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Poems, religious, historical, and political

Snow, Eliza Roxcy. Poems, religious, historical, and political. By Eliza R. Snow. Vol. I. Liverpool, F. D. Richards, 36, Islington. London, Latter-day Saints’ Book Depot, 35 Jewin Street, City. And all booksellers, 1856.
viii, 270, [1] p. 18 cm.

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Eliza R. Snow was known as “Zion’s Poetess,” “prophetess,” “priestess,” and “presidentess.” The plural wife of the prophet Joseph Smith, and later of Brigham Young, this designation as “Zion’s Poetess,” was given by Joseph Smith, although it is unknown when that title was bestowed. It is clear, however, that long before her first book of poems was published in 1856, she was known by the Saints, and especially by the women of the Church, through her poetry.

She was born 21 January 1804 in Becket, Massachusetts, the second of seven children of Oliver and Rosetta Leonora Pettibone Snow–a family which included her younger brother, Lorenzo, later to be an Apostle and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was baptized a member of the Church on 5 April 1835. In her lifetime her public persona was well known, and certainly her administrative mark is evident on most of the auxiliary organizations of the Church. She was present on 17 March 1842, in Nauvoo, Illinois, at the founding of the women’s organization known as the Relief Society, and she directed it’s resurgence in Utah from 1867 until her death in 1887. The church youth groups of today were born as Retrenchment Associations which she organized and promoted at the direction of Brigham Young, and the children’s organization, founded in Farmington, Utah, known as the Primary Association were also the focus of her substantial energy. She spent over 20 years of her life traveling throughout Utah promoting these organizations and meeting with the women and children of the Church. As Maureen Ursenbach Beecher has noted “She was a legend before half her effective life was done, and lived that legend for the rest of it.” (Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, “The Eliza Enigma,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 11 (Spring 1978): 30)

This first volume of poetry by “Zion’s Poetess” collects the poems of the preceding two decades which were published in the Times and Seasons, Nauvoo Neighbor, Millennial Star, and Deseret News. As her personal view of Mormon history, as a glimpse of the private Eliza, and as a window into the depths of her religious and doctrinal convictions, it is an invaluable book. As poetry it is an uneven collection.

The volumes include poems of great familiarity, such as “Invocation, or the Eternal Father and Mother,” known to today’s audience as “O My Father,” and “Be Not Discouraged,” more commonly known as “Though Deepening Trials”–both still included in the official LDS hymnal. Snow demonstrates the deep and enduring sacrifices she made to embrace the “Everlasting Covenant,” in her poem “Evening Thoughts, or What it is to be a Saint.” There is an intimate poignancy in her “The Bride’s Avowal,” written shortly after her sealing to Joseph Smith and her good humor is evident in “Mental Gas.”

The second volume of poetry, bearing the same title, was published in Salt Lake City in 1877.

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 47, p. [34].

Used by permission of the authors.

Proclamation by the Governor

Proclamation by the governor Proclamation by the governor. Citizens of Utah—We are invaded by a hostile force who are evidently assailing us to accomplish our overthrow and destruction… . [Great Salt Lake City], 1857]. Broadside 28 x 19cm.

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Signed at end: Given under my hand and seal at Great Salt Lake City, Territory of Utah, this fifth day of August, A.D. eighteen hundred and fifty seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty second. Brigham Young.

