For the accommodation of the people he proposed the establishment of a national bank, with branches in each State, the directors thereof to be elected yearly by the people; and the profits arising from the business to be used as revenue, in defraying the expenses of government, the profits from the branch banks, being used in the respective States where they existed; and those arising from the parent institution by the general government; and reduce taxation to the extent of the net profits of these institutions. In the light of the experience he and the Latter-day Saints had passed through in Missouri, he advocated the idea of giving the president full power to send an army to suppress mobs, "and appealed to the States to repeal that relic of folly," which made it necessary for the governor of a State to make a demand of the president for troops in case of invasion or rebellion. "The governor himself," he goes on to say, "may be a mobber; and instead of being punished, as he should be, for murder or treason, he may destroy the very lives, rights and property he should protect." He favored the annexation of Texas, and the extension of the authority of the United States over contiguous territory on the west, and said: When a neighboring realm petitioned to join the Union of the Sons of Liberty, my voice would be, _come_--yea, come Texas, come Mexico, come Canada, and come all the world; let us be brethren, let us be one great family, and let there be a universal peace. [4] On the seventeenth of June, 1844, a State convention was held at Nauvoo, which ratified the views of Joseph on the "Powers and Policy of the Government," passed a series of resolutions inviting all men of all parties to assist in the work of reforming the government, and in a formal manner putting in nomination General Joseph Smith for President of the United States, and Sidney Rigdon for vice-president. James Arlington Bennett, of New York, was asked to take the second place on the ticket first; but, he being of foreign birth, was not eligible. Then the position was offered to Colonel Solomon Copeland, but for some reason he did not accept; so the next choice was Sidney Rigdon, who by that time had removed from Nauvoo to Pennsylvania. Arrangements were entered into, to hold a national convention in New York on the thirteenth of July following, and preparations were made for an active campaign in favor of the Prophet-nominee; but before the time for the national convention had arrived, the standard bearer of the new party of reform, Jeffersonian Democracy, [5] free trade and sailors' rights, fell pierced by assassins' bullets--the victim of a cruel mob.