Footnotes
Historian’s Office, Journal, 7 June 1853; Wilford Woodruff, Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, to George A. Smith, 30 Aug. 1856, in Historian’s Office, Letterpress Copybooks, vol. 1, p. 364. Grimshaw evidently created this wrapper after 4 November 1853, as he used a canceled letter from Thomas Clark to Thomas Bullock dated 4 November 1853 to serve as the wrapper, using the reverse side for the docket. (Wrapper for Sylvester Emmons to JS, 29 Jan. 1843, JS Collection [Supplement], CHL.)
Historian’s Office. Journal, 1844–1997. CHL. CR 100 1.
Historian’s Office. Letterpress Copybooks, 1854–1879, 1885–1886. CHL. CR 100 38.
Smith, Joseph. Collection, 1827–1846. CHL. MS 155.
“Letters to and from the Prophet,” ca. 1904, [2], Historian’s Office, Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904, CHL.
Historian’s Office. Catalogs and Inventories, 1846–1904. CHL. CR 100 130.
See the full bibliographic entry for JS Collection, 1827–1844, in the CHL catalog.
Footnotes
On 30 October 1841, the Nauvoo City Council conferred on Emmons the “freedom of the city,” an honorary gesture recognizing prominent people. (Minutes, 30 Oct. 1841.)
Since the 1830s, municipal and state politicians believed that the Saints voted in blocs and would follow JS’s lead in voting. (See Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 397, 508–509; and Arrington and Bitton, Mormon Experience, 50–52.)
Bushman, Richard Lyman. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. With the assistance of Jed Woodworth. New York: Knopf, 2005.
In the United States during the early nineteenth century, democratic tradition held that candidates should not seek office too vigorously but should instead assume an air of selfless public service if called upon by voters. Even the practice of paying elected officials made some Americans uncomfortable, as it suggested the possibility of less virtuous political aims. The rhetoric about disinterested public service did not always match reality. Many candidates for local office published broadsides, advertised their candidacies in newspapers, or at the very least printed circulars announcing their candidacy. While JS did not engage in such practices, he did seek to cultivate goodwill among those who opposed him politically. (See Pocock, “Election Practices in Early Ohio,” 49–50; Wood, Radicalism of the American Revolution, 287–305; JS, Journal, 2 and 4 Feb. 1843; and Historical Introduction to Oath, 11 Feb. 1843.)
Pocock, Emil. “‘A Candidate I’ll Surely Be’: Election Practices in Early Ohio, 1798–1825.” In The Pursuit of Public Power: Political Culture in Ohio, 1787–1861, edited by Jeffrey P. Brown and Andrew R. L. Cayton, 49–68. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1994.
Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: A. A. Knopf, 1992.
The letter was presumably sent to JS at Nauvoo. JS’s journal indicates that he was in the city on 29 January and for several days thereafter. (JS, Journal, 29 Jan.–6 Feb. 1843.)
Nauvoo Poll Book, 1843, [1], Nauvoo, IL, Records, CHL.
Nauvoo, IL. Records, 1841–1845. CHL. MS 16800.
On 19 May 1842, two days after John C. Bennett’s resignation as mayor, the Nauvoo City Council appointed JS to fill the position in Bennett’s stead, swearing him in to office that same day. (Oath, 21 May 1842.)