Part 3: October 1843

October 1843 was a cold and wet month in , Illinois—one that saw the first snowfall of the season. At the beginning of the month, JS and his family celebrated the opening of the town’s newest hotel, the . During a dinner party held there on 3 October, JS remarked on past trials and persecutions and expressed his love and gratitude to his guests and to God for blessing him abundantly.

A few days later, JS presided over a in . Among the business discussed during the conference was the “case and standing of .” JS had openly accused his counselor of betraying him and conspiring to have him extradited to , and in mid-August he induced a church congregation to disfellowship Rigdon pending an investigation. However, during a session of the October general conference, church members voted that Rigdon should “retain his station” as JS’s counselor. The conference also addressed the progress of the Nauvoo . Construction work had slowed due to a “want of team work and provisions.” Church leaders spoke at the conference, “setting forth the importance of the saints using their utmost exertions to fulfil the revelation concerning the Temple.” JS concluded the conference “with exhortations to the church to renew their exertions to forward the work.” Shortly after the conference, JS and authorized church elder to collect funds for ongoing construction. Specifically, they told him to collect donations “both from the Saints, and all honorable men of the earth, to assist in building the Temple of the Lord at Nauvoo.”

Following the conference, other missionaries departed for locations around the globe, including the Kingdom of Tahiti. Meanwhile, emigrants continued to pour into Nauvoo from and the eastern , raising Nauvoo’s population to around eleven thousand individuals. Letters from leaders in the British mission described the continuing growth that fueled the gathering to Nauvoo. “The condition of the churches in England is much better than it has been,” church elders and wrote from , “and the work is prospering generally, the number of members at the General Conference in June last was about 8000.” Ward and Clark anticipated “an accelerated progress to the work” as more missionaries arrived. , who was charged with leading the British Mission in May 1843, arrived in Liverpool from Nauvoo in late September and promptly penned a letter to the and on 4 October echoing Ward and Clark’s assessment of church growth and informing church leaders that “there is a great want of Laborers in the winyard.”

While the church largely prospered overseas, letters and other documents created in October reveal challenging times for the Latter-day Saints in the British Isles and the . informed church leaders in that a leadership vacuum, created when members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and other seasoned missionaries returned to America, had resulted in doctrinal disagreements and even apostasy in some in the British mission; he also discussed various negative depictions of JS and the church then circulating in the British media. ’s antagonistic writings and lecture tour in the eastern United States had also generated prejudice toward the church. In a letter written from in late October, informed JS that bias was “strong And Friends as scarce Since the Benit [Bennett] revolution” and that “the people appears to be affraid of Evry thing they see and hear And Eaven will deny their own Eye sight For fear of being deluded And they not have power to prevent it without They act Contirary to all light and Knowledge.” In western , the Saints remained apprehensive about the mobilization of the “ Mob” that had passed resolutions against the church the previous month.

Amid growing tension, JS reiterated his belief in the Constitution while also seeking out allies to help protect the rights, property, and lives of the Saints. In a discourse delivered on 15 October, JS declared, “I am the greatest advocate of the C[onstitution] of U.S. there is there on the earth.” Nevertheless, he intimated that the nation’s foundational text was not broad enough to adequately defend minority rights. The following day, JS wrote to governor and petitioned him for more public arms for the . Church member ’s late October letter to JS introduced United States surveyor Colonel , who was sympathetic to the Saints and willing to use his connections in to help them. Heywood’s letter and Frierson’s offer to help provided one impetus for JS to recommence efforts to petition Congress for reparations for the Latter-day Saints’ forced expulsion from during the 1830s and for protection from adversaries during the present time. Even as their opponents continued to threaten and revile them, JS and the Saints received written support and encouragement from various individuals sympathetic to their cause, including land speculator and author and educator , who told JS “I am capable of being a most undeviating fr[i]end.”

Part 3 features twenty-three documents created in October 1843, including letters, discourses, and pay orders.