The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901 Part 30

As soon as the Mormons arrived, Nauvoo was laid out in blocks measuring about 180 by 200 feet, with a river frontage of more than three miles.

An English visitor to the place in 1843 wrote "The city is of great dimensions, laid out in beautiful order; the streets are wide and cross each other at right angles, which will add greatly to its order and magnificence when finished. The city rises on a quick incline from the rolling Mississippi, and as you stand near the Temple you may gaze on the picturesque scenery round. At your side is the Temple, the wonder of the world; round about and beneath you may behold handsome stores, large mansions, and fine cottages, interspersed with varied scenery."*

* Mackay's "The Mormons," p. 128.

Whatever the exact population of the place may have been, its rapid growth is indisputable. The cause of this must be sought, not in natural business reasons, such as have given a permanent increase of population to so many of our Western cities, but chiefly in active and aggressive proselyting work both in this country and in Europe. This work was a.s.sisted by the sympathy which the treatment of the Mormons had very generally secured for them. Copies of Mormon Bibles were rare outside of the hands of the brethren, and the text of Smith's "revelations" bearing on his property designs in Missouri was known to comparatively few even in the church. While the Nauvoo edition of the "Doctrine and Covenants"

was in course of publication, the Times and Seasons, on January 1, 1842, said that it would be published in the spring, "but, many of our readers being deprived of the privilege of perusing its valuable pages, we insert the first section." Mormon emissaries took advantage of this situation to tell their story in their own way at all points of the compa.s.s. Meetings were held in the large cities of the Eastern states to express sympathy with these victims of the opponents of "freedom of religious opinion," and to raise money for their relief, and the voice of the press, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, was, without a discovered exception, on the side of the refugees.

This paved the way for a vast extension of that mission work which began with the trip of Cowdery and his a.s.sociates in 1830, was expanded throughout this country while the Saints were at Kirtland, and was extended to foreign lands in 1837. The missionaries sent out in the early days of the church represented various degrees of experience and qualification. There were among them men like Orson Hyde and Willard Richards, who, although they gave up secular callings on entering the church, were close students of the Scriptures and debaters who could hold their own, when it came to an interpretation of the Scriptures, before any average audience. Many were sent out without any especial equipment for their task. John D. Lee, describing his first trip, says:--

"I started forth an illiterate, inexperienced person, without purse or scrip. I could hardly quote a pa.s.sage of Scripture. Yet I went forth to say to the world that I was a minister of the Gospel." He was among the successful proselyters, and rose to influence in the church.* Of the requirement that the missionaries should be beggars, Lorenzo Snow, who was sent out on a mission from Kirtland in 1837, says, "It was a severe trial to my natural feelings of independence to go without purse or scrip especially the purse; for, from the time I was old enough to work, the feeling that 'I paid my way' always seemed a necessary adjunct to self respect."

* For an account of his travels and successes, see "Mormonism Unveiled."

Parley P. Pratt, in a letter to Smith from New York in November, 1839, describing the success of the work in the United States, says, "You would now find churches of the Saints in Philadelphia, in Albany, in Brooklyn, in New York, in Sing Sing, in Jersey, in Pennsylvania, on Long Island, and in various other places all around us," and he speaks of the "spread of the work" in Michigan and Maine.

The importance of England as a field from which to draw emigrants to the new settlement was early recognized at Nauvoo, and in 1840 such lights of the church as Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, P. P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and George A. Smith, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, were sent to cultivate that field. There they ordained Willard Richards an Apostle, preached and labored for over a year, established a printing-office which turned out a vast amount of Mormon literature, including their Bible and "Doctrine and Covenants,"

and began the publication of the Millennial Star.

In 1840 Orson Hyde was sent on a mission to the Jews in London, Amsterdam, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, and the same year missionaries were sent to Australia, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the East Indies. In 1844 a missionary was sent to the Sandwich Islands; in 1849 others were sent to France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland, Italy, and Switzerland; in 1850 ten more elders were sent to the Sandwich Islands; in 1851 four converts were baptized in Hindostan; in 1852 a branch of the church was organized at Malta; in 1853 three elders reached the Cape of Good Hope; and in 1861 two began work in Holland, but with poor success. We shall see that this proselyting labor has continued with undiminished industry to the present day, in all parts of the United States as well as in foreign lands.

