It was bitter cold in early January 150 years ago at Winter Quarters on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River. Many Latter-day Saints were suffering from disease, especially "blackcanker" (scurvy) brought on by a lack of vitamin C. A few were dying. Yet, there was optimism. Nearly everyone realized that in the spring the Exodus, which had begun almost a year earlier from Nauvoo, Ill., would start up again toward the Rocky Mountains.
On Sabbath days and sometimes on other occasions, President Brigham Young and the other apostles counseled the Saints to keep their covenants. They urged the Camp of Israel to warrant the Lord's blessings through their faith and good works, particularly in the form of working harmoniously with each other and everybody carrying his own weight. The Twelve had organized the Winter Quarters encampment into 22 separate wards, each with a bishop. On Dec. 20, 1846, President Young instructed the bishops to hold meetings in the wards where the Saints could "confess their sins, pray with and for each other, humble themselves before the Lord and commence a reformation that all might exercise themselves in the principles of righteousness."1In this cabin city, members of the Twelve Apostles met nearly every day with each other to review their plans. When possible they conferred with traders, trappers, and Christian missionaries who knew the West firsthand. They had obtained the most reliable maps of the mountains and the valleys between them.
Upon the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith 21/2 years earlier, the leadership of the Church had fallen upon the Twelve with President Young as president. The whisperings of the Spirit had not yet come to this quorum instructing them to reorganize a new First Presidency.
Thus the Twelve Apostles, who as a body held the fullness of the priesthood keys, continued to direct the Church in all spiritual and temporal matters. But the Church, which had gone through its share of crises over the past three years, still had some members who remained confused on the issue of leadership.
Another complicating factor regarding leadership was the existence of a council, generally referred to as the Council of Fifty, but sometimes also referred to in the official minutes as the "general council." Joseph Smith had organized the council in March 1844 just three months before his martyrdom. This council dealt with political relationships, and among other things coordinated Joseph Smith's short-lived run for the United States presidency.
Following the Prophet's death, Brigham Young appropriately assumed leadership of the Council of Fifty. Under President Young's leadership, this council coordinated relationships with the various government agencies in Illinois and the United States in general. It also met to direct plans and policies for the westward exodus. Because of its significant work, the Council of Fifty came to represent in the minds of some of its members a station equal to that of the Quorum of the Twelve, who were also members of the general council. These few men thought that the Council of the Fifty would deal with temporal matters while the apostles would govern only Church and spiritual affairs. This was a mistaken notion, but one nevertheless that four or five influential men believed.
Another difficulty regarding the Twelve in January 1847 was that three key members of the quorum - Orson Hyde, Parley P. Pratt, and John Taylor - were away in Great Britain presiding over the British Mission and clearing up some difficulties that had arisen there the past summer. (See Church News, Nov. 2, 1996, p. 6.) Thus all the Twelve were not together at this critical time to counsel with each other, to strengthen each other and the members, and to finalize their united plans for the last legs of the westward trek.
One of the men who caused Brigham Young and the Twelve the most difficulty with the leadership issue was Bishop George Miller, who was also a charter member of the Council of Fifty. Bishop Miller had been called by revelation to serve as one of the presiding bishops in Nauvoo (D&C 124:20-22). He was held in high confidence by the Prophet Joseph Smith. Sadly, after Brother Joseph died, Bishop Miller did not transfer his total loyalty over to the Twelve Apostles. After the westward trek began in February 1846, again and again Brother Miller went on ahead of the main encampment, often totally against the counsel of Brigham Young. President Young became exasperated with the bishop on a number of occasions. Unwisely Bishop Miller went off to live in the Ponca settlement of nearly 400 Saints, about 170 miles away from Winter Quarters on the Niobrara River. At Ponca, Miller repeatedly undercut the direction of President Young and the Twelve. From Dec. 24 to Dec. 27, the Council of Fifty at Winter Quarters deliberated for more than 25 hours on the subject of possibly setting up a farm or way station north of Fort Laramie in present-day northeastern Wyoming that would aid the exodus of the bulk of the Latter-day Saints a year and a half hence in 1848. This plan was the brainchild of Bishop George Miller, and he argued at length in behalf of his idea. Both Brigham Young and Willard Richards were ill at this time and missed a great portion of these meetings.
