| 616 There was much correspondence between Joseph and the Governor, but Joseph avoided arrest until Governor Carlin's term of office had expired and he was succeeded on January 1, 1843, by Governor Thomas Ford.
Monday the 5th instant, and I have not had time to answer it until this evening; and I now appropriate a few moments to the difficult task of replying satisfactorily to its contents, every word of which evinces your devotedness to the interest of your husband, and pouring forth the effusions of a heart wholly his. I am thus admonished that I can say nothing, that does not subserve his interest, that can possibly be satisfactory to you; and before I proceed, I will here repeat my great regret that I have been officially called upon to act in reference to Mr. Smith in any manner whatever. I doubt not your candor when you say you do not desire me "to swerve from my duty as Executive in the least," and all you ask is to be allowed the privileges and advantages guaranteed to you by the Constitution and laws: you then refer me to the eleventh section of the Charter of the City of Nauvoo, and claim for Mr. Smith the right to be heard by the Municipal Court of said city, under a writ of habeas corpus emanating from said court, when he was held in custody under an executive warrant. The Charter of the City of Nauvoo is not before me at this time, but I have examined both the charters and city ordinance upon the subject, and must express my surprise at the extraordinary assumption of power by the board of Aldermen as contained in said ordinances. From my recollection of the charter it authorizes the Municipal Court to issue writs of habeas corpus in all cases of imprisonment or custody arising from the authority of the ordinances of said city; but that the power was granted or intended to be granted to release persons held in custody under the authority of writs issued by the courts or the Executive of the State, is most absurd and ridiculous, and an attempt to exercise it is a gross usurpation of power that cannot be tolerated. I have always expected and desired that Mr. Smith should avail himself of the benefits of the laws of this State, and of course that he would be entitled to a writ of habeas corpus issued by the Circuit Court, and entitled to a hearing before said court; but to claim the right of a hearing before the Municipal Court of the City of Nauvoo, is a burlesque upon the charter itself. As to Mr. Smith's guilt or innocence of the crime charged upon him, it is not my province to investigate or determine; nor has any court on earth jurisdiction of his case but the courts of the State of Missouri; and, as stated in my former letter, both the Constitution and laws presume that each and every State in this Union are competent to do justice to all who may be charged with crime committed in said State.
Your information that twelve men from Jackson County, Missouri were lying in wait for Mr. Smith between Nauvoo and Warsaw, for the purpose of taking him out of the hands of the officers who might have him in custody, and murdering him, is like many other marvelous stories that you hear in reference to him-not one word of it true; but I doubt not that your mind has been continually harrowed up with fears produced by that and other equally groundless stories. That that statement is true is next to impossible, and your own judgment, if you will but give it scope, will soon set you right in reference to it. If any of the citizens of Jackson County had designed to murder Mr. Smith, they would not have been so simple as to perpetrate the crime in Illinois, when he would necessarily be required to pass through to the interior of the State of Missouri, where the opportunity would have been so much better and
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