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Recommendation from Nauvoo High Council, 27 October 1839

Source Note

high council, Recommendation, for JS, , Hancock Co., IL, 27 Oct. 1839;handwriting of and ; signatures of , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and ; one page; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC. Includes dockets.
One leaf, measuring 12 × 7½ inches (30 × 19 cm). In March 1840, collected all of the papers submitted to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in support of the church’s memorial to Congress and returned them to , Illinois. This recommendation was presumably still with that collection of documents when subsequent church delegations resubmitted the documents with additional petitions to the federal government. Congress apparently stored this recommendation with other documents it received in the 1840s relative to the church’s ongoing petitioning efforts. Those records were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration sometime after its creation in 1934. Since then, the National Archives and Records Administration has had continuous custody of the document.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Letter from Elias Higbee, 24 Mar. 1840.

Historical Introduction

On 27 October 1839, the wrote a letter of recommendation for JS to take with him to . Five months earlier, a May 1839 at , Illinois, had appointed an of the . Rigdon was to meet with president and Congress to present the case that the expulsion of church members from had violated their constitutional rights. The conference hoped that by appealing to the federal government directly, the Saints would receive restitution for the property that had been confiscated in Missouri. It appears that sometime between Rigdon’s appointment in May and a general conference of the church held 5–7 October 1839, it was decided that JS would accompany Rigdon. The minutes of the October conference record the decision that would go with Rigdon and JS.
On 21 October, the newly formed high council reaffirmed JS’s appointment to join and , and the high council then voted to provide letters of recommendation for the three men. Accordingly, wrote this recommendation for JS on 27 October, and the high council signed it the following day. The church’s four added their signatures, but it is unclear whether they did so at the same meeting. The recommendation spoke to JS’s upstanding character and certified that he was an agent of the church authorized to present to the president and Congress the sufferings of church members at the hands of the people and government of . JS likely included this document with the other letters of recommendation he and Higbee presented to during their meeting on 29 November 1839. Whereas Van Buren kept the other letters with his own records, it appears that JS retained possession of this document. After JS met with Van Buren, this recommendation and other documents were submitted to Congress.

Footnotes

  1. [1]

    Minutes, 4–5 May 1839.

  2. [2]

    Minutes and Discourses, 5–7 Oct. 1839.

  3. [3]

    Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 21 and 28 Oct. 1839, 25, 29. Two council members voted against JS going to Washington DC: George W. Harris and William Huntington. The letters of recommendation for Rigdon and Higbee are not extant.

    Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 1839–1845. CHL. LR 3102 22.

  4. [4]

    Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 28 Oct. 1839, 29. Two signatories to this letter, Don Carlos Smith and Levi Jackman, had not been designated as standing members of the high council. Two of the original members of the council, Charles C. Rich and Lewis Dunbar Wilson, did not sign the letter. Smith and Jackman were likely acting as substitutes for Rich and Wilson. (Minutes and Discourses, 5–7 Oct. 1839.)

    Nauvoo High Council Minutes, 1839–1845. CHL. LR 3102 22.

  5. [5]

    Although he started on the journey to Washington DC with JS and Higbee, Rigdon made it only to Columbus, Ohio, before his continued bout of malaria necessitated that he stop and recover. Two other members of the travel party, Robert D. Foster and Orrin Porter Rockwell, stayed with Rigdon. They did not arrive in Washington DC until early December 1839. (Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 19 Nov. 1839, 68; Historical Introduction to Letter of Introduction from James Adams, 9 Nov. 1839; Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839.)

  6. [6]

    Letter to Hyrum Smith and Nauvoo High Council, 5 Dec. 1839. That Van Buren received and retained the other letters of recommendation is evident by their inclusion in the core documents of the Martin Van Buren Papers, which were donated to the Library of Congress by Van Buren’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter. (West, Papers of Martin Van Buren: Guide and Index, 15; West, Calendar of the Papers of Martin Van Buren, 381–382.)

    West, Lucy Fisher, ed. The Papers of Martin Van Buren: Guide and Index to General Correspon- dence and Miscellaneous Documents. Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1989.

    West, Elizabeth Howard. Calendar of the Papers of Martin Van Buren. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1910.

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Related Case Documents
Editorial Title
Recommendation from Nauvoo High Council, 27 October 1839
ID #
3155
Total Pages
2
Print Volume Location
JSP, D7:30–32
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