Lincoln and the Mormons

[RJNorton]

On January 1, 1843, Joseph Smith was present in Springfield. Smith was arrested on a warrant issued by Governor Ford and had a hearing before Judge Pope in the U.S. District Court. It would have been physically possible for Abraham Lincoln to have met Joseph Smith during this January 1843 trip to Springfield but there is no evidence (IMO) the two men met.

It is known, however, that Lincoln did some reading in this area while President. On November 18, 1861, the following books were borrowed from the Library of Congress and sent to the White House at Lincoln's request: John Williams Gunnison's "Mormons, or Latter Day Saints," John Hyde's "Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs," and Joseph Smith, Jr.'s "The Book of Mormon; An Account Taken by the Hand of Mormon from the Plates of Nephi."

Lincoln talked about the Mormons in one speech. This was in a speech given in Springfield on June 26, 1857. The bulk of the speech was on the Dred Scott Decision, but Lincoln also brought up a few other topics including the Mormons. I am including Lincoln's words on the Mormons:

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FELLOW CITIZENS:---I am here to-night, partly by the invitation of some of you, and partly by my own inclination. Two weeks ago Judge Douglas spoke here on the several subjects of Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and Utah. I listened to the speech at the time, and have read the report of it since. It was intended to controvert opinions which I think just, and to assail (politically, not personally,) those men who, in common with me, entertain those opinions. For this reason I wished then, and still wish, to make some answer to it, which I now take the opportunity of doing.

I begin with Utah. If it prove to be true, as is probable, that the people of Utah are in open rebellion to the United States, then Judge Douglas is in favor of repealing their territorial organization, and attaching them to the adjoining States for judicial purposes. I say, too, if they are in rebellion, they ought to be somehow coerced to obedience; and I am not now prepared to admit or deny that the Judge's mode of coercing them is not as good as any. The Republicans can fall in with it without taking back anything they have ever said. To be sure, it would be a considerable backing down by Judge Douglas from his much vaunted doctrine of self-government for the territories; but this is only additional proof of what was very plain from the beginning, that that doctrine was a mere deceitful pretense for the benefit of slavery. Those who could not see that much in the Nebraska act itself, which forced Governors, and Secretaries, and Judges on the people of the territories, without their choice or consent, could not be made to see, though one should rise from the dead to testify.

But in all this, it is very plain the Judge evades the only question the Republicans have ever pressed upon the Democracy in regard to Utah. That question the Judge well knows to be this: ``If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?'' There is nothing in the United States Constitution or law against polygamy; and why is it not a part of the Judge's ``sacred right of self-government'' for that people to have it, or rather to keep it, if they choose? These questions, so far as I know, the Judge never answers. It might involve the Democracy to answer them either way, and they go unanswered.

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When Brigham Young sent Deseret News assistant editor T.B.H. Stenhouse to Washington D.C., to ascertain Lincoln's plans for the Mormons, the president told him, "Stenhouse, when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farms which we had to clear away. Occassionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn and too heavy to remove, so we plowed around it. That's what I intend to do with the Mormons. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone, I will let him alone." Throughout the remainder of the war, President Lincoln's tolerant attitude toward the Mormons won him the respect of the Saints."

In Preston Nibley, "Brigham Young: The Man and His Work" (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1936) p. 369. Also, in "Church History in the Fulness of Times" p. 383.