The Utah War had its formal beginning on July 18, 1857, when the Tenth Infantry marched out of Ft. Leavenworth. Six days later, while the Saints were celebrating the tenth anniversary of their arrival in the Valley, A. O. Smoot, O. P. Rockwell, Judson Stoddard, and Elias Smith rode in and confirmed what had been anticipated for several weeks, that the army was on its way to Utah. On August 5, 1857, Brigham Young issued his first proclamation declaring martial law and forbidding any US troops to enter the territory. This broadside, however, was given little, if any, circulation. Why this was so, and why a second proclamation was issued six weeks later, one can only speculate at this point. It would appear that during most of August the Mormon leaders had not precisely focused on a strategy for dealing with the approaching army; and after the first proclamation was struck off, they likely had second thoughts about a direct confrontation with the federal government. On August 29, Brigham Young instructed Daniel H. Wells to draft a second proclamation of martial law; but by this time news of the impending visit of Captain Stewart Van Vliet, an assistant quartermaster in the army, must have reached the Mormon leaders, prompting them to hold up any formal declarations until after his visit. Under any circumstances, Van Vliet arrived in Great Salt Lake City on September 8. Six days later he left the city to return to the army, having convinced Brigham Young that the Army intended to enter the territory, and convinced himself that the Mormons would resist any such attempt. The following day, September 15, 1857, Brigham Young reissued his proclamation of martial law. This proclamation is identical to the first, except for a rewritten sentence near the end and the change of the date.

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 50, p. [36].

Used by permission of the authors.

Proclamation no. 2, to the citizens of Hancock County, Ill.

Backenstos, Jacob Benjamin. Proclamation No. 2. To the citizens of Hancock County, Ill., and the surrounding country. J. B. Backenstos, Sheriff, Hancock County, Ill. Sept. 16th, A.D. 1845, half past 2 o’clock P.M. [Nauvoo, 1845]
Broadside 41 x 28.5 cm.

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Jacob Backenstos, a “Jack Mormon,” had ties to the Saints through his brother William, who was married to a niece of Emma Smith. Born in Pennsylvania in 1811, Backenstos served as clerk of the Hancock circuit court in 1843 and in August 1844 was elected by the Mormon bloc to the Illinois legislature, where he argued against the repeal of the Nauvoo charter. The following year he was elected sheriff of Hancock County and was immediately confronted with the violence that ultimately drove the Saints from Illinois. Fifteen days after Congress declared war with Mexico, he was commissioned a captain of mounted riflemen, and at the battle of Chapultepec he was brevetted a lieutenant-colonel for gallantry and meritorious service. In 1849 he marched with the mounted riflemen to Oregon, settled with his family in the Willamette Valley, and there resigned his commission in 1851. On September 25, 1857, he drowned himself in the Willamette River near Portland.

In his capacity as sheriff of Hancock, Backenstos issued five proclamations over a period of twelve days. All of these were undoubtedly printed by the Times and Seasons print shop, and thus they are included here, even though they are technically not Mormon pieces.

From the moment violence broke out in the Morley settlement, the anti-Mormons continually threatened the life of Jacob Backenstos, and on September 15, he learned that an armed force was after him. The next day, as he was traveling along the Warsaw-Carthage road, four men on horseback began to pursue him, one of them, Franklin A. Worrell, the commander of the guard at Carthage Jail at the time Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered. Backenstos whipped his horse and soon came upon Orrin Porter Rockwell and two other Mormons. Jumping out of his buggy with pistol in hand, he ordered the Mormons to assist him and commanded the four in pursuit of him to stop. When one of them leveled a musket at him, he told Porter Rockwell to shoot. Rockwell took aim at Worrell’s belt buckle and shot him off his horse. The pursuers retreated and then returned with a wagon to carry the fatally wounded Worrell back to Warsaw. Backenstos headed for Nauvoo, where he issued his second proclamation that afternoon.

Most of this proclamation is an account of the events leading up to the shooting of Worrell. At the end Backenstos again commands the house burners to stop and return to their homes. He calls on all the able-bodied men in the county to resist the rioters, and he directs the posse comitatus to go to the nearest points of conflict and defend the Mormons. In a postscript he remarks that the Saints have acted with “more than ordinary forbearance.”

At the time he issued Proclamation No. 2, Backenstos apparently did not know the identity of the man that Rockwell had shot or that he had been fatally wounded. Proclamation No. 3 identifies the man as Worrell and states that he had died. Backenstos was tried for the shooting, on a change of venue, in Peoria that December and acquitted. Rockwell was tried in Galena in August 1846 and acquitted when Backenstos testified that he had acted on his orders.

