Part 29 (1/2)
CHAPTER I. -- THE RECEPTION OF THE MORMONS
The state of Illinois, when the Mormons crossed the Missouri River to settle in it, might still be considered a pioneer country. Iowa, to the west of it, was a territory, and only recently organized as such. The population of the whole state was only 467,183 in 1840, as compared with 4,821,550 in 1900. Young as it was, however, the state had had some severe financial experiences, which might have served as warnings to the new-comers. A debt of more than $14,000,000 had been contracted for state improvements, and not a railroad or a ca.n.a.l had been completed.
”The people,” says Ford, ”looked one way and another with surprise, and were astonished at their own folly.” The payment of interest on the state debt ceased after July, 1841, and ”in a short time Illinois became a stench in the nostrils of the civilized world.... The impossibility of selling kept us from losing population; the fear of disgrace or high taxes prevented us from gaining materially.”* The State Bank and the Shawneetown Bank failed in 1842, and when Ford became governor in that year he estimated that the good money in the state in the hands of the people did not exceed one year's interest on the public debt.
* Ford's ”History of Illinois,” Chap. VII.
The lawless conditions in many parts of the state in those days can scarcely be realized now. It was in 1847 that the Rev. Owen Lovejoy (handwritten comment in the book says ”Elijah P. Lovejoy.” Transcriber) was killed at Alton in maintaining his right to print there an abolition newspaper. All over the state, settlers who had occupied lands as ”squatters” defended their claims by force, and serious mobs often resulted. Large areas of military lands were owned by non-residents, who were in very bad favor with the actual settlers. These settlers made free use of the timber on such lands, and the non-residents, failing to secure justice at law, finally hired preachers, who were paid by the sermon to preach against the sin of ”hooking” timber.*
* Ford's ”History of Illinois,” Chap. VI.
Bands of desperadoes in the northern counties openly defied the officers of the law, and, in one instance, burned down the courthouse (in Ogle County in 1841) in order to release some of their fellows who were awaiting trial. One of these gangs ten years earlier had actually built, in Pope County, a fort in which they defied the authorities, and against which a piece of artillery had to be brought before it could be taken.
Even while the conflict between the Mormons was going on, in 1846, there was vitality enough in this old organization, in Pope and Ma.s.sac counties, to call for the interposition of a band of ”regulators,” who made many arrests, not hesitating to employ torture to secure from one prisoner information about his a.s.sociates. Governor Ford sent General J. T. Davies there, to try to effect a peaceable arrangement of the difficulties, but he failed to do so, and the ”regulators,” who found the county officers opposed to them, drove out of the county the sheriff, the county clerk, and the representative elect to the legislature. When the judge of the Ma.s.sac Circuit Court charged the grand jury strongly against the ”regulators,” they, with sympathizers from Kentucky, threatened to lynch him, and actually marched in such force to the county seat that the sheriff's posse surrendered, and the mob let their friends out of jail, and drowned some members of the posse in the Ohio River.
The reception and treatment of the Mormons in Illinois, and the success of the new-comers in carrying out their business and political schemes, must be viewed in connection with these incidents in the early history of the state.
The greeting of the Mormons in Illinois, in its practical shape, had both a political and a business reason.* Party feeling ran very high throughout the country in those days. The House of Representatives at Was.h.i.+ngton, after very great excitement, organized early in December, 1839, by choosing a Whig Speaker, and at the same time the Whig National Convention, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, nominated General W. H.
Harrison for President. Thus the expulsion from Missouri occurred on the eve of one of our most exciting presidential campaigns, and the Illinois politicians were quick to appraise the value of the voting strength of the immigrants. As a residence of six months in the state gave a man the right to vote, the Mormon vote would count in the presidential election.
* ”The first great error committed by the people of Hanc.o.c.k County was in accepting too readily the Mormon story of persecution.
It was continually rung in their ears, and believed as often as a.s.serted.”--Gregg, ”History of Hanc.o.c.k County,” p. 270.
Accordingly, we find that in February, 1839, the Democratic a.s.sociation of Quincy, at a public meeting in the court-house, received a report from a committee previously appointed, strongly in favor of the refugees, and adopted resolutions condemning the treatment of the Mormons by the people and officers of Missouri. The Quincy Argus declared that, because of this treatment, Missouri was ”now so fallen that we could wish her star stricken out from the bright constellation of the Union.” In April, 1839, Rigdon wrote to the ”Saints in prison”
that Governor Carlin of Illinois and his wife ”enter with all the enthusiasm of their nature” into his plan to have the governor of each state present to Congress the unconst.i.tutional course of Missouri toward the Mormons, with a view to federal relief. Governor Lucas of Iowa Territory, in the same year (Iowa had only been organized as a territory the year before, and was not admitted as a state until 1845), replying to a query about the reception the Mormons would receive in his domain, said: ”Their religious opinions I consider have nothing to do with our political transactions. They are citizens of the United States, and are ent.i.tled to the same political rights and legal protection that other citizens are ent.i.tled to.” He gave Rigdon at the same time cordial letters of introduction to President Van Buren and Governor Shannon of Ohio, and Rigdon received a similar letter to the President, recommending him ”as a man of piety and a valuable citizen,” signed by Governor Carlin, United States Senator Young, County Clerk Wren, and leading business men of Quincy. Thus began that recognition of the Mormons as a political power in Illinois which led to concessions to them that had so much to do with finally driving them into the wilderness.
