Illinois Supreme Court Justice John Dean Caton’s Unique Connection to the “Exodus of the Mormons to Salt Lake”

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April 3, 2020

In 1818, Illinois became the 21st State. From presidents and politics to agriculture, commerce, and industry, there is much to write and to reflect on related to the more well-known historical figures and events in Illinois’ history. Today, in March 2020, the State is in the midst of another major historical event that will reverberate. The below focuses on a less well-known and referenced thread of Illinois’ past—the personal connection of a Justice of the Illinois Supreme Court to the Latter-day Saints’/Mormon’s 1846 exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois to what is now Salt Lake City, Utah.[i] In doing so, the below seeks to call attention to an excellent account of the early days of legal practice in Illinois: Early Bench and Bar of Illinois, compiled and published in 1893 by John Dean Caton.[ii] It also reflects, in this author’s opinion, an excellent instance of an Illinois legal professional’s thoughtful consideration and counsel related to a major, and not altogether expected, issue of the time.

According to the Illinois Supreme Court Historic Preservation Commission, Caton served as a Supreme Court Justice from 1842 to 1843 and from 1843 to 1864,[iii] including as the Chief from 1855 to 1864.[iv] Caton was born in Orange County, New York on March 19, 1812.[v] He was admitted to the Bar in New York and moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1833,[vi] where he got his first client—a “rather short, stout young man” who Caton helped “catch [a] thief” and recover “$46 of Bellows Falls money.”[vii] Caton opened offices in Cook and Putnam County, Illinois and resided in Ottawa, Illinois when he was first appointed an interim associate justice of the Supreme Court.[viii] He died on July 30, 1895 in Chicago and is buried in Ottawa.[ix]

According to the preface to his book, Caton had a habit “in social conversation” with other “gentlemen of the bar . . .[of] relating some professional incidents which had occurred many years before.”[x] Caton apparently enjoyed telling what some lawyers at Winston & Strawn refer to as “old war stories.”

At the urging of his friends, Caton decided to “note down events which had occurred in the early times and lay them before the public” in a “series of articles published in the Chicago Legal News.”[xi] Thereafter, Caton received “many letters from gentlemen of the Bar in various parts of the State” encouraging him to republish them in book form.[xii] Spurred by his fan mail, Caton “prepared [the articles] for the press” and “placed them in the hands of the printer, thinking that many incidents of some peculiarities of former times might be thus perpetuated, which may in still later times be considered worth remembering.”[xiii]

Caton was right; his stories include a number of peculiarities worth remembering. The titles of his chapters show this—identifying “Hoosier Peculiarities,” covering “Connubial” events, describing the “Hardships of Travel in Attending Court,” and including “Anecdotes of Lincoln.”[xiv] Caton’s book is worth reading. This article focuses on a chapter in Caton’s Appendix, “The Exodus of the Mormons to Salt Lake.” It is noteworthy because of the little-referenced connection it describes between Justice Caton and the history of one of the largest religious denominations in the United States. The article is also a well-written, fun read that serves as a good introduction and advertisement for the rest of Caton’s “professional incidents.”

“A ‘Place Prepared’ in the Rockies,” a Description from Ensign Magazine.

To start, background regarding the Latter-day Saints’/Mormon’s exodus from Nauvoo to the Salt Lake Valley is appropriate. Justice Caton’s book led this author to an article in a monthly publication by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called The Ensign of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One Ensign work in particular informs this article. In 1988, Ronald K. Esplin, then director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History at Brigham Young University, wrote the article (drawn from a larger study published in 1982) “A ‘Place Prepared’ in the Rockies,” which is subtitled “Revelation led Latter-day Saints westward to the valley seen by prophets.”[xv]

Esplin begins his article by noting that “the exodus of the Latter-day Saints from Nauvoo and their subsequent trek to the Rocky Mountains often evokes images of persecution, injustice, and suffering, of Brigham Young leading a people driven westward by hostile neighbors.”[xvi] He states, however, that “the pioneers saw themselves fulfilling a prophesied destiny.”[xvii] Esplin’s article then proceeds to analyze prophecy with reference to recorded history.

