the conflict as well, but it is unclear which affidavits the Senate Committee on the Judiciary had in their possession at this time. (Baugh, “Call to Arms,” chap. 9 and appendixes I–J; Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 50–51; Greene, Facts relative to the Expulsion, 21–24.)
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).
Greene, John P. Facts Relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, from the State of Missouri, under the “Exterminating Order.” By John P. Greene, an Authorized Representative of the Mormons. Cincinnati: R. P. Brooks, 1839.
-
14
During the 1830s and 1840s, several debates ensued in the United States over the power of the federal government to enforce the Bill of Rights on individual states. In 1833 the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. Then, in 1845, the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights did not protect religious liberty from infringement by state or municipal governments. Although this latter case postdates the church’s petitioning efforts in 1840, it demonstrates that JS, Higbee, and Rigdon were not the only Americans questioning the extent of federal power to ensure religious liberty in individual states. Higbee seems to suggest here that even if the federal government did not have power to protect church members’ rights to religious freedom under the First Amendment, the government should not be constitutionally restrained from intervening when a state drives thousands of citizens off their land and out of state borders. (Barron v. Baltimore, 7 Peters 243 [1833]; Permoli v. Municipality No. 1, 3 Howard 589 [1845]; Sehat, Myth of American Religious Freedom, 4; McBride, “When Joseph Smith Met Martin Van Buren,” 157–158.)
Peters / Peters, Richard. Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States. 17 vols. Various publishers, 1828–1843.
Howard / Howard, Benjamin C. Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States. 25 vols. Various publishers. 1843–1860.
Sehat, David. The Myth of American Religious Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
McBride, Spencer W. Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
-
15
Church leaders had previously addressed allegations that they directed church members to steal from their neighbors or to willfully act against Missouri laws. After some church members organized into militia companies in October 1838 and attacked settlements that harbored anti-Mormon vigilantes, they defended their appropriation of corn, hogs, and other goods and livestock as being in keeping with generally accepted practices of war. (Foote, Autobiography, 30; Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839; Bill of Damages, 4 June 1839.)
Foote, Warren. Autobiography, not before 1903. Warren Foote, Papers, 1837–1941. CHL. MS 1123, fd. 1.
-
16
This passage likely refers to the pending trials of three groups of church members imprisoned in 1838. The first group was incarcerated in Liberty, Missouri; the second was incarcerated in Richmond, Missouri; and the third had been released on bail. (Historical Introduction to Letter to Emma Smith, 1 Dec. 1838; Historical Introduction to Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839.)
-
17
Senator Garret D. Wall. (Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 16 Dec. 1839, 11.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
-
18
King presided over a November 1838 court of inquiry in Richmond, Missouri, in which several church members were tried on a variety of charges, including treason, riot, and murder. Thirty-nine individuals testified for the prosecution and seven testified for the defense. (Document Containing the Correspondence, 149–151; LeSueur, 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, chap. 12; Historical Introduction to Letter to Emma Smith, 1 Dec. 1838.)
LeSueur, Stephen C. The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.
-
19
Two groups of church members were imprisoned in Missouri in 1838. One group, which included JS, was incarcerated in Liberty on charges that included treason and riot. Another group, which included Parley P. Pratt, was incarcerated in Richmond on charges that included murder. The Compulsory Process Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees individuals accused of crimes the right to obtain witnesses in their favor. The prisoners in both groups claimed that the witnesses they called were either intimidated or not allowed to testify. (Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839; Pratt, Autobiography, 233; U.S. Constitution, amend. VI.)
Pratt, Parley P. The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Embracing His Life, Ministry and Travels, with Extracts, in Prose and Verse, from His Miscellaneous Writings. Edited by Parley P. Pratt Jr. New York: Russell Brothers, 1874.
-
20
Avard was a church member who had been a prominent leader of the Danites, a militant organization of church members devoted to supporting the First Presidency and defending the church with violence, if necessary. Following the 1838 Missouri conflict, Avard testified against JS and other church leaders, which helped lead to their arrest and imprisonment. He was excommunicated on 17 March 1839. (Introduction to Part 2: 8 July–29 Oct. 1838; Sampson Avard, Testimony, Richmond, MO, Nov. 1838, pp. [2]–[23], State of Missouri v. JS et al. for Treason and Other Crimes [Mo. 5th Jud. Cir. 1838], in State of Missouri, “Evidence”; “Extracts of the Minutes of Conferences,” Times and Seasons, Nov. 1839, 1:15; see also LeSueur, 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, 40–44, 199–201, 220–222; and Baugh, “Call to Arms,” 79–101.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
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).
-
21
None of the extant affidavits that were collected to submit to the committee with the church’s memorial address Avard’s character. A petition included in John P. Greene’s Facts relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons, however, claimed that Avard had sworn falsely against JS, which led to JS’s imprisonment. That petition was signed by five men: Alanson Ripley, Heber C. Kimball, William Huntington, Joseph B. Noble, and JS. (Greene, Facts relative to the Expulsion, 31–33; Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839.)
Greene, John P. Facts Relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, from the State of Missouri, under the “Exterminating Order.” By John P. Greene, an Authorized Representative of the Mormons. Cincinnati: R. P. Brooks, 1839.