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 276, p. 317-18.

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

Proclamation No. 4, Backenstos, Jacob

Backenstos, Jacob Benjamin. Proclamation No [sic] 4. To the citizens of Hancock County, Ill., and the surrounding country. [Signed and dated at the end:] J.B. Backsenstos, Sh’ff, H.C. Ill. Bank of the Mississippi river, near Montebello, Sept. 20th A.D. 1845.[Nauvoo, 1845]
Broadside 41 x 28.5 cm.

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Jacob Backenstos, a “Jack Mormon,” had ties to the Saints through his brother William, who was married to a niece of Emma Smith. Born in Pennsylvania in 1811, Backenstos served as clerk of the Hancock circuit court in 1843 and in August 1844 was elected by the Mormon bloc to the Illinois legislature, where he argued against the repeal of the Nauvoo charter. The following year he was elected sheriff of Hancock County and was immediately confronted with the violence that ultimately drove the Saints from Illinois. Fifteen days after Congress declared war with Mexico, he was commissioned a captain of mounted riflemen, and at the battle of Chapultepec he was brevetted a lieutenant-colonel for gallantry and meritorious service. In 1849 he marched with the mounted riflemen to Oregon, settled with his family in the Willamette Valley, and there resigned his commission in 1851. On September 25, 1857, he drowned himself in the Willamette River near Portland.

In his capacity as sheriff of Hancock, Backenstos issued five proclamations over a period of twelve days. All of these were undoubtedly printed by the Times and Seasons print shop, and thus they are included here, even though they are technically not Mormon pieces.

Backenstos’s third and fourth proclamations, summarize his movements from Tuesday, September 16, to Saturday, September 20. In Proclamation No. 4 Backenstos tells of riding to the southwest part of Hancock on the afternoon of September 18 with two hundred mounted men–Miller’s and Markham’s troops–with the intent of attacking the rioters the next day. Instead of launching this attack–undoubtedly because of Brigham Young’s request not to make a direct assault–he turned toward Carthage, armed with a number of arrest warrants for the leaders of the rioters, and at sundown he entered the town. Before his troops could surround Carthage, however, all of those he sought to arrest escaped, except Anthony Barkman, whom he took into custody. About noon on September 20 Backenstos headed for his rendezvous with J. H. Hale’s company, and en route he learned that the rioters had fled into Missouri. He reports that, to his knowledge, no houses had been burned since September 16, and therefore, he declares the county at peace. Included in this proclamation are Backenstos’s letter of September 18 to the rioters asking them to surrender and to give up the state arms, and Levi Williams’s contemptuous reply of September 19.

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 279, p. 321-22.

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

Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles

Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints. To all the kings of the world; to the president of the United States of America; to the governors of the several states; and to the rulers and people of all nations: greeting: [Caption title] [Dated at end:] New York, April 6, 1845. [New York? 1845?] 16 pp. 22 cm.

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Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles derived from the revelation to Joseph Smith of January 19, 1841 (D&C 124), which in its opening verses, enjoined him to make a solemn proclamation … to all the kings of the world, to the four corners thereof, to the honorable president-elect, and the high-minded governors of the nation. The revelation directed Robert B. Thompson to assist in its writing, and he helped produce a manuscript draft, now in the LDS Church archives, which apparently was not finished because of his death in August 1841. At the end of that year Joseph Smith spoke to one of his scribes about the proclamation. And again on November 21, 1843, he instructed Willard Richards, Orson Hyde, John Taylor, and W. W. Phelps to write a proclamation to the Kings &c. of the Earth, but his presidential campaign and then his assassination apparently interrupted this effort. That Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles was published in fulfillment of the revelation is made clear by Wilford Woodruff in the Millennial Star of October 15, 1845, and that it was actually composed by Parley Pratt is acknowledged by Brigham Young in his letter to Parley of May 26, 1845.

