[], An Appeal to the American People: Being an Account of the Persecutions of the Church of Latter Day Saints; and of the Barbarities Inflicted on Them by the Inhabitants of the State of Missouri, second edition; i-vi, 7–60 pp.; Cincinnati, OH: Shepard and Stearns, 1840. The copy used herein is held at CHL.
A manuscript draft of this pamphlet, simply titled “To the Publick” was presented to a conference of church members at , Illinois, on 1 November 1839. The conference voted to approve the manuscript and authorized its publication on behalf of the church. The pamphlet, when published, carried the endorsement of JS, , and as “Presidents of said Church.”
and collaborated on the publication of the text, which was available in print by May 1840. Though no author is named on the title page, was acknowledged as author in an 1840 Times and Seasons newspaper article, and when the pamphlet was advertised in that church periodical in 1841. JS and held some expectation that funds from the sale of An Appeal would eventually help defray costs of their late-1839 trip to .
By July 1840, and had been authorized to produce a second, revised edition to be published by Shepard & Stearns in . Page related some of the circumstances surrounding its publication and circulation in a letter sent to JS, “. . . at [Ohio] we parted for a few days . . . Elder Hyde went to Cincinnati where in my absince he published a second Edition of the ‘Apeal to the American people’ (2000 copies)[.] when I arrived the work was about completed[.] after disposing of as many of them as posible and suplying the market about cincinnati and the adjacient country he left me with some fourteen or fifteen hundred on hand, to dispose of” (John E. Page, Philadelphia, PA, to JS et al., Nauvoo, IL, 1 Sept. 1841, JS Collection, CHL). Funds from this printing were to be for the express purpose of subsidizing Hyde and Page’s imminent mission to in Palestine.
The second edition was essentially a lightly edited reprint of the first, with a four-page “Publisher’s Preface” added. In the preface, and noted the purpose of the publication, explained the severe hardships imposed by the persecutions upon Page’s own family, provided a detailed account of a vision experienced by Hyde, and expressed enthusiasm about the prospects of the mission. The preface also contained a copy of an official letter of appointment and commendation for Hyde and Page from an April 1840 church conference at , Illinois, signed by JS, and a letter of reference from , governor of .
Although many of the events reported in both editions of ’s pamphlet can be corroborated from other sources, his chronology of events is often inaccurate. However, Rigdon’s account does contain the texts of several significant documents. Among these are JS’s September 1838 affidavit concerning the 7 August 1838 visit to and those of and regarding the massacre. Consequently, though in many respects Rigdon’s document from a historical perspective is more advocacy than history, it offers access to some important material not readily found elsewhere.
where I was living, I committed my family to the protection of heaven, and leaving the house on the opposite side, I took a path which led up the hill, following in the trail of three of my brethren that had fled from the shop. While ascending the hill, we were discovered by the mob, who immediately fired at us, and continued so to do till we reached the summit. In descending the hill I secreted myself in a thicket of bushes, where I lay till eight o’clock in the evening, at which time I heard a female voice calling my name in an under tone, telling me that the mob had gone and there was no danger. I immediately left the thicket and went to the house of , where I found my family (who had fled there) in safety, and two of my friends mortally wounded, one of whom died before morning.
Here we passed that awful night in deep and painful reflections on the scenes of the preceding evening. After day-light appeared, some four or five men, with myself, who had escaped with our lives from the horrid massacre, repaired, as soon as possible, to the mills, to learn the condition of our friends, whose fate we had truly anticipated.
When we arrived at the house of , we found Mr. [Levi] Merrick’s body lying in the rear of the house, ’s in front, literally mangled from head to foot. We were informed by Miss Rebecca Judd, who was an eye-witness, that he was shot with his own gun, after he had given it up, and then was cut to pieces with an old corn cutter, by a , of , who keeps a ferry on Grand river, and who has since repeatedly boasted of this act of savage barbarity. ’s body we found in the house, and after viewing these corpses we immediately went to the black-smith’s shop, where we found nine of our friends, eight of whom were already dead, the other, Mr. [Simon] Cox, of Indiana, struggling in the agonies of death, and soon expired. We immediately prepared and carried them to a place of interment. This last office of kindness, due to the relics of departed friends, was not attended with the customary ceremonies nor decency—for we were in jeopardy, every moment expecting to be fired on by the mob, who we supposed were lying in ambush, waiting for the first opportunity to despatch the remaining few, who were providentially preserved from the slaughter of the preceding day; however, we accomplished without molestation this painful task. The place of burying was a vault in the ground, formerly intended for a well, into which we threw the bodies of our friends promiscuously. Among those slain, I will mention Sardius Smith, son of , about nine years old, who, through fear, had crawled under the bellows in the shop, where he remained until the massacre was over, when he was discovered by a Mr. [Ira] Glaze of Carroll county, who presented his rifle near the boy’s head and literally blowed off the upper part of it. Mr. Stanly, of Carroll, told me afterwards that Glaze boasted of this deed all over the county.
The number killed and mortally wounded in this wanton slaughter was eighteen or nineteen, whose names, as far as I can [p. 40]