Essentials in Church History: A History of the Church from the Birth of Joseph Smith to the Present Time (1922), with Introductory Chapters on the Antiquity of the Gospel and the "Falling Away"Smith, Joseph Fielding
History
Essentials in Church History: A History of the Church from the Birth of Joseph Smith to the Present Time (1922), with Introductory Chapters on the Antiquity of the Gospel and the "Falling Away"
Smith, Joseph Fielding
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- History
Memorial to Governor Carlin
A mass meeting of the citizens of Nauvoo was held July 13, 1840, at
which a committee consisting of Isaac Galland, Robert B. Thompson,
Sidney Rigdon and Daniel H. Wells, drew up resolutions of protest
against the treatment accorded the four men who were kidnapped,
which were adopted. The citizens then memorialized Governor Carlin,
petitioning him to take steps to have released the four men who were
then held prisoners in Missouri, and have punished the perpetrators
of the crime. Daniel H. Wells and George Miller waited upon the
governor and laid the case before him. As they recited the story of
the cruelties, the governor's wife, who was present, was moved to
tears, and the governor promised to take the matter in hand. However,
his friendship for the Saints had greatly cooled and no action was
ever taken by Governor Carlin to release the prisoners, or to bring to
justice the perpetrators of the crime.
Missouri's Requisition for the Prophet
The next move on the part of Missouri was a requisition made on
Governor Carlin of Illinois, by Governor Lilburn W. Boggs, of Missouri,
in September, 1840, for Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight,
Parley P. Pratt, Caleb Baldwin and Alanson Brown, as fugitives from
justice. This came after a silence of nearly two years, and was the
outgrowth of the action taken by Congress. Governor Carlin complied
with this unnatural, illegal and absurd request. When the sheriff came
to serve his papers none of the brethren were found at home. Thus
matters rested until the summer of 1841. On the 4th day of June, 1841,
the Prophet called at the residence of Governor Carlin and had an
interview with him and was treated very kindly. A few hours after his
departure the governor sent the sheriff of Adams County, Thomas King,
with a posse, and an officer from Missouri, to arrest him and deliver
him up to the authorities of Missouri. They found the Prophet about
twenty-eight miles south of Nauvoo. Some of the posse, on discovering
the spirit of the officer from Missouri, returned to their homes in
disgust. The party returned to Quincy where the Prophet obtained a writ
of habeas corpus, and Judge Stephen A. Douglas, who providentially
happened to be in Quincy, promised to give a hearing at Monmouth,
Warren County, the following week. The news of the Prophet's arrest
soon spread and a rescuing party was formed to prevent the Prophet
being carried to Missouri, if that attempt should be made. He returned
to Nauvoo in the custody of the sheriff, whom he entertained at his own
house and waited on him, the sheriff, being sick. June 7, Sheriff King
and the Prophet, accompanied by a number of citizens from Nauvoo, left
for Monmouth, seventy-five miles distant, where the trial commenced on
the 9th, and concluded the following day. Attorney O. H. Browning, of
the defense, made an eloquent plea closing his remarks in the following
words:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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