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(July 17, 1831, as recollected on August 12, 1861)

On August 12, 1861, just months after the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, William W. Phelps penned a letter to Brigham Young giving him “the substance” of “a revelation by Joseph Smith, Jr.”[1] This revelation, Phelps wrote, was given in Indian territory, “over the boundary, west of Jackson Co., Missouri,” on July 17, 1831, when Joseph and six other elders, including Phelps, were preparing to “preach the first sermon to the remnants of the Lamanites and Nephites.” As Phelps recalled, the company, which also included Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, and others, had “neither pen, ink, or paper” on hand, prompting Joseph to remark how “the Lord could preserve his words as he had ever done.” Thereafter the Prophet, according to Phelps’ account, proceeded to recite the revelation, which Phelps numerated in the margins of the manuscript.[2]

The revelation opens in the voice of Jesus Christ in a manner not unlike many of the revelations encountered in the Doctrine and Covenants. It designates “this land,” meaning the land in the vicinity of Jackson County, as that upon which “the Zion of God” shall be built up in the last days. It further gives Phelps the honor of preaching to the Native Americans while instructing the other assembled elders in various roles. As also seen in other Joseph Smith revelations, Jesus then warns the elders to prepare for his second coming and to watch for the “vexation and vengeance” that would soon sweep the nation. But perhaps most startling of all is the Lord’s declaration that “in time” the elders would “take unto [themselves] wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white and delightsome.” For, the revelation declared, “even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.”[3]

In a concluding postscript, Phelps designated this text a “revelation about preaching the first sermon to the Lamanites and Nephites,” and one that also contained “remarks on polygamy.” He also informed President Young of the circumstances that unfolded following its receipt. “About three years after this was given,” wrote Phelps, “I asked brother Joseph privately how ‘we’ . . . could take wives from the ‘natives,’ as we were all married men.” The answer, according to Phelps, came immediately that they would take them as wives in the same manner that the biblical patriarchs took plural wives, a practice that was and would be directed “by revelation.”[4]

There are several remarkable but also problematic aspects of this text, the most glaring of which is the fact that Phelps’s account of this revelation and its reception was given three decades after the reported event. This makes the text a late, secondhand recollection, not a source directly from the Prophet himself. Indeed, by his own explicit admission, none of the elders at that time had the means to record any such revelation, obliging Phelps to give President Young only the “substance” or “part” of the text.[5] It is unknown if Phelps was copying an earlier manuscript or composing this draft from memory, but the latter appears more likely.[6] If this version is a copy, then where is the original? How much longer after the event was that original composed? And how can we be sure Phelps’s copy is faithful to that original? If Phelps was recalling the revelation, how sure can we trust him after three decades to capture verbatim what Joseph might have spoken on that occasion? These and other questions diminish our confidence that we can unreservedly attribute this revelation to the Prophet.

There is also something to be said about the fact that the contents of this revelation appear to reflect the contemporary influence of the tumultuous opening of the Civil War in 1861. The language of verse 6 of the revelation, which speaks of “ungodly and daring men” rising up in violence to bring about “the destruction of the government” and “the death and misery of many souls” resonates with how Latter-day Saints reacted to the outbreak of the war.[7] Of course, in what is now section 87 of the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith prophesied on December 25, 1832, with chilling specificity and fulfillment that civil war would consume the United States and that war would eventually pour out across the globe.[8] So we cannot rule out the possibility that the Prophet may have given another earlier prophetic utterance pertaining to that coming calamity. But it could just as easily be that Phelps’s memory, if not also the specific language of his version of the revelation, was influenced by both the outbreak of the war during which he was writing as well as the language of the canonical revelation, which also thunders with apocalyptic language reminiscent of Phelps’s text.[9]

