On 8 March 1842 replied to JS’s letter of the previous day by answering questions JS had posed regarding various injustices citizens of perpetrated, including the recent incarceration of three abolitionists in that state. In January 1842 Bennett and abolitionist Charles V. Dyer exchanged letters concerning the “outrages committed upon the latter day saints” in Missouri in 1838 as well as the evils of American slavery. The correspondence was published in the antislavery newspaper Genius of Liberty and, at some point, came to the attention of JS. In his 7 March 1842 letter to Bennett, JS expressed his own indignation at the “injustice, cruelty, and oppression, of the rulers of the people” and inquired of Bennett, “What think you should be done?”
In his 8 March 1842 reply, answered JS using metaphorical language replete with allusions to Roman mythology and the Bible. He asserted that the citizens of would one day be punished for their crimes against the innocent—whether they be abolitionists or Latter-day Saints—either by military force or by God. It is likely that the two men’s correspondence was a rhetorical dialogue intended for publication in the newspaper Times and Seasons. It is also possible that, as a guest living in JS’s home, Bennett hand delivered the letter to JS. Either way, Bennett’s response was published in the 15 March 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons. Following its publication there, the letter gained notoriety among some citizens of Illinois. Former governor of Illinois , who was then campaigning for election to his former office, was quoted in mid-May 1842 as saying that the letter manifested Bennett’s “willingness at any moment to march against the Penitentiary in Missouri with his armed force, established under the auspices, (as Joe Smith says,) of Mr. Snyder and Judge Douglass, and release the three Abolitionists now in confinement there.”
Letter to John C. Bennett, 7 Mar. 1842. In July 1841 three men were arrested near Palmyra, Missouri, for attempting to help local slaves escape to Canada; they were later sentenced to twelve years in prison.
store the label, unbind the bird, and let her tower unfettered in the air—then will the nation have repose, and the present minions of power hide their faces in the dust. Many of ’s noble sons detest her acts of cruelty and crime, and gladly would they wipe them from the escutcheon of her fame, and will; yes, they will lend a helping hand—and all must help, for the time is at hand,—and if man, rebellious, cowardly, faltering man, will not do the work, the thunderings of Sinai will wind up the scene—the blood of the murdered Mormons cries aloud for help, and the restoration of the inheritances of the saints; and God has heard the cry—and if the moral battle must be fought, and the victory won, he who answers by fire will cause sword and flame to do their office, and again make the Constitution and the Laws paramount to every other consideration—and I swear by the Lord God of Israel, that the sword shall not depart from my thigh, nor the buckler from my arm, until the trust is consummated, and the hydra-headed, fiery dragon slain. This done, the proud southron will no longer boast of ill-gotten gain, or wash his hands in the blood of the innocent, or immure the freemen of the within ’s sullied, poisoned, deathly prison walls. Let us always take refuge under the broad folds of the Constitution and the Laws, and fear no danger, for the day of vengence will assuredly come when the Omnipotent hand of the Great God will effect the restitution of the trophies of the brigand victories of , and again place the saints on high.
In October 1838 armed vigilantes killed ten, and fatally injured seven, Latter-day Saints near the Hawn’s Mill settlement in Missouri; they also reportedly looted houses, wagons, and tents and stole clothing from both survivors and the deceased. In Far West, Missouri, state militiamen ransacked church members’ homes and robbed them of personal property. Various accounts also indicate that multiple Latter-day Saint women were the victims of acts of sexual violence, including rape. (Greene, Facts relative to the Expulsion, 23–24; David Lewis, Affidavit, in Sidney Rigdon et al., “To the Publick,” ca. Sept. 1838–Oct. 1839, draft, JS Collection, CHL; Baugh, “Call to Arms,” 359–368, 424–426; Amanda Barnes Smith, Statement, 18 Apr. 1839, Historian’s Office, JS History Documents, ca. 1839–1860, CHL; American Anti-slavery Society, American Slavery as It Is, 191–192; Murdock, Journal, 29 Oct. 1838, 103–104; Hyrum Smith, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, pp. 13, 24, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL; see also “Part 3: 4 November 1838–16 April 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.
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).
Historian’s Office. Joseph Smith History Documents, 1839–1860. CHL. CR 100 396.
American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. New York: American Anti- Slavery Society, 1839.
Murdock, John. Journal, ca. 1830–1859. John Murdock, Journal and Autobiography, ca. 1830–1867. CHL. MS 1194, fd. 2.
See Genesis 4:10; Revelation 6:10; and Book of Mormon, 1840 ed., 111, 320 [2 Nephi 28:10; Alma 37:30]. Bennett’s rhetoric echoes sentiments contained in the Bible and the Book of Mormon, as well as in the writings of Parley P. Pratt. Speaking of the violent acts committed against the Latter-day Saints in Missouri, Pratt wrote in 1839: “The spirits of the ancient martyrs will hail their brethren of the Church of latter-day Saints, as greater sufferers than themselves, and the blood of ancient and modern Saints, will mingle together in cries for vengeance.” (Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 56.)
In Greek and Roman mythology, the Lernaean Hydra was a multiheaded water serpent that was killed by Hercules. Slavery was often characterized as a hydra-headed monster in abolitionist literature. (“Hydra,” in American Dictionary [1841], 849; “The Cause in Ohio,” Liberator [Boston], 16 May 1835, 77; “Remarks of James C. Jackson,” Liberator, 12 Mar. 1841, 41.)
An American Dictionary of the English Language; First Edition in Octavo, Containing the Whole Vocabulary of the Quarto, with Corrections, Improvements and Several Thousand Additional Words. . . . Edited by Noah Webster. 2nd ed. 2 vols. New Haven: By the author, 1841.
Originally a term used by the Scottish to refer to those in England, southron was appropriated by nineteenth-century Americans to refer to the inhabitants of the South. (“Southron,” in Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, 410; see also, for example, Freeman, Yaradee, 82.)
Bartlett, John Russell. Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases, Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States. New York: Bartlett and Welford, 1848.
Freeman, Frederick. Yaradee; A Plea for Africa, in Familiar Conversations on the Subject of Slavery and Colonization. Philadelphia: J. Whetham, 1836.
This is likely a reference to three Illinois abolitionists—James Burr, George Thompson, and Alanson Work—who were arrested in Missouri for attempting to help black slaves escape to Canada. In September 1841 the men were convicted and eventually sentenced to twelve years in a Missouri prison. (Thompson, Prison Life and Reflections, 17–23, 81, 85–90.)
Thompson, George. Prison Life and Reflections; or, A Narrative of the Arrest, Trial, Conviction, Imprisonment, Treatment, Observations, Reflections, and Deliverance of Work, Burr and Thompson, Who Suffered an Unjust and Cruel Imprisonment in Missouri Penitentiary, for Attempting to Aid Some Slaves to Liberty. Oberlin, OH: James M. Fitch, 1847.
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.
Historian’s Office. Joseph Smith History Documents, 1839–1860. CHL. CR 100 396.