Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Joseph Smith's Reference to "nullifying [South] Carolina," January 2, 1844

Joseph Smith, Letter to John C. Calhoun, January 2, 1844, p. 2 (in the handwriting of Thomas Bullock):


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 recompence allowed: and from the Legislature, with the Governor at the head, down to the Justice of the Peace, with a Bottle of Whiskey 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? Oh nullifying Carolina! Oh 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 to have the mortification to say, “Oh it is my bull “that has killed your Ox— that alters the case? I must enquire into it. And if, and if?”


Further Reading: