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Three letters to the New York Herald

GRANT, Jedediah Morgan. Three letters to the New York Herald, from J. M. Grant, of Utah. [New York? 1852?] 64 pp. 23 cm.

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Jedediah M. Grant had been a member of the First Council of Seventy for almost seven years and mayor of Great Salt Lake City for about eight months when he left Salt Lake City for Kanesville on September 24, 1851, to assist Ezra T. Benson with the Mormon immigration. But the nature of this mission changed on October 1, three days after the federal territorial appointees—judges Lemuel G. Brandebury and Perry E. Brocchus, territorial secretary Broughton D. Harris, and sub-Indian agent Henry R. Day—abruptly left Salt Lake City for the East. Now he was to go on to Washington and help John M. Bernhisel and Thomas L. Kane defuse the sensational reports the Church leaders knew would be forthcoming from the “runaway” appointees.

Grant reached Washington on December 8, two days after Brandebury and Harris. Early statements from the appointees had been appearing in the eastern newspapers since the first week of November, and on December 19 Brandebury, Brocchus, and Harris submitted their formal report to President Fillmore. This report dwelled mainly on what they perceived to be examples of disloyalty and disrespect toward the federal government—and themselves—and irregularities in establishing the territorial government; its comments on Mormon polygamy were confined to essentially one paragraph. But it was polygamy, Grant made clear in his correspondence, that most concerned the Congress and the Fillmore administration.

Jedediah Grant was eager to respond, but the cautious Bernhisel restrained him from making any public expression for two months. Then in February he and Thomas L. Kane struck upon a plan to write a series of letters to the New York Herald refuting the Brandebury-Brocchus-Harris allegations. The first of the letters appeared in the Herald of March 9, 1852, together with an editorial comment by the editor, James Gordon Bennett. When Bennett declined to print the second letter in its entirety, Grant concluded to publish the series in pamphlet form, and writing from New York on May 13, he reported that his Three Letters to the New York Herald was “completed and ready for circulation.”

The first fifty pages of Three Letters to the New York Herald contain the letters, identified as Letter I, II, and III. Each is addressed to James Gordon Bennett and signed only by Grant. The first is undated—although it was dated March 4, 1852 in the Herald; the second is dated at the beginning, April 8, 1852; and the third is dated at the end, New York, April 25, 1852. The remaining fourteen pages comprise a four-part appendix. The first part is a letter from Grant to Millard Fillmore transmitting a copy of the pamphlet, dated at New York, May 1, 1852. The second is an extract of Perry E. Brocchus’s letter of September 20, 1851, from Utah: Message from the President of the United States, Transmitting Information in Reference to the Condition of Affairs in the Territory of Utah (32d Cong., 1st sess., House Ex. Doc. 25), pp. 5B6, or Appendix to the Congressional Globe, vol. 25, pp. 85-86. The third is an account of the murder of Joseph Smith. And the fourth is a series of documents pertaining to the anti-Mormon violence in Missouri: Joseph Young’s—not David Lewis’s—account of the Haun’s Mill Massacre followed by Lewis’s account, probably from Sidney Rigdon’s An Appeal to the American People; then the testimony of Hyrum Smith, Rigdon, and Parley P. Pratt, followed by an excerpt of General John B. Clark’s speech of November 6, 1838, all from the Times and Seasons of July 1 and 15, and August 1, 1843.

Grant’s first letter is essentially a tongue-in-cheek recounting of the appointees experiences in Utah. An excerpt:

It is an error, the prevalent opinion that we all cleanse the nasal orifice with the big toe, and make tea with holy water. We have among us women who play on the piano and mix French with their talk, and men who like tight boots, and who think more of the grammar than the meaning of what they are saying; and who would ask nothing better than to be fed by other people for squaring circles and writing dead languages all their lives—albeit we would not give one good gunsmith’s apprentice for the whole of them.

Brandebury is portrayed as a benign incompetent, whose principal offense was failing to bathe. Brocchus, on the other hand, is painted as a vindictive opportunist, who fostered the contention with the Mormons.

