--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Russell, I. K. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 28 number: 11 published: 1925-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "I. K. Russell, “Joseph Smith—and the Great West II,” *Improvement Era 28, no. 11 (September 1925)*: 1037–1046." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera28011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera28011unse start_page: 1037 end_page: 1046 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1925-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera28011unse publication_year: 1925 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1925, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Joseph Smith—and the Great West II JOSEPH SMITH— AND THE GREAT WEST II Why the Slaveholders Desired the Rockies — and Beyond By I. K. Russell. Author of "Hidden Heroes of the Rockies," "Romance of the Holes in the Bread." etc. When Joseph Smith assembled the "Mormon" people in Kirtland, Ohio, and later in Independence, Missouri, and then in Nauvoo, Illi- nois, we have already stated, in the opening paper of this series, that he assembled them in a country which it was previously determined no New Englanders should ever have or hold. Bitter persecution immediately became their lot. Their years of peace in Missouri were not even two in number. We know that in January, 1831, Oliver Cowdery, Parley P. Pratt, Ziba Petersen, Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Frederick G. Williams led the vanguard of the "Mormons" into western Missouri. No one who knows the theology of the "Mormon" people, or their interest since 1831, in the fate of the American Indian will need to be told that the object of these "Mor- mon" missionaries was honestly stated by the Prophet when he styled it a "mission to the Lamanites on Missouri's western borders." Everywhere in the Church a picture is held in high esteem which shows Joseph Smith himself "preaching to the Lamanites," and "preaching to the Lamanites" has been a persistent purpose of the Church ever since. Its missions to their country flowed out of Kirt- land in the very beginning, and out of Utah to the Arizona and New Mexican country at the very beginning of L^tah history. It could not, indeed, be otherwise, considering the nature of the revelations through which the Prophet found his life work upon this earth. As trite as these facts are, it is necessary to restate them here in Older to throw up against them, in marked contrast, the way Joseph Smith's "mission to the Lamanites" was taken in a certain section of America. There it threw the people into a passion. Bitter hatred poured out from this group of American states upon the "Mormons" and all their works. And this bitter hatred expressed itself in one charge only — Joseph Smith, under pretense of preaching to the Indians was really preaching to the slaves. A careful study of the documents produced at the mass meetings, in which the first mob violence was planned for the "Mormons" in Missouri, shows that those attending were stirred to violence by one anti-"Mormon" charge, and this one alone. This charge was that Joseph Smith and his "Mormons" were "interfer- ing with Missouri's men of color." 1038 IMPROVEMENT ERA Of course, anyone who knows the story of the rise of the "Mor- mon" Church knows that Joseph Smith had no mission to lead in the controversy over Slavery. He was intent upon setting up the Church that had a principal work to do in the Dispensation of the Fulness of Time. And this work, a message to the Indians, was a principal factor. It was the message of hope and good cheer when the tide of their af- fairs was at a very low ebb. To the Missourians, however, this was a preposterous thought. Not knowing the "Mormon" religious views towards the Indians they interpreted all things with regard to what they did know — the Southern man's hatred of the Northern abolition- ist. And if the Saints were without intent to organize methods to break up slavery, and to undermine Missouri affairs with an under- ground railroad for escaping slaves, others were not so bereft of these intentions, which gave the South real cause for alarm. Thus Joseph Smith preached to the Indians, and perhaps was unaware of the enormous bitterness held towards New Englanders in Missouri. But if his conduct was without deliberately provocative acts, that of his native state, Vermont, was not. At the very moment the mobs of Missouri arose to hurl the "Mormon" people beyond Mis- souri's border, the legislature of Vermont started an entirely new phase of the slavery controversy. It duly petitioned the Congress of the United States that slavery was a sin, and should be abolished as such. This was the first state among the states to take up the issue as a matter of formal state petitions to the Federal government. It was also the first time the issue had been put forcibly in the terms of religion, not of economics and labor policies. Anyone who knows political affairs knows that when politicians see their issues pass over to religious control, they know that their days are numbered for arguing, and that the time for fighting soon will be drawing near. Thus Joseph Smith and his people became, in Missouri, the focal point of a New England thrust against slavery, and the one point at which Southern sympathizers could reach Northern people. Therefore, over