Parley P. Pratt, History of the Late Persecution, 1839
Source Note
, History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons, in Which Ten Thousand American Citizens were Robbed, Plundered, and Driven from the State, and Many Others Imprisoned, Martyred, &c. for Their Religion, and All This By Military Force, By Order of the Executive; i–vi, 7–84 pp.; Detroit, MI: Dawson & Bates, 1839. The copy used for this transcription is held at CHL.
Historical Introduction
While incarcerated at , Missouri, in March 1839, JS addressed a letter to the church “at Illinois and scattered abroad and to in particular,” instructing the Saints to gather up “a knoledge of all the facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them by the people of this state.” (JS et al., Liberty, MO, to the church members and Edward Partridge, Quincy, IL, 20 Mar. 1839, in Revelations Collection, CHL [D&C 123:1, 6].) Edward Partridge responded with an account that became the three opening installments of “A History, of the Persecution, of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints in Missouri,” an eleven-part series published in the church’s Illinois newspaper, Times and Seasons, between December 1839 and October 1840. “A History, of the Persecution” receives comprehensive treatment in volume 2 of the Histories series of The Joseph Smith Papers and is available on this website.
may have intended to tell the entire story himself, but he fell ill shortly after publication of “A History, of the Persecution” began and died on 27 May 1840. Prompted by Partridge’s illness and subsequent death, the editors of the Times and Seasons, and , sought elsewhere for source materials to continue the series. It is probable that they composed the fourth installment to provide a brief transition from Partridge’s account, which ends in 1836, and the conflicts in and adjoining counties beginning in 1838. In April and June 1840, the fifth and seventh installments reprinted passages from ’s History of the Late Persecution Inflicted by the State of Missouri upon the Mormons (Detroit: Dawson and Bates 1839). The sixth and eighth through tenth installments drew upon ’s pamphlet, An Appeal to the American People. The series concluded with an eleventh installment in October 1840, featuring Missouri militia general ’s callous speech to the Saints after their surrender at , Missouri, in November 1838.
wrote History of the Late Persecution, the document featured here, during his eight-month imprisonment in jails in 1838–1839. His wife, , daringly smuggled the manuscript out of the jail. After his escape on 4 July 1839 and reunion with the Saints in , Pratt left on a mission to England with the Twelve Apostles. When he reached he paused to visit relatives and arranged for the publication of his history there, obtaining a copyright for his book on 30 September 1839. Revised versions were subsequently reprinted in in 1840 as a pamphlet under the same title and as an expanded hardback with the title Late Persecution of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints. (Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography, 89–90, 100–103.) Pratt later drew upon his history when he composed his autobiography in the 1850s.
’s History of the Late Persecution provides an autobiographical account of events in , , , and counties, Missouri, beginning in 1833. Some of the material describing events that transpired in Jackson County in 1833 was drawn from an earlier publication Pratt co-authored with and , “‘The Mormons’ So Called.” History of the Late Persecution also rehearses the conflict that engulfed Caldwell and Daviess counties, the expulsion of the Saints from Missouri, the mistreatment of Mormon prisoners by Missouri authorities, and the smuggling of Pratt’s manuscript copy of the History from jail, concluding with his narrow escape from imprisonment in Columbia, Missouri.
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made of doubled oak plank, and nearly as much as a man could raise. I lifted it up and went up; the little girl followed, and while holding it for her to come up, by some means the strap by which I held it, slipped from my grasp, and it fell upon the head, and caught the arm of the child. It was seized instantly, and raised up again and the child rescued from the top of the ladder before she fell to the bottom of the dungeon; her head and arm were dreadfully bruised. Meantime, the guards and sheriff, had halted to chat with some one within a few rods of the jail. At this moment I ordered to run below and take the manuscript from its place in the straw bed, and instantly replace it about her person, while at the same time I would call to the sheriff and guards, and inform them that our little girl was dreadfully hurt, and that her mother wished to go out instantly for some spirits to put in her camphor bottle to bathe the bruised child. This was instantly done, the alarm was given, the guards came running, and unlocked the door, and we told them that our little girl was dreadfully hurt; at which , with the manuscript concealed about her person, instantly took the child and hastened out with much fright, lest the child was nearly killed. Under these circumstances, the guard could make no objection to her going; it being a poor time indeed to wait for searching or ceremony.— The little child though much hurt, was not so badly injured as we expected; she was soon as well as ever.— When she had gone out into a house near the prison, and had taken care of the child, I feared that they would search her then, and search the house. At this moment Mrs. Gibbs happened to the door of the prison, and by watching a good opportunity, I handed her a scrap of writing, folded up to the bigness of my thumb nail. In this was written as follows: let the truth remain with the people of . At the same time my shoes needing some new soles on them, I pulled them off, and called the guard to hand them to , and request her to carry them to the shoemaker, and get them mended. The fact was this: liv [p. 67]