Prompted by James Gordon Bennett’s comment that “the pith of the charges” were not answered in the first letter, Grant begins his second with a point-by-point denial of the allegations outlined in the third paragraph of the Brandebury-Brocchus-Harris report. He defends the character of Brigham Young, asking if “he is to be outlawed because he holds unpopular opinions of Zachary Taylor,” and justifies the tone of Daniel H. Wells’s oration because of the anti-Mormon violence in Missouri and Illinois. In his third letter, Grant expresses the view that the appointees were men who were “not conscience driven,” who came to the territory for “Money or Political Honors” and then left when they realized such rewards would not come to them in Utah. The Brandebury-Brocchus-Harris report mentions the murders of John M. Vaughan and James M. Monroe, and Grant summarizes the facts in these cases and argues that the killings were justified because Vaughan and Monroe had seduced their killer’s’ wives. He deals with polygamy in one paragraph by denying that Brigham Young rode “with his score of wives, and a sucking baby a-piece, airing in one omnibus” and then declaring: “But, as to this charge of Polygamy again: Suppose I should admit it at once; whose business is it? Does the Constitution forbid it? Is here any thing in the Act for the Government of the Territory, forbidding it?”

To what extent Grant’s pamphlet affected the actions of the federal government is difficult to assess. Bernhisel reported to Kane that it “created quite a sensation” in Washington and that Senator Hamlin, of Maine, remarked that “it had confirmed him in what he believed before, that the returned officers were d—d scoundrels.” But before Three Letters to the New York Herald appeared, the Fillmore administration had concluded to retain Brigham Young as territorial governor and Fillmore had nominated Orson Hyde as a supreme court justice and Benjamin G. Ferris, a non-Mormon, as territorial secretary. Undoubtedly, like Senator Hamlin, the administration quickly lost confidence in the appointees, who had abandoned their offices over what amounted to little more than some name-calling.

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

Used by permission of the author.

A Timely warning to the people of England

HYDE, Orson. A timely warning to the people of England, of every sect and denomination, and to every individual into whose hands it may fall. By an elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, late from America. Preston, 19th August, 1837. Manchester, [England], Reprinted by W. R. Thomas, Spring Gardens, [1839]. Broadside 51 x 34 cm. Text in three columns, within an ornamental border.

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In the summer of 1836 Orson Hyde published A prophetic warning to all the churches… . in Toronto, Canada, the earliest work that can be called a Mormon missionary tract. The following year Joseph Smith called Heber C. Kimball and Hyde to begin one of the most dramatic episodes in Mormon history, the first Mormon mission to England. On July 1, 1837 Kimball, Hyde, Willard Richards and four recent converts from Canada sailed from New York on the Garrick, arriving at Liverpool on July 19. A few days before their departure these elders distributed A prophetic warning in New York City and a month after arriving in England it appears that Hyde republished the broadside tract in Preston with the new title, A timely warning to the people of England… . Unfortunately there are no known extant copies of the 1837 Preston edition but there is good evidence that it was printed, making it the first Mormon work published in Great Britain. In 1839 a third edition appeared printed by W. R. Thomas of Manchester with the title referring to the 1837 Preston edition.

A timely warning (1839) and A prophetic warning (1836) are virtually identical for the first half of the text. But in the second half A timely warning eliminates the more morbid events predicted for the last days and is less severe in condemning the sectarian clergy, even though it comments on their tendency to cry “false teachers” without examining the Latter day Saints’ claims. It also includes a reference to “the coming of the Son of Man, which will be witnessed by this generation” —one of the few instances in which a Mormon author speculates in print about the time of the Second Advent.

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]). Items 30, 36, and 54, p. 63-64, 68, 85-86.

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

A Timely warning to the people of England 1837

Hyde, Orson. A timely warning to the people of England, of every sect and denomination, and to every individual into whose hands it may fall, by an elder of the church of Latter-day saints, (late from America.) Preston, 19th August, 1837. A. Charlwood, Printer; Orford-hill. [Norwich, 1847?]