and above all other issues for controversy and mis- understanding, the "Mormons" committed one gigantic offence by settling in Missouri. They attempted as New Englanders to settle in a land where it was determined no New Englanders should ever dwell. Scratch the back, then, of a Missouri mobocrat and, outside of a few clergymen, you find a man determined on holding Missouri to the Southern cause. Read the newspaper accounts of the expulsion of the Saints, and test them by this rule. Almost invariably you find those papers, which later became Free State papers, denouncing the expulsion. You find those that gloated over the troubles of the Saints to be, in another decade, Secessionist papers. These items have always appeared as casual fragments of the story of Missouri and Nauvoo. For instance, one of the Missourians who JOSEPH SMITH— AND THE GREAT WEST 1039 came upon the trail of the Prophet with a Missouri writ, after he had removed into Illinois, was set upon by townspeople of Pawpaw Grove, thirty miles from Dixon. And how like the spirit of Bleeding Kansas, which appeared after the "Mormons" had removed themselves from the scene of growing Civil War hatreds, does the message given to this Missourian sound. Joseph Smith was a prisoner of Joseph H. Reynolds, agent of Missouri, sent to secure his person. He had duly accepted arrest at Dixon, making no other defense than to ask friends to secure a lawyer for him and seek out a legal writ of habeas corpus. Reynolds proceeded with his prisoner to Pawpaw and there David Town, a citizen in no way sympathetic to the "Mormons" but also a citizen who knew the oncoming strife over slavery spoke up to Mis- souri's agent: "You damned infernal Puke, (a pet nick-name for Missourians) we'll learn you to come here and interrupt gentlemen. Sit down there and sit still. If you never learned manners in Missouri we'll teach you that gentle- men are not to be imposed upon by a nigger-driver. You cannot kidnap men here. There is a committee in this grove that will sit on your case; and, sir, it is the highest tribunal in the United States, and from its decision there is no appeal." The Missouri agent sat right down beneath this tirade of an aged, lame abolitionist, and allowed Joseph Smith to address a multitude of people who had called upon him for a speech. At its conclusion they turned the party right around and headed it for Nauvoo where, they concluded, it was perfectly legal to hear the writs against him. This was possibly the first, but far from the last time pro-slaver and abolitionist met at close quarters with the "Mormon" leader as the issue between them. All who know the Church's story know how Colonel Thomas L. Kane hurried to Utah ahead of Johnston's Army and went to Johnston's camp as an envoy from the President of the United States. Also how he there challenged the commander of Johns- ton's Army to a duel and broke with him, and soon had arranged for a Peace Commission to supplant this army's power in Utah affairs. It was only a little while after this that Johnston was hurrying on to answer the South's call and to ride to his death as the Southern com- mander at the Battle of Shiloh, while the great friend of the "Mor- mons" was riding into battle on the Northern side, and emerging a cripple for life from an almost fatal wound. In its proper place we shall present the scene in the Congress of the United States as the petition from Vermont was read denouncing slavery as a sin and asking for its abolition as a crime against Chris- tianity. We shall show how this occurred simultaneously with the raising of the cry in Missouri that Joseph Smith, son of Vermont, was tampering with our men of color. As we go a little deeper into the politics of that hour we find that Joseph Smith looked westward for a haven of refuge for his people and that when his heart settled upon Upper California, the same pro-slave interests that wanted him out of Missouri, determined 1040 IMPROVEMENT ERA to keep him out of the Far West. Utah and California, along with Texas, New Mexico, and Oregon were dedicated to the pro-slave cause, and active work began to seize them for Slavery, as early as 1824. Once we realize the enormous desire of certain states to gain and hold territory in the Far West for slavery, we shall recognize without difficulty a series of events as being closely linked together in a regular sequence. All are now known, but only as isolated in- cidents. This sequence begins with the colonizing of Texas from Virginia, and Kentucky, the same indentical states which were seeking to colonize Missouri when Joseph Smith's New Englanders intruded into the state in sad disruptment of their plans. The sequence includes the working up of a Mexican War, the annexation of Texas, the driving through to the West Coast, the ex- pulsion of the "Mormons" from Missouri, the following of them through into Iillinois, the rush of Boggs to precede them to California, as soon as he could organize after the martyrdom of the Prophet, and — final act in the Far Western pro-slave drama — the sending of Johnston's Army to seat a Southern governor in the Utah gubernator- ial chair. This was Slavery's last powerful gesture; only "Bleeding Kansas," John Brown's raid, and Sumpter remained before the final rupture. Historians like to tell how Brigham Young faced President Buchannan down and "defeated" him in the "Utah