Footnotes
An account of an April 1840 JS discourse states that JS met with Van Buren at the President’s House over two successive days, whereas according to this letter to Hyrum Smith—the earliest extant account of the meeting—and a March 1840 discourse, the parties met at the President’s House only once. All three of these accounts, however, reported the same sentiment in Van Buren’s response. (Discourse, 7 Apr. 1840; Discourse, 1 Mar. 1840.)
See Allgor, Parlor Politics, 76–79, 232.
Allgor, Catherine. Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000.
Reynolds, My Own Times, 575. According to Lucy Mack Smith’s account of this meeting between JS, Higbee, and Van Buren, the parlor in which these men met was filled with several other visitors. (Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, bk. 17, [12].)
Reynolds, John. My Own Times: Embracing Also, the History of My Life. Belleville, IL: B. H. Perryman and H. L. Davison, 1855.
Presidents rarely issued executive orders during this period. Van Buren’s seven predecessors in office had issued a combined total of thirty executive orders over forty-three years. Van Buren issued ten executive orders during his term as president. (Peters and Woolley, “Executive Orders,” in American Presidency Project.)
Peters, Gerhard, and John T. Woolley. “Executive Orders.” In The American Presidency Project, 1999–. Hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara. Accessed 12 Apr. 2017. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php.
Silbey, Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics, chaps. 3–4.
Silbey, Joel H. Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
A report of JS’s discourse at an April 1840 general conference of the church states that JS and Higbee were seeking Van Buren’s assistance with their plan to petition Congress and makes no mention of a possible executive order. (Discourse, 7 Apr. 1840.)
Letter to Seymour Brunson and Nauvoo High Council, 7 Dec. 1839; Letter from Robert D. Foster, 24 Dec. 1839. At this time, the president’s annual message to Congress (later known as the State of the Union address) was not delivered as a speech but instead was sent to Congress as a letter. (Congressional Globe, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 1–7.)
The Congressional Globe, Containing Sketches of the Debates and Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Congress. Vol. 8. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1840.
According to this letter and others that JS, Rigdon, and Higbee wrote to Commerce during the ensuing months, the delegation was constantly concerned about insufficient funds during their travels. (Letter from Jacob W. Jenks, 31 Dec. 1839; Letter from Elias Higbee, 20 Feb. 1840–B; Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 3 Apr. 1840.)
This campaign to have influential men write to Congress was apparently an extension of the petitioning plan Rigdon set forth in April 1839. (Letter from Sidney Rigdon, 10 Apr. 1839.)
Coray, Autobiographical Sketch, 17, 19.
Coray, Howard. Autobiographical Sketch, after 1883. Howard Coray, Papers, ca. 1840–1941. Photocopy. CHL. MS 2043, fd. 1.
Likely An Appeal to the American People, which was approved for publication by a 1 November 1839 conference at Quincy, Illinois. ([Rigdon], Appeal to the American People, [2].)
Likely the Quincy branch of the State Bank of Illinois. (Richard M. Young, Washington DC, to Elias Higbee, 9 Apr. 1840, in JS Letterbook 2, pp. 133–134.)
Hyrum Smith subsequently deposited $300 with merchants in Quincy, which JS and Higbee could then withdraw in Washington DC. (Letter from Hyrum Smith, 2 Jan. 1840.)
Wight wrote his petition pursuant to JS’s request that the Saints gather “a knowledge of all the facts and suffering and abuses put upon them by the people of this state [Missouri].” There are two petitions authored by Wight to which this letter may be referring, though there are only minor textual differences between the two documents. (Letter to Edward Partridge and the Church, ca. 22 Mar. 1839 [D&C 123:1]; Lyman Wight, Petition, ca. 1839, microfilm, Martin Van Buren, Correspondence, 1839–1844, CHL; Lyman Wight, Petition, ca. 1839, CHL.)
Van Buren, Martin. Correspondence, 1839–1844. Photocopies. CHL. MS 12809. Original at Library of Congress, Washington DC.
Wight, Lyman. Petition, Liberty, MO, 15 Mar. 1839. CHL. MS 24547.
As the Twenty-Sixth Congress commenced, two separate delegations from New Jersey—one Whig, one Democrat—arrived at the United States Capitol, each claiming to be that state’s duly elected delegation to the House of Representatives. Of the six seats New Jersey held in the House, five were contested due to actions of local elections officials. Because of the strong partisan divide within the House of Representatives (which contained 119 Democrats and 118 Whigs, not including the contested New Jersey seats), the question of which New Jersey delegates to seat elicited a heated and prolonged debate that prevented the House from formally organizing and conducting legislative business for fourteen days. The House ultimately decided to seat the Democratic representatives. (Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 26th Cong., 1st Sess., 2–16 Dec. 1839, 3–80; 10 Mar. 1840, 569–578; Alexander Johnston, “Broad Seal War,” in Lalor, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, 309.)
Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Being the First Session of the Twenty-Sixth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 2, 1839, and in the Sixty-Fourth Year of the Independence of the Said United States. Washington DC: Blair and Rives, 1839.
Lalor, John J. Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Political Economy, and of the Political History of the United States, by the Best American and European Writers. Vol. 1, Abdication–Duty. Chicago: Melbert B. Carey, 1883.