It is but fair to Governor Ford, however, to say that in his inaugural speech of December 8th, 1842, he pointed out what he regarded as objectionable features in the Nauvoo charter, and recommended its modification,[[18]] and later censured the lawyers for misleading the Nauvoo city authorities in this matter, in the following passage from a letter to the Mayor and City Council of Nauvoo, under date of June 22nd, 1844.
You have also assumed to yourselves more power than you are entitled to in relation to habeas corpus under your charter. I know that you have been told by lawyers, for the purpose of gaining your favor, that you have this power to any extent. In this they have deceived you for their own base purposes. Your charter supposes that you may pass ordinances, a breach of which will result in the imprisonment of the offender.
For the purpose of giving more speedy relief to such persons authority was given to the Municipal Court to issue writs of habeas corpus in all cases arising under the ordinances of the city.
It was never supposed by the Legislature, nor can the language of your charter be tortured to mean that a jurisdiction was intended to be conferred which would apply to all cases of imprisonment under the general laws of the state or of the United States, as well as the city ordinances.
To which President Smith replied:
Whatever power we have exercised in the habeas corpus has been done in accordance with the letter of the Charter and Constitution as we confidently understood them; and that, too, with the ablest counsel; but if it be so that we have erred in this thing, let the Supreme Court correct the evil. We have never gone contrary to constitutional law, so far as we have been able to learn it. If lawyers have belied their profession to abuse us the evil be on their heads.[[19]]
XI. The Fate of a Balance of Power Factor in Politics.
Being misled by false legal and political advice was not the only misfortune of the kind perpetrated upon the Saints, first by the subserviency of, and then the betrayal by, politicians and lawyers. The hope of both parties to secure political advantage by the influx of the now Latter-day Saint population into the state has been already referred to; as also the efforts of both parties to gain their favor by granting exceptional favors to them in founding Nauvoo. When, however, the time for voting came, and the Saints voted according to their convictions of duty, or as their inclinations prompted, the defeated party or candidates blamed them for the defeat, and straightway favored the adoption of an anti-Mormon policy, which found support not only in the defeated party, but also among those who felt a grievance against the Saints on other accounts; some because Nauvoo's prosperity and constantly increasing importance as a center of population and trade and commerce was rapidly eclipsing all other towns of the state; and others, over-anxious to retard, if not destroy, a rival system on account of religious prejudice. When an anti-Mormon party took the field, pledged itself to repeal the Nauvoo charter, and to drive the Mormons from the state—as was the pledge of Joseph Duncan, Whig candidate for Governor of Illinois in 1841,[[20]] there was really no other course for the Saints to pursue but to combine solidly for the defeat of the candidate and party making such pledges; the instinct of self-preservation impelled such a course, rather than the prompting of inclination.
For a time, as in all such cases, the party receiving the support of this practically solid Mormon vote could be relied upon to protect and defend those who had made success possible for them; but at the first indication that the hold of the favored party upon such vote is precarious, that there is a possibility that it might go to the other side,[[21]] naturally the ardor of their friendship, seldom or never sincere, cools; and they are as ready to combine for the destruction of their former allies as others have been. And when in addition to precariousness of hold upon those who possess the balance of power there stands up in the back ground of things the possibility that the balance of power party may become strong enough in the political subdivision in which they are located to run affairs on their own account, the likelihood of all parties combining against them becomes all the more assured. In Illinois the Latter-day Saints ran the entire political gamut of experience as a "balance of power" factor in the politics of western Illinois. The final phase of that experience had been reached when at a mass meeting held at Carthage on the sixth of September, 1843, it was—
Resolved, That as it has been too common for several years past for politicians of both political parties, not only of this county, but likewise of the state, to go to Nauvoo and truckle to the heads of the Mormon clan for their influence, we pledge ourselves that we will not support any man of either party in the future who shall thus debase himself.[[22]]
Politicians still sought Mormon aid to encompass their own political ends, but, as Governor Ford later remarked, "they were willing and anxious for Mormon voters at elections, but they were unwilling to risk their popularity with the people, by taking part in their favor even when law and justice, and the Constitution, were all on their side;"[[22]] and so finally all parties turned against them, and they were at the last, as we shall see in the future volume of this history, expelled without mercy from the state.
XII. Joseph Smith's Candidacy for the Presidency.