Notwithstanding his release, Smith thought it best to remain in hiding for some time to escape another arrest, for which the governor ordered a reward of $200. About the middle of August his associates in Nauvoo concluded that the outlook for him was so bad, notwithstanding the protection which his city court was ready to afford, that it might be best for him to flee to the pine woods of the North country. Smith incorporates in his autobiography a long letter which he wrote to his wife at this time,* giving her directions about this flight if it should become necessary. Their goods were to be loaded on a boat manned by twenty of the best men who could be selected, and who would meet them at Prairie du Chien: "And from thence we will wend our way like larks up the Mississippi, until the towering mountains and rocks shall remind us of the places of our nativity, and shall look like safety and home; and there we will bid defiance to Carlin, Boggs, Bennett, and all their whorish whores and motley clan, that follow in their wake, Missouri not excepted, and until the damnation of Hell rolls upon them by the voice and dread thunders and trump of the eternal God." * Ibid., pp. 693-695. In October Rigdon obtained from Justin Butterfield, United States attorney for Illinois, an opinion that Smith could not be held on a Missouri requisition for a crime committed in that state when he was in Illinois. In December, 1842, Smith was placed under arrest and taken before the United States District Court at Springfield, Illinois, under a writ of habeas corpus issued by Judge Roger B. Taney of the State Supreme Court. Butterfield, as his counsel, secured his discharge by Judge Pope (a Whig) who held that Smith was not a fugitive from Missouri. While these proceedings were pending, the Nauvoo City Council (Smith was then mayor), passed two ordinances in regard to the habeas corpus powers of the Municipal Court, one giving that court jurisdiction in any case where a person "shall be or stand committed or detained for any criminal, or supposed criminal, matter."* This was intended to make Smith secure from the clutches of any Missouri officer so long as he was in his own city. * For text of these ordinances, see millennial Star, Vol. XX, p. 165.