There is, finally, the matter of the revelation instructing the elders to, in due time, take for themselves “wives of the Lamanites and Nephites.” This aspect of the revelation has engendered considerable interest among scholars for the potentially significant implications it holds for Joseph Smith’s introduction of plural marriage.[11] “While one must view the document cautiously,” writes one historian, “if Phelps was correct this disclosure may constitute Mormonism’s earliest formal approval of plural marriage.”[12] Was Joseph in fact receiving instruction about or otherwise hinting at the restoration of this practice as early as 1831? It appears possible. Regulations for polygamy appear in the Book of Mormon (Jacob 2:28–30), and later sources indicate that plural marriage was on the Prophet’s mind much earlier than when he formally entered the practice;[13] kindled, according to some of these accounts, by his early work on the translation of the Bible, where he encountered depictions of biblical figures taking multiple wives.[14]

These sources and others like them that avow an earlier date for the restoration of plural marriage, however, are predominantly from a later time when plural marriage was an official (and heavily ridiculed) practice of the Church—a time when Latter-day Saints practicing plural marriage were keen to refute accusations of the practice’s illicit origins or claims from members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now the Community of Christ) that Brigham Young, not Joseph Smith, had introduced the practice. This is not at all to suggest these Saints, some of whom were involved in plural marriage from its earliest inception, were consciously lying or fabricating details from whole cloth, but rather to urge caution not to rely on them uncritically since their memories and retellings could easily have been affected by this later cultural environment. While they do create an undeniable impression that Phelps’s text is perhaps preserving something in line with the Prophet’s early thinking, they do not definitively prove such.

There does appear to be some degree of contemporary corroboration that marriage with Native Americans was on the minds of some early Saints, as depicted in Phelps’s letter. Ezra Booth, an early convert and elder who served a mission in Missouri in 1831, reported in December of that year after his disaffection from the Church that “it has been made known by revelation, that it will be pleasing to the Lord” for some of the elders to “form a matrimonial alliance with the Natives.” Booth even alleged that one elder in Missouri, who was “entirely free from his wife” back in New York, was now “at liberty to take him a wife from among the Lamanites,” echoing the language of the revelation.[15] That Booth specifically mentions the existence of a revelation containing this instruction is striking and seems to confirm that Joseph may have received some manner of communication on the topic. However, Booth’s testimony fails to confirm that plural marriage was being considered, as depicted in Phelps’s later text, and likewise says nothing about the elders taking Native American wives for the purpose of making their seed “white and delightsome.” Rather, according to Booth the purpose of these strategic marriages was for the elders to “gain a residence in the Indian territory,” thereby foiling the obstructionist efforts of federal Indian agents who had barred Latter-day Saints from preaching in the territory.[16]

Significantly, Phelps himself left another earlier account of the circumstances surrounding Joseph Smith’s receipt of this July 1831 revelation—one that confirms some details of his later version while complicating others. In a February 1845 meeting of the Council of Fifty, Phelps related how some years previous a group of elders “went over the boundaries of the U.S. to preach.” On this occasion Joseph Smith “commenced a revelation that Martin [Harris] was to marry among the Lamanites” and that Phelps “was to preach that day.”[17] This “long revelation,” as Phelps describes it, is almost certainly the one Booth spoke of in his 1831 letter. Martin Harris, it would appear from Phelps’s recounting, was the elder mentioned by Booth who claimed divine authorization to marry a Native American woman after divorcing his wife back in the New York—the irascible Lucy Harris. This scribed summary of Phelps’s account omits some key details, however, and so its usefulness in verifying the later version of events is limited. Missing in the 1845 account, for one thing, is any of the apocalyptic doom prominent in the 1861 letter. So too plural marriage with the Lamanites goes unmentioned in the earlier account, as do the details of Phelps’s reaction. To be sure, scribe Thomas Bullock was unable to capture the entirety of Phelps’s remarks, hastily scribbling “&c &c” as he struggled to capture what he was hearing, so it appears that Phelps disclosed more about the incident than what we can currently determine. So, while Phelps seemed in 1861 to recall correctly the broad details surrounding the origins of this revelation, verification for his key claims about what Joseph pronounced in July 1831 remains elusive.

