U NHALLOWED H N 1846–1893 AND SAINTS O NO UNHALLOWED HAND SAINTS The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED Volume 1: The Standard of Truth, 1815–1846 SAINTS The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days Volume 2 No Unhallowed Hand 1846–1893 Published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Salt Lake City, Utah © 2020 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. Version: 11/16 Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission. For more information, contact [email protected]. saints.ChurchofJesusChrist.org Cover art by Greg Newbold Cover design and interior layout by Patric Gerber Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, issuing body. Title: Saints : the story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days. Volume 2, No unhallowed hand, 1846–1893. Other titles: Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the latter days Description: Salt Lake City, Utah : The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The second volume in a four-volume series recounting the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043996 | ISBN 9781629726489 (paperback) Subjects: LCSH: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—History—19th century. | Mormon Church—History—19th century. Classification: LCC BX8611 .S235 2020 | DDC 289.309/034—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043996 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ----<>+<>---- The standard of truth has been erected. No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished and the great Jehovah shall say the work is done. —Joseph Smith, 1842 CONTRIBUTORS SAINTS THE STORY OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE LATTER DAYS Church Historian and Recorder Executive Director, Church History Department Elder LeGrand R. Curtis Jr. Assistant Executive Director, Church History Department Elder Kyle S. McKay Managing Director, Church History Department Matthew J. Grow Director, Publications Division Matthew S. McBride Managing Historian Jed L. Woodworth Product Manager Ben Ellis Godfrey Editorial Manager Nathan N. Waite VOLUME 2 NO UNHALLOWED HAND 1846–1893 General Editors Matthew J. Grow Jed L. Woodworth Scott A. Hales Lisa Olsen Tait Writers Scott A. Hales David C. Nielsen Angela Hallstrom Dallin T. Morrow James Goldberg Editors R. Eric Smith Leslie Sherman Edgington Kathryn Tanner Burnside Nathan N. Waite Stephanie Steed Alison Palmer Alison Kitchen Gainer CONTENTS PART 1: Rise and Go October 1845–August 1852 1 Gather Up a Company 3 2 Glory Enough 16 3 Word and Will of the Lord 34 4 An Ensign to the Nations 52 5 Bowed Down to the Grave 69 6 Seven Thunders Rolling 83 7 Keep Up Good Courage 96 8 This Time of Scarcity 108 9 As the Spirit Dictates 121 10 Truth and Righteousness 137 PART 2: By Sea and by Land September 1852–May 1869 11 A Glorious Privilege 159 12 Their Faces Are Zionward 173 13 By Every Possible Means 189 14 Hard to Be Separated 205 15 In Storms and in Calms 219 16 Not Doubting nor Despairing 231 17 The Folks Are Reforming 241 18 Too Late, Too Late 254 19 The Chambers of the Lord 270 20 Handwriting on the Wall 285 21 The Same Great Work 301 22 Like Coals of Living Fire 316 23 One Harmonious Whole 331 PART 3: The Trying Hour May 1869–July 1887 24 An Immense Labor 351 25 The Dignity of Our Calling 366 26 For the Best Good of Zion 381 27 Fire in the Dry Grass 395 28 Until the Coming of the Son of Man 411 29 To Die in the Harness 429 30 A Steady, Onward Movement 443 31 The Shattered Threads of Life 461 32 Stand Up and Take the Pelting 476 33 Until the Storm Blows Past 492 34 Nothing to Fear from the Wicked 507 35 A Day of Trial 522 PART 4: A Temple of God July 1887–May 1893 36 The Weak Thing of This World 539 37 To the Throne of Grace 555 38 Mine Own Due Time and Way 571 39 In the Hands of God 586 40 The Right Thing 602 41 So Long Submerged 616 42 Inspiration at the Divine Fountain 631 43 A Greater Necessity for Union 645 44 Blessed Peace 661 x Note on Sources 676 Notes 678 Sources Cited 778 Acknowledgments 814 Index 816 xi the S UTH NO U AND TANDARD of TR NHALLOWED H SCANDINAVIA COPENHAGEN LIVERPOOL • CARDSTON • • SWITZERLAND • SAN NAUVOO NEW YORK CITY ,. ... • •• FRANCISCO SALT PHILADELPHIA I • ~--....: .. LAKE .....:·. I CITY '··. I NEW ORLEANS '· .. • • '·.'· .. INDIA HONG KONG MEXICO '·.'· .. SIAM CAPE VERDE'· .. (Thailand) MEXICO CITY ISLANDS•\ • SANDWICH ISLANDS (Hawaii) ' ' : ~:, ~ ' ,._1/ft\\ ' ' ' ' ."'