Late persecution of the Church

Pratt, Parley Parker. Late persecution of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints. Ten thousand American citizens, robbed, plundered, and banished; others imprisoned, and others martyred for their religion. With a sketch of their rise, progress and doctrine. By P. P. Pratt, minister of the gospel: written in prison. New-York, J. W. Harrison, Printer, 28 Catharine-St., 1840.
xx, [21]-215 p. 16 cm.

View Document

For eight months following the surrender of the Mormons at Far West, Parley Pratt languished in Richmond and Columbia jails. Before he finally escaped on July 4, 1839, he wrote a number of hymns and two significant essays. The first essay was an account of the anti-Mormon violence in Missouri, the manuscript which Parley’s wife smuggled out of Richmond Jail when the guards discovered his writings. In October 1839, enroute to his mission in Great Britain, Parley stopped in Detroit to publish this account in a pamphlet entitled History of the Late Persecution. Pausing in New York before sailing with the Twelve, he published three more books, a second edition of Voice of Warning, Millennium and Other Poems, and Late Persecution, a hardback edition of his account of the Missouri violence.

Late Persecution incorporates an introduction, not included in the first edition, which gives some of the early history of the Saints as well as a summary of their most fundamental beliefs. None of the concepts here were new to the printed record; all are discussed, for example, in Voice of Warning. What was new was the concise formulation of these ideas in a few pages. Indeed Parley’s introduction marks an important step in the development of a summary of Mormon belief which began with Oliver Cowdery’s one-page doctrinal outline in the Messenger and Advocate of October 1834. In February 1840 Parley reworked the doctrinal portion of this introduction into a four page tract which was published in Washington D.C. and subsequently republished six more times in England and the United States. Eight months later Orson Pratt used Parley’s introduction in composing the “sketch” of Mormon beliefs that concludes Remarkable Visions, a text that is generally considered to be the precursor of the “Articles of Faith.”

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake, A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 12, p. [12-13]; and Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 64, p. 100-102.

Used by permission of the authors and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.

“Latter-day Saints”, alias Mormons

Higbee, Elias, and Robert Blashel Thompson. “Latter-day Saints”, alias Mormons. The petition of the Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, stating that they have purchased lands of the General Government, lying in the state of Missouri, from which they have been driven with force by the constituted authorities of the state, and prevented from occupying the same; and have suffered other wrongs, for which they pray Congress to provide a remedy. December 21, 1840. Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. 26th Congress, 2d Session. Doc. No. 22. Ho. of Reps. [Signed and dated at end:] Elias Higbee, Robt. B. Thompson. Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, November 28, 1840. [Washington, 1840?]
13 pp. 25 cm.

View Document

At the conference of the Saints in Nauvoo, October 5, 1840, John C. Bennett, who had been in the Church less than two months, delivered an impassioned speech on the mistreatment of the Mormons in Missouri and urged the conference to take further steps to obtain redress. In response the conference delegated Elias Higbee and Robert B. Thompson to initiate a second appeal to the federal government. Higbee and Thompson were expected choices: two days before, Thompson had been appointed Church clerk, and the year before, Higbee had led the first attempt to obtain federal assistance.

Both Higbee and Joseph Smith must have known that a second appeal would be fruitless. Higbee had been on the scene while the Senate Judiciary Committee debated the first petition, and he knew the doctrine of states’ rights was insurmountable. Perhaps they felt that even a fruitless effort might generate some favorable publicity for the Saints.

Higbee and Thompson completed their petition on November 28, 1840. Twenty-three days later, John T. Stuart, the representative from Springfield, Illinois, presented it to the House of Representatives, which referred it to the House Judiciary Committee and ordered it printed. There it died.

Generally the Higbee-Thompson petition is the same as the one submitted a year earlier. It incorporates some expositional improvements and one substantive change: the Mormon losses in Jackson, estimated at $175,000 in the first, are reduced to $120,000 in the second. The bulk of the petition rehearses the Mormons’ difficulties in the various Missouri counties, points out that they have exhausted all possibilities within the state, and declares that no redress is possible “unless it be awarded by the Congress of the United States.”

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 94, p. 143-44.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University

Latter Day Saints’ emigrant’s guide

Clayton, William. The Latter-day Saints’ emigrants’ guide: being a table of distances, showing all the springs, creeks, rivers, hills, mountains, camping places, and all other notable places, from Council Bluffs, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Also, the latitudes, longitudes and altitudes of the prominent points on the route. Together with remarks on the nature of the land, timber, grass, &c. The whole route having been carefully measured by a roadometer, and the distance from point to point, in English miles, accurately shown. By W. Clayton . St. Louis : Mo. Republican Steam Power Press-Chambers & Knapp. 1848.
24 pp. 19 cm.