England provided an especially promising field for Mormon missionary work. The great manufacturing towns contained hundreds of people, densely ignorant,* superst.i.tious, and so poor that the owners.h.i.+p of a piece of land in their own country was practically beyond the limit of their ambition. These people were naturally susceptible to the Mormon teachings, easily imposed upon by stories of alleged miracles, and ready to migrate to any part of the earth where a building lot or a farm was promised them. The letters from the first missionaries in England gave glowing reports of the results of their labors. Thus Wilford Woodruff, writing from Manchester in 1840, said, "The work has been so rapid it was impossible to ascertain the exact number belonging to each branch, but the whole number is 33 churches, 534 members, 75 officers, all of which had embraced the work in less than four months." Lorenzo Snow, in a letter from London in April, 1841, said: "Throughout all England, in almost every town and city of any considerable importance, we have chapels or public halls in which we meet for public wors.h.i.+p. All over this vast kingdom the laws of Zion are rolling onward with the most astonis.h.i.+ng rapidity."

* "It has been calculated that there are in England and Wales six million persons who can neither read nor write, that is to say, about one-third of the population, including, of course, infants; but of all the children more than one-half attend no place of public instruction."--d.i.c.kens, "Household Words."

The visiting missionaries began their work in England at Preston, Lancas.h.i.+re, in 1836 or 1837, and soon secured there some five hundred converts. Then they worked on each side of the Ribble, making converts in all the villages, and gaining over a few farm owners and mechanics of some means. Their method was first to drop hints to the villagers that the Holy Bible is defective in translation and incomplete, and that the Mormon Bible corrects all these defects. Not able to hold his own in any theological discussion, the rustic was invited to a meeting. At that meeting the missionary would announce that he would speak simply as the Lord directed him, and he would then present the Mormon view of their Bible and prophet. As soon as converts were won over, they were immersed, at night, and given the sacrament. Then they were initiated into the secret "church meeting," to which only the faithful were admitted, and where the flock were told of visions and "gifts," and exhorted to stand firm (along with their earthly goods) for the church, and warned against apostasy.

One way in which the prophetic gift of the missionaries was proved in the early days in England was as follows: "Whenever a candidate was immersed, some of the brethren was given a letter signed by Hyde and Kimball, setting forth that 'brother will not abide in the spirit of the Lord, but will reject the truth, and become the enemy of the people of G.o.d, etc., etc.' If the brother did not apostatize, this letter remained unopened; if he did, it was read as a striking verification of prophecy."*

* Caswall's "City of the Mormons," appendix.

Miracles exerted a most potent influence among the people in England with whom the early missionaries labored, and the Millennial Star contains a long list of reported successes in this line. There are accounts of very clumsy tricks that were attempted to carry out the deception. Thus, at Newport, Wales, three Mormon elders announced that they would raise a dead man to life. The "corpse" was laid out and surrounded by weeping friends, and the elders were about to begin their incantations, when a doubting Thomas in the audience attacked the "corpse" with a whip, and soon had him fleeing for dear life.*

* Tract by Rev. F. B. Ashley, p. 22.

Thomas Webster, who was baptized in England in 1837 by Orson Hyde and became an elder, saw the falsity of the Mormon professions through the failure of their miracles and other pretensions, and, after renouncing their faith, published a pamphlet exposing their methods. He relates many of the declarations made by the first missionaries in Preston to their ignorant hearers. Hyde declared that the apostles Peter, James, and John were still alive. He and Kimball a.s.serted that neither of them would "taste death" before Christ's second coming. At one meeting Kimball predicted that in ten or fifteen years the sea would be dried up between Liverpool and America. "One of the most glaring things they ever brought before the public," says Webster, "was stated in a letter written by Orson Hyde to the brethren in Preston, saying they were on the way to the promised land in Missouri by hundreds, and the wagons reached a mile in length. They fell in with some of their brethren in Canada, who told him the Lord had been raining down manna in rich profusion, which covered from seven to ten acres of land. It was like wafers dipped in honey, and both Saints and sinners partook of it. I was present in the pulpit when this letter was read."

