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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ner being ended, our two brethren took leave of us and started for , (leaving Mrs. Phelps to still visit with her husband;) they had proceeded a mile or two on the road and then took into the woods, and finally placed their three horses in a thicket within one third of a mile of the prison, and there they waited in anxious suspense till sundown. In the mean time we put on our coats and hats and waited for the setting sun. With prayer and supplication for deliverance from this long and tedious bondage, and for a restoration to the society of our friends and families, we then sung the following lines:
Lord, cause their foolish plans to fail,
And let them faint or die,
Our souls would quit this loathsome jail,
And fly to .
To join with the embodied Saints,
Who are with freedom blessed,
That only bliss for which we pant,
With them a while to rest.
Give joy for grief—give ease for pain,
Take all our foes away;
But let us find our friends again,
In this eventful day.
This ended the celebration of our National Liberty, but the gaining of our own was the grand achievement now before us. In the mean time, the sun was setting; the moment arrived, the footsteps of the jailor were heard on the stairs, every man flew to his feet, and stood near the door—the great door was opened, and our supper handed in through a small hole in the inner door, which still remained locked, but at length the key was turned in order to hand in the pot of coffee. No sooner was the key turned, than the door was jerked open, and in a moment all three of us were out and rushing down the stairs, the foremost, Mr. Phelps, was clinched by the jailor, both tumbled down the stairs, through the entry and out into the door yard, when Phelps cleared himself with [p. 77]