View Document

William Clayton left Winter Quarters on April 14, 1847 , to join the pioneer company on its momentous trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley and that day began a chronicle of the trip in his daily diary. For the first three weeks he simply estimated the distance of each day’s travel, but the inaccuracy of these guesses troubled him, and as early as April 19 he spoke with Orson Pratt about the possibility of devising an odometer to actually measure the distances, an idea he also promoted among the members of the company. On April 26 Brigham Young assigned him to assist Thomas Bullock in keeping a record of the trip, and on May 8 he began to calculate the distances by tediously counting the revolutions of a wagon wheel. Two days later Young asked Orson Pratt to design an odometer along the lines Clayton had suggested, and that afternoon Pratt handed his plan to Appleton M. Harmon, who had a working model by May 12 and a finished machine by the 16th.

While Clayton tabulated distances and he and Bullock kept notes on the terrain, Orson Pratt determined latitudes and longitudes, altitudes, and temperatures with a set of instruments brought from England . On May 18, Bullock and Clayton met with Willard Richards who asked Clayton to mark the pioneer route on a copy of the Frémont-Preuss map, together with the various distances, features of the terrain, and Pratt’s measurements-a signal that the record was to be put in some form for the use of later Mormon immigrants.

Brigham Young’s interest in the Clayton-Bullock-Pratt record is made clear by his request on August 2 that Clayton travel back to Winter Quarters with the ox team company and again measure the distances with a new odometer to be made by William A. King. Clayton began the return trip on August 17 and arrived at Winter Quarters on October 21. “I have succeeded in measuring the whole distance from the City of the Great Salt Lake to this place,” he wrote in his journal.

Three and a half weeks after he reached Winter Quarters, Clayton wrote to Brigham Young about his “Table of Distances,” asking for any suggestions and for permission to publish it as a profit-making venture. On February 8, Brigham Young wrote letters to Nathaniel H. Felt in St. Louis , and others, which indicated his support of Clayton’s undertaking and asked for Felt’s financial assistance. Unknown to either Brigham Young or William Clayon was the discovery of gold at Sutter’s mill on January 24, an event which would transform the market for Clayton’s book.

By March 7 he had arranged with the shop of the Daily Missouri Republican in St. Louis to print 5,000 copies of his book, and on the 28th Felt wrote to Brigham Young that Clayton’s Guide was out of press. On June 2, at the Elkhorn ferry, Thomas Bullock got one hundred copies of the guide from Clayton and sold them throughout the camp to the Mormons about to make the overland trek.

While Clayton’s Guide was popular among Mormon emigrants, it was also the most popular guidebook among the California gold seekers. J. Goldsborough Bruff used it in 1849, for example, as did Byron N. McKinstry, Madison B. Moorman, and Silas Newcomb in 1850. One overland traveler claimed in the Missouri Republican of October 3, 1849 , that copies had sold for as much as $5 and that he would not take less than $2 each for a few that he had. But its highest-albeit backhanded-compliments came from those who plagiarized it. Joseph E. Ware’s The Emigrants’s Guide to California (St. Louis, 1849) and Philip L. Platt’s and Nelson Slater’s The Travelers’ Guide Across the Plains, Upon the Overland Route to California (Chicago, 1852), for instance, both borrowed from it without credit, although Platt and Slater did mention in their preface that “the best [guidebook] we saw was that prepared by Mr. W. Clayton.”

Although he published his guide as a profit-making venture, it appears Clayton derived little financial benefit from it. The Frontier Guardian of February 7, 1851 , which advertised copies for sale, mentions that even though he had published a large edition, “other men speculated upon them, and he, a poor man, is left unrewarded for his toil.” Despite the fact that a notice of a copyright is printed in his book, it seems clear that he did not obtain one.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume Two, 1848-1852 . ( Provo , Utah : Brigham Young University , Religious Studies Center , 2005]). Item 354. Forthcoming.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center , Brigham Young University.

Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate

Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate. Kirtland, Ohio, October 1834-September 1837.
3 v. (36 nos. in 576 p.) 23 cm.

