The Joseph Smith Papers. Documents, Vol. 8, February-November 1841. Edited by Brent M. Rogers, Mason K. Allred, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Brett D. Dowdle. (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2019). 544 pages. Index. Illustrations. ISBN: 978-1-62972-570-3. $54.99 (Amazon)

I have a nearly complete set of volumes thus-far-published in the Joseph Smith Papers series. Quite a few have been review copies, kindly given and gratefully received; others I have purchased myself because they’re that valuable to me. You might guess at the value I place on them by seeing that they have their own shelf – soon to expand to a second shelf, somehow – when most of my books have to be content with living in heaps and stacks. I spend quite a bit of time with them, too. Although I have yet to read any volume from beginning to end, I dip in and out, reading a document here and there. It’s a time period that I’m no more familiar with than any random member of your ward, so I’m always looking for something I can link to some person or event I already know, trying to expand my understanding of those early years of our history as a people.

I confess that it’s difficult for me to write reviews for the Keepa audience, too. I like to tell stories, but the plots of these books change with every document. The cast of characters is very broad. If you’re interested in the archival minutiae of the notes and editorial apparatus, you’re going to use these books regardless of anything I write here. So I stall, and my promised reviews are late, and I struggle with what to write.

This time, instead of apologizing for my scattershot reading and my lack of academic sophistication in writing about the book as a whole, I’m inviting you to come with me as I look at a few documents. I have a sneaking feeling that most Keepa readers, if presented with this volume and a couple of hours to explore, would do much as I do – check the index for familiar names, turn through the pages until something caught your eye, and then be drawn into the document you landed on.

pp. 143-146: Joseph Smith, Letter to Editors of Times and Seasons, Nauvoo, 6 May 1841

Joseph Smith wrote about the visit four days earlier of Stephen A. Douglas and Cyrus Walker to Nauvoo. Both men were lawyers/judges probably visiting the Hancock County courts. I don’t find in the notes whether this was the first meeting between Joseph Smith and Stephen A. Douglas, but it wouldn’t be the last: Just over two years later (18 May 1843), the two would dine together, and Joseph Smith would tell Judge Douglas that he, Douglas, would one day aspire to the presidency of the United States, but that his ambition would fail if he turned against the Saints. If you and I have heard anything about Stephen A. Douglas before, that prophesy is no doubt what we have heard.

The 1841 visit, though was Judge Douglas’s first visit to Nauvoo. The men walked through Nauvoo; Joseph introduced his guests to an outdoor congregation – probably assembled at “the grove” where large meetings took place, because there was no building in Nauvoo where such large groups could meet. The guests spoke briefly to the congregation, and it sounds like the sort of speech you would expect in the circumstances: Judge Douglas was pleased to be there, modestly said he wasn’t aware of anything he had done to merit the attention, “and likewise spoke in high terms of our location and the improvements we had made, and that our enterprise and industry were highly creditable to us indeed.”

This reminds me of the many “visitors to Deseret” who published accounts of what they saw, in later years, in Salt Lake City. Friend or foe, visitors almost always spoke favorably of the hard work the Saints had invested in building a new city in the wilderness.

Lawyer Walker made similar remarks when he was introduced to the audience.

Probably Joseph Smith would have been as welcoming a host to any notable visitors who came to Nauvoo with good intentions. He probably didn’t write letters to the newspaper to document every such visit, though. This time he did – why? I suspect this paragraph tells us why:

How different their conduct, from that of the official characters in the state of Missouri, whose minds were prejudiced to such an extent, that instead of mingling in our midst and ascertaining for themselves our character, kept entirely aloof, but were ready at all times to listen to those who had the “poison of adders under their tongues,” [Psalm 140:1-3] and who sought our overthrow.

Let every person who may have imbibed sentiments prejudicial to us, imitate the honorable example of our distinguished visitors, (Douglass & Walker) and I believe they will find much less to condemn than they anticipated, and probably a great deal to commend.

That’s a sentiment voiced by Brigham Young and other later leaders: “Come and see us before you judge.” I hadn’t realized it started with Joseph Smith.

–oooOooo–

pp. 376-381, Joseph Smith’s Affidavit, 29 November 1841, regarding Mormon theft

Okay, this is a harder one. I suppose we’d all like to believe that those we identify with, including early Church members, had only minor flaws, not the gross sins and lawlessness that we prefer to leave to our early-day persecutors. Even when we theoretically prefer “warts and all” history, those warts aren’t always easy.

My family lived in Jackson County, Missouri when I was in high school, and I took my Seminary year on Church history by home study. We were provided with books and whole file boxes of great materials, and my family took weekend field trips to Adam-ondi-Ahman, Liberty, Richmond, Nauvoo, Carthage. It was the perfect setting to explore Church history.

