American Crucifixion by Alex Beam

Author:Alex Beam [Beam, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610393140
Publisher: PublicAffairs

THAT SAME MORNING, JOSEPH WROTE HIS LAST LETTER TO EMMA, and to the Saints in Nauvoo:

DEAR EMMA.—

The Governor continues his courtesies, and permits us to see our friends. We hear this morning that the Governor will not go down with his troops today to Nauvoo, as we anticipated last evening; but if he does come down with his troops you will be protected. . . .

There is no danger of any extermination order. Should there be a mutiny among the troops (which we do not anticipate, excitement is abating) a part will remain loyal and stand for the defense of the state and our rights. . . .

JOSEPH SMITH.

P. S. Dear Emma, I am very much resigned to my lot, knowing I am justified, and have done the best that could be done. Give my love to the children and all my friends, Mr. Brewer, and all who inquire after me; and as for treason, I know that I have not committed any, and they cannot prove anything of the kind, so you need not have any fears that anything can happen to us on that account. May God bless you all. Amen.

P.S. 20 min to 10–I just learn that the Governor is about to disband his troops, all but a guard to protect us and the peace,—and come himself to Nauvoo and deliver a speech to the people. This is right as I suppose.

While Wheelock was carrying Joseph’s letter to Nauvoo, Governor Ford and a detachment of Captain Dunn’s McDonough County Dragoons were on the road to Warsaw, where they had agreed to meet the local militia at a crossroads outside of town. The previous day, Ford and Deming had instructed the Warsaw commander to prepare his troops to march to Nauvoo, with two cannons. The men of the Warsaw militia, three hundred strong, thought they would be accompanying Ford into Nauvoo, and they had plunder on their mind. Thomas Sharp had issued his call for a Mormon extermination campaign only a few days before.

In Warsaw on this muggy Thursday, John Hay watched his father, a surgeon, ride out with the militia to the crossroads near some railroad shanties. The dilapidated shacks had been built to supply a contemplated Carthage-to-Warsaw railway that foundered in the Panic of 1837. “They went out in high glee, fully expecting to march to the city of the Saints,” reported Hay, who was a teenager at the time. “Every man clearly understood that Nauvoo was to be destroyed before they returned.”

When Colonel Levi Williams and his Warsaw regiment met Ford at the crossroads, they learned that their marching orders had been rescinded. Ford had gotten wind of their intentions and did not want them to march on Nauvoo after all. He pointedly confiscated their cannons, which he suspected they would put to ill use. “They were annoyed . . . at losing the fun of sacking Nauvoo,” Hay wrote.

Most of the men returned to Warsaw. But Thomas Sharp was on the scene, and both Colonel Williams and his son were Mormon-haters of some renown.

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