JS, History, 1838–1856, vol. F-1, created 9 Apr.–7 June 1856 and 20 Aug. 1856–6 Nov. 1856; handwriting of and Jonathan Grimshaw; 304 pages, plus 10 pages of addenda; CHL. This is the final volume of a six-volume manuscript history of the church. This sixth volume covers the period from 1 May to 8 Aug. 1844; the remaining five volumes, labeled A-1 through E-1, go through 30 Apr. 1844.
Historical Introduction
History, 1838-1856, volume F-1, constitutes the last of six volumes documenting the life of Joseph Smith and the early years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The series is also known as the Manuscript History of the Church and was originally published serially from 1842 to 1846 and 1851 to 1858 as the “History of Joseph Smith” in the Times and Seasons and Deseret News. This volume contains JS’s history from 1 May 1844 to the events following his 27 June 1844 death, and it was compiled in Utah Territory in 1856.
The material recorded in volume F-1 was initially compiled under the direction of church historian , who was JS’s cousin, and also assistant church historian . Smith collaborated with in collecting material for the volume and creating a set of draft notes, which Smith dictated to Bullock and other clerks. Woodruff gathered additional material concerning the death of Joseph Smith as a supplement to George A. Smith’s work recording that event. Jonathan Grimshaw and , members of the Historian’s Office staff, transcribed the draft notes into the volume along with the text of designated documents.
According to the Historian’s Office journal, Jonathan Grimshaw initiated work on the text of volume F-1 on 9 April 1856, soon after Robert L. Campbell had completed work on volume E-1. (Historian’s Office, Journal, 5 and 9 Apr. 1856.) Grimshaw’s scribal work begins with an entry for 1 May 1844. Unlike previous volumes in which the numbering had run consecutively to page 2028, Grimshaw began anew with page 1. He transcribed 150 pages by June 1856, and his last entry was for 23 June 1844. Though more of his writing does not appear in the volume, he continued to work in the office until 2 August, before leaving for the East that same month. (Historian’s Office, Journal, 2 and 10 Aug. 1856.)
assumed the role of scribe on 20 August 1856. (Historian’s Office, Journal, 20 Aug. 1856.) He incorporated ’s draft notes for the period 24–29 June 1844 on pages 151–189, providing an account of JS’s death and its immediate aftermath. He next transcribed a related extract from ’s 1854 History of Illinois on pages 190–204. Pages 205–227 were left blank.
provided the notes for the final portion of the text. This account begins with an entry for 22 June 1844 and continues the record through 8 August 1844, ending on page 304. (The volume also included ten pages of addenda.) The last specific entry in the Historian’s Office journal that captures at work on the history is for 6 November 1856. A 2 February 1857 Wilford Woodruff letter to indicates that on 30 January 1857, the “presidency sat and heard the history read up to the organization of the church in , 8th. day of August 1844.” (Historian’s Office, Journal, 6 Nov. 1856; Wilford Woodruff, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to George A. Smith, 2 Feb. 1857, Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybooks, vol. 1, p. 410; see also Wilford Woodruff, Great Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich, 28 Feb. 1857, Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybooks, vol. 1, pp. 430–431.)
The pages of volume F-1 contain a record of the final weeks of JS’s life and the events of the ensuing days. The narrative commences with and arriving at , Illinois, on 1 May 1844 from their lumber-harvesting mission in the “” of Wisconsin Territory. As the late spring and summer of 1844 unfold, events intensify, especially those surrounding the suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor in mid-June. Legal action over the Expositor leads to a charge of riot, and subsequently JS is charged with treason and is incarcerated at the jail in , Illinois. The narrative of volume F-1 concludes with an account of the special church conference convened on 8 August 1844 to consider who should assume the leadership of the church.
<June 22> “The press was declared a nuisance under the authority of the charter as written in 7th section of addenda, the same as in the Charter; so that if the act of declaring the press a nuisance was unconstitutional, we cannot see how it is that the charter itself is not unconstitutional; and if we have erred in judgment it is an official act, and belongs to the Supreme Court to correct it, and assess damages vs the to restore property abated as a nuisance. If we have erred in this thing we have done it in good company; for Blackstone on wrongs assert[s] the doctrine that scurrilous prints may be abated as nuisances.
“As to Marshal law, we truly say that we were obliged to call out the forces to protect our lives; and the constitution guarantees to every man that privilege; and our measures were active and efficient, as the necessity of the case required; but the is and has been continually under the special direction of the all the time. No person to our knowledge has been arrested only for violation of the peace, and those some of our own citizens, all of whom we believe are now dis[HC 6:538]charged; and if any property has been taken for public benefit without a compensation, or against the will of the owner, it has been done without our knowledge or consent, and when shown shall be corrected, if the people will permit us to resume our usual labors.
“If we ‘have committed a gross outrage upon the laws and liberties of the people’ as your represents, we are ready to correct that outrage when the testimony is forthcoming. All men are bound to act in their sphere on their own judgement; and it would be quite impossible for us to know what your ’s judgment would have been in the case referred to, consequently acted on our own; and according to our best judgment, after having taken able counsel in the case. If we have erred we again say we will make all right if we can have the privilege.
“‘The constitution also provides that the people shall be protected against all unreasonable search and seizure’. True; the doctrine we believe most fully, and have acted upon it; but we do not believe it unreasonable to search so far as it is necessary to protect life and property from destruction.
“We do not believe in the ‘union of Legislative and Judicial power’, and we have not so understood the action of the case in question.
“Whatever power we have exercised in the Habeas Corpus has been done in accordance with the letter of the charter and constitution as we confidently understood them, and that too with the ablest counsel; but if it be so that we have erred in this thing, let the Supreme Court correct the evil. We have never gone contrary to constitutional law, so far as we have been able to learn it; if Lawyers have belied their profession to abuse us, the evil be on their heads.
“You have intimated that no press has been abated as a nuisance in the ; we refer your to Humphrey vs Press in , who abated the press by his own arm for libel, and the courts decided on prosecution no cause of action. And we do know that it is common for police in , &c, to destroy scurrilous prints; and we think the loss of characters by libel, and the loss of life by mobocratic prints, to be a greater loss than a little property, all of which life alone excepted, we have sustained, brought upon us by the most unprincipled outlaws, gamblers, counterfeiters, and such characters as have been standing by me, and probably are now standing around your ; namely those men who have brought these evils upon us.
“We have no knowledge of men’s being sworn to pass our city, and upon the receipt of your last message the Legion was disbanded, and the left to your ’s disposal. [HC 6:539]
“How it could be possible for us now to be tried constitutionally by the same [p. 144]