He stopped and grinned a little sheepishly. “As you can tell, Mr. Calhoun’s brief note has got me considerably exercised.”
“Rightly so,” Brigham said. “Rightly so.”
Joseph sobered again. “Well, I will tell you this much. We have petitioned the executive branch, we have petitioned the Congress, we have sought redress in the courts of this land, and we have received no satisfaction. In most cases, we have not even had so much as a sympathetic hearing. But I tell you, if the Latter-day Saints are not restored to all their rights and paid for all their losses, according to the known rules of justice, judgment, reciprocation, and common honesty, I say that God will come out of his hiding place and vex this nation with a sore vexation. Yea, the consuming wrath of an offended God shall smoke through the nation with much distress and woe.”
A hush had now fallen over the room and every eye was on Joseph, whose eyes were blazing. “I will go further. I will go so far as to prophesy, by virtue of the holy priesthood vested in me and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that if Congress will not hear our petitions, they shall someday be broken up as a government.”
“My goodness, Joseph,” Emma said a moment later as she pushed through the hushed crowd to stand by his side. “What have you done to get all these people so serious?”
He smiled and slipped an arm through hers. “Brigham and John got me talking politics,” he said apologetically. “They should know better than that. But I shall desist now and—”
At that moment, there was a noise behind them, in the hallway that led to the front door of the Mansion House. “I beg your pardon, sir,” a man’s voice said loudly, “but this is a private party.”
There was a scuffling noise, and a gruff voice shouted, “Let me pass!”
Jonathan Dunham, a colonel in the Nauvoo Legion and also one of Joseph’s personal guards, hastily set his glass down and started pushing through the crowd toward the door. Joseph followed, the crowd falling back now to let them through.
“Sir!” The first voice sounded a little frightened now. “You can’t go in there.”
“Get outta my way!”
Suddenly into view in the hallway a man appeared. The city marshal, who had been standing watch at the door, was right behind him, grabbing at his coat, but the man shook him off easily. There was a gasp of horror from the assembled guests. The man looked like an apparition from some foul, dark place. He wore filthy buckskin breeches and shirt. There was a tattered hat, equally filthy, pulled down low over his eyes. His face was covered with a full beard, greasy and matted, leaving only dark, glittering eyes peering out from beneath the brim of the hat. What hair showed from beneath the hat was long, worn past the shoulders, and looked as though it hadn’t been washed for months. He was weaving back and forth, his mouth partly opened, a small hole in a thicket of hair.
“It’s a Missourian!” someone said, loud enough for all to hear.
“He’s drunk!” cried another.
“Put that man from my house, Mr. Dunham,” Joseph called over the heads of the people, who were shrinking back away from the intruder now as quickly as possible.
Dunham reached the hallway and blocked the man’s path. Joseph was right behind him. As Dunham reached for him, the man sidestepped him, thrust him aside, and stepped forward to stand directly in front of Joseph.
“Watch out, Joseph!” Nathan exclaimed. Beside him, Emma gave a low cry.
But Joseph needed no counsel. His hands shot out and he grabbed the man’s arms, pinning them to his side in a powerful grip. Dunham and the marshal had both recovered and were coming in behind them. But Joseph had gone rigid. He was staring at the man. It was a startling contrast. There was Joseph, face smooth and clean shaven, well dressed in a long tailored coat and neatly creased trousers, with boots that were highly polished. And facing him was this filthy apparition of a man with wild eyes, long, matted hair, and thickly tangled beard. For a long moment, they just stared at each other, and then suddenly, the intruder began to laugh. It was soft and low, but in the shocked silence, it was such a startling sound, so totally unexpected, that everyone froze.
Joseph reared back, staring even more intently at the man. Then his hands dropped away, his eyes widening in stunned surprise. “Porter?” he gasped. “Porter Rockwell?”
Chapter Notes
Joseph and Emma Smith began moving into the Mansion House on
31 August 1843. The first reception was held a few weeks later. They did hold a dinner and Christmas party there for a large number of guests on Christmas Day (see
HC
6:134–35).
