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.
<July 15> His foes of the world and enemies of his own household, who have sought occasions against him, in order, secretly to deprive him of his life, because his goodness, greatness and glory exceeded theirs, have a poor excuse to offer the world, for shedding his innocent blood; and no apology to make to the Judge of all the earth, at the day of judgement. They have murdered him because they feared his righteousness.
“His easy good natured way, allowing every one was honest, drew around him hypocrites, wicked and mean men, with the virtuous, and in the hour of trouble, or trial, when the wheat was cleansed by water, the light kernels and smut rose upon the top of the water and had to be poured off, that the residue might be clean, or to be still plainer, when they went through the machine for cleansing the grain, the chaff, light grain and smut were blown off among the rubbish.
“False brethren, or to call them by their right name, ‘apostates,’ [HC 7:186] have retarded the work more, and combined more influence to rob him of life, than all christendom: for they having mingled in his greatness, knew where and when to take advantage of his weakness. Their triumph, however, is one that disgraces their and , ruins them in time and in eternity. They cannot outgrow it: they cannot out live it: and they cannot out die it: from him that winked at it, to him that shot the fatal ball, where ever there is moral honesty, humanity, love of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there the breath of indignation, the whisper of ‘those murders’— the story of mobocracy and the vengeance of God, will haunt the whole gang and their offspring and abettors with a fury like Milton’s gates of hell:
‘[blank] grating harsh thunder.’
“In thus descanting upon the glory of General Joseph Smith and the cowardly disgrace of his assassins, let his noble minded brother have no less honor shown him: he lived so far beyond the ordinary walk of man, that even the tongue of the vilest slanderer could not touch his reputation. He lived godly and he died godly, and his murderers will yet have to confess that it would have been better for them to have a millstone tied to them, and they cast into the depths of the sea, and remain there while eternity goes and eternity comes, than to have robbed that noble man of heaven, of his life. If there be such a thing as the greatest and least crimes, among the archives of the better world, the wilful murder of Joseph and will be first and worst, without forgiveness in this world or the world to come;— ‘for no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.’
‘The Savior said, wo until the world because of offences, but offences must needs come; but wo unto him by whom they come! Prophets have been sent, according to the sacred history, which all enlightened nations use as a guide of morality here, or for a rule to obtain heaven hereafter, to instruct and lead the people according to the pure purposes of God, and yet from Cain, down to two or three hundred Americans, Illinoisians, Missourians, Christians even freemen, the lives of mostly all these good men, the servants of God, not omitting his own Son, have been taken from them by those who professed to be the most wise, enlightened, intelligent, and religious, (that is nationally) that were on the earth when the hellish deeds were done. But what has the next generation said? Ah! time [p. 268]