The Council of Fifty gave tentative approval to the Yellowstone River plan, but after a few days of contemplating it, Brigham Young could see several flaws in the idea. This way station would be more than a hundred miles north of the route they were intending to take to the Rocky Mountains, and right in the middle of Sioux Indians who had been hostile in recent times toward Anglo-American exploring teams. Furthermore, the Mormon Battalion men would have to march back hundreds of miles farther to join their families.
Most of all, President Young was annoyed that the brethren had approved a plan that did not have the seal of divine approval and that had actually been put forward by one, Bishop George Miller, who had not been loyal to the Quorum of the Twelve. For another thing, Bishop Miller had been known to say that he did not think that the Saints should make their new home in the Great Basin in the Rocky Mountains. Miller's attitude was beginning to cause dissension among some Latter-day Saints.2
With the Lord's inspiration Brigham Young decided once and for all to dispel any doubt that the Quorum of the Twelve was in firm control of the leadership of the Church.
On Jan. 11, 1847, Brigham Young confided to his closest advisers about a dream he had had the previous night of Joseph Smith conversing with him "freely about the best manner of organizing companies for emigration." This dream, accompanied by conversations with Elders Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, motivated President Young to seek the Lord in prayer. On Thursday, Jan. 14, 1847, he presented a revelation to the members of the Quorum of the Twelve that he had received from the Lord. It began as "The Word and Will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their journeyings to the West." (D&C 136:1.) An important clause at the beginning of the revelation stated that the principles enunciated therein were to be implemented "under the direction of the Twelve Apostles." (D&C 136:3.)
The revelation directed that three additional companies of fifty (besides those of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball) be organized to leave early in the spring to put in crops in the West. Five apostles and one other man who would later become an apostle (Erastus Snow) - two apiece to head each company of fifty - were appointed to recruit "pioneers" for this project. The apostle teams were Ezra T. Benson and Erastus Snow, Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff, and Amasa Lyman and George A. Smith. These brethren were enjoined to "choose out a sufficient number of able-bodied and expert men, to take teams, seed, and farming utensils." They would find the best skilled men with a variety of abilities to blaze the trail and establish a refuge in the Rocky Mountains. (D&C 136:3-16.)
The apostles present at the Jan. 14 meeting enthusiastically endorsed the revelation. After the revelation was more formally written up by Elder Willard Richards, the scribe for the Twelve, it was presented on Jan. 16 to the Winter Quarters High Council, which also enthusiastically responded to the revelation. For example, council member Lorin Farr said "it reminded him of the first reading of the Book of Mormon, he was perfectly satisfied that it was from the Lord."3 On Sunday, Jan. 17, the revelation was presented to the general priesthood in a Sabbath meeting and sustained by the uplifting of hands. The temperature was 17 degrees below zero that morning. Two days later the general Winter Quarters membership also upheld the revelation.
Brigham Young was pleased. He recorded, "The Church has been led by revelation just as much since the death of Joseph Smith as before. . . . Joseph received his apostleship from Peter, and his brethren, and the present Apostles received their apostleship from Joseph, the first apostle, and Oliver Cowdery, the second apostle."4
Hosea Stout, a loyal follower of Brigham Young and the apostles, recorded in his journal, "This will put to silence the wild bickering and suggestions of those who are ever in the way and opposing the proper council. They will now have to come to this standard or come out in open rebelion to the Will of the Lord which will plainly manifest them to the people and then they can have no influence."5
In a few days the revelation was hand delivered and then read to the Ponca settlement by Elder Ezra T. Benson. He was accompanied by Erastus Snow and Orrin Porter Rockwell. They also took with them a letter from the Twelve to the Ponca Saints. "Brethren, this is a subject that has long attracted our attention, and concerning which we have thought and felt deeply . . . the only human hope or prospect of
the Church'sT salvation, has appeared to rest on the removal of the saints from a land of oppression and violence to some more congenial clime; and the whisperings of the spirit to us have invariably been of the same import, to depart; to go hence, to flee into the mountains; to retire to our strongholds, that we may be secure in the day of the visitation of judgements that must pass through the land."