The plan for the penny subscription fund was first proposed by Mercy Fielding Thompson, who said that it did come as a direct answer to her prayers. It was immediately endorsed by Joseph Smith and by Hyrum, who was by then a member of the temple building committee. Word spread quickly and the response from the sisters was immediate and consistent. Whether it was first announced at the Prophet’s Christmas party is not clear, but the letter that the two sisters Mercy and Mary wrote to encourage their sister Saints in England to participate, along with Hyrum’s accompanying endorsement, is dated
25 December 1843. (See Don Cecil Corbett,
Mary Fielding Smith: Daughter of Britain
[Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1966], pp. 155–57.)
By December 1844, one year later, they had received about five hundred dollars, or fifty thousand pennies. About that same time, when a note came due on some Church lands, the money was used to make a payment and protect the credit of the Church at a critical time. That money was replaced from other sources, and eventually the pennies donated by the women of the Church helped fund the purchase of both glass and nails for the house of the Lord. (See Corbett,
Mary Fielding Smith,
pp. 177–78.)
On 2 November 1843, in council with several members of the Twelve, Joseph discussed the idea of writing to potential candidates for the 1844 national elections. It was favorably received and two days later the letters were written. In a brief letter dated 2 December 1843, John C. Calhoun responded as here indicated. Joseph was so incensed at his answer that on 2 January 1844 he wrote a long and blistering reply. The things he says here in conversation are taken directly from that letter. (See
HC
6:155–60.)
Joseph’s prophecy about the calamities that would come upon the United States if they did not redress the Saints for the crimes committed against them in Missouri was actually given about nine months earlier than shown here (see
HC
5:394).
Orrin Porter Rockwell was released from jail in Independence, Missouri, on 13 December 1843 after Joseph raised and sent two hundred dollars with Porter’s mother to help pay for legal counsel. Warned that he might still be in danger, Porter traveled by foot and horseback night and day until he arrived in Nauvoo on Christmas Day, showing up at the party as described in this chapter. It was most likely on that same occasion that Joseph promised Rockwell that if he never cut his hair his life could not be taken. (See Richard Lloyd Dewey,
Porter Rockwell: A Biography
[New York: Paramount Books, 1986], pp. 73–77.)
Chapter 34
Four days following the Christmas party at the Mansion House, a large group of men gathered together at the behest of Mayor Joseph Smith. With the population of Nauvoo now approaching about eleven thousand souls, the city council decided that the time had come to form a city police force. Joseph had asked his trusted friend and servant Jonathan Dunham to serve as the captain of this new force and requested that he submit a list of names of those who could possibly serve.
At four o’clock on the afternoon of Friday the twenty-ninth of December, the forty men who had been selected to be on the force, along with members of the city council, assembled in the lodge room of Joseph’s store to be formally sworn into office and to receive their charge from the mayor of Nauvoo.
With mixed emotions, Benjamin Steed watched them come in. He was thrilled in a way, for here was a constabulary force that would raise their right hands and solemnly swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States, sustain the laws of the state of Illinois, and enforce the ordinances of the city of Nauvoo. Since the first days of the restored Church, the Saints in general and Joseph Smith in particular had too often been at the mercy of merciless officers of the law. With this police force, that would not happen again.
But Benjamin was saddened in a way as well. For some months now, the various wards, or districts, in the city had been asking for a police force. The population was getting too large. There were too many questionable characters coming in off the riverboats. It wasn’t safe to leave doors open any longer. Stock had been stolen. Personal property had a way of simply disappearing. Some of the rowdier youth were starting to pilfer things from stores and homes. Such things were discouraging enough; indeed, the council had been considering the move to create a police force for some time. But the thing which had finally motivated them to action was something of far graver consequence.
