Everything changed for Joseph Smith in the Latter-day Saints in a few short months in 1838.

5,000 saints gathered in the burgeoning city of far west Missouri to celebrate the 4th of July.

Confident and secure in their main settlement, Sydney Rigden declared that if a mob came again, it would be a war of

extermination. His words proved prophetic. The Missourians would remember that language. Governor

Lilburn Boggs signed Executive Order No. 44 on the 27th of October that same year,

declaring that the Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state.

After the Hansville Massacre and the siege at Far West, 66 Latter-day St. Men were arrested.

Joseph Smith, Hiram Smith, Sidney Rigdon, as well as Caleb Baldwin, Lyman White, and Alexander McRae

were eventually jailed in the Clay County Jail at Liberty, Missouri for crimes of high treason,

an offense that did not provide the possibility of bail.

B.H. Roberts would later call the jail a prison temple,

yet it was a squalid, dirty, and dark place.

They spent four months there as the saints were scattered across Missouri,

hoping to find safety in the city

of Quincy, Illinois. Joseph wrote his first general missive to the Saints in the middle of

December. After a long winter in the jail was screeking iron gates, Joseph wrote again to the Saints

as the spring began to thaw, not knowing they would soon escape. The Doctrine and Covenant sections we know today as sections 121, 122, and 123 are all portions of a larger letter written to the Saints on March 22nd, not being able to stand up straight in the jail.

In the letter Joseph also described how our souls have been bowed down, and we have suffered much distress, and

truly we have had to wade through an ocean of trouble. Joseph directed the letter to the Latter-day

Saints at Quincy, Illinois, and scattered abroad, and to Bishop Edward Partridge in particular.

However, he sent the missive to his wife, Emma, because he wanted her to have first reading of it.

The 17-page letter was quickly circulated amongst the saints.

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