The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo

by B. H. Roberts

[3]. See Appendix II.

[4]. See Appendix III.

[5]. The fifth resolution adopted at the Nauvoo convention read as follows:

Resolved, that the better to carry out the principles of liberty and equal rights, Jeffersonian Democracy, free trade, and sailors' rights, and the protection of person and property, we will support General Joseph Smith for the President of the United States at the ensuing election.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE PROJECTED MOVEMENT TO THE WEST.

AS an evidence that the Prophet entertained no thought of success in his candidacy for the office of Chief Executive, we may mention the fact that, during the time that vigorous preparations were being made for the presidential canvass, he was setting on foot a scheme for taking the body of The Church into the west to settle Oregon. On the twentieth of February, 1844, the Prophet in his journal says:

"I instructed the Twelve Apostles to send out a delegation, and investigate the location of California and Oregon, and hunt out a good location, where we can remove to, after the temple is completed, and where we can build a city in a day, and have a government of our own, get up into the mountains, where the devil cannot dig us out, and live in a healthy climate, where we can live as old as we have a mind too."

In accordance with that instruction, the Twelve called the council on the twenty-first, and Jonathan Dunham, Phinehas H. Young and David Fullmer volunteered to go; and Alphonzo Young, James Emmett, George D. Watt, and Daniel Spencer were called to go.

Subsequently a memorial was drawn up by the Prophet, asking Congress to pass an enactment, authorizing him to raise a company for the purpose of establishing colonies in that vast, unsettled section of the country in the far West, known under the general name of Oregon. At that time there was no particular government existing in the region to which the names Oregon and California were loosely given. Nor was it certain whether that country would fall into the possession of England or the United States, as the northern boundary line question was then unsettled, and England and the United States held the country by a treaty of joint occupancy. As the Prophet preferred having an assurance of protection from the government on his enterprise, he asked Congress to pass the act before alluded to.