Footnotes
Richards served as church historian from December 1842 until his death in 1854. (JS, Journal, 21 Dec. 1842; Orson Spencer, “Death of Our Beloved Brother Willard Richards,” Deseret News, 16 Mar. 1854, [2].)
Deseret News. Salt Lake City. 1850–.
The scribes may have added the use marks when preparing the document for publication. (See Historical Introduction to “Extract, from the Private Journal of Joseph Smith Jr.,” July 1839.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 17 Feb. 1840, 179; 23 Mar. 1840, 259–260; Elias Higbee, Washington DC, to JS, [Commerce, IL?], 24 Mar. 1840, in JS Letterbook 2, p. 105; see also Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 391–394.
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.
Bushman, Richard Lyman. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. With the assistance of Jed Woodworth. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Jessee, “Writing of Joseph Smith’s History,” 441; JS History, vol. C-1, 948–952. Bullock may have added the use marks after he finished copying the document in 1845, and Richards may have added the docket around the same time. The archival marking was added in the twentieth century.
Jessee, Dean C. “The Writing of Joseph Smith’s History.” BYU Studies 11 (Summer 1971): 439–473.
Footnotes
Historical Introduction to Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 10 Apr. 1839; Minutes, 4–5 May 1839.
See, for example, James Newberry, Affidavit, Adams Co., IL, 7 May 1839; Joseph Dudley, Affidavit, Adams Co., IL, 11 May 1839; Phebee Simpson Emmett, Affidavit, Adams Co., IL, 14 May 1839, Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845, CHL.
Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845. CHL. MS 2703.
Mulholland was in Commerce, Illinois, during JS’s visit to Quincy in late May and early June 1839. (JS, Journal, 27 May–8 June 1839; Mulholland, Journal, 19 May–8 June 1839.)
Mulholland, James. Journal, Apr.–Oct. 1839. In Joseph Smith, Journal, Sept.–Oct. 1838. Joseph Smith Collection. CHL. MS 155, box 1, fd. 4.
“Extracts of the Minutes of Conferences,” Times and Seasons, Nov. 1839, 1:15; Authorization for Almon Babbitt et al., ca. 4 May 1839; Snow, Journal, 1838–1841, 50–54.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
Snow, Erastus. Journals, 1835–1851; 1856–1857. CHL. MS 1329, box 1, fds. 1–3.
For more information on the “armies of Israel,” see Introduction to Part 3: 4 Nov. 1838–16 Apr. 1839.
“Extract, from the Private Journal of Joseph Smith Jr.,” Times and Seasons, July 1839, 1:2–9.
When the prisoners arrived in Richmond, Missouri, on 9 November 1838, they were placed in a room in “an old log house.” They were bound together the following day “with three trace chains and seven padlocks . . . until [they] were all chained together about two feet apart.” For the remainder of the month, they remained chained together and slept on the floor. (Lyman Wight, Journal, in History of the Reorganized Church, 2:296–297; Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 52.)
The History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 8 vols. Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1896–1976.
Pratt described one night when the prisoners “listened for hours to the obscene jests, the horrid oaths, the dreadful blasphemies and filthy language of guards” as they “recounted to each other their deeds of rapine, murder, robbery, etc.” committed against the Latter-day Saints in Caldwell County. (Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 52; Pratt, Autobiography, 228, 229.)
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.
Hyrum Smith recalled that the prisoners submitted the names of sixty potential defense witnesses; only seven ultimately testified. Several Latter-day Saints recounted that officers of the court harassed and abused the defense witnesses.
For more information on the January 1839 habeas corpus hearing, see Introduction to Part 3: 4 Nov. 1838–16 Apr. 1839.
TEXT: The line running through “with the same success” may not signify a cancellation; instead, the line may be intended to separate the insertion from the main text.
On 9 March 1839, Hyrum Smith wrote a petition for a writ of habeas corpus; though directed to King, it apparently was never submitted. In mid-March, JS and the other prisoners wrote separate petitions directed to the Missouri Supreme Court, but the requests were denied. (Hyrum Smith, Petition, Liberty, MO, 9 Mar. 1839, CHL; Historical Introduction to Petition to George Tompkins, between 9 and 15 Mar. 1839.)
Smith, Hyrum. Petition, Liberty, MO, 9 Mar. 1839. CHL.
Wight recalled that the prisoners were fed “with a scanty allowance, on the dregs of coffee and Tea from the [jailer’s] own Table and fetching the provisions in a basket in which the chickens had roosted the night before without being cleaned.” (Lyman Wight, Testimony, Nauvoo, IL, 1 July 1843, p. 30, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL.)
Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.
From 6 to 8 April 1839, Clay County sheriff and jailer Samuel Hadley, deputy jailer Samuel Tillery, and several other men escorted the prisoners from Liberty to Gallatin for a session of the Daviess County Circuit Court. (Hyrum Smith, Diary, 6–8 Apr. 1839.)
Smith, Hyrum. Diary, Mar.–Apr. 1839, Oct. 1840. CHL. MS 2945.
The men were indicted around 10 April 1839 for treason against the state of Missouri. (Daviess Co., MO, Circuit Court Record, Apr. 1839, bk. A, 58, Daviess County Courthouse, Gallatin, MO; Indictment, [Honey Creek Township, MO], ca. 10 Apr. 1839, State of Missouri v. Gates et al. for Treason [Daviess Co. Cir. Ct. 1839], Historical Department, Nineteenth-Century Legal Documents Collection, CHL; see also Baugh, “We Took Our Change of Venue,” 61–65.)
Daviess County, Missouri. Circuit Court Record, vol. A, July 1837–Oct. 1843. Daviess County Courthouse, Gallatin, MO.
Baugh, Alexander L. “‘We Took Our Change of Venue to the State of Illinois’: The Gallatin Hearing and the Escape of Joseph Smith and the Mormon Prisoners from Missouri, April 1839.” Mormon Historical Studies 2, no. 1 (2001): 59–82.