CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY CONTINUED.
- Nauvoo.
- Revelation to build Temple and Tavern.
- Nauvoo Legion.
- Letter-writers.
- Joseph a candidate for the Presidency.
- Letter to Clay and Calhoun.
The Illinoisans received the Saints with an extraordinary degree of favor, and under the unceasing cry of persecution, converts, old and new, flocked in from all quarters. They established themselves in a bend of the Mississippi, in the county of Hancock, where the village of Commerce had been laid out by its proprietor, the name of which they afterward changed to Nauvoo. Nauvoo was one of the names of one of the numerous petty chiefs in British India. About a year. after their involuntary exode from Missouri, something like fifteen thousand Saints were supposed to be settled in and around the new city. To give an impetus to the gathering, Joseph, after an unusual interval, again mounted the tripod, and put forth an elaborate revelation (January, 1841), in which, among other things, Nauvoo was duly appointed one of the stakes, and a temple ordered to be built; to which end, the Saints far and near were commanded to come with their gold, silver, precious stones, and other materiel, of which a goodly enumeration was made.
One of the most powerful levers which he had invented for moving his disciples in temple building was the doctrine of baptism for the dead—that is, that the
