Revelation, circa Early 1830
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Source Note
Revelation, , Ontario Co., NY, [ca. early] 1830. Featured version, titled “23 Commandment AD 1830,” copied [ca. Mar. 1831] in Revelation Book 1, pp. 30–31; handwriting of ; CHL. Includes redactions. For more complete source information, see the source note for Revelation Book 1.
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Historical Introduction
This revelation directed JS and others to obtain the copyright for the Book of Mormon “upon all the face of the Earth” and appointed four men, , , , and , to travel to Kingston, Upper Canada, to secure a copyright for the four provinces of . Since the men apparently traveled to Kingston sometime between late January and early March 1830, the revelation must have been written early in 1830. More than six months earlier, on 11 June 1829, JS had applied for a copyright for the Book of Mormon in the by submitting the book’s title page to the clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of . The copyright protected the text against unauthorized changes and distribution. In January 1830, , who printed the Reflector on the same press being used for the Book of Mormon, tested the prepublication copyright by printing a portion of the Book of Mormon in his newspaper without authorization. The problem was quickly resolved, in part because JS asserted his copyright authority. Shortly after that confrontation, this revelation commanded JS to expand copyright protection of the Book of Mormon throughout the world.The potential profits from the sale of the books had also recently become the subject of an agreement between JS and , the primary financier for the printing, who had mortgaged his property in August 1829 as payment to . On 16 January 1830, likely during his visit to to confront , JS signed an agreement that granted Harris the right to sell copies of the Book of Mormon until he was compensated for the cost of the printing. Although the agreement permitted Harris to collect $3,000 from the sale of the books, this revelation, possibly dictated about the same time, explicitly excluded Harris from sharing in the temporal blessings associated with the wider sale and distribution of the Book of Mormon. As shown in the text transcribed below, the revelation promised blessings to “those who have assisted” JS, “yea even all save M◊◊tin [Martin] only.” Three layers of deletion obscured Harris’s name. later wrote that the necessary preparations for the trip to were made “in a sly manor so as to keep Martin Haris from drawing a share of the money.”According to a much later recollection by , originally suggested to JS that the Book of Mormon copyright could be sold for “considerable money” in . recalled that a small group of church leaders were assembled at the Smith log home in when this revelation came. It directed , , , and to obtain the copyright for the Book of Mormon not only in but “upon all the face of the Earth of which is known by you.” They were to begin their efforts in Kingston and were then authorized, under certain conditions, to sell the Book of Mormon copyright for the four major British provinces in North America., , and likely the other two traveled to Kingston in response to the revelation, but they failed to obtain a copyright. A local resident apparently informed them that they were more likely to secure a copyright if they went to York, the capital of , but rather than travel more than 160 miles farther, they returned home and reported to JS at the home of in . Almost six decades later questioned the legitimacy of the revelation because of the group’s failure to secure a copyright. He claimed that in a council held on 1 November 1831 to consider printing the revelations, JS repudiated the revelation. Whitmer further stated that he and and were present when Cowdery and Page returned. “We asked Joseph,” he wrote, “how it was that he had received a revelation from the Lord for some brethren to go to Toronto [Kingston] and sell the copy-right, and the brethren had utterly failed in their undertaking.” Joseph reportedly enquired of the Lord through the and, according to Whitmer, received a revelation that stated, “Some revelations are of God: some revelations are of man: and some revelations are of the devil.” Page, however, left no indication in his recollection that he was bitter about the revelation or his trip to . Even though the text in Revelation Book 1 includes editing marks, it was not published with other revelations in the Book of Commandments in 1833.
Footnotes
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1
The only copy of this revelation (in Revelation Book 1) is simply dated 1830 and placed between two April 1830 revelations. David Whitmer’s later account helps narrow the dating: he reportedly recalled that the revelation was dictated in January 1830 and that Cowdery and Page crossed Lake Ontario on the ice to reach Kingston, which only would have been possible that winter between January and early March. This window of time also coincides with a period when E. B. Grandin’s printshop used the original Book of Mormon manuscript, rather than the printer’s manuscript, for a portion of the typesetting from Helaman to the third book of Nephi. It is probable that Cowdery, scribe for the printer’s manuscript, was in Canada with the manuscript. (Traughber, “False Prophecies,” 1; Skousen, “Translating and Printing the Book of Mormon,” 107–109.)
Traughber, John L. “False Prophecies.” In John L. Traughber, Papers, 1854–1910. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Skousen, Royal. “Translating and Printing the Book of Mormon.” In Oliver Cowdery: Scribe, Elder, Witness, edited by John W. Welch and Larry E. Morris, 75–76. Provo, UT: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, Brigham Young University, 2006.
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2
See Copyright for Book of Mormon, 11 June 1829; and Title Page of Book of Mormon, ca. Early June 1829.
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3
“The First Book of Nephi,” Reflector (Palmyra, NY), 2 Jan. 1830, 9; Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845, bk. 9, [9]–[10]; see also Historical Introduction to Letter from Oliver Cowdery, 28 Dec. 1829.
