Mormon Publications: 19th Century - Late persecution of the Church

Pratt, Parley Parker. Late persecution of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day Saints. Ten thousand American citizens, robbed, plundered, and banished; others imprisoned, and others martyred for their religion. With a sketch of their rise, progress and doctrine. By P. P. Pratt, minister of the gospel: written in prison. New-York, J. W. Harrison, Printer, 28 Catharine-St., 1840.

xx, [21]–215 p. 16 cm.

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For eight months following the surrender of the Mormons at Far West, Parley Pratt languished in Richmond and Columbia jails. Before he finally escaped on July 4, 1839, he wrote a number of hymns and two significant essays. The first essay was an account of the anti-Mormon violence in Missouri, the manuscript which Parley’s wife smuggled out of Richmond Jail when the guards discovered his writings. In October 1839, enroute to his mission in Great Britain, Parley stopped in Detroit to publish this account in a pamphlet entitled History of the Late Persecution. Pausing in New York before sailing with the Twelve, he published three more books, a second edition of Voice of Warning, Millennium and Other Poems, and Late Persecution, a hardback edition of his account of the Missouri violence.

Late Persecution incorporates an introduction, not included in the first edition, which gives some of the early history of the Saints as well as a summary of their most fundamental beliefs. None of the concepts here were new to the printed record; all are discussed, for example, in Voice of Warning. What was new was the concise formulation of these ideas in a few pages. Indeed Parley’s introduction marks an important step in the development of a summary of Mormon belief which began with Oliver Cowdery’s one-page doctrinal outline in the Messenger and Advocate of October 1834. In February 1840 Parley reworked the doctrinal portion of this introduction into a four page tract which was published in Washington D.C. and subsequently republished six more times in England and the United States. Eight months later Orson Pratt used Parley’s introduction in composing the “sketch” of Mormon beliefs that concludes Remarkable Visions, a text that is generally considered to be the precursor of the “Articles of Faith.”

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake, A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 12, p. [12–13]; and Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]). Item 64, p. 100-102.

Used by permission of the authors and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.