It would appear, therefore, that while Phelps may have captured some authentic details in his 1861 recording of this revelation, the cumulative effect of the available evidence prompts us to agree with David J. Whittaker’s assessment that “the contents of the document better fit an 1861 context” rather than an 1831 context, and that “it is possible that Phelps added his own understanding [to the revelation] thirty years later.”[18] For these and other reasons, we are therefore persuaded against ascribing this text to the Prophet without serious reservation. In our judgment there simply appear to be too many gaps and uncertainties in the historical record for us to confidently view this as a Joseph Smith revelation. It is there for best for now to approach the text as a late, secondhand retelling of a purported revelation by the Prophet. Some of the circumstantial evidence reviewed above does mitigate this uncertainty somewhat, but not enough for us to assign authorship of this text to the Prophet. However, following the precedent provided by the Joseph Smith Papers Project,[19] we feel it appropriate to include this text in our appendix as a revelation attributed to Joseph Smith for both the convenience and interest of our readers. As with the other revelations in this book, the text of this revelation has been standardized. The verse numbers here follow those used by Phelps in his letter.

❋ ❋ ❋

The substance of a revelation by Joseph Smith Jr., given over the boundary, land of Jackson County, Missouri, on Sunday morning, July 17, 1831, when seven elders—namely, Joseph Smith Jr., Oliver Cowdery, W. W. Phelps, Martin Harris, Joseph Coe, Ziba Peterson, and Joshua Lewis—united their hearts in prayer in a private place to inquire of the Lord who should preach the first sermon to the remnants of the Lamanites and Nephites and the people of that section that should assemble that day in the Indian country to hear the gospel and the revelations according to the Book of Mormon. Among the company there being neither pen, ink, or paper, Joseph remarked that the Lord could preserve his words as he had ever done until the time appointed and proceeded.

¹Verily, verily, saith the Lord your Redeemer, even Jesus Christ, the light and the life of the world—ye cannot discern with your natural eyes the design and the purpose of your Lord and your God in bringing you thus far into the wilderness for a trial of your faith, and to be especial witnesses, to bear testimony of this land, upon which the Zion of God shall be built up in the last days, when it is redeemed.

²Verily, inasmuch as ye are united in calling upon my name to know my will concerning who shall preach to the inhabitants that shall assemble this day to learn what new doctrine you have to teach them, you have done wisely, for so did the prophets anciently; even Enoch, Abraham, and others. And therefore, it is my will that my servant Oliver Cowdery should open the meeting with prayer; that my servant W. W. Phelps should preach the discourse; and that my servants Joseph Coe and Ziba Peterson should bear testimony as they shall be moved by the Holy Spirit. This will be pleasing in the sight of your Lord.

³Verily, I say unto you, ye are laying the foundation of a great work for the salvation of as many as will believe and repent, and obey the ordinances of the gospel, and continue faithful to the end. For, as I live, saith the Lord, so shall they live.

⁴Verily, I say unto you that the wisdom of man in his fallen state knoweth not the purposes and the privileges of my holy priesthood; but ye shall know when ye receive a fulness by reason of the anointing. For it is my will that, in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and just; for even now their females are more virtuous than the Gentiles.

⁵Gird up your loins and be prepared for the mighty work of the Lord to prepare the world for my second coming; to meet the tribes of Israel according to the predictions of all the holy prophets since the beginning; for the final desolation and decrees upon Babylon. For, as the everlasting gospel is carried from this land, in love for peace, to gather mine elect from the four quarters of the earth, for Zion, even so shall rebellion follow after speedily, with hatred for war until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all the kingdoms and nations that strive to govern themselves by the laws and precepts, and force and powers of men under the curse of sin in all the world.

⁶Verily, I say unto you, that the day of vexation and vengeance is nigh at the doors of this nation, when wicked, ungodly and daring men will rise up in wrath and might, and go forth in anger, like as the dust is driven by a terrible wind. And they will be the means of the destruction of the government and cause the death and misery of many souls. But the faithful among my people shall be preserved in holy places, during all these tribulations.

⁷Be patient, therefore, possessing your souls in peace and love, and keep the faith that is now delivered unto you for the gathering of scattered Israel. And lo, I am with you, though ye cannot see me, until I come. Even so. Amen.

Notes

[1] William W. Phelps to Brigham Young, August 12, 1861, revelations collection, circa 1829–1876, MS 4583, CHL, [1]. Spelling and grammar in this letter have been standardized.

