Footnotes
Willard Richards succinctly summarized the topic of JS’s discourse as “economy of Nauvoo.” (Richards, Journal, 15 Oct. 1843.)
Richards, Franklin D. Journals, 1844–1899. Richards Family Collection, 1837–1961. CHL. MS 1215, boxes 1–5.
Alanson Ripley, “Nauvoo,” Times and Seasons, June 1840, 1:122.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
An Act to Incorporate the Nauvoo Agricultural and Manufacturing Association, in the County of Hancock [27 Feb. 1841], Laws of the State of Illinois [1840–1841], p. 139, sec. 2.
General Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Eighteenth General Assembly, Convened January 3, 1853. Springfield: Lanphier and Walker, 1853.
Sidney Rigdon, “To the Editor of the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 21 June 1843, [3].
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
The editorial further argued that workers were “not employed at what they ought to be. Men that have been accustomed to manufacturing cotton goods are making ditches on the prairie, woolen manufacturers are carrying the hod, and working at day labor, and silk weaver’s are mixing clay at the brickyard, iron smelters are turned farmers, and potters have got metamorphised into builders and wood choppers. . . . The prosperity of this place depends in a great measure upon the encouragement of home manufacture.” (“Home Manufacture,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 31 May 1843, [2].)
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
Lydia Knight, “Manufacturing Straw,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 10 May 1843, [3]; “Important to Weavers,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 17 May 1843, [2]; Sidney Rigdon, “To the Editor of the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 21 June 1843, [3]; James Spratley et al., “A Word from the Suffering Boot and Shoe Makers,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 13 Sept. 1843, [3]; Letter from Jared Carter, 14 Oct. 1843. Hoping to facilitate the construction of mills, the city granted JS a charter to build a wing dam on the Mississippi River in early December 1843. (JS, Journal, 23 Nov. 1843; “An Ordinance to Erect a Dam in the Mississippi River, and for Other Purposes,” 8 Dec. 1843, JS Office Papers, CHL; see also Nauvoo City Council Minute Book, 8 Dec. 1843, 192–193.)
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
Richards, Journal, 15 Oct. 1843.
Richards, Franklin D. Journals, 1844–1899. Richards Family Collection, 1837–1961. CHL. MS 1215, boxes 1–5.
Many people in prerevolutionary and antebellum America embraced the principle of liberty of conscience. Puritan minister Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 for having “broached and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions” and made liberty of conscience the ideological core of the colony he founded in Rhode Island in 1636. In 1789, United States president George Washington told the United Baptist Churches of Virginia that every man “being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.” In 1842, JS published thirteen statements that encapsulated some Latter-day Saint beliefs. One of these statements affirmed, “We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our conscience, and allow all men the same privilege let them worship how, where, or what they may.” (Felt, Annals of Salem, 81; Williams, Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed, 1–2; Knowles, Memoir of Roger Williams, 320–325, 363–372, 413; George Washington, New York City, to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia, May 1789, in Twohig, Papers of George Washington, 423–425; “Church History,” 1 Mar. 1842.)
Felt, Joseph B. The Annals of Salem, from Its First Settlement. Salem, MA: W. and S. B. Ives, 1827.
Williams, Roger. The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed: And Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and Answered. Edited by Edward Bean Underhill. London: J. Haddon, 1848.
Knowles, James D. Memoir of Roger Williams, the Founder of the State of Rhode-Island. Boston: Lincoln, Edmands and Co., 1834.
Twohig, Dorothy, ed. The Papers of George Washington. Vol. 2, 1 April 1789–15 June 1789. Presidential Series. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1987.
One of the reasons that JS believed the Constitution was flawed was that it did not compel the executive or legislative branches to use federal power to defend minority rights—a subject he mentioned on several occasions. (See Letter to John C. Calhoun, 4 Nov. 1843; General Joseph Smith’s Appeal to the Green Mountain Boys, 21 Nov.–ca. 3 Dec. 1843; Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 16 Dec. 1843–12 Feb. 1844; and “Correspondence of Gen. Joseph Smith and Hon. J. C. Calhoun,” Times and Seasons, 1 Jan. 1844, 5:394.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.