However ridiculous such methods may appear, their success in Great Britain was great.* In three years after the arrival of the first missionaries, the General Conference reported a members.h.i.+p of 4019 in England alone; in 1850 the General Conference reported that the Mormons in England and Scotland numbered 27,863, and in Wales 4342. The report for June, 1851, showed a total of 30,747 in the United Kingdom, and said, "During the last fourteen years more than 50,000 have been baptized in England, of which nearly 17,000 have migrated from her sh.o.r.es to Zion." In the years between 1840 and 1843 it was estimated that 3758 foreign converts settled in and around Nauvoo.**

* "There is no page of religious history which more proudly tells its story than that which relates this peculiar phase of Mormon experience. The excitement was contagious, even affecting persons in the higher ranks of social life, and the result was a grand outpouring of spiritual and miraculous healing power of the most astonis.h.i.+ng description. Miracles were heard of everywhere, and numerous competent and most reliable witnesses bore testimony to their genuineness."--"Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 10.

** Two of the most intelligent English converts, who did proselyting work for the church and in later years saw their error, have given testimony concerning this work in Great Britain. John Hyde, Jr., summing up in 1857 the proselyting system, said: "Enthusiasm is the secret of the great success of Mormon proselyting; it is the universal characteristic of the people when proselyted; it is the hidden and strong cord that leads them to Utah, and the iron clamp that keeps them there."--"Mormonism," p. 171.

Stenhouse says: "Mormonism in England, Scotland and Wales was a grand triumph, and was fast ripening for a vigorous campaign in Continental Europe" (when polygamy was p.r.o.nounced). The emigration of Mormon converts from Great Britain to the United States, in its earlier stages, was thoroughly systemized by the church authorities in this country. The first record of the movement of any considerable body tells of a company of about two hundred who sailed for New York from Liverpool in August, 1840, on the s.h.i.+p North American, in charge of two elders. A second vessel with emigrants, the Shefeld, sailed from Bristol to New York in February, 1841. The expense of the trip from New York to Nauvoo proved in excess of the means of many of these immigrants, some of whom were obliged to stop at Kirtland and other places in Ohio. This led to a change of route, by which vessels sailed from British ports direct to New Orleans, the immigrants ascending the Mississippi to Nauvoo.

The extent of this movement to the time of the departure of the Saints from Nauvoo is thus given by James Linforth, who says the figures are "as complete and correct as it is possible now to make them*":--

* "Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley," 1855.

Year *** No. of Vessels *** No. of Emigrants

1840 1 200

1841 6 1177

1842 8 1614

1843 5 769

1844 5 644

1845-46 3 346

Total 3750

The Mormon agents in England would charter a vessel at an English port*

when a sufficient company had a.s.sembled and announce their intention to embark. The emigrants would be notified of the date of sailing, and an agent would accompany them all the way to Nauvoo. Men with money were especially desired, as were mechanics of all kinds, since the one sound business view that seems to have been taken by the leaders at Nauvoo was that it would be necessary to establish manufactures there if the people were to be able to earn a living. In some instances the pa.s.sage money was advanced to the converts.

* For d.i.c.kens's description of one of these vessels ready to sail, see "The Uncommercial Traveller," Chap. XXII

CHAPTER IV. -- THE NAUVOO CITY GOVERNMENT--TEMPLE AND OTHER BUILDINGS

A tide of immigration having been turned toward the new settlement, the next thing in order was to procure for the city a legal organization.

Several circ.u.mstances combined to place in the hands of the Mormon leaders a scheme of munic.i.p.al government, along with an extensive plan for buildings, which gave them vast power without incurring the kind of financial rocks on which they were wrecked in Ohio.

Dr. Galland* should probably be considered the inventor of the general scheme adopted at Nauvoo. He was at that time a resident of Cincinnati, but his intercourse with the Mormons had interested him in their beliefs, and some time in 1840 he addressed a letter to Elder R. B.

Thompson, which gave the church leaders some important advice.** First warning them that to promulgate new doctrinal tenets will require not only tact and energy, but moral conduct and industry among their people, he confessed that he had not been able to discover why their religious views were not based on truth. "The project of establis.h.i.+ng extraordinary religious doctrines being magnificent in its character,"

he went on to say, would require "preparations commensurate with the plan." Nauvoo being a suitable rallying-place, they would "want a temple that for size, proportions and style shall attract, surprise and dazzle all beholders"; something "unique externally, and in the interior peculiar, imposing and grand." The "clergymen" must be of the best as regards mental and vocal equipment, and there should be a choir such as "was never before organized." A college, too, would be of great value if funds for it could be collected.