Source Note
David W. Kilbourne, Letter, Fort Madison, Lee Co., Iowa Territory, to Thomas Dent, England, June 15, 1844. David W. Kilbourne Papers, 1818–1914, Special Collections, State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines. A partial transcript of this letter can be found in John E. Hallwas and Roger D. Launius, Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1995), 161–62.
Historical Introduction
During the spring of 1844, opposition to the Church from those who had previously been members became increasingly organized. William Law, who had been the second counselor in the First Presidency but was dropped from such position in January, was excommunicated in April 1844. Along with him, Robert D. Foster, Wilson Law, and Howard Smith were also excommunicated. These men and others who opposed Joseph Smith’s presidency began meeting together. On April 28, 1844, the group formed the “Reformed Mormon Church” with William Law as the president. One of the groups’ primary qualms with Smith was his practice and implementation of plural marriage.1
The Nauvoo Expositor was the vehicle of the Reformed Church to express their reservations and doubts regarding Smith and the Latter-day Saint Church. The group established a printing press on May 7, 1844, and issued a prospectus a week later. On June 7, they printed one thousand copies of the first and only issue of the Expositor.2 The issues raised in the Expositor included plural marriage, the political power wielded by Smith, and the lack of disestablishmentarianism at Nauvoo.3 The Nauvoo city council met the next day to discuss the periodical. The meeting adjourned and reconvened on June 10. The city council decided that the paper was designed to incite violence and ordered the press destroyed.4 Marshal John P. Greene, assisted by the city police and with the Nauvoo Legion standing by, fulfilled the orders of the city council and destroyed the printing press.5 Hearing of what had happened and hearing that the dissenters feared for their lives, residents of Fort Madison responded by sending riverboats and volunteers to aid in the evacuation of members of the Reformed Church.6
Document Transcript
Fort Madison
Upper Mississippi
June 15th 1844
Revd. T. Dent
Billington near Whalley
Lancashire England
My dear Sir
Your kind and interesting letter of April 16th was recd on the 24th Ultimo. I can say in all sincerity that your correspondence has been a source of great pleasure as well as profit to me & I shall always be very happy in my place way to keep you advised of events of any interest as they transpired at the famous city of Nauvoo.
Since I last wrote you the troubles at Nauvoo have continued to increase among the Mormons themselves. The eyes of some among the most honest of the leaders have been opened to see Joe’s true character. In the case of a Mr. Law a man who has stood high among them & who has considerable property—has a steam flouring mill at Nauvoo—& several dwelling houses—the one in which he has resided being a fine two story brick home—this man was sent out some time last fall on a mission to preach & during his absence Joe made proposals to his wife which she rejected & on her husbands return communicated the fact to him—this led to an outbreak between Law & Joe which has continued to the present time and has resulted in creating great excitement there.7 Some few weeks since Law & his friends withdrew from the Church, & formed a new one which has been daily increasing in numbers. This new society also commenced the publications of a News Paper called the Nauvoo Expositor—the first no. of which I shall send to you with this letter. This will give you a full history of this new society.
After this No. was issued Joe (as mayor) calld a meeting of the city counsel—at which meeting resolutions were passd declaring this newspaper to be a public nuisance & finally passd an ordinance to destroy it. This meeting of council the took place on the 10th June & on the 11th about sun set Joe ordered the Marshall & all the city offering with volunteers to commence the work of destruction. About three hundred marched in a body to the printing office—took their press out & broke it into ten thousand pieces—they then took the tables & made a pile in front of the house & burnt them they then passed to Joe’s residence & gave him three cheers. They went to the residence of Law & also his brothers & several others who had dissented & gave them notice that they must not be found in Nauvoo the next day at 4 oclock P.M. at the risk of their lives.8
The next morning the 12th Inst a messenger came up here to get a steam boat to go & bring them off—accordingly a boat started from here with some 50 of our citizens to assist removing their families whose liv[es] were the[re] threatened.
About dusk the boat returned here ladled with men women & children. With horses waggons furniture &c. The Boat proceeded to Burlington about 20 miles above this when Mr. Law told me they intended to secure quarters for the women & children & then return to Nauvoo to fight if necessary.
