Footnotes
See Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 373–395; and Lepler, Many Panics of 1837, chap. 1.
Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. The Oxford History of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Lepler, Jessica M. The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
William Clayton, Nauvoo, IL, to Nauvoo City Council, 13 Jan. 1843, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL.
Collector’s Report, 14 Jan. 1843, Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL.
Nauvoo City Council Minute Book, 4 Mar. 1843, 167. The council amended the ordinance between the time the group discussed it on 25 February and passed the final version on 4 March to ensure that city scrip could still be used for payment in certain instances. (See Nauvoo City Council Rough Minute Book, 4 Mar. 1843, 10.)
Article 1, section 10, clause 1, reads, “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.” Nauvoo’s charter allowed the city to collect taxes and “enforce the payment of the same in any manner to be provided by ordinance, not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, or of this State.” (Act to Incorporate the City of Nauvoo, 16 Dec. 1840.)
An Act to Amend “An Act concerning Judgments and Executions, Approved, January 17th, 1825” [19 Feb. 1841], Laws of the State of Illinois [1840–1841], pp. 168–171; An Act Entitled “Act Regulating the Sale of Property on Judgments and Executions” [6 Jan. 1843], Laws of the State of Illinois [1842–1843], pp. 186–189. The 1843 act expanded on an act passed in 1841. Following the financial panics of 1837 and 1839, many states passed similar stay and appraisal laws to allow relief for debtors. (An Act Regulating the Sale of Property [27 Feb. 1841], Laws of the State of Illinois [1840–1841], pp. 172–173; Balleisen, Navigating Failure, 12.)
Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Ninth General Assembly, at Their First Session, Commencing December 1, 1834, and Ending February 13, 1835. Vandalia, IL: J. Y. Sawyer, 1835.
Balleisen, Edward J. Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
JS and other Nauvoo citizens interpreted the state legislature’s granting of the city charter as its giving the city government broad powers similar to those that the federal constitution granted to the states, provided Nauvoo’s laws were “not repugnant” to either the United States Constitution or the constitution of Illinois. (See Act to Incorporate the City of Nauvoo, 16 Dec. 1840; “Remarks on Chartered Rights,” Wasp, 24 Dec. 1842, [2]; and Historical Introduction to Ordinance, 14 Nov. 1842.)
The Wasp. Nauvoo, IL. Apr. 1842–Apr. 1843.
Appraisal laws regulated the work of county appraisers, while stay laws provided debtors with additional time to pay their debts before creditors could seize their property for payment. The new Illinois laws stipulated that foreclosed property could not be sold for less than two-thirds of its appraised value. If the property remained unsold, it would return to the debtor. Another law allowed the debtor twelve months to redeem the property and avoid foreclosure. The laws’ opponents feared that as a result of the depressed real estate market at the time, the two-thirds requirement would make sale of the property impossible. The provisions prohibited the creditor from simply auctioning the property to the highest bidder. (An Act Entitled “An Act Regulating the Sale of Property on Judgments and Executions” [6 Jan. 1843], Laws of the State of Illinois [1842–1843], pp. 186, 188, secs. 1, 4; An Act to Amend “An Act concerning Judgments and Executions, Approved, January 17th, 1825” [19 Feb. 1841], Laws of the State of Illinois [1840–1841], pp. 168–169, sec. 1; see also Bronson v. Kinzie et al., 1 Howard 311 [1843].)
Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Ninth General Assembly, at Their First Session, Commencing December 1, 1834, and Ending February 13, 1835. Vandalia, IL: J. Y. Sawyer, 1835.
Howard / Howard, Benjamin C. Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States. 25 vols. Various publishers. 1843–1860.
TEXT: Possibly “there”.
JS’s statement regarding powers not delegated to the states paraphrases the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”