Excerpts from “Saints”

In late April 1839, days after reuniting with the Saints, Joseph rode north to inspect land that church leaders wanted to buy in and around Commerce, a town fifty miles from Quincy. For the first time in more than six months, the prophet was traveling without armed guards or the threat of violence looming over him. He was finally among friends, in a state where people welcomed the Saints and seemed to respect their beliefs.

While in jail, Joseph had written to a man who was selling land around Commerce, expressing interest in settling the church there. “If there is not anyone who feels particular interest in making the purchase,” Joseph had told him, “we will purchase it of you.”

After the fall of Far West, however, many Saints questioned the wisdom of gathering to a single area. Edward Partridge wondered if the best way to avoid conflict and provide for the poor was to gather in small communities scattered throughout the country. But Joseph knew the Lord had not revoked His commandment for the Saints to gather.

Arriving in Commerce, he saw a marshy floodplain that rose gently to a wooded bluff overlooking a wide bend in the Mississippi River. A few homes dotted the area. Across the river in Iowa Territory, near a town called Montrose, stood some abandoned army barracks on more land available for purchase.

Joseph believed the Saints could build thriving stakes of Zion in this area. The land was not the choicest he had ever seen, but the Mississippi River was navigable all the way to the ocean, making Commerce a good place for gathering the Saints from abroad and establishing commercial enterprises. The area was also sparsely settled.

Still, gathering the Saints there would be risky. If the church grew, as Joseph hoped it would, their neighbors might become alarmed and turn against them, as people had in Missouri.

Joseph prayed. “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”

“Build up a city,” the Lord replied, “and call my Saints to this place.”

That spring, Wilford and Phebe Woodruff moved into the barracks in Montrose. Among their new neighbors were Brigham and Mary Ann Young and Orson and Sarah Pratt. After they settled their families, the three apostles planned to leave on their mission for Britain with the rest of the quorum.

Thousands of Saints soon moved to the new gathering place, pitching tents or living in wagons as they went to work building homes, acquiring food and clothes, and clearing farmland on both sides of the river.

As the new settlement grew, the Twelve met often with Joseph, who preached with new vigor as he prepared them for their mission. The prophet taught that God did not reveal anything to him that He would not also make known to the Twelve. “Even the least Saint may know all things as fast as he is able to,” Joseph declared.

He instructed them in the first principles of the gospel, the Resurrection and the Judgment, and the building of Zion. Remembering the betrayal of former apostles, he also urged them to be faithful. “See to it that you do not betray heaven,” he said, “that you do not betray Jesus Christ, that you do not betray your brethren, and that you do not betray the revelations of God.”

Around this time, Orson Hyde expressed a desire to return to the Quorum of the Twelve, ashamed that he had denounced Joseph in Missouri and abandoned the Saints. Fearing Orson would betray them again when the next difficulty came along, Sidney Rigdon was reluctant to restore his apostleship. Joseph, however, welcomed him back and restored his place among the Twelve. In July, Parley Pratt escaped from prison in Missouri and was also reunited with the apostles.

By then swarms of mosquitos had risen from the marshlands to feast on the new settlers, and many Saints came down with deadly malarial fevers and bone-rattling chills. Most of the Twelve were soon too sick to leave for Britain.

On the morning of Monday, July 22, Wilford heard Joseph’s voice outside his home: “Brother Woodruff, follow me.”

Wilford stepped outside and saw Joseph standing with a group of men. All morning they had been moving from house to house, tent to tent, taking the sick by the hand and healing them. After blessing the Saints in Commerce, they had taken a ferry across the river to heal the Saints in Montrose.

Wilford walked with them across the village square to the home of his friend Elijah Fordham. Elijah’s eyes were sunken and his skin ashen. His wife, Anna, was weeping as she prepared his burial clothes.

Joseph approached Elijah and took his hand. “Brother Fordham,” he asked, “have you not faith to be healed?”

“I am afraid it is too late,” he said.

“Do you not believe that Jesus is the Christ?”

“I do, Brother Joseph.”

“Elijah,” the prophet declared, “I command you, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, to arise and be made whole.”