The letter added, "While we were contemplating and praying and councilling on this all important subject, the Word and Will of the Lord, as you will hear from Brother Benson, was received, and it has been presented to all the authorities of the different Quorums of the Priesthood and Church assembled at this place, and received their united and unanimous sanction, and consequently has become a law unto all saints."6
Elder Benson relieved Bishop George Miller of his leadership in the settlement and directed him to fulfill his bishop's duties in Winter Quarters. The Ponca Saints sustained the revelation and a few men were recruited by Elders Benson and Snow to participate in the spring pioneer journey.
As for Bishop Miller, he was chagrined. He later stated that he felt "broken down in spirit" by what he felt was a "usurpation" of authority by the Twelve and the "oppressive measures" he felt that they were taking. He resolved then and there "to go with them no longer" and to separate himself and his family from the westward venture.7 He ultimately would join the Strangites in Michigan.
Throughout the rest of the winter the revelation was taken throughout all the known camps of the Saints in Iowa and was sustained by uplifted hands in each location.
In late January and throughout February the six appointed priesthood leaders gathered their companies together with skilled and vigorous men according to the revelation. They also abided by an injunction in the revelation that read, "And this shall be our covenant - that we will walk in all the ordinances of the Lord." (D&C 136:4.) Each man who joined one of the companies of fifty solemnly covenanted that he would follow all the revelation's instructions. Also by vote, the Saints covenanted to follow another key portion of the revelation: "Let each company bear an equal proportion, according to the dividend of their property, in taking the poor, the widows, the fatherless, and the families of those who have gone into the army [Mormon Battalion], that the cries of the widow and the fatherless come not up into the ears of the Lord against this people." (D&C 136:8.)
The revelation also gave explicit instructions regarding behavior of the Camp of Israel: "Keep yourselves from evil to take the name of the Lord in vain. . . . Cease to contend one with another; cease to speak evil one of another. Cease drunkenness; and let your words tend to edifying one another." (D&C 136:21, 23-24.)
This revelation to Brigham Young praised the labors of the Prophet Joseph Smith and stated that "it was needful that he should seal his testimony with his blood, that he might be honored and the wicked might be condemned." (D&C 136:37-39.)
Heber C. Kimball reported in his journal, "The union that now exist
sT in the camp of Isreal, which are now on the west side of the Missouri River, surpasses any since the Church was organized from the Quorum of the Twelve down through every organization of the Church."8
Thus we can plainly discern that the hand of Almighty God was guiding the Latter-day Saints 150 years ago even in the days of their calamity at Winter Quarters and at other camps in Iowa and Nebraska.
NOTES:
1 Manuscript History of Brigham Young, p. 480.
2 Richard E. Bennett described the problems of Bishop Miller in "Finalizing Plans for the Trek West: Deliberations at Winter Quarters, 2846-2847," BYU Studies (24:3:301-320).
3 MHBY, pp. 503-04.
4 MHBY, pp. 505-06.
5 Juanita Brooks, ed. On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout 1844-1861, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1964), 1:229.
6 MHBY, pp. 512-13.
7 H. W. Mills, ed., "De Tal Palo Tal Astilla," Annual Publications of the Historical Society of Southern California, 10, Part III (1917), pp. 111-12.
8 Heber C. Kimball to John M. Bernhisel, February 17, 1847; and Journal of Heber C. Kimball, February 23, 1847, LDS Church Historical Archives.
