CHAPTER VII.
PRESIDENT SMITH'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH JOHN C. CALHOUN--CARTWRIGHT DROWNING CASE, ENGLAND--CITY GUARDS INCREASED--FEARS OF LAW AND MARKS--INVESTIGATION BY THE CITY COUNCIL--RESISTANCE OF OFFICERS AT CARTHAGE--ANTI-MORMON OBJECTIONS TO CITY ORDINANCES--THE PROPHET'S DIFFICULTIES WITH FRANCIS M. HIGBEE--REGULATIONS FOR THE SALE OF SPIRITUOUS LIQUORS.
_Monday, January 1, 1844.--_A cold, blustering rainstorm ushered in the new year.
At sunrise, Thomas Miller, James Leach, James Bridges, and John Frodsham were brought before me by the police, charged with disorderly conduct. Fined Miller $5: the others were discharged.
[Sidenote: New Year's at the Mansion.]
A large party took a new year's supper at my house, and had music and dancing till morning. I was in my private room with my family, Elder John Taylor and other friends.
_Tuesday 2.--_Two p.m., Hyrum Dayton was brought before Mayor's court for disorderly conduct in resisting and abusing the police: fined $25 and costs. His son, Lysander Dayton, for the same offense, was sentenced to ten days' hard labor, on the public streets; and subsequently, for contempt of court, ten days more.
Snow one inch deep.
I here insert Mr. Calhoun's answer to my letter of inquiry, dated November 4, 1843:--
_Letter: John C. Calhoun to Joseph Smith--Defining What Former's Policy would be Towards the Saints if Elected President_.
FORT HILL, December 2, 1843.
SIR:--You ask me what would be my rule of action relative the Mormons {156} or Latter-day Saints, should I be elected President; to which I answer, that if I should be elected, I would strive to administer the government according to the Constitution and the laws of the union; and that as they make no distinction between citizens of different religious creeds I should make none. As far as it depends on the Executive department, all should have the full benefit of both, and none should be exempt from their operation.
But as you refer to the case of Missouri, candor compels me to repeat what I said to you at Washington, that, according to my views, the case does not come within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government, which is one of limited and specific powers.
With respect, I am, &c., &c.,
J. C. CALHOUN.
Mr. JOSEPH SMITH.
To which I wrote the following reply:--
_Letter: Joseph Smith to John C. Calhoun--The Latter's Policy Towards the Latter-day Saints, if Elected President of the U. S. Considered_.
NAUVOO, ILLINOIS, January 2, 1844.
Sir:--Your reply to my letter of last November, concerning your rule of action towards the Latter-day Saints, if elected President, is at hand; and that you and your friends of the same opinion relative to the matter in question may not be disappointed as to me or my mind upon so grave a subject, permit me, as a law-abiding man, as a well-wisher to the perpetuity of constitutional rights and liberty, and as a friend to the free worship of Almighty God by all, according to the dictates of every person's own conscience, to say that_ I am surprised_ that a man or men in the highest stations of public life should have made up such a fragile "view" of a case, than which there is not one on the face of the globe fraught with so much consequence to the happiness of men in this world or the world to come.
To be sure, the first paragraph of your letter appears very complacent and fair on a white sheet of paper. And who, that is ambitious for greatness and power, would not have said the same thing? Your oath binds you to support the Constitution and laws; and as all creeds and religions are alike tolerated, they must of course, all be justified or condemned according to merit or demerit. But why--tell me why are all the principal men held up for public stations _so cautiously careful_, not to publish to the world that they will _judge a righteous judgment, law or no law?_ for laws and opinions, like the vanes of steeples, change with the wind.
One Congress passes a law, another repeals it; and one statesman says that the Constitution means this, and another that; and who does {157} not know that all may be wrong? the opinion and pledge, therefore, in the first paragraph of your reply to my question, like the forced steam from the engine of a steam-boat, makes the show of a bright cloud at first; but when it comes in contact with a purer atmosphere, dissolves to common air again.
Your second paragraph leaves you naked before yourself, like a likeness in a mirror, when you say, that according to your _view,_ the Federal Government is "one of limited and specific powers," and has no jurisdiction in the case of the "Mormons." So then a State can at any time expel any portion of her citizens with impunity: and, in the language of Mr. Van Buren, frosted over with your gracious _"views of the case,"_ though the cause is ever so just, Government can do nothing for them, because it has no power.
Go on, then, Missouri, after another set of inhabitants (as the Latter-day Saints did,) have entered some two or three hundred thousand dollars' worth of land, and made extensive improvements thereon; go on, then, I say; banish the occupants or owners, or kill them, as the mobbers did many of the Latter-day Saints, and take their land and property as spoil; and let the Legislature, as in the case of the "Mormons," appropriate a couple of hundred thousand dollars to pay the mob for doing that job; for the renowned Senator from South Carolina, Mr. J. C. Calhoun, says the powers of the Federal Government are so _specific and limited that it has no jurisdiction of the case!_ O ye people who groan under the oppression of tyrants!--ye exiled Poles, who have felt the iron hand of Russian grasp!--ye poor and unfortunate among all nations! come to the asylum of the oppressed; buy ye lands of the General Government; pay in your money to the treasury to strengthen the army and the navy; worship God according to the dictates of your own consciences; pay in your taxes to support the great heads of a glorious nation: but remember a _"sovereign State"_ is so much more powerful than the United States, the parent Government, that it can exile you at pleasure, mob you with impunity, confiscate your lands and property, have the Legislature sanction it,--yea, even murder you as an edict of an emperor, _and it does no wrong;_ for the noble Senator of South Carolina says the power of the federal Government is _so limited and specific, that it has no jurisdiction of the case!_ What think ye of _imperium in imperio_?
Ye spirits of the blessed of all ages, hark! Ye shades of departed statesmen, listen! Abraham, Moses, Homer, Socrates, Solon, Solomon, and all that ever thought of right and wrong, look down from your exaltations if you have any; for it is said, "In the midst of counselors there _is safety_;" and when you have learned that fifteen thousand innocent citizens, after having purchased their lands of the United States {158} and paid for them, were expelled from a "sovereign State," by order of the Governor, at the point of the bayonet, their arms taken from them by the same authority, and their right of migration into said State denied, under pain of imprisonment, whipping, robbing, mobbing, and even death, and no justice or recompense allowed; and, from the Legislature with the Governor at the head, down to the Justice of the Peace, with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other, hear them all declare that there is no justice for a "Mormon" in that State; and judge ye a righteous judgment, and tell me when the virtue of the States was stolen, where the honor of the General Government lies hid, and what clothes a senator with wisdom. O nullifying Carolina! O little tempestuous Rhode Island! Would it not be well for the great men of the nation to read the fable of the _partial judge;_ and when part of the free citizens of a State had been expelled contrary to the Constitution, mobbed, robbed, plundered, and many murdered, instead of searching into the course taken with Joanna Southcott, Ann Lee, the French Prophets, the Quakers of New Eng