rebellion." But they have not measured the sequence here given in their narratives. For before President Buchannan made peace with Brigham Young, over the issue of Johnston's Army, he made war upon his own cabinet He drove forth from it, for instance, Secretary of War Floyd, and a very few hours ahead of court martial charges for treason, and he officially erased Floyd's name from the camp in Utah where Johnston's Army had made its permanent headquarters. Buchannan was a Pennsylvania Irishman who ended pro-slave days in Washington when he scourged the pro-slave members of his Cabinet out of it, made peace with Brigham Young, and aimed National affairs towards the destiny through which Lincoln carried it to victory, while Brigham Young backed him with men and arms and all the help it was possible for a Utah governor to give. It is now necessary to start at the very beginning of this trail and there, curiously enough, we find Andrew Jackson and Joseph Smith. The economic situation through which both of these great leaders played their parts contains the key to all that followed on the Slavery issue. The British warships were at the seat of the issue. England declared against the Slave Trade and ordered her men of war to seize slave ships and liberate enslaved persons. But slavery flourished in the United States, and this act of Eng- land's suddenly threw the market from a foreign to a domestic one. The slave auction blocks were up and down the Mississippi river. But Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky were the great breeding states. JOSEPH SMITH— AND THE GREAT WEST 1041 Market there must be — a constantly expanding market, or the slaves of the breeding states would overbreed their sales possibilities. To keep the price up the pro-slave leaders of the South saw, as early as 1820, that new territory must be annexed to America — and must be pro-slave in character when it was annexed. In this year, 1820, the Missouri Compromise act was passed. It left Missouri to become a pro-slave state unless its people should other- wise decree. But the Mason-Dixon line was also drawn, and who would it pocket up? The people of New England thought it would pocket up the South in the tight little corner then inhabited. But the people of the South determined it should pocket up New England in its own tight little corner of America where they jeered that the thrifty Yankees, "kept the holy day and everything else they could get their hands on." How would the South see thar New Eng- land was held in its own little pocket? By seeing to it that the South pushed through to the West Coast, and on down through Texas to the Rio Grande. Also that the South settle the middle-west, to the exclusion of Yankees in Missouri and even in Illinois as fully as it was possible to keep them out. The first fruit of this policy, it happens, brought Joseph Smith into the picture, although he was not then an active participant. After Andrew Jackson and his friends had decided that the breeding states must have a larger slave market, the first territory that seemed available was the tract that had been ceded by Virginia to the United States government, and known at first as the Northwest Territory. Its chief settlement was then at Vincennes. in the Wabash valley, and from Vincennes the present five states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan were governed. William Henry Harrison of "Tippecanoe-and-Tyler-Too" fame, was the Governor, and I have visited his home in Vincennes where elaborate kitchens and bed rooms for the slaves made up the basement floor, and I saw there the still remaining layers of mud and willows between the ceiling rafters so that the slaves below would not hear the secrets discussed in the Governor's council room above. As Kentuckians poured over into the Northwest Territory and thus arroused the Indian leader Tecumseh to battle, they found a little trick had been played upon them. For Massachusetts, even at that early date, had been trying to pocket up the pro-slave territory, and Congressman Nathan Dane of Massachusetts had slipped a little line into the deed of acceptance which few had noted at the time. Twenty years later it was to prove a thorn in the side of Southern flesh. Nathan Dane's little line was that "The states to be made from the Northwest territory shall be free-state territory." The fertile valleys of the Northwest territory lured the slave holders but they had forgotten the trick clause slipped by a Massa- chusetts congressman into the territory's organic act. Thus distinguished citizens of Kentucky and Virginia began to 1042 IMPROVEMENT ERA pour down into the Wabash valley at the time of the Missouri Com- promise, bringing many slaves with them. They were already, in 1820, counting the nine states that could be made up out of Texas, if it could be annexed, and the way these nine states would overwhelm New England's power in Congress, through giving the South a larger representation. They were also counting the advantages of pushing on to the West Coast and carving one pro-slave state after another out of the Far West to hold down New England's power. But we all know it was not American destiny to have events take this course. Joseph Smith wanted to go to the Far West for another reason than to carve slave states out of it. He saw England covetously landing marines and arms on the Columbia, and establishing English