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A Timely Warning is a revision of Orson Hyde’s A Prophetic Warning. These publications are virtually identical for the first half of text. But in the second half, A Timely Warning eliminates the more morbid events predicted for the last days and is less severe in condemning the sectarian clergy, even though it comments on their tendency to cry “false teachers” without examining the Latter-day Saints’ claims. It also includes a reference to “the coming of the Son of Man, which will be witnessed by this generation”–one of the few instances in which a Mormon author speculates in print about the time of the Second Advent. Unlike A Prophetic Warning, it clearly identifies itself as a Latter-day Saint tract.

This is a reprint of the 1840 Manchester edition. It embodies all of the corrections incorporated in that edition and adds a number of improvements in punctuation and capitalization. Otherwise it is textually the same as the 1839 (see this digital collection) and 1840 editions–except for a parenthetical insertion on page 6: “This work was first published in 1837. We wish a discerning public to judge for themselves how far these predictions have been fulfilled. Since that time thrones have been cast down; much blood has been shed; the seeds have rotted under the clods; pestilence has been, and is still raging in different parts of the world.”

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 332, p. 361-62.

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

Times and Seasons

Times and Seasons. Nauvoo, November 1839-February 15, 1846.
6 v. (131 nos. 192; [193]-582; [577]-958; 383; [384]-767; [768]-1135 p.) facsims. (1 fold.) 23 cm.

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When the Mormons began to evacuate Far West, Missouri in October 1838, the press and type were buried in the front yard of one of the Saints. The following spring they were dug up and hauled to Nauvoo for service in the new Mormon city. In November 1839, the first number of the official Mormon organ during the Nauvoo period, the Times and Seasons, came off the transplanted Far West press. Maintaining the size and format of the Messenger and Advocate, the Times and Seasons was a monthly for the first year and a semimonthly thereafter. Initially “Commerce” was listed on the masthead as the place of publication; “Nauvoo” appeared there after the fifth number.

The Times and Seasons saw a virtual parade of editors. Ebenezer Robinson and Don Carlos Smith served together for the first fifteen numbers. Don Carlos Smith alone edited numbers 16-24, and he and Robert B. Thompson edited numbers 25-31. Robinson joined Thompson in editing numbers 32 and 33 following the death of Don Carlos Smith, and two months later Thompson died, leaving Ebenezer Robinson to edit the next ten issues. Up to this point, the press and the periodical itself had been owned by the editors, but a series of events led the Church to buy out Ebenezer Robinson with Joseph Smith taking over as editor.

On November 20 and 30, 1841, the Twelve met to discuss the magazine. At a third meeting in Joseph Smith’s office on January 17, 1842, they expressed their opposition to Robinson’s publishing the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants without the explicit consent of the First Presidency. Robinson in their view, was too proprietary with what were, after all, official Church works. Beyond this, the Twelve were assuming a greater responsibility for the affairs of the Church, and it is not surprising they wanted more control over the official Church magazine. On January 28 Joseph Smith received a revelation that they should take charge of the Times and Seasons and manage the print shop under Joseph Smith’s direction (issue 44 reflects this change). The next day Robinson deeded the shop to Joseph Smith for $6,600–ultimately paid in cash installments, credit against temple contributions, livestock, and shares in the Nauvoo House. With whole number 61 (vol. 4, no. 1), John Taylor became the editor, continuing until the Times and Seasons ceased publication in February 1846.

One cannot hope to understand the Nauvoo period of Mormonism without the Times and Seasons. More than its predecessors, it captures the spirit of the Latter-day Saints as it chronicles their day-to-day efforts to spread their message and gather the converted. Its pages reflect the optimism which fueled the building of the City of Joseph and the sorrow which accompanies its abandonment.

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 11, p. [12]; and Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah, Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1977]). Item 60, p. 91-96.

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

To the public

Barkman, Anthony. To the public: Antony [sic] Barkman. Nauvoo, Sept. 26, 1845. [Nauvoo, 1845]
Broadside 25 x 10 cm.

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Anthony Barkman, an anti-Mormon and one of the Carthage Greys who guarded Joseph Smith at the time of his assassination, was arrested by Jacob Backenstos in Carthage on September 19. Hosea Stout notes in his diary that Barkman signed the complaint on which he, Willard Richards, John Taylor, W.W. Phelps, and eight others were tried on September 24 and acquitted after Barkman admitted that he had been inducted to perjure himself. In To the Public Barkman acknowledges that he was arrested for perjury–a charge undoubtedly arising out of his complaint against Richards, Taylor, and the others. He further admits to threatening the life of Sheriff Backenstos, and states that during the time he was in custody in Nauvoo, he was well treated by the people there. One might conjecture that Barkman issued this statement in exchange for his freedom.