The words seemed to shake the house. Elijah rose from his bed, his face flush with color. He dressed, asked for something to eat, and followed Joseph outside to help minister to many others.

Later that evening, Phebe Woodruff was astonished when she visited Elijah and Anna. Only a few hours earlier, Anna had all but given up on her husband. Now Elijah said he felt strong enough to work in his garden. Phebe had no doubt his recovery was the work of God.

Joseph’s efforts to bless and heal the sick did not end the spread of disease in Commerce and Montrose, and some Saints perished. As more people died, eighteen-year-old Zina Huntington worried that her mother would succumb to the illness as well.

Zina cared for her mother daily, leaning on her father and brothers for support, but soon the entire family was sick. Joseph checked on them from time to time, seeing what he could do to help the family or make Zina’s mother more comfortable.

One day, Zina’s mother called for her. “My time has come to die,” she said weakly. “I am not afraid.” She testified to Zina of the Resurrection. “I shall come forth triumphant when the Savior comes with the just to meet the Saints on the earth.”

When her mother died, Zina was overcome with grief. Knowing the family’s suffering, Joseph continued to attend to them.

During one of Joseph’s visits, Zina asked him, “Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over on the other side?”

“More than that,” he said, “you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.”

“Have I then a Mother in Heaven?” Zina asked.

“You assuredly have,” said Joseph. “How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?”

While the apostles were leaving for Britain, Saints in Illinois and Iowa composed statements detailing their harsh treatment in Missouri, as Joseph had instructed them to do when he was in jail. By the fall, church leaders had collected hundreds of these accounts and prepared a formal petition. In total, the Saints asked for more than two million dollars to compensate for lost homes, land, livestock, and other property. Joseph planned to deliver these claims personally to the president of the United States and to Congress.

Joseph considered President Martin Van Buren to be a high-minded statesman—someone who would champion the rights of citizens. Joseph hoped that the president and other lawmakers in Washington, DC, would read about the Saints’ suffering and agree to recompense them for the land and property they had lost in Missouri.

On November 29, 1839, after traveling nearly a thousand miles from his home in Illinois, Joseph arrived at the front door of the presidential mansion in Washington. Beside him were his friend and legal adviser, Elias Higbee, and John Reynolds, a congressman from Illinois.

A porter greeted them at the door and motioned them inside. The mansion had recently been redecorated, and Joseph and Elias were awed by the elegance of its rooms, which contrasted sharply with the Saints’ ramshackle dwellings in the West.

Their guide led them upstairs to a room where President Van Buren was speaking with visitors. As they waited outside the door, with the petition and several letters of introduction in hand, Joseph asked Congressman Reynolds to introduce him simply as a “Latter-day Saint.” The congressman seemed surprised and amused by the request, but he agreed to do as Joseph wished. Though not eager to assist the Saints, Congressman Reynolds knew their large numbers could influence politics in Illinois.

Joseph had not expected to meet the president with such a small delegation. When he left Illinois in October, his plan had been to let Sidney Rigdon take the lead in these meetings. But Sidney was too sick to travel and had stopped along the way.

At last the president’s parlor doors opened, and the three men entered the room. Like Joseph, Martin Van Buren was the son of a New York farmer, but he was a much older man, short and squat, with a light complexion and a shock of white hair framing most of his face.

As promised, Congressman Reynolds introduced Joseph as a Latter-day Saint. The president smiled at the unusual title and shook the prophet’s hand.

After greeting the president, Joseph handed him the letters of introduction and waited. Van Buren read them and frowned. “Help you?” he said dismissively. “How can I help you?”

Joseph did not know what to say. He had not expected the president to dismiss them so quickly. He and Elias urged the president to at least read about the Saints’ suffering before deciding to reject their pleas.

“I can do nothing for you, gentlemen,” the president insisted. “If I were for you, I should go against the whole state of Missouri, and that state would go against me in the next election.”

Disappointed, Joseph and Elias left the mansion and delivered their petition to Congress, knowing it would be weeks before legislators could review and discuss it.

While they waited, Joseph decided to visit the eastern branches of the church. He would also preach in Washington and in the surrounding towns and cities.