Chapter XLV: Appendix: I

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN JOSEPH SMITH AND JOHN C. CALHOUN.

HON. JOHN C. CALHOUN.

DEAR SIR,--As we understand you are a candidate for the Presidency
at the next election; and as the Latter-day Saints (sometimes
called Mormons, who now constitute a numerous class in the school
politic of this vast republic,) have been robbed of an immense
amount of property, and endured nameless sufferings by the State of
Missouri, and from her borders have been driven by force of arms,
contrary to our national covenants; and as in vain we have sought
redress by all constitutional, legal, and honorable means, in her
courts, her executive councils and her legislative halls; and as
we have petitioned Congress to take cognizance of our sufferings
without effect, we have judged it wisdom to address you this
communication, and solicit an immediate, specific and candid reply
to "_What will be your rule of action relative to us as a people_,"
should fortune favor your ascension to the chief magistracy?

Most respectfully, sir, your friend,
and the friend of peace, good order,
and constitutional rights,
JOSEPH SMITH.

In behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

FORT HILL, 2ND DECEMBER, 1843.

SIR,--You ask me what would be my rule of action relative to the
Mormons 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.

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 _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 would bind 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 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
counsellors there _is safety;_" and when you have learned that
fifteen thousand innocent citizens, after having purchased their
lands of the United States 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 England, and rebellious niggers in the slave
states, to hear both sides and then judge, rather than have the
mortification to say, "Oh, it is _my_ bull that has killed _your_
ox! That alters the case! I must inquire into it; _and if, and if_--

If the general government has no power to reinstate expelled
citizens to their rights, there is a monstrous hypocrite fed
and fostered from the hard earnings of the people! A real "bull
beggar" upheld by sycophants. And although you may wink to the
priests to stigmatize, wheedle the drunkards to swear, and raise
the hue-and-cry of--"Impostor! false prophet! G-- d-- old Joe
Smith!" yet remember, if the Latter-day Saints are not restored
to all their rights and paid for all their losses, according to
the known rules of justice and judgment, reciprocation and common
honesty among men, that God will come out of His hiding place, and
vex this nation with a sore vexation: yea, the consuming wrath
of an offended God shall smoke through the nation with as much
distress and woe as independence has blazed through with pleasure
and delight. Where is the strength of government? Where is the
patriotism of a Washington, a Warren, and Adams? And where is a
spark from the watch-fire of '76, by which one candle might be lit
that would glimmer upon the confines of Democracy? Well may it be
said that one man is not a state, nor one state the nation.

In the days of General Jackson, when France refused the first
installment for spoliations, there was power, force, and honor
enough to resent injustice and insult, and the money came; and
shall Missouri, filled with negro-drivers and white men stealers,
go "unwhipped of justice" for tenfold greater sins than France?
No! verily, no! While I have power of body and mind--while water
runs and grass grows--while virtue is lovely and vice hateful, and
while a stone points out a sacred spot where a fragment of American
liberty once was, I or my posterity will plead the cause of injured
innocence, until Missouri makes atonement for all her sins, or
sinks disgraced, degraded, and damned to hell, "where the worm
dieth not, and the fire is not quenched."

Why, sir, the power not delegated to the United States and the
States belong to the people, and Congress sent to do the people's
business have all power; and shall fifteen thousand citizens groan
in exile? O vain men! will ye not, if ye do not restore them to
their rights and two million dollars' worth of property, relinquish
to them (the Latter-day Saints,) as a body, their portion of power
that belongs to them according to the Constitution? Power has its
convenience as well as inconvenience. "The world was not made for
Caesar alone, but for Titus too."

I will give you a parable. A certain lord had a vineyard in a
goodly land, which men labored in at their pleasure. A few meek
men also went and purchased with money from some of these chief
men that labored at pleasure a portion of land in the vineyard,
at a very remote part of it, and began to improve it, and to eat
and drink the fruit thereof,--when some vile persons, who regarded
not man, neither feared the lord of the vineyard, rose up suddenly
and robbed these meek men, and drove them from their possessions,
killing many.

This barbarous act made no small stir among the men in the
vineyard; and all that portion who were attached to that part of
the vineyard where the men were robbed rose up in grand council,
with their chief man, who had firstly ordered the deed to be done,
and made a covenant not to pay for the cruel deed, but to keep the
spoil, and never let those meek men set their feet on that soil
again, neither recompense them for it.

Now, these meek men, in their distress, wisely sought redress
of those wicked men in every possible manner, and got none.
They then supplicated the chief men, who held the vineyard at
pleasure, and who had the power to sell and defend it, for redress
and redemption; and those men, loving the fame and favor of
the multitude more than the glory of the lord of the vineyard,
answered--"Your cause is just, but we can do nothing for you,
because we have no power."

Now, when the lord of the vineyard saw that virtue innocence
was not regarded, and his vineyard occupied by wicked men, he
sent men and took the possession of it to himself, and destroyed
these unfaithful servants, and appointed them their portion among
hypocrites.

And let me say that all men who say that Congress has no power to
restore and defend the rights of her citizens have not the love of
the truth abiding in them. Congress has power to protect the nation
against foreign invasion and internal broil; and whenever that
body passes an act to maintain right with any power, or to restore
right to any portion of her citizens, it is the SUPREME LAW OF THE
LAND; and should a State refuse submission, that State is guilty of
_insurrection or rebellion_, and the President has as much power
to repel it as Washington had to march against the "whisky boys
at Pittsburg," or General Jackson had to send an armed force to
suppress the rebellion of South Carolina.

To close, I would admonish you, before you let your "_candor
compel_" you again to write upon a subject great as the salvation
of man, consequential as the life of the Savior, broad as the
principles of eternal truth, and valuable as the jewels of
eternity, to read in the eighth section and first article of
the Constitution of the United States, the _first, fourteenth_,
and _seventeenth_ "specific" and not very "limited powers" of
the federal government, what can be done to protect the lives,
property, and rights of a virtuous people, when the administrators
of the law and law-makers are unbought by bribes, uncorrupted by
patronage, untempted by gold, unawed by fear, and uncontaminated
tangling alliances--even like Caeser's wife, not only
_unspotted, but unsuspected!_ And God, who cooled the heat of a
Nebuchadnezzar's furnace or shut the mouths of lions for the honor
of a Daniel, will raise your mind above the narrow notion that the
general government has no power, to the sublime idea that Congress,
with the President as executor, is as almighty in its sphere as
Jehovah is in His.

With great respect, I have the honor to be
Your obedient servant,
JOSEPH SMITH.

Hon. ("Mr.") J. C. Calhoun,
Fort Hill, S. C.