To the Public was reprinted from the same setting in the Nauvoo Neighbor of October 1, and reprinted again in the New-York Messenger of October 25.

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

To the saints scattered abroad

Whitney, Newel Kimball, Reynolds Cahoon, and Vinson Knight. Kirtland, Ohio, September 18th, 1837. To the saints scattered abroad, the bishop and his counselors of Kirtland send greeting. N. K. Whitney, R. Cahoon, V. Knight, [sic] [Kirtland, 1837]
Broadside 50.5 x 32.5 cm.

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On September 17, 1837, the Church leaders called the Kirtland Saints together in the temple. At issue was a failed Mormon “bank”, an onerous debt, proliferating lawsuits, and apostasy–all embedded in the national economic crises following the banking panic of May 1837. Here they directed the bishop and his counselors to issue a memorial to the Saints abroad, which they drafted the next day. This memorial was printed from a rearrangement of the same typesetting, in the Messenger and Advocate (see this digital collection) of September 1837.

An appeal for financial help directed to the Mormons outside Kirtland, the memorial outlines the various circumstances which contributed to the penury of the church, and it suggests that the appropriate way to finance the work of the last days is to tithe the members–foreshadowing the revelation of July 8, 1838 (Doctrine and Covenants 119). It further argues that the salvation of the Saints depends on the building up of Zion and her stakes, thus linking the well-being of the colony in Kirtland to those in Missouri.

Newel Kimball Whitney was called to be the bishop in Kirtland on December 4, 1831 (Doctrine and Covenants 72). A native of Vermont, he was a prosperous merchant in Kirtland when he joined the church in November 1830. In October 1839 he was appointed bishop of the Nauvoo middle ward, and five years later he was sustained as “first bishop in the Church.” He made the overland journey to Utah in 1848 and continued to serve as the presiding bishop until his death in Salt Lake City, September 23, 1850, at age fifty-five.

Reynolds Cahoon was chosen a counselor to Whitney on February 10, 1832. A veteran of the War of 1812 and a native of New York, he converted to Mormonism in Ohio in 1830, at the age of forty. He was on the committees charged with building the Kirtland Nauvoo temples. In June 1838 John Smith selected him to be his counselor in the presidency of the stake at Adam-ondi-Ahman, and in October 1839 Smith again picked him as a counselor in the presidency of the Montrose, Iowa, stake. Cahoon was a member of the Council of Fifty and was named a captain of a hundred when the Twelve began planning for the evacuation of Illinois (see Circular, to the Whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1845, in this digital collection). He made the overland trek to Utah in 1848, and died at South Cottonwood, April 19, 1861.

Vinson Knight was ordained a counselor to Bishop Whitney on January 13, 1836. Born in Norwich, Massachusetts, March 14, 1804, he joined the Church in 1834 and was approved to be ordained an elder eleven days before he was called to be Whitney’s counselor. In October 1839 he was appointed the bishop of the Nauvoo lower ward, and sixteen months later he was elected to the first Nauvoo city council, in which capacities he served until his death on July 31, 1842.

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

Treatise on the fulness of the everlasting, 1842

Martin, Moses. A treatise on the fulness of the everlasting gospel, setting forth its first principles, promises, and blessings. In which some of the most prominent features that have ever characterized that system, when on the earth, are made manifest; and that it will continue to do so, so long as it can be found on the earth. By Elder Moses Martin, minister of the gospel. Read this little book and judge for yourselves; for the wise man has said, that he that judges a matter before hearing both sides of the question, is a fool. Therefore read, and then judge. New-York: J. W. Harrison, Printer; cor: Pearl and Catham-sts. 1842.
64 pp. 15.5 cm.

