“Voices of the Restoration: Liberty Jail,” Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: Doctrine and Covenants 2025 (2025)
“Liberty Jail,” Come, Follow Me—For Home and Church: 2025
Voices of the Restoration
Liberty Jail
While imprisoned in Liberty, Missouri, Joseph Smith received letters informing him about the perilous situation of the Latter-day Saints who were being driven from the state by the order of the governor. A poignant letter came from his wife Emma. Her words, and Joseph’s letters in response, express both their sufferings and their faith during this difficult time in Church history.
Joseph Smith and others were held in this jail in the winter of 1838–39.
Letter from Emma Smith to Joseph Smith, March 7, 1839
Dear Husband
Having an opportunity to send by a friend, I make an attempt to write, but I shall not attempt to write my feelings altogether, for the situation in which you are, the walls, bars, and bolts, rolling rivers, running streams, rising hills, sinking valleys and spreading prairies that separate us, and the cruel injustice that first cast you into prison and still holds you there, with many other considerations, places my feelings far beyond description.
Was it not for conscious innocence, and the direct interposition of divine mercy, I am very sure I never should have been able to have endured the scenes of suffering that I have passed through … ; but I still live and am yet willing to suffer more if it is the will of kind Heaven that I should for your sake.
We are all well at present, except Fredrick who is quite sick.
Little Alexander who is now in my arms is one of the finest little fellows you ever saw in your life. He is so strong that with the assistance of a chair he will run all round the room. …
No one but God knows the reflections of my mind and the feelings of my heart when I left our house and home, and almost all of everything that we possessed excepting our little Children, and took my journey out of the state of Missouri, leaving you shut up in that lonesome prison. But the recollection is more than human nature ought to bear. …
… I hope there are better days to come to us yet. … [I] am ever yours affectionately.
Emma Smith
Letter from Joseph Smith to Emma Smith, April 4, 1839
Dear—and affectionate—Wife.
Thursday night I sat down just as the sun is going down, as we peek through the grates of this lonesome prison, to write to you, that I may make known to you my situation. It is I believe now about five months and six days since I have been under the grimace of a guard night and day, and within the walls, grates, and screeking iron doors of a lonesome, dark, dirty prison. With emotions known only to God do I write this letter. The contemplations of the mind under these circumstances defies the pen, or tongue, or Angels, to describe, or paint, to the human being who never experienced what we experience. … We lean on the arm of Jehovah, and none else, for our deliverance, and if he doesn’t do it, it will not be done, you may be assured, for there is great thirsting for our blood in this state; not because we are guilty of anything. … My Dear Emma, I think of you and the children continually. … I want to see little Frederick, Joseph, Julia, Alexander, Joana, and old major [the family dog]. … I would gladly walk from here to you barefoot, and bareheaded, and half naked, to see you and think it great pleasure, and never count it toil. … I bear with fortitude all my oppression, so do those that are with me; not one of us have flinched yet. I want you [to] not let [our children] forget me. Tell them Father loves them with a perfect love, and he is doing all he can to get away from the mob to come to them. … Tell them Father says they must be good children, and mind their mother. …
Yours,
Joseph Smith Jr.