[2] Phelps to Brigham Young, August 12, 1861, [1].

[3] Phelps to Brigham Young, August 12, 1861, [1].

[4] Phelps to Brigham Young, August 12, 1861, [2].

[5] Phelps to Brigham Young, August 12, 1861, [3], where Phelps designates this text “part substance of a revelation.”

[6] H. Michael Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations: Text & Commentary (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999), 374, says that Phelps recorded this text “evidently from memory” but provides no further elaboration. The key piece of evidence that Phelps most likely wrote this text from memory is found within the letter itself, where Phelps mentions how none of the elders at the meeting where this revelation was received had pen or paper to record the revelation.

[7] See the examples and discussion in Richard E. Bennett, “‘We Know No North, No South, No East, No West’: Mormon Interpretations of the Civil War, 1861–65,” in Civil War Saints, ed. Kenneth L. Alford (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 93–105; Brett D. Dowdle, “‘What Means This Carnage?’: The Civil War in Mormon Thought,” in Civil War Saints, 107–25.

[8] JSP, D2:328–31; see also Scott C. Esplin, “‘Have We Not Had a Prophet Among Us?’: Joseph Smith’s Civil War Prophecy,” in Civil War Saints, 41–59.

[9] By the time of Phelps’s writing, this revelation had been published in the 1851 Liverpool edition of the Pearl of Great Price. See Franklin D. Richards, comp., The Pearl of Great Price: Being a Choice Selection from the Revelations, Translations, and Narrations of Joseph Smith (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1851), 35. It would not be included in the Doctrine and Covenants until 1876. See The Doctrine and Covenants, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1876), 278–79.

[10] JSP, D2:330–31.

[11] See, for example, Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 3; Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840–1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 19–20; B. Carmon Hardy, ed., Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2007), 34–37; Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 1:86–87; Merina Smith, Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy: The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830–1853 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2013), 43–44; Max Perry Mueller, Race and the Making of the Mormon People (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 72–73.

[12] Hardy, Doing the Works of Abraham, 35.

[13] Two of Joseph’s plural wives, Helen Mar Kimball and Lucy Walker, both reported that Joseph had received revelation about plural marriage as early as 1831 but refrained from entering into the practice at that time. See Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884), 53; Lucy Walker, United States Testimony, 1892, Temple Lot Case, 450–51, MS 1160, CHL. Lyman E. Johnson and Orson Pratt both affirmed something similar, the latter claiming in an 1869 sermon how in 1832 the Prophet received revelation “that the principle of taking more wives than one is a true principle, but the time had not yet come for it to be practised.” “Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith,” The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star 40, no. 50 (December 16, 1878): 788; Orson Pratt, “Celestial Marriage,” in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: Horace S. Eldredge, 1871), 13:193.

[14] Andrew Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” Historical Record 6, no. 3–5 (May 1887): 232–33; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah: 1540–1887 (San Francisco, CA: The History Company, 1890), 161–62; B. H. Roberts, ed., History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1909), 5:xxix–xxx; Osborne J. P. Widtsoe, The Restoration of the Gospel (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1912), 157–58.

[15] Ezra Booth to Ira Eddy, December 6, 1831, Ohio Star 2, no. 49 (December 8, 1832): 1 reprinted in Eber D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed: Or, A Faithful Account of That Singular Imposition and Delusion, from Its Rise to the Present Time (Painesville, OH: E. D. Howe, 1834), 220.

[16] Booth to Ira Eddy, December 6, 1831, 1.

[17] JSP, CFM:533.

[18] David J. Whittaker, “Mormons and Native Americans: A Historical and Bibliographical Introduction,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 35.

[19] The editors of the ninth volume of the Document series of The Joseph Smith Papers include Joseph’s purported 1842 letter to Nancy Rigdon, known as the “Happiness Letter,” in an appendix. JSP, D9:413–18. For more on the rationale of this decision, see Gerrit Dirkmaat, “Searching for ‘Happiness’: Joseph Smith’s Alleged Authorship of the 1842 Letter to Nancy Rigdon,” Journal of Mormon History 42, No. 3 (July 2016): 94–119.