Footnotes
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. 1840, 138.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 Feb. 1840, 173.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 4 and 23 Mar. 1840, 215, 259–260.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Footnotes
The memorial described Thomas McBride as a veteran of the Revolutionary War. His son stated, however, that McBride was born in 1776. (McBride, Autobiography, 17, 29–30.)
McBride, James. Autobiography, 1874–1876. Microfilm. CHL. MS 8201.
Sometime after he started clerking for JS in 1843, Thomas Bullock prepared a register of affidavits for property church members lost in Missouri during the 1830s. This register contained 491 bills of damages, which totaled $1,381,084.51½. It appears, however, that Bullock’s register omitted several affidavits prepared by church members. (Thomas Bullock, “Bills,” Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845, CHL; Johnson, “Missouri Redress Petitions,” 32–34.)
Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845. CHL. MS 2703.
Johnson, Clark V. “The Missouri Redress Petitions: A Reappraisal of Mormon Persecutions in Missouri.” BYU Studies 26 (Spring 1986): 31–44.
JS et al., “Petition to United States Congress for Redress,” ca. 29 Nov. 1839, JS Collection, CHL.
The church delegates arrived in Quincy on 30 October 1839 and continued their journey on 1 November 1839. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 29 Oct.–1 Nov. 1839, 66.)
A catchword is placed in the bottom corner of a printed or handwritten page and is the word that appears first on the subsequent page. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century printers often used catchwords as a way of ensuring that they composed pages in the correct order. The plans to print the memorial were described in communications to the Saints. (Rumonds, Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress, 2:975; Gaskell, New Introduction to Bibliography, 53; Letter from Elias Higbee, 24 Mar. 1840; see also Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 Mar. 1841, 220–221.)
Rummonds, Richard-Gabriel. Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress. 2 vols. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press; London: British Library, 2004.
Gaskell, Philip. A New Introduction to Bibliography. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2009.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Orson Pratt recorded that JS arrived in Philadelphia by 21 January 1840 and that Higbee followed four or five days later. Rigdon and Robert D. Foster remained in Washington DC, where Foster preached and waited to send word to JS and Higbee once Senator Young submitted the memorial to the Senate. (Orson Pratt to Sarah Marinda Bates Pratt, 6 Jan. 1840, in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, 1:61; Letter from Robert D. Foster, 24 Dec. 1839; Letter to Robert D. Foster, 30 Dec. 1839.)
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 17 Feb. 1840, 179.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
John P. Greene, Facts relative to the Expulsion of the Mormons or Latter Day Saints, from the State of Missouri, under the “Exterminating Order” (Cincinnati: R. P. Brooks, 1839); Parley P. Pratt, History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons (Detroit: Dawson and Bates, 1839). In a hearing before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Higbee directed the attention of the committee members to accounts and affidavits reprinted in these two pamphlets. (Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–A; Letter from Elias Higbee, 21 Feb. 1840.)
According to the Senate journal, on 17 February 1840, Young submitted to the committee additional documents, which almost certainly included the affidavits JS, Rigdon, and Higbee brought with them from Commerce, Illinois, and several that church leaders had recently sent to them by mail. It is unclear, however, how many affidavits were submitted with the memorial in 1840. In preparing to leave Washington DC in March 1840, Higbee collected the documents supporting the memorial to bring back to Commerce. In 1840 and 1842, subsequent church delegations to the federal government submitted new memorials to Congress and attached to these documents several affidavits, including at least some of those that had been originally submitted by this first delegation as well as several that were prepared by church members in 1839 and 1840 but were not sent to Washington in time to be included with this memorial. Therefore, among the hundreds of affidavits housed in the collections of the National Archives and in the Church History Library, there is no clear indication which were submitted with the first memorial, which were submitted with subsequent petitions, and which were never submitted to Congress at all. (Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 17 Feb. 1840, 179; Letter from Elias Higbee, 24 Mar. 1840; Minutes and Discourse, 3–5 Oct. 1840; Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess., 21 Dec. 1840, 85; 27th Cong., 2nd Sess., 10 May 1842, 799; “Latter-day Saints,” Alias Mormons: The Petition of the Latter-day Saints, Commonly Known as Mormons, House of Representatives doc. no. 22, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess. [1840]; see also the petitions and affidavits housed in Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845, CHL; and in Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, National Archives, Washington DC.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Journal, of the House of Representatives, of the State of Missouri, at the First Session of the Tenth General Assembly, Begun and Held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Nineteenth Day of November, in the Year of Our Lord, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Thirty-Eight. Jefferson City, MO: Calvin Gunn, 1839.
“Latter-day Saints,” Alias Mormons: The Petition of the Latter-day Saints, Commonly Known as Mormons. House of Representatives doc. no. 22, 26th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1840).
Mormon Redress Petitions, 1839–1845. CHL. MS 2703.
Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives / Petitions and Memorials, Resolutions of State Legislatures, and Related Documents Which Were Referred to the Committee on Judiciary during the 27th Congress. Committee on the Judiciary, Petitions and Memorials, 1813–1968. Record Group 233, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789–2015. National Archives, Washington DC. The LDS records cited herein are housed in National Archives boxes 40 and 41 of Library of Congress boxes 139–144 in HR27A-G10.1.
“Twenty-Sixth Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington DC), 29 Jan. 1840, [2].
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. 1840, 138; “Twenty-Sixth Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington DC), 29 Jan. 1840, [2].
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.
Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 149 (1840); Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 646, 833, 1452, 1664, 1763–1764, 1800; “Twenty-Sixth Congress,” Daily National Intelligencer (Washington DC), 29 Jan. 1840, [2]. In their respective remarks, Clay and Preston urged the Senate to refer the memorial for consideration by the Committee on the Judiciary. Benton advocated for the tabling of the memorial but “only for a day or two.”
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005, the Continental Congress, September 5, 1774, to October 21, 1788, and the Congress of the United States, from the First through the One Hundred Eighth Congresses, March 4, 1789, to January 3, 2005, inclusive. Edited by Andrew R. Dodge and Betty K. Koed. Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005.
Daily National Intelligencer. Washington DC. 1800–1869.
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 Jan. 1840, 138. The breakdown of votes for and against Norvell’s motion is unknown.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 12 and 17 Feb. 1840, 173, 179.
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 Mar. 1840; see also McBride, “When Joseph Smith Met Martin Van Buren,” 156.
McBride, Spencer W. Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017.
Report of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 4 Mar. 1840; Journal of the Senate of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 23 Mar. 1840, 259–260. Neither the Senate journal nor the Congressional Globe provides details of the Senate vote on this resolution. The Senate journal merely indicates that the resolution passed, and the Congressional Globe makes no mention of the resolution in its report on the business Congress attended to on that date. (See Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 281 [1840].)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
David R. Atchison, Booneville, MO, to Lilburn W. Boggs, 5 Oct. 1838, copy; Hiram Parks, “5 Miles from Dewit,” MO, to David R. Atchison, 7 Oct. 1838, Mormon War Papers, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City.
Mormon War Papers, 1838–1841. MSA.
In this instance and throughout the remainder of this document, the town name of Far West is enclosed in quotation marks. In each of these instances, the petition draft does not include quotation marks around the place name. (See JS et al., “Petition,” ca. 29 Nov. 1839, p. 21.)
Cancellation and insertion in the handwriting of first unidentified scribe.
Insertion in blue ink in the handwriting of second unidentified scribe.
Insertion in blue ink in the handwriting of second unidentified scribe.