View Documents

When the new press was set up in Kirtland, the Church leaders agreed to complete the volume of The Evening and the Morning Star and then replace it with a new Kirtland periodical, the Messenger and Advocate. In October 1834 the first number of the Messenger and Advocate appeared, and for the next three years it was issued more or less monthly, making three volumes of twelve numbers each. By the time The Evening and the Morning Star ceased publication, the concept of the official church organ had evolved from that of a newspaper to be read and thrown away to that a periodical to be read and saved; so the format of the Messenger and Advocate was changed to a uniform sixteen-page, octavo issue, allowing the run to be more conveniently bound. Oliver Cowdery continued as editor for the first eight numbers. He was succeeded by John Whitmer who was officially the editor for number 9-18. W.W. Phelps, however, performed a substantial part of the editorial labors during Whitmer’s term. Oliver Cowdery again assumed the editorial chair with number 19, but it was his brother, Warren A. Cowdery, who actually edited the next nine issues. Warren A. Cowdery became the official editor with the twenty-ninth number, serving until the Messenger and Advocate ceased publication in September 1837.

The Messenger and Advocate is the basic source for the study of Mormonism’s Ohio period. The tone of the magazine reflects the theological ferment that characterized the Kirtland era. Its pages include doctrinal essays, official statements of the Church leaders, announcements and minutes of conferences, news of the progress of the Church in Kirtland and elsewhere, responses to anti-Mormon attacks, and letters from the outlying branches. The first number gives a summary of the basic tenets of Mormonism by Oliver Cowdery, and in eight of the first thirteen issues there is a series of letters from Cowdery to W. W. Phelps which constitute the first published account of the birth of Mormonism (See Letters by Oliver Cowdery, to W.W. Phelps … in this digital collection).

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake, A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 4, p. [8-9]; and Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 16, p. 47-50.

Used by permission of the authors and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.

Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star

Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star. Manchester, England, May 1840-March 1842; Liverpool, April 1842- March 3, 1932; London, March 10, 1932-December 1970.
132 v. 23 cm.

View Documents

The Millennial Star was the longest running Latter-day Saint (LDS) periodical, published continuously for 130 years until discontinued in 1970 with the overhaul of all the LDS magazines. It was inaugurated by the Twelve at the beginning of their great mission to England. Brigham Young and his fellow members of the Twelve landed in Liverpool on April 6, 1840, the tenth anniversary of the Church. Eight days later they began a series of meetings in Preston in which they resolved to publish a monthly periodical to be called the Latter-day Saints Millennial Star. The prospectus, also reprinted in the first number of the Star, announces that the magazine “will stand aloof from the common political and commercial news of the day.–Its columns will be devoted to the spread of the fulness of the gospel.”

Parley Pratt served as the founding editor until mid-July 1840, when he went back to the United States to get his family. Brigham Young and Willard Richards then took charge of the Star, with Richards doing most of the work. Parley resumed the editorship when he returned in October, laboring alone until April 1842 when he was joined by a British convert, Thomas Ward. Ward became editor and publisher in November 1842, serving until October 1846 when he was replaced by Orson Hyde, president of the British Mission. Thereafter, the British Mission president assumed the editorship of the Star.

When Parley Pratt left England in October 1842, leaving Ward as editor, the Star came close to losing its life. On November 21, 1842, in Nauvoo, the Twelve agreed to terminate the magazine, apparently because they felt its circulation was too low, and on January 3, 1843, they wrote to Ward informing him of this decision. After numerous letters between Ward and Brigham Young, Young wrote Reuben Hedlock, who had replaced Ward as British Mission President, that he was at liberty to print as many copies as he could sell, and the survival of the Star was assured.

Initially the Star was a monthly. With the issue of June 15, 1845 (vol. 6, no. 1), it was changed to a semimonthly and continued as such until April 24, 1852 (vol. 14 no. 9) when it was issued weekly.

Even though the Star was published primarily for the members of the Church in England, it is an important record of the progress of the whole of Mormonism, especially of the nineteenth century Utah church. Hence, it is difficult to overestimate the value of the Star. “But for this publication,” notes H. H. Bancroft, “it would be impossible to fill the gaps which occur in the record of the Mormon people.” (History of Utah, 407).

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake, A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 14, p. [13-14]; and Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 71, p. 108-13.

Used by permission of the authors and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.

Lecture on the authenticity & scriptural character of the Book of Mormon

Adams, George J. A lecture on the authenticity & scriptural character of the Book of Mormon. By G. J. Adams, a minister of the gospel. Delivered at the town hall, Charlestown, Mass on Sunday evening, February 4th, and Wednesday evening, February 7th. Reported and published by his friend C.P.B. Boston: Printed by J. E. Farwell, No. 4 Washington Street. 1844
24 pp. 18 cm.