Law told me that he would just as soon live in h..l as in Nauvoo—that Joe would have no scruples to cause any man’s life to be taken to carry out his plans.
There is great excitement throughout the state of Ill. especially in the counties contigious to Nauvoo.
Joe & his men were arrested this day after the press was destroyed, but he immediately cleared himself & the others by the exercise of his writ of Habeas Corpus authorized in the city charter.
Another writ is out for him & at an effort is now making [illegible] in the surrounding counties to raise sufficient force to arrest him & take him out of the city.
I anticipate [illegible] then sooner or later bloodshed must take place. Nauvoo has become the receptacle of outlaws & robbers for the whole country & the people it seems to me will be obliged to resolve themselves into the original elements of society & rise in their majesty & disperse the banditi.9
The night after Law left two attempts were made to fire his mill & houses. Martin Harris is still living—he has since resided at Nauvoo.
I am under obligations for the interest you have taken in enquiring after the friends of our two orphan girls. I have heard nothing more from them. Their friends on their fathers side Robert & James Cope reside at Atherton near Nantwich.
They are interesting children & are beloved by all who know them—we send them to a good school & they make fine proficiency.
The usual way of making remittances from your [illegible] to this is by wills of exchange—few instances to among the Bankers in your commercial towing world give a draft on some Banker in N. York for the amount desired or a defect of money with the drawed.
Sometimes if the amount is not large Bank of England notes are sent these can be cashed here without any trouble.
If the amount to be remitted was large then it would be better to deposit the funds with the Banker in your county say in London to the credit of the person in this county to whom it was to go & so that the person could draw for the same & he would then save the premium on the wills.
Also sent all the war [illegible]
1. Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise (Deseret Book; Brigham Young University Press, 2002), 356–60.
2. Leonard, Nauvoo, 362–64.
3. John E. Hallwas and Roger D. Launius, Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois (Utah State University Press, 1995), 142–48.
4. Hallwas and Launius, Cultures in Conflict, 149–56.
5. Leonard, Nauvoo, 365.
6. Hallwas and Launius, Cultures in Conflict, 161.
7. William Law joined the Church in 1836 and joined the Saints in Nauvoo in November 1839 while helping a seven-wagon caravan of Canadian Saints also migrate, which group included Law’s non-Mormon brother Wilson. Wilson was baptized and ordained an elder in Nauvoo. Joseph Smith quickly recognized William Law’s commitment to the Church and his leadership abilities and called him to be a counselor in the First Presidency in 1841. The Law brothers supported Smith during extradition attempts but became disaffected, and William was informally dropped from the First Presidency by Smith in January 1844, due to several financial, administrative and doctrinal differences. Law objected and requested his case be heard at the April general conference but was denied. Instead, Church leaders held a private trial of excommunication for Law on April 18, 1844, in which they excommunicated him. Law felt that the whole process was “illegal, and, therefore corrupt.” When leaders in the Church contacted Law and tried to convince him to come back, Law made it clear that he would only if they would discontinue plural marriage. When it became clear that they would not, Law decided to reveal the practice, which he did with a vengeance in the Nauvoo Expositor. This act, of course, deeply alienated him from the Latter-day Saints. See Lyndon W. Cook, “William Law, Nauvoo Dissenter,” BYU Studies 33, no. 1 (1982): 47–72.
8. Kilbourne mistakenly reports the destruction of the printing press on June 11; it was on the evening of June 10. The meeting to which Kilbourne referred began on Saturday, June 8, the day after the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor was published, and then continued June 10. It was decided on the 10th that the Expositor needed to be destroyed, and Marshal John P. Greene along with members of the city police destroyed it that evening. See Leonard, Nauvoo, 362–66.
9. Kilbourne had good reason to suspect that bloodshed would soon take place. The day after the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor, Thomas Sharp, in his periodical The Warsaw Signal, published an account of the destruction and declared, “War and extermination is inevitable! Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!! . . . We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!!” “EXTRA. ‘The Time is Come!’” Warsaw (Ill.) Signal Extra, June 11, 1844.
