The church’s memorial to Congress valued the lost property in Missouri at $2 million. (Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840.)

At this time, individuals could purchase land from the federal government for $1.25 per acre. Many church members purchased federal land in Missouri and subsequently made improvements to it. Others settled on and improved land as a way to claim preemption rights when that land was made available for sale. Despite their improvements, which would have immediately raised the land’s market value, they still purchased the land at $1.25. (Klein, “Missouri Reader: Ownership of the Land under France, Spain, and the United States,” 293–294; Historical Introduction to Land Patent, 7 Sept. 1838.)

Klein, Ada Paris, ed. “The Missouri Reader: Ownership of the Land under France, Spain, and United States.” Missouri Historical Review 44, no. 3 (Apr. 1950): 274–294.

The church’s memorial to Congress did not explicitly invoke specific clauses of the United States Constitution that were violated by the vigilantes, militia, or government officials in Missouri. The memorial did imply, however, that constitutional rights were violated, including the Guarantee Clause in Article 4 and the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty. (Memorial to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, ca. 30 Oct. 1839–27 Jan. 1840; Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 10 Apr. 1839.)

The “Golden Humbug Firm” was a derogatory label applied to those who supported the monetary policies of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Their fiscal policies sought to restrict the ratio of circulating paper money to supplies of gold and silver. Such policies led to a shortage of hard money during the 1830s and 1840s and contributed to the Panic of 1837 and the ensuing financial recession. In a song titled “O! Van Buren!,” which was distributed by William Henry Harrison’s presidential campaign, one verse read, “The officers will have the gold, / The people the shinplasters, / O! Van Buren, / Gold humbug Mat Van Buren.” (Robinson, Fifty Cents. Shin Plaster [1837]; “O! Van Buren!,” in Tippecanoe Song Book, 137.)

Robinson, Henry R. Fifty Cents. Shin Plaster. Lithograph. New York: By the author, 1837. Copy at American Cartoon Print Filing Series, Library of Congress Prints and Photo- graphs Division, Washington DC. Digital image available at www.loc.gov/pictures/ item/2008661307/.

Tippecanoe Song Book: A Collection of Log Cabin and Patriotic Melodies. Philadelphia: Marshall, Williams, and Butler, 1840.

This passage apparently refers to the ongoing debate over the Second National Bank of the United States, which Congress did not recharter in 1836. Whereas Democrats complained that the Bank of the United States represented a conspiracy of rich men against the public, Whig opponents of the banking policies of Jackson and Van Buren claimed that these presidents’ administrations conspired to replace balanced government with financial perks for political allies, chiefly through granting political friends charters for so-called pet banks. (Howe, What Hath God Wrought, 390–395.)

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.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a military and political leader in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France. Nero, also known as Nero Claudius Caesar, served as Roman emperor from 54 to 68 CE. Caligula, also known as Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, was the Roman emperor from 12 to 41 CE. All three were supposedly tyrannical rulers. (Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, bks. 4 and 6, in Edwards, Suetonius, vii, xxv, 136–167, 195–227.)

Edwards, Catharine, trans. Suetonius: Lives of the Caesars. Oxford World’s Classics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

In October 1838, Missouri governor Lilburn W. Boggs issued orders to the state militia that the Mormons were to be either driven from the state or exterminated. (Lilburn W. Boggs, Jefferson City, MO, to John B. Clark, Fayette, MO, 27 Oct. 1838, copy, Mormon War Papers, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.)

Mormon War Papers, 1838–1841. MSA.