Perhaps the most valuable paragraph I read in those materials, though, was something about how the Saints had irritated their neighbors with boasts that God had given them that land, and they would one day possess all their neighbors had. It’s hard to explain how hard that idea hit me, and how thrilled I was to read it, without even having been aware that I needed to read it. It wasn’t that knowing the Saints had even a small part of the blame for their own difficulties through their boasting and undiplomatic conduct that thrilled me – I didn’t like that at all. But suddenly those early Saints popped out of their idyllic glow of hagiography into three-dimensional reality. They were people, in every way like me, with serious flaws and bad tempers and arrogance. That didn’t justify their being driven from the state, but it made them real, knowable people in my eyes, and I’ve never stopped loving that.

So while it isn’t exactly pleasant reading, this 1841 affidavit and the editorial materials provided with it are a replay of that Seminary paragraph about the Missouri Saints. The background materials trace the claims made by both Mormons and non-Mormons in the Nauvoo region that Latter-day Saints were guilty of repeated acts of thievery, justifying themselves by an 1831 revelation using the language of Isaiah that God would “consecrate the riches of the Gentiles unto my people which are of the house of Israel.” The commentary in this leaves little doubt that a number of Latter-day Saints were in fact guilty of theft

Joseph Smith acknowledged their guilt in this affidavit, made for newspaper publication, with the primary purpose of refuting widespread claims that he, Joseph Smith, approved of such crimes.

It has been proclaimed upon the house-top and in the secret chamber, in the public walks and private circle, throughout the length and breadth of this vast continent, that stealing by the Latter Day Saints has received my approval; nay, that I have taught the doctrine, encouraged them in plunder, and led on the van – than which nothing is more foreign from my heart.

He called such thieves “devils and not saints” and said he did not hold such persons in fellowship.

All are not Israel that are of Israel; and I wish it to be distinctly understood in all coming time, that the church over which I have the honor of presiding will ever set its brows like brass, and its face like steel, against all such abominable acts of villany and crime.

I was unaware of the extent of Mormon crime – and likewise unaware of this strong and unequivocal condemnation of such acts. These are the kinds of stories and insights I commonly find even while casually leafing through many of these Joseph Smith Papers volumes.

–oooOooo–

pp. 167-180, Letter from Elder Orson Hyde, 15 June 1841

Have I ever said how much I love historical correspondence? There’s something so immediate about it, so personal, that old letters draw me right into the world of the writer. This letter from Orson Hyde when he served as a missionary in England, en route, eventually, to the Holy Land, was written to Joseph Smith. It was intended for publication in the Times and Seasons so is perhaps not so private and personal as the best correspondence, but it is wonderful.

Hyde notes that he has received a recent issue of the Times and Seasons and writes, with perhaps a touch of homesickness, what reading the home news meant to him:

I have just seen the 12th Nol of the Times and Seasons, containing the minutes of your conference – the report of the presidency – the celebration of the anniversary of the church; and the laying of the foundation of the Temple. This, to me, was a precious gem. It brought tidings from my own country; and from the place rendered doubly endearing from the fact that there is the home of my wife and children.

He reports that he has written a book to be published in German – Did Hyde write German? or does he mean that he has written his book with the German temperament in mind and intends to have it translated? This is not clear to me. He summarizes some of the content and transcribes a section from his introduction for his Nauvoo readers. That introduction echoes language from the American Declaration of Independence, which might have resonated well with the revolutionary spirit raging in Europe during the 1840s:

When in the course of Divine Providence, it becomes our duty to record one of those remarkable events which gives birth to a new era, and lays the foundation for the renovation of the moral world, it fills the mind with wonder, astonishment, and admiration …

Much of Hyde’s letter concerns his specific calling and mission to the Jews. He has tried to arrange an interview with the chief Rabbi of England, but that gentleman had recently broken his leg and was not receiving visitors. So Hyde wrote a letter to the Rabbi, and copied that letter into his own epistle to Nauvoo. This embedded letter is a very long one, and makes it clear in a way I had not previously understood just what Hyde’s mission to the Holy Land meant to him. He introduces the Rabbi to Joseph Smith not by speaking at length of Jesus Christ or even by naming the Church or its prophet, but by emphasizing the role of the prophets of Israel and Hyde’s understanding of Israel’s future. There is a lot more here than I ever realized.

-oooOooo–

This, I hope, gives you some idea of how I read these volumes and why I enjoy them – While I’m sure a careful page-by-page reading would reveal understandings that are not evident to my here-and-there dipping into the volume, my way of using the Joseph Smith Papers publications gives me access to history in small pieces, and personal engagement with primary documents.

I’ve read a lot of history – a lot – and sometimes it can be difficult to remember the sense of wonder that I used to feel when everything is new. Reading, or even sampling, history this way, from a barely-familiar era and through documents that have never before been seen as of such importance that they are featured in Church classes, rekindles that sense of historical wonder.

I think Keepa readers might enjoy these volumes in the same way I do, without feeling the necessity of reading every page.