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Moses Martin was born in New Hampshire, June 1, 1812. When he was a young boy he moved to Pennsylvania with his family, and there, in February 1833, was converted to Mormonism by John F. Boynton and Evan M. Greene, who also brought Benjamin Winchester and Jedediah M. Grant into the Church about the same time. Martin marched with Zion’s Camp and distinguished himself by being court-martialed for falling asleep on sentry duty. Despite this blot on his military record, he was picked for the First Quorum of Seventy the following year and sent out as a missionary. During 1846-48 he labored in England, serving as president of the London and Manchester conferences, and in March 1848 he sailed for America with a company of emigrants. At the April 1850 general conference, Brigham Young publicly excoriated him and cut him off from the Church, apparently because he had taken a plural wife in England. Martin moved to northern California and then, in 1857, to San Bernardino, where he lived until his death, May 7, 1899.

Martin published A Treatise on the Fulness of the Everlasting Gospel while he was proselytizing in New York. It was undoubtedly printed between July 21, 1842, when he took out a New York copyright, and October 13, 1842, when he deposited a copy with the district court.

A Treatise is an apologetic work which attempts to validate the claims of the Latter-day Saints by placing Mormonism in the context of Judeo-Christian history. The main text begins with an argument–entirely reminiscent of the Voice of Warning (see this digital collection)–that the scriptures should be read literally.The book next infers that the gospel is the same for each generation, and that when God wishes to restore his kingdom upon the earth, he will reveal himself to some man and delegate him to organize his kingdom. It then discuses, in order, the principal Old Testament prophets and the primitive Christian church, emphasizing those characteristics it sees as shared with Mormonism. It concludes with the declaration that Joseph Smith was God’s instrument in restoring his church in fulfillment of these prophecies.

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

Treatise on the fulness of the everlasting, 1846

Martin, Moses. A treatise on the fulness of the everlasting gospel, setting forth its first principles, promises, and blessings. In which some of the most prominent features that have ever characterized that system, when on the earth, are made manifest; and that it will continue to do so, so long as it can be found on the earth. By Elder Moses Martin, minister of the gospel. Read this little book and judge for yourselves; for the wise man has said, that he that judges a matter before hearing both sides of the question, is a fool. Therefore read, and then judge. (First edition printed at New York, in 1842.) Second edition. London: Printed by F. Shephard, High Street, Islington. 1846.
60 pp. 15 cm.

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Moses Martin embarked on his mission to England in the summer of 1846 and landed at Liverpool on October 14. Four days later he was called to preside over the London Conference. He labored in England until March 9, 1848, when he sailed for America with a company of eighty Mormon immigrants.

The London edition of A Treatise was probably published near the end of the year. The Millennial Star of February 1, 1847, advertised the book at 6d. retail, 4d. wholesale. Accompanying this ad is an endorsement from John Taylor, who urged the Saints to buy Martin’s book so he could provide some support for his destitute family which he had left in Illinois in the care of William Anderson, who subsequently was killed during the skirmishing at Nauvoo. Thomas D. Brown acted as an agent for the book, Martin sold it himself, and during 1847-48 the Millennial Star office also sold about seven hundred copies. So one might guess that this edition of A Treatise was published in two or three thousand copies.

Textually this edition is identical to the first edition published in 1842 (see this digital collection). Changes occur in two places in the biblical references at the end: the section “Baptism” has been slightly changed and reordered, and “Book of Mormon” has been redone to conform to Daniel Shearer’s Key to the Bible. Why the 1842 edition departed from Key to the Bible at this point, while the 1846 edition returned to it, is not known.

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

Twelve Apostles…The seven presidents of the seventy elders…

The twelve apostles. The seven presidents of the seventy elders. The first seventy elders. The second seventy elders. [Kirtland? 1836?]
Broadside 31 x 20 cm.

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This broadside lists the names of the Twelve Apostles, the seven presidents of the Seventy, and the First Quorum of Seventy, as initially chosen in February 1835, together with those in the Second Quorum of Seventy who were selected a year later. Certainly a product of the Messenger and Advocate press, it would seem to have been printed after the second quorum was organized early in February 1836, and before the excommunication on May 23, 1836, of Charles Kelley, who is listed as a member of the first quorum. One might note that nine of the Twelve, all of the presidents of the Seventy, and all of the First Quorum of Seventy marched with Zion’s Camp.

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