Reflector. Palmyra, NY. 1821–1831.
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4
Martin Harris to Egbert B. Grandin, Indenture, Wayne Co., NY, 25 Aug. 1829, Wayne Co., NY, Mortgage Records, vol. 3, pp. 325–326, microfilm 479,556, U.S. and Canada Record Collection, FHL.
U.S. and Canada Record Collection. FHL.
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6
Hiram Page, Fishing River, MO, to William E. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848, typescript, Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, CHL; see also Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 30–31.
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
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7
Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 31.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
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8
H. Page to W. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848.
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
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9
British copyright law, under the 1709 Statute of Anne, provided copyright protection for British subjects, including those in Canada, only if a copy of the work was physically registered with Stationers Hall in London, a difficult proposition for most Canadian authors.a From 1814 to 1835 no author or printer registered any books from the Canadian provinces; even if one had, registration would have offered little or no protection in North America because of the lack of enforcement.b Lower Canada created copyright laws in 1832, but the laws could not be enforced until 1841, when provincial legislatures enacted local statutes.c Therefore, the only copyright that was available in Canada to JS and his agents was under British common law. Nonetheless, since this revelation explained that they should obtain the copyright “upon all the face of the Earth,” a copyright could have been obtained if JS’s agents had journeyed to York and there enlisted a British subject to register the copyright in London. This was an uncommon practice, however, and would not have given them protection in Canada. They also had the right to make legal agreements with individual printers in various locations to publish the Book of Mormon and the right to distribute the profits according to those agreements.
(aAn Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of Such Copies, during the Times Therein Mentioned [10 Apr. 1710], Statutes at Large, vol. 4, chap. 19, p. 418, sec. 2. bFleming et al., History of the Book in Canada, 352; Ehat, “‘Securing’ the Prophet’s Copyright in the Book of Mormon,” 38–52. cSee Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, 5:260n11; Fleming et al., History of the Book in Canada, 352, 457n35; An Act for the Protection of Copy Rights in This Province, [18 Sept. 1841], Provincial Statutes of Canada, chap. 61, pp. 323–327; and An Act for the Protection of Copy Rights, [25 Feb. 1832], Provincial Stautes of Lower-Canada, chap. 53, pp. 624–625.)The Statutes at Large. . . . 9 vols. Edited by Owen Ruffhead. London: Mark Basket, and Henry Woodfall and William Strahan, 1763–1765.
Fleming, Patricia Lockhart, Gilles Gallichan, and Yvan Lamonde, eds. History of the Book in Canada. Vol. 1, Beginnings to 1840. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Ehat, Stephen Kent. “‘Securing’ the Prophet’s Copyright in the Book of Mormon: Historical and Legal Context for the So-Called Canadian Copyright Revelation.” BYU Studies 50, no. 2 (2011): 4–70.
Vogel, Dan, ed. Early Mormon Documents. 5 vols. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1996–2003.
Provincial Statutes of Canada . . . At the Parliament Begun and Holden at Westminster, on the Fifteenth Day of November, Anno Domini 1837, in the First Year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lady Victoria . . . . Kingston, Upper Canada: Stewart Derbishire and George Desbarats, 1841.
The Provincial Statutes of Lower-Canada, Enacted by His Most Excellent Majesty, Our Sovereign Lord William, the Fourth. . . . Quebec, Lower Canada: John Charlton Fisher and William Kemble, 1831.
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10
H. Page to W. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848.
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
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11
Traughber, “False Prophecies,” 1–2; Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 31. The extant minutes of the 1 November 1831 conference do not contain any discussion of this revelation. (See Minute Book 2, 1–2 Nov. 1831.)
Traughber, John L. “False Prophecies.” In John L. Traughber, Papers, 1854–1910. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
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12
Whitmer, Address to All Believers in Christ, 31; see also Traughber, “False Prophecies,” 2.
Whitmer, David. An Address to All Believers in Christ. Richmond, MO: By the author, 1887.
Traughber, John L. “False Prophecies.” In John L. Traughber, Papers, 1854–1910. Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City.
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13
H. Page to W. McLellin, 2 Feb. 1848. Page’s letter to McLellin offered this comment on his and Cowdery’s trip to Kingston: “But when we got there, there was no purchaser neither were they authorized at Kingston to buy rights for the provence; but little York was the place where such buisaness had to be done, we were to get 8,000 dollars[.] we were treated with the best of respects by all we met with in Kingston—by the above we may learn how a revlation may be received and the person receving it not be benafited.”
Letters and Documents Copied from Originals in the Office of the Church Historian, Reorganized Church, no date. Typescript. CHL. MS 9090. Original at CCLA.
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14
Sidney Rigdon apparently edited this copy of the revelation for subsequent use, primarily by crossing out the passages of the revelation that referred to selling the copyright and by adding an “amen” immediately preceding the section to be deleted. An unidentified person also marked “to Kingston” for deletion. These redactions most likely occurred during preparations for publication in 1832–1833. (Revelation Book 1, pp. 30–31.)
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