outposts even in our own Ogden valley, to watch the South Pass Gate- way to the coast. He wanted to go West — and in that desire pointed the real path of American destiny. But in the meanwhile, the issue took concrete form in the valley of the Wabash. Uncle Sam owned the valley that Paul Dresser made famous in his immortal song. And Uncle Sam had soldiers from the War of 1812 who might be paid with land grants. The Congress of the United States opened a Land Office in Washington, and, in June 1816, issued Land Warrant Number 1. The important thing about this warrant, for the purposes here under consideration was that it was granted to a citizen of New York state. His name was Abraham Markle. To take up his land grant, he embarked on the Allegheny river, floated down to the Ohio, and down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash. Up this stream he poled his two ratts until he came to Governor General Harrison's famous mansion. But he found no welcome there. He poled on up the river 40 miles. "Damnedyankee" was already known as one word in that country, and the future wife of Jefferson Davis was playing around the Harrison home . "Old Zachary" Taylor himself was a hero of the country, and had lived in the Harrison house before going forth on the career that made him the second American president to emerge from its front door. Abraham Markle, the New York miller, with the papers for Land Grant No. 1 in his pocket, poled on up the river to the ruins of a fort built by America's ninth president, in fear, of a battle which actually had been fought there by the man who afterwards became America's twelfth president. Markel stopped at these ruins of old Fort Harrison and built a flouring mill. Other Northerners followed him down the Ohio, and found a scant welcome at Vincennes, where many Southerners had followed William Tecumseh Harrison and Zacb- ery Taylor up the Mississippi from the South. The Northerners poled on up to Markel's mill, where they founded Terre Haute. In the early twenties, when they had barely got a town hall built, a stranger came into their midst, a Northerner like themselves, who was to draw the first fire, perhaps, of the Slavery Issue. This stranger was John W. Osborne. He was an editor, and he arrived in a cart with a JOSEPH SMITH— AND THE GREAT WEST 1043 printing press and a very dirty outfit of clothes. He told a weird tale, the significance of which could not be gleaned for another half century, any more than the significance of a Missouri writ holder seeking Joseph Smith's person could be so gleaned at the time it happened. The tale John W. Osborne told was that he found the. citizens of Vincennes indulging in the open sale of slaves over the Kentucky border, although the clause Congressman Nathan Dane of Massachusetts had put into the Northwest Territory enabling act, provided that this should be Free State territory. Osborne had duly protested in his paper, which he had established in Vincennes — the Western Star. And the Kentucky folks he had addressed, instead of thanking him for pointing out the law, had mobbed his office and smashed up his paper. They had warned him to get out of town. He had taken the warning and had departed for Terre Haute. But the ruffians had followed him and at a lonely point on the road had tipped his cart over, further harming his printing press. And here he was — all ready again to open up in the Abolitionist cause! The people of Terre Haute wanted to get on with the folks at Vincennes and restrained him. But two intinerant preachers came to town and these served as an outlet for his scrivening talents. These preachers were Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon. They spoke in Terre Haute's new town hall and John W. Osborne, a persecuted, mobbed and driven editor of a once-suppressed abolitionist paper, printed the story of their sermons! These sermons of Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon in Terre Haute were only two of many that elders of the Church made in that city. But what is here significant is that these sermons were preached at the beginning of the persecution of the Saints. This was just the time, too, when Joseph Smith made his famous prophecy concerning a war to commence in South Carolina: "For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States. * * * And it shall come to pass, after many days slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshalled and disciplined for war." We know now that the issue of Slavery had been acute in Vir- ginia and Massachusetts from the beginning of the nineteenth century, and that it had already reached a point of mobocratic action at the time Joseph Smith prophecied concerning the dire consequences sure to come from this issue. Thus the prophet spoke to the issues of his times, here as else- where, for it is well known that many of his prophecies followed prayers to the Lord for light on some issue deeply stirring him. Indeed, the prophet said as much, in 1843, when he declared to the Saints at Ramus, near Nauvoo: "I prophecy in the name of the Lord God, that the commencement of the difficulties which will cause much bloodshed previous to the coming of the Son of Man will be in 1044 IMPROVEMENT ERA South Carolina. It may probably arise through the slave question. This a voice declared to me while I was praying very earnestly on the subject, December 25, 1832." From the