Dated at the end, April 6, 1845, the proclamation declares that the kingdom of God is established on the earth, that its authority rests with the Latter-day Saints, and that all must repent of their sins and be baptized into the kingdom. To the kings and rulers of the earth it says, You are not only required to repent and obey the gospel … but you are hereby commanded, in the name of Jesus Christ, to put your silver and your gold, your ships and steam-vessels, your railroad trains and your horses, chariots, camels, mules, and litters, into active use, for the fulfillment of these purposes. The American Indians, it asserts, are a remnant of the tribes of Israel and must be educated and civilized, for they are to assist in building the New Jerusalem in America while the Jews rebuild the old Jerusalem. It concludes with a series of one-sentence statements summarizing the fundamentals of Mormonism, each followed by the phrase “And we know it.”

The revelation of January 19,1841, enjoined Joseph Smith to write the proclamation in the spirit of meekness. But those outside of Mormonism must have viewed Proclamation of the Twelve Apostles as an arrogant tract–a fact implicitly acknowledged in the Millennial Star of October 15, 1845, which urged elders to use wisdom in distributing it “so as not to unnecessarily to expose themselves to difficulties and persecution.”

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 256, p. 294-96.

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

Proclamation! to the people of the coasts and islands of the Pacific

PRATT, Parley Parker. Proclamation! To the people of the coasts and islands of the Pacific; of every nation, kindred and tongue. By an apostle of Jesus Christ. Published for the author, by C. W. Wandell, minister of the gospel. [Sydney, William Baker, Printer, Hibernian Press, 1851]. Signed at end: P. P. Pratt, president of the Pacific mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 16 pp. 21 cm.

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In February 1851 Brigham Young called John Murdock to preside over the Australian mission, and the following month he left Salt Lake City in company with Parley P. Pratt, who would supervise all missionary activity in the Pacific. On July 11 he and Pratt reached San Francisco. Parley departed for Chile on September 5, and six days later Murdock and Charles W. Wandell, who was already in San Francisco, embarked on a forty-nine day voyage to the southern continent where they stepped ashore at Sydney harbor on Friday, October 31, 1851. The next day they engaged William Baker to print a pamphlet, and Wandell spent Sunday, November 2, preparing the manuscript for the press, while Murdock preached his first sermon in Australia.

Parley Pratt composed Proclamation to the People of the Coasts and Islands of the Pacific in San Francisco prior to his departure for Chile and handed the manuscript to Murdock and Wandell for immediate publication. Proclamation is a signal book—the first Mormon work published outside of North America or Western Europe, the first work associated with that extraordinary effort that sent Mormon missionaries to South America, Australia, India, Africa, and China. Arranged in six chapters, it opens by declaring that a new gospel dispensation has been revealed which is to be preached to every nation and people, and it asserts that Parley Pratt is sending forth his proclamation, first in English, eventually in every language within the bounds of his mission, that all must turn from sin and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. The New Testament church fell into corruption, it continues, so a new apostolic commission has been restored and is held by the Latter-day Saints. At this point it directs an address to the pagans, to the Jews, and to the Indians of North and South America, and in the address to the Indians it summarizes the Book of Mormon narrative and states that the Book of Mormon people sailed from Arabia to the coast of Chile—a belief that may have prompted Parley to undertake his missionary journey to that country.

Proclamation was reprinted in two installments in the Millennial Star for September 18 and 25, 1852, and, translated into Danish, in five installments in the second volume of Skandinaviens Stjerne. T. B. H. Stenhouse reprinted a French translation in four installments in his Le Réflecteur, March-June 1853. Parts of it were republished by Richard Ballantyne in Madras in 1853 under the title Proclamation of the Gospel, Extracted from a Work by P. P. Pratt.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume Two, 1848-1852. Forthcoming.

Used by permission of the author.