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." 1 This was intended to make Smith secure from the clutches of any Missouri officer so long as he was in his own city.

But Smith's enemy, General Bennett (who before this date had been cast out of the fold), was now very active, and through his efforts another indictment against Smith on the old charges of treason, murder, etc., was found in Missouri, in June, 1843, and under it another demand was made on the governor of Illinois for Smith's extradition. Governor Ford, a Democrat, who had succeeded Carlin, issued a warrant on June 17, 1843, and it was served on Smith while he was visiting his wife's sister in Lee County, Illinois. An attempt to start with him at once for Missouri was prevented by his Mormon friends, who rallied in considerable numbers to his aid. Smith secured counsel, who began proceedings against the Missouri agent and obtained a writ in Smith's behalf returnable, the account in the Times and Seasons says, before the nearest competent tribunal, which "it was ascertained was at Nauvoo"-Smith's own Municipal Court. The prophet had a sort of triumphal entry into Nauvoo, and the question of the jurisdiction of the Municipal Court in his case came up at once. Both of the candidates for Congress, Walker (who was employed as his counsel) and Hoge, gave opinions in favor of such jurisdiction, and, after a three hours' plea by Walker, the court ordered Smith's release. Smith addressed the people of Nauvoo in the grove after his return. From the report of his remarks in the Journal of Discourses (Vol. II, p. 163) the following is taken:

"Before I will bear this unhallowed persecution any longer, before I will be dragged away again among my enemies for trial, I will spill the last drop of

1 For text of these ordinances, see Millennial Star, Vol. XX, p. 165.

blood in my veins, and will see all my enemies in hell. . . . Deny me the writ of habeas corpus, and I will fight with gun, sword, cannon, whirlwind, thunder, until they are used up like the Kilkenny cats. . . . If these [charter] powers are dangerous, then the constitutions of the United States and of this state are dangerous. If the Legislature has granted Nauvoo the right of determining cases of habeas corpus, it is no more than they ought to have done, or more than our fathers fought for."

Smith expressed his gratitude to Walker for what the latter had accomplished in his behalf, and the Whig candidate now had no doubt that the Mormon vote was his.

But the Missouri agent, indignant that a governor's writ should be set aside by a city court, hurried to Springfield and demanded that Governor Ford should call out enough state militia to secure Smith's arrest and delivery at the Missouri boundary. The governor, who was not a man of the firmest purpose, had no intention of being mixed up in the pending congressional fight and struggle for the Mormon vote; so he asked for delay and finally decided not to call out any troops.

The Hancock County Democrats were quick to see an opportunity in this situation, and they sent to Springfield a man named Backenstos (who took an active part in the violent scenes connected with the subsequent history of the Mormons in the state) to ascertain for the Mormons just what the governor's intentions Backenstos reported that the prophet need have no fear of the Democratic governor so long as the Mormons voted the Democratic ticket.1

were.

When this news was brought back to Nauvoo, a few days before the election, a mass meeting of the Mormons was called, and Hyrum Smith (then Patriarch, succeeding the prophet's father, who was dead) announced the receipt of a "revelation" directing the Mormons to vote for Hoge. William Law, an influential business man in the Mormon circle, immediately denied the existence of any such " revelation." The prophet alone could decide the matter. He was brought in and made a statement to the effect that he himself proposed to vote for Walker; that he considered it a mean business" to influence any man's vote by dictation, and that he had no great faith in revelations about elections; "but

66

1 Governor Ford, in his "History of Illinois," says that such a pledge was given by a prominent Democrat, but without his own knowledge.

brother Hyrum was a man of truth; he had known brother Hyrum intimately ever since he was a boy, and he had never known him to tell a lie. If brother Hyrum said he had received such a revelation, he had no doubt it was a fact. When the Lord speaks, let all the earth be silent." 1

The election resulted in the choice of Hoge by a majority of 455!

1 Ford's "History of Illinois," p. 318.

CHAPTER VI

SMITH A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED

STATES

SMITH's latest triumph over his Missouri enemies, with the feeling that he had the governor of his state back of him, increased his own and his followers' audacity. The Nauvoo Council continued to pass ordinances to protect its inhabitants from outside legal processes, civil and criminal. One of these provided that no writ issued outside of Nauvoo for the arrest of a person in that city should be executed until it had received the mayor's approval, any one violating this ordinance to be liable to imprisonment for life, with no power of pardon in the governor without the mayor's consent! The acquittal of O. P. Rockwell on the charge of the attempted assassination of Governor Boggs caused great delight among the Mormons, and their organ declared on January 1, 1844, that "throughout the whole region of country around us those bitter and acrimonious feelings, which have so long been engendered by many, are dying away."

Smith's political ideas now began to broaden. "Who shall be our next President?" was the title of an editorial in the Times and Seasons of October 1, 1843, which urged the selection of a man who would be most likely to give the Mormons help in securing redress for their grievances.

The next month Smith addressed a letter to Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, who were the leading candidates for the presidential nomination, citing the Mormons' losses and sufferings in Missouri, and their failure to obtain redress in the courts or from Congress, and asking, “What will be your rule of action relative to us as a people should fortune favor your ascendancy to the chief magistracy?" Clay replied that, if nominated, he could "enter into no engagements, make no promises, give no pledges to any particular portion of the people of the United States," adding, "If I ever enter into that high office, I must go into it

free and unfettered, with no guarantees but such as are to be drawn from my whole life, character and conduct." He closed with an expression of sympathy with the Mormons "in their sufferings under injustice." Calhoun replied that, if elected President, he would try to administer the government according to the constitution and the laws, and that, as these made no distinction between citizens of different religious creeds, he should make none. He repeated an opinion which he had given Smith in Washington that the Mormon case against the state of Missouri did not come within the jurisdiction of the federal government.

These replies excited Smith to wrath and he answered them at length, and in language characteristic of himself. A single quotation from his letter to Clay (dated May 13, 1844) will suffice : —

"In your answer to my question, last fall, that peculiar trait of the modern politician, declaring 'if you ever enter into that high office, you must go into it unfettered, with no guarantees but such as are to be drawn from your whole life, character and conduct,' so much resembles a lottery vender's sign, with the goddess of good luck sitting on the car of fortune, astraddle of the horn of plenty, and driving the merry steeds of beatitude, without reins or bridle, that I cannot help exclaiming, 'O, frail man, what have you done that will exalt you? Can anything be drawn from your life, character or conduct that is worthy of being held up to the gaze of this nation as a model of virtue, character and wisdom?' . . . Your 'whole life, character and conduct' have been spotted with deeds that causes a blush upon the face of a virtuous patriot; so you must be contented with your lot, while crime, cowardice, cupidity or low cunning have handed you down from the high tower of a statesman to the black hole of a gambler. . . . Crape the heavens with weeds of woe; gird the earth with sackcloth, and let hell mutter one melody in commemoration of fallen splendor! For the glory of America has departed, and God will set a flaming sword to guard the tree of liberty, while such mint-tithing Herods as Van Buren, Boggs, Benton, Calhoun, and Clay are thrust out of the realms of virtue as fit subjects for the kingdom of fallen greatness-vox reprobi, vox Diaboli."

Calhoun was admonished to read the eighth section of article one of the federal constitution, after which "God, who cooled the heat of a Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, or shut the mouths of lions. for the honor of a Daniel, will raise your mind above the narrow notion that the general government has no power, to the sublime idea that Congress, with the President as executor, is as almighty in its sphere as Jehovah is in his."1

1 For this correspondence in full, see Times and Seasons, January I and June 1, 1844, or Mackay's "The Mormons," p. 143.