The business reason for the welcome of the Mormons in Illinois and Iowa was the natural ambition to secure an increase of population. In all of Hanc.o.c.k County there were in 1830 only 483 inhabitants as compared with 32,215 in 1900. Along with this public view of the matter was a private one. A Dr. Isaac Galland owned (or claimed t.i.tle to) a large tract of land on both sides of the border line between Illinois and Iowa, that in Iowa being included in what was known as ”the half-breed tract,” an area of some 119,000 acres which, by a treaty between the United States government and the Sacs and Foxes, was reserved to descendants of Indian women of those tribes by white fathers, and the t.i.tle to much of which was in dispute. As soon as the Mormons began to cross into Illinois, Galland approached them with an offer of about 20,000 acres between the Mississippi and Des Moines rivers at $2 per acre, to be paid in twenty annual instalments, without interest. A meeting of the refugees was held in Quincy in February, 1839, to consider this offer, but the vote was against it. The failure of the efforts in Ohio and Missouri to establish the Mormons as a distinct community had made many of Smith's followers sceptical about the success of any new scheme with this end in view, and at this conference several members, including so influential a man as Bishop Partridge, openly expressed their doubt about the wisdom of another gathering of the Saints. Galland, however, pursued the subject in a letter to D. W. Rodgers, inviting Rigdon and others to inspect the tract with him, and a.s.suring the Mormons of his sympathy in their sufferings, and ”deep solicitude for your future triumphant conquest over every enemy.” Rigdon, Partridge, and others accepted Galland's invitation, but reported against purchasing his land, and the refugees began scattering over the country around Quincy.
CHAPTER II. -- THE SETTLEMENT OF NAUVOO
Smith's leaders.h.i.+p was now to have another ill.u.s.tration. Others might be discouraged by past persecutions and business failures, and be ready to abandon the great scheme which the prophet had so often laid before them in the language of ”revelation”; but it was no part of Smith's character to abandon that scheme, and remain simply an object of lessened respect, with a scattered congregation. He had been kept advised of Galland's proposal, and, two days after his arrival in Quincy, we find him, on April 24, presiding at a church council which voted to instruct him with two a.s.sociates to visit Iowa and select there a location for a church settlement, and which advised all the brethren who could do so to move to the town of Commerce, Illinois. Thus were the doubters defeated, and the proposal to scatter the flock brought to a sudden end. Smith and his two a.s.sociates set out at once to make their inspection.
The town of Commerce had been laid out (on paper) in 1834 by two Eastern owners of the property, A. White and J. B. Teas, and adjoining its northern border H. R. Hotchkiss of New Haven, Connecticut, had mapped out Commerce City. Neither enterprise had proved a success, and when the Mormon agents arrived there the place had scarcely attained the dignity of a settlement, the only buildings being one storehouse, two frame dwellings and two blockhouses. The Mormon agents, on May 1, bought two farms there, one for $5000 and one for $9000 (known afterward as the White purchase), and on August 9 they bought of Hotchkiss five hundred acres for the sum of $53,500. Bishop Knight, for the church, soon afterward purchased part of the town of Keokuk, Iowa, a town called Nashville six miles above, a part of the town of Montrose, four miles above Nashville, and thirty thousand acres in the ”half-breed tract,”
which included Galland's original offer, and ten thousand acres additional.
Thus was Smith prepared to make another attempt to establish his followers in a permanent abiding-place. But how, it may be asked, could the prophet reconcile this abandonment of the Missouri Zion and this new site for a church settlement with previous revelations? By further ”revelation,” of course. Such a mouthpiece of G.o.d can always enlighten his followers provided he can find speech, and Smith was not slow of utterance. While in jail in Liberty he had advised a committee which was sent to him from Illinois to sell all the lands in Missouri, and in a letter to the Saints, written while a prisoner, he spoke favorably of Galland's offer, saying, ”The Saints ought to lay hold of every door that shall seem to be opened unto them to obtain foothold on the earth.”
In order to make perfectly clear the new purpose of the Lord in regard to Zion he gave out a long ”revelation” (Sec. 124), which is dated Nauvoo, January 19, 1841, and which contains the following declarations:--
”Verily, verily I say unto you, that when I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work under my name, and those sons of men go with all their might and with all they have, to perform that work and cease not their diligence, and their enemies come upon them and hinder them from performing that work, behold, it behooveth me to require that work no more at the hands of those sons of men, but to accept their offerings.