View Document

Adams’s principal point in this lecture is that the Bible predicts and describes the advent of the Book of Mormon, and he bases his argument on Isaiah 28-29, Ezekiel 37:15-19, and Genesis 48-49. This line of reasoning dates to the beginning of Mormon writing. It appears in all its essentials, for example, in W.W. Phelps’s article in The Evening and the Morning Star of January 1833, William Smith’s piece in the Messenger and Advocate of January 1837, the fourth chapter of Voice of Warning, and the Gospel Reflector. (All these titles are in this digital collection).

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 195, p. 237.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University

Letters by Oliver Cowdery

Cowdery, Oliver. Letters by Oliver Cowdery, to W. W. Phelps, on the origin of the Book of Mormon, and the rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Liverpool, Published by Thomas Ward and John Cairns, 36, Chapel Street, 1844.
48 p. 17 cm.

View Document

Oliver Cowdery’s eight letters to W. W. Phelps, first published in the Messenger and Advocate between October 1834 and October 1835, constitute the earliest printed account of the birth of Mormonism. Extracts from the letters were in the Millennial Star for June and September-November 1840, and the letters were printed more or less in full in the Times and Seasons of November 1-December 15, 1840, and March 15-May 1, 1841. They were again published in the sixth number of the Gospel Reflector.

Cowdery’s first letter describes his initial contact with Joseph Smith, his participation in translating the Book of Mormon, and the appearance of John the Baptist which he and Joseph Smith shared. In the third letter he moves back in time and discusses the revival of Rev. Lane in the Palmyra area, the attendant religious excitement, and the Smith family’s religious seeking-events that are usually associated with Joseph Smith’s 1820 vision.

At this pont an intriguing textual change occurs. The version of this letter in the Messenger and Advocate states that this religious excitement occurred during Joseph Smith’s fifteenth year. In the pamphlet 15th is changed to 17th. The fourth letter picks up the narrative and, in the original version, it states that the reference to the fifteenth year in Letter III was “an error in the type–it should have been in the 17th… . This would bring the date down to the year 1823.” The pamphlet version eliminates any reference to an error and, like the original, proceeds from this point with an account of the appearance of the angel to Joseph Smith on September 21, 1823; an event that is entirely unrelated to the religious excitement described in the third letter. These changes follow the Gospel Reflector.

Whatever was intended in letter III, certain problems persist. Joseph Smith’s seventeenth year was 1822, not 1823, and Rev. George Lane was most prominently in the Palmyra area in 1824-25. It is conceivable that Cowdery shifted the date after realizing he had introduced Lane at the wrong time. It is also possible that he described the events leading up to Joseph Smith’s 1820 vision in letter III with the intent of recounting it in Letter IV; then, after Letter III was printed, he decided not to mention the vision, which at the time was not openly discussed.

Letter VII continues the account of the angelic visitation on September 21, 1823, and of the events just following. It includes a description of the Hill Cumorah, where Joseph Smith obtained the plates. Letter VIII further describes Cumorah and relates the vision he had at this spot. The next-to-last paragraph refers to a trial he was subjected to sometime between 1823 and 1827–undoubtedly the trial at South Brainbridge, New York, in 1826. The pamphlet concludes with a short letter from Joseph Smith, first published in the Messenger and Advocate of December 1834, in which he comments on his early life.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 197, p. 237-40.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.

Listen to the voice of truth

Listen to the voice of truth. Vol. 1. New York, 1844. No. 1. A sketch of the faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints particularly for those who are unacquainted with our principles. [Printed by S. Brannan, & Co. No. 7 Spruce street, New-York.] [1844]
[4] pp. 23 cm.

View Document

Only the first number of Listen to the Voice of Truth is located, and it is probably the only one published. Its appearance is noted in The Prophet of August 31, 1844. “We this week publish the first number of a series of cheep comprehensive TRACTS illustrating the great truths we are contending for….We would further say that a Society has been formed by the saints of New York, and a small fund raised for the purpose of circulating them gratuitously, which will evidently be the means of removing a great deal of prejudice from the minds of those who are unacquainted with our faith and principles.”

The main text is a reprint, with at least one, probably inadvertent, omission of pp. 27-36 of the 1842 edition of Orson Pratt’s Remarkable Visions, beginning with “First, we believe in God the Eternal Father,” which gives “a sketch of the faith and doctrine” of the Latter-day Saints. This is followed by “Columbian Bard’s” poem, taken from Parley Pratt’s Mormonism Unveiled: Zion’s Watchman Unmasked, and the locations of Mormon meetings in Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, and Boston.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 235, p. 277.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.