destruction of the Western Star, printed by Editor Os- borne, at Vincennes, it was only a simple step and a simple gesture to the destruction of the Evening and Morning Star, at Independence, Mo. The Evening and Morning Star was published by the Saints as their first organ. When it was destroyed by a mob on July 20, 1833, Bishop Edward Partridge was treated to a coat of tar and feathers. Thus began for the Saints a bitter period of persecution and pillage. How the hatreds which brought this about and dominated policies to- wards the Saints, had their beginnings in the first Southern attempt to escape the rigors of the Mason-Dixon line through expansion into Texas, in 1822, will be the subject of the next succeeding chapter. In it we shall trace more false charges brought against the inhabitants of Texas to justify the pro-slave invasion of that territory than were brought against the Saints in Missouri. And we shall see how there germinated here the ambition both to take Texas and then rush on clear across the continent to California. REFERENCES 1. Senator Thomas H. Benton of Missouri says in his Thirty Years in the U. S. Senate, (vol. 2, pp. 150) that "the most angry and portentious debate which had y^et taken place in Congress, occurred over the introduction by Congressman William Slade of Vermont of a resolution on slavery." Senator Benton described how the pro- Slave congressmen left the House in a tumultuous uproar. 2. The St. Louis. Mo., News, in commenting on the arrest of the "Mormon" leaders in Missouri, said: "Although many of the 'Mormons' deserve hanging, as an atone- ment for their criminal proceedings and corrupt intentions, they are trulv objects of charity. But if this intrinsically vagrant race would relieve themselves from the humiliating necessity of asking charity, they should mind their own business, abandon abolition, and apply themselves to hard labor." In marked contrast to this pro-Slave paper, the New York Sun said: "Captain Bogart must be very much like a blackguard and a coward if he is not a candidate for both titles. He is one of those who started the horrible stories of the cutting up of the Missourians. fifty at a batch, by the 'Mormons.' They must have a primitive mode of administering justice in Missouri. The Emperor of Russia, the Shah of Persia, or the Sultan of Turkey, could not embrace in his own person more legislative, judicial and executive power than is here assumed." In Boston, home of obolition, the Atlas printed a letter from its own investigator which warmly took the "Mormon" side and declared their persecutors "were refute Kcntuckians and Tcnnesseeans, intermixed with Virginians of the same caste, in whon the vice of sectional pride, which marks these people, and a prejudice against all others, especially those belonging to the free states, whom they indiscriminately brand as Yankees — is exaggerated in the highest pitch. Such persons, if they could do it, would incorporate in the Constitution of Missouri, a provision lo prohibit emigrating thither of anybody not belonging to their own kith and kin." 3. Rise and Fait of Nauvoo, by B. H. Roberts, pp. 2 2 2. 4. The Gazeteer of Missouri, for 183 7, gives this one and only cause for the expulsion (page 93) : "The measure, although a strong and violent one, was fully justified and indispensable in consequence of the impertinent and mischievous inter- ference of the 'Mormons' with the slaves of the country. Their threatened association with the neighboring tribes of Indians was a serious subject of alarm." JOSEPH SMITH — AND THE GREAT WEST 1045 5. William Jay, Review of the Mexican War, Boston, 1849. 6. I. K. Russell, Old Vigo, Hero of Terre Haut, Vincennes and Vigo County, Terre Haute, 192 5. 7. Markle Manuscript, in Emmeline Fairbanks' Memorial Library, Terre Haute, Indiana. 8. Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, by B. H. Roberts, pp. 189. My Dream I awoke in a garden of Heaven, From a slumber as deep as the grave; And its marvelous beauties o'er- whelmed me Like a soothing iridescent wave. Near at hand, stood the Keeper < f Gardens. He was aged, and kindly, and wise; And he told me the tale of the garden, As its glories appeared to my eyes: "See yon oaks in the distance, out-spreading, Fitting symbol of strength without end? They are formed from the faith of the fathers. Staunch and true as the heart of a friend. "And the vine on the wall, thick and verdant? 'T is the chanty lavished Below On the weaklings, the erring, the fallen, Would that more of such verdure might grow' "These fair lilies — the love of a virgin, Pure and fresh as the breath of the dawn; And these roses- — a mother's devotion, Tempest-tossed, still they bravely bloom on!" Thus he spake, as we passed through the garden, And my heart flamed with joy at the thought That no impulse for good e'er is wasted, 'T is the seed from which beauty is wrought. Then we came to the heart of the garden, Where a fountain eternally played; And a rose-vine twined o'er the white marble, By the crystal-clear stream ever sprayed; It was laden with buds just unfolding, Creamy-white, and bejeweled with dew, With a fragrance as sweet and enchanting As their beauty was charming to view. As I turned to the Keeper of Gardens, With a wonderful softness he smiled, And he murmured, "Each blossom before you Is the first lisping prayer of a child!" Pinedate, Arizona ESTELLE WEBB THOMAS.