~.......: ' ', AUSTRALIA ' JUAN FERNÁNDEZ' CAPE NEW SOCIETY ISLANDS ' ISLANDS' ' , • TOWN ZEALAND (Tahiti) • The Brooklyn • TO ALL NATIONS Route of the ship Brooklyn Pacific Islands mission Hawaiian Islands mission European missions South African mission the S UTH NO U AND TANDARD of TR NHALLOWED H SCANDINAVIA COPENHAGEN LIVERPOOL • CARDSTON • • SWITZERLAND • SAN NAUVOO NEW YORK CITY • •• FRANCISCO• SALT PHILADELPHIA LAKE CITY NEW ORLEANS • • INDIA HONG KONG MEXICO SIAM CAPE VERDE (Thailand) MEXICO CITY ISLANDS• • SANDWICH ISLANDS (Hawaii) AUSTRALIA JUAN FERNÁNDEZ CAPE NEW SOCIETY ISLANDS ISLANDS • TOWN ZEALAND (Tahiti) • The Brooklyn • TO ALL NATIONS Route of the ship Brooklyn Pacific Islands mission Hawaiian Islands mission European missions South African mission PART 1 I C:::,tC, I Rise and Go OCTOBER 1845–AUGUST 1852 Lo! a mighty host of Jacob Tented on the western shore Of the noble Mississippi, Which they had been crossing o’er; At the last day’s dawn of winter, Bound with frost and wrapt in snow: Hark! the sound is onward, onward! Camp of Israel! rise and go. Eliza R. Snow, “Song for the Camp of Israel” 1846–1852 UNITED STATES IOWA WINTER M •FT. BRIDGER orm QUARTERS on • • Tra • GREAT SALT il MT. PISGAH • LAKE VALLEY NAUVOO n ttalio n Ba ormo MISSOURI MEXICO M Boundaries late 1846 TEXAS ns sio • ANAA acific Mis TUKUHORA P 52 1843–18 TAHITI • PAPEETE TUBUAI • MATAURA CHAPTER 1 Gather Up a Company I want to speak about the dead.” Thousands of Latter-day Saints hushed as Lucy Mack Smith’s voice echoed through the large assembly hall on the first floor of the nearly completed Nauvoo temple. It was the morning of October 8, 1845, the third and final day of the fall conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Knowing she would not have many more opportunities to speak to the Saints— especially now that they planned to leave Nauvoo for a new home far to the west—Lucy spoke with a power beyond her feeble seventy-year-old body. “It was eighteen years ago last twenty-second of September that Joseph took the plates out of the earth,” she testified, “and it was eighteen years last Monday since Joseph Smith, the prophet of the Lord—”1 3 No Unhallowed Hand She paused, remembering Joseph, her martyred son. The Saints in the room already knew how an angel of the Lord had led him to a set of gold plates buried in a hill called Cumorah. They knew that Joseph had translated the plates by the gift and power of God and published the record as the Book of Mormon. Yet how many Saints in the assembly hall had truly known him? Lucy could still remember when Joseph, then only twenty-one years old, had first told her that God had entrusted him with the plates. She had been anxious all morning, afraid he would return from the hill empty- handed, as he had the four previous years. But when he arrived, he had quickly calmed her nerves. “Do not be uneasy,” he had said. “All is right.” He had then handed her the interpreters the Lord had provided for the trans- lation of the plates, wrapped in a handkerchief, as proof that he had succeeded in getting the record. There had been only a handful of believers then, most of them members of the Smith family. Now more than eleven thousand Saints from North America and Europe lived in Nauvoo, Illinois, where the Church had gathered for the last six years. Some of them were new to the Church and had not had a chance to meet Joseph or his brother Hyrum before a mob shot and killed the two men in June 1844.2 That was why Lucy wanted to speak about the dead. She wanted to testify of Joseph’s prophetic call and her family’s role in the Restoration of the gospel before the Saints moved away. 4 Gather Up a Company For more than a month, vigilante mobs had been torching the homes and businesses of Saints in nearby settlements. Fearing for their lives, many families had fled to the relative safety of Nauvoo. But the mobs had only grown stronger and more organized as the weeks passed, and soon armed skirmishes had broken out between them and the Saints. The state and national governments, meanwhile, did nothing to protect the Saints’ rights.3 Believing it was only a matter of time before the mobs attacked Nauvoo, Church leaders had negotiated a fragile peace by agreeing to evacuate the Saints from the county by spring.4 Guided by divine revelation, Brigham Young and the other members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles were planning to move the Saints more than a thousand miles west, beyond the Rocky Mountains, just outside the border of the United States.