Porter Rockwell had brought back a very disturbing report from Missouri. He told Joseph that he had been told by a person friendly to the Church—Benjamin guessed it was Alexander Doniphan, Rockwell’s lawyer—that someone from Nauvoo was conspiring with the Missourians to betray Joseph into their hands. For years now, the Missourians had been trying to arrest Joseph and extradite him back to Jackson County for trial. This past summer they had nearly succeeded, and it had taken a group of men from the Legion to intervene or Joseph would have been gone. And everyone—Mormon and Missourian—knew that if they ever got Joseph back to Missouri, he was a dead man.
What was most alarming about Rockwell’s report was that this person (or persons) was someone in the highest councils of the Church. Joseph had shared that news with the city council two days before, and that is when they decided it was time to create the police force. Not only would they be charged with the responsibility to make the city a safer place to live, they would specifically be given the responsibility to protect the person of the mayor and prophet. It would be a great relief to Benjamin to see them sworn into office and out on the streets. Things were starting to get tense again, and he couldn’t get memories of the days prior to the fall of Far West out of his mind now.
The ceremony was simple and short. The officers were sworn in with great solemnity; then Hyrum, who was conducting, invited Joseph to address them. Joseph arose with great dignity and walked to the front of the council room. Every eye was on him, and when he reached the small desk there, he met the gaze of every man, each in turn. Then he finally nodded.
“Brethren, this is a historic day, and my heart rejoices at what I see before me. As of this afternoon, we now have forty brethren who are sworn to uphold the law and protect our city. We have called forty of you so that there will be enough to always have some on duty while the others rest. I note that we have not done as some city councils have done. You have heard the expression, ‘Set a rogue to catch a rogue.’ That is what some cities have done. They have taken thieves out of the prisons and set them up as their policemen, thinking there is some truth in that adage. This is wrong and decidedly a foolish policy.”
Benjamin watched him with open admiration. Joseph was not only a prophet of remarkable vision and spiritual power but also a wise and prudent civic leader, a man whom most of the men in the room had an unswerving loyalty toward because they loved him and knew that he loved them in return.
The men were rapt in their attention as he charged them with their duties, a charge that Benjamin suspected had not been heard in many cities across the country. He spoke of purity and integrity. He reminded them that they were to be at peace with all men, even the Missourians, so long as those men would mind their own business and leave the Saints alone. He warned them that they were not to cross over into Missouri under any circumstances, for they would be in grave danger. As proof of that, he briefly rehearsed the sufferings of Porter Rockwell and the injustices he had been forced to endure.
“And if the Missourians will not leave us alone,” he concluded, “and you are compelled to strike, you must do it with decency and order.” He counseled them to keep a strict account of the time they served as policemen, to have the ordinances of the city always in their possession so they could study and learn them. He warned them against bribery. He specifically charged them to ferret out the grogshops, the gambling houses, any brothels and to stamp them out. They were to watch for disorderly conduct, and he added, with a smile, that if anyone tried to resist them, they were to cuff that person’s ears. That brought a smile to several faces, for Joseph had been known to do that a time or two with young boys who ran afoul of the laws of the city.
Then, just as Benjamin thought he was ready to conclude, Joseph paused. Now his eyes showed grave concern. “Now, brethren, there is one more thing that I would say to you.”
The very gravity of Joseph’s voice brought everyone forward slightly in their chairs.
“You need to know that part of your responsibility will be to keep your mayor safe. And when I say that, I am sure you will think first of the Missourians or some of our enemies down in Warsaw or over in Carthage. But I tell you with all soberness, my life is more in danger from some dough head of a fool in this city than from all my numerous and inveterate enemies abroad.”
There was no sound, but suddenly the men were exchanging startled glances with one another.
“Yes,” Joseph said wearily, “I am exposed to far greater danger from traitors among ourselves than from enemies without. Even though my life has been sought for many years by the civil and military authorities, the priests, and the people of the state of Missouri, make no mistake. If I can escape from the ungrateful treachery of assassins, I can live as Caesar might have lived. But Caesar had his Brutus, and I have pretended friends ready to betray me.”