Jacob, Udney Hay.  An extract, from a manuscript entitled the Peacemaker.  Or the doctrines of the millennium: being a treatise on religion and jurisprudence. Or a new system of religion and politicks. For God, my country, and my rights. By Udney Hay Jacob, an Israelite, and a shepherd of Israel.  Nauvoo, Ill. J. Smith, Printer. 1842.
37 pp. 20.5 cm.

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Strictly speaking, this is not a Mormon book.  Its preface states, “The author of this work is not a Mormon, although it is printed by their press.”  It is included because it was printed at the Times and Seasons office and bears Joseph Smith’s name as printer, and because some have argued that it was gotten out at Joseph Smith’s behest to promote the doctrine of plural marriage.

Born in Massachusetts in 1781, Udney Hay Jacob and his family lived in Hancock County at the same time the Mormons began moving into Nauvoo.  His oldest son Norton joined the Church in March 1841, much to the dismay of his family.  That fall Norton left the family farm to locate seven miles from Nauvoo, and in early November 1842 he moved into the city.  Udney Jacob joined the Church in 1843, became disaffected, and was rebaptized in 1845.  As late as January 1844 he had not personally met Joseph Smith.  He remained in Hancock while Norton traveled with the pioneer company to the Great Basin in the summer of 1847, and in the fall of 1850 he too made the overland trip to Utah.  He died in Salt Lake City ten years later.

Udney Jacob seems to have written a book sometime before March 1840, when he corresponded with Martin Van Buren in an attempt to promote his work.  Two chapters apparently make up An Extract from a Manuscript Entitled The Peacemaker.   The Times and Seasons shop probably printed it in November 1842, since Joseph Smith repudiated it in the Times and Seasons of December 1, “a short time” after it appeared (see this digital collection).

Since it bears Joseph Smith’s name as printer, most likely it was published no later than November 12, when Smith turned the full responsibility for the printing office over to John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff, who had been managing it for the preceding nine months.

That some in Nauvoo believed the pamphlet expressed the views of the Church authorities is indicated by Oliver Olney in an anti–Mormon tract, entitled The Absurdities of Mormonism Portrayed, published in the spring of 1843.  Thirty–four years later, John D. Lee made the same claim in his book Mormonism Unveiled.  But in August 1845, in a response to a speech of William Smith, John Taylor publicly refuted this idea: “I had been called upon to expose the corruptions of some men who were in secret publishing the doctrines contained in a book written by Udney H. Jacobs which was a corrupt book; they state that it was Joseph’s views, published under a cloak of another man’s name and the character of Joseph Smith was implicated in the matter.”

Jacob himself commented on the pamphlet in 1851 in a letter to Brigham Young:  “I cannot imagine why you suspected me unless it was that I wrote a pamphlet some years since entitled the Peace Maker—you have certainly a wrong idea of that matter.  I was not then a member of this Church, and that pamphlet was not written for this people but for the citizens of the United States who professed to believe the Bible.”

The foregoing does not seem to support the contention that Joseph Smith sponsored the publication of An Extract from The Peacemaker.  More likely, the stir over polygamy in the summer and fall of 1842 and his son’s recent move to Nauvoo prompted Udney Jacob to approach the Times and Seasons shop about printing his pamphlet, and a willing hand in the shop accepted the job without reviewing it with his superiors.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church.  Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]).  Item 165, p. 211–12.

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