Footnotes
An account of an April 1840 JS discourse states that JS met with Van Buren at the President’s House over two successive days, whereas according to this letter to Hyrum Smith—the earliest extant account of the meeting—and a March 1840 discourse, the parties met at the President’s House only once. All three of these accounts, however, reported the same sentiment in Van Buren’s response. (Discourse, 7 Apr. 1840; Discourse, 1 Mar. 1840.)
See Allgor, Parlor Politics, 76–79, 232.
Allgor, Catherine. Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
Reynolds, My Own Times, 575. According to Lucy Mack Smith’s account of this meeting between JS, Higbee, and Van Buren, the parlor in which these men met was filled with several other visitors. (Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, bk. 17, [12].)
Reynolds, John. My Own Times: Embracing Also, the History of My Life. Belleville, IL: B. H. Perryman and H. L. Davison, 1855.
Presidents rarely issued executive orders during this period. Van Buren’s seven predecessors in office had issued a combined total of thirty executive orders over forty-three years. Van Buren issued ten executive orders during his term as president. (Peters and Woolley, “Executive Orders,” in American Presidency Project.)
Peters, Gerhard, and John T. Woolley. “Executive Orders.” In The American Presidency Project, 1999–. Hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php.
Silbey, Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics, chaps. 3–4.
Silbey, Joel H. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
A report of JS’s discourse at an April 1840 general conference of the church states that JS and Higbee were seeking Van Buren’s assistance with their plan to petition Congress and makes no mention of a possible executive order. (Discourse, 7 Apr. 1840.)
Letter to Seymour Brunson and Nauvoo High Council, 7 Dec. 1839; Letter from Robert D. Foster, 24 Dec. 1839. At this time, the president’s annual message to Congress (later known as the State of the Union address) was not delivered as a speech but instead was sent to Congress as a letter. (Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 1–7.)
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
According to this letter and others that JS, Rigdon, and Higbee wrote to Commerce during the ensuing months, the delegation was constantly concerned about insufficient funds during their travels. (Letter from Jacob W. Jenks, 31 Dec. 1839; Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–B; Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 3 Apr. 1840.)
This campaign to have influential men write to Congress was apparently an extension of the petitioning plan Rigdon set forth in April 1839. (Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 10 Apr. 1839.)
Coray, Autobiographical Sketch, 17, 19.
Coray, Howard. Autobiographical Sketch, after 1883. Howard Coray, Papers, ca. 1840–1941. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2043, fd. 1.
JS and Higbee composed the letter at the boardinghouse in which they were staying on the corner of Missouri Avenue and Third Street in Washington DC, which was approximately four miles from the President’s House.
See James 5:15.
See Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; 10:21; and Luke 9:23.
Van Buren was criticized by several of his political rivals for the opulent way in which he remodeled and decorated the President’s House during the early part of his term in office. (Seale, President’s House, 214–215, 221–224.)
Seale, William. The President’s House: A History. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
The meeting most likely occurred in an upper-floor room adjacent to the president’s office where the president regularly received large groups of visitors. According to architectural plans of the President’s House, that room was called the Audience Room at the time. (Phillips-Schrock, White House, 157–161.)
Phillips-Schrock, Patrick. The White House: An Illustrated Architectural History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013.
See Historical Introduction to Letter of Introduction from Sidney Rigdon, 9 Nov. 1839.
“Come in contact with” was an idiom meaning to contradict or to disagree with. (See “Contact,” in Oxford English Dictionary, 2:889.)
Oxford English Dictionary. Compact ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
See 2 Peter 1:16.