Mormon Publications: 19th Century - General epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles

Digital Collections at BYU > Mormon Publications: 19th Century > Learn More About These Titles > General epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles

General epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints abroad, dispersed throughout the earth, greeting. [St. Louis, 1848] 8 pp. 25 cm.

View Document

At end: Written at Winter Quarters, Omaha Nation, west bank of Missouri River, near Council Bluffs, North America, and signed December 23d, 1847, in behalf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Brigham Young, President. Willard Richards, Clerk.

General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles marks the beginning of Mormonism's Utah period. Issued fifty-three days after Brigham Young and most of the Twelve returned to Winter Quarters following their trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley, it opens with an account of the evacuation of Nauvoo, the settling of the Iowa camps, the call of the Mormon Battalion, and the overland journey of the pioneer company. It announces the establishment of a new home for the Latter-day Saints, describes the Salt Lake Valley, and calls upon the Saints to gather "on the east side of the Missouri River, and, if possible, be ready to start from hence by the first of May next, or as soon as grass is sufficiently grown, and go to the Great Salt Lake City." It counsels those unable to move to the Valley the following summer to settle for a time near Council Bluffs, urges the European Saints to immigrate speedily, by way of New Orleans to the Bluffs, and asks all those coming west to bring whatever seeds, plants, livestock, tools, machinery, books, maps, charts, and scientific instruments they can to the Valley.

The epistle also speaks of "having it in contemplation soon to re-organize the Church according to the original pattern, with a First Presidency and Patriarch." In fact, on December 5, at Orson Hyde's house near Council Bluffs, Brigham Young and eight members of the Twelve had reorganized the First Presidency with Brigham Young, president, and Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, his counselors, and the following day had called John Smith as patriarch. Eighteen days later, the day after they issued the epistle, they convened a four-day general conference at Council Bluffs during which Young, Kimball, Richards, and Smith were sustained by the congregation.

During the latter part November 1847, Orson Pratt, Wilford Woodruff and George A. Smith, and Ezra T. Benson submitted suggestions for the epistle to Willard Richards, and on December 16 at 11 p.m. he began dictating it to Robert L. Campbell, finishing it at 8 a.m. the following morning. The draft was discussed at a meeting of the Twelve later that day and again on the 19th and 21st. Richards and Thomas Bullock worked together on revisions over the three days December 20-22. The manuscript was handed to Amasa Lyman and Ezra T. Benson, who in company with William I. Appleby , Erastus Snow, James H. Flanigan, and others, left Council Bluffs for the East on December 28, and on January 14, Lyman, Benson, Snow, and Appleby reached St. Louis. Three days later, from St. Louis, Benson and Appleby wrote to Brigham Young that they had "five hundred copies of the Epistle already struck off" and were getting 3,000 printed at a cost of about $30.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume Two, 1848-1852. Forthcoming.

Used by permission of the author.