Esplin recounts that “[b]efore leaving Nauvoo, Latter-day Saint leaders saw the proposed trek westward as the beginning of fulfillment of a prophecy.”[xviii] He notes early references by Church leader Joseph Smith to the Rocky Mountains, describes Nauvoo as a “place to regroup” necessitated by the “violent expulsion of [Latter-day Saints/Mormons] from Missouri in 1838-39,” and goes on to describe a number of efforts, undertaken as early as 1840, to settle “‘away towards the Rocky Mountains.’”[xix] Esplin references “[t]he famous ‘Rocky Mountain Prophecy,’” which Brigham Young later characterized as a prophecy “that the Latter-day Saints would be ‘planted in the midst of the Rocky Mountains’ as ‘not a new thing’ and not hid up or ‘locked in a drawer, but . . . declared to the people long before we left Nauvoo.’”[xx]

Esplin explains how various issues (including the death of Smith on June 27, 1844) diverted attention from the West between 1842 and 1844.[xxi] He theorizes that had Smith lived, he may have begun carrying out plans to leave Illinois in 1844.[xxii] Esplin states that while it may have seemed, in the spring of 1845, that the Latter-day Saints had no intention of leaving Nauvoo, “the wheels were already in motion.”[xxiii] Citing diaries from 1845, Esplin notes that Brigham Young, in January 1845, discussed going West to “settle a new country.”[xxiv] Using the same source, Esplin states that Church leaders assigned men to “labor among the western tribes in continuation of earlier efforts ‘to . . . find a home for the Saints.’”[xxv]

Esplin writes that Young settled on the Rocky Mountains as a place that was secure and that others did not desire.[xxvi] This ruled out increasingly settled areas on the Pacific Coast and left Young convinced that it “clearly had to be in the Rocky Mountains.”[xxvii] Esplin notes that Church leaders undertook their planning carefully and studied information from explorer John C. Fremont and others related to their target area in the Rockies.[xxviii]

Esplin describes how violence pushed Young to publicly announce the exodus in September 1845.[xxix] Ultimately, on July 26, 1847, Young climbed Ensign Peak/Ensign Hill, “duplicated to his satisfaction the view he had seen in vision before,” and confirmed the intended site of what is now Salt Lake City.[xxx] According to a diary entry, Young testified on July 27, 1847 that this “is the spot, and we have come here according to the suggestion and direction of Joseph Smith. . . . I prayed that he would lead us directly to the best spot, which he has done, for after searching we can find no better.”[xxxi]

Esplin’s article preserves a sense of the breadth and malleability of prophecy while concluding, with reference to contemporaneously recorded history, that “[n]ever would [the Latter-day Saints] forget that their exodus [from Nauvoo to Salt Lake] was not by chance.”[xxxii] There is one historical thread that Esplin’s article does not include—the role that Justice John Dean Caton played in “guid[ing] the Mormons to Salt Lake.”[xxxiii]

Caton’s Role in “Guid[ing] the Mormons to Salt Lake.”

Caton’s description of his role in this historical episode sheds further light on the Latter-day Saints’/Mormon’s exodus from Nauvoo. It is filled with “peculiarities” that may prove enjoyable to today’s readers. For one, Caton’s part is not, as far as this author can tell, well known or referenced. And, while Caton condenses and describes the episode to fit his sensibilities and perceptions of the time, it meshes well with Esplin’s description.

Caton begins his “description of the Great Salt Lake Country and how it became inhabited by the Mormons” by noting that, in the latter part of 1844, he received and “read with great interest” “Fremont’s First and Second Expeditions to and Beyond the Rocky Mountains.”[xxxiv] Fremont is the same explorer Esplin references as a source the Latter-day Saints used in preparing to migrate to “their target area.” Caton describes Fremont’s book as providing “a very good account of his observations made in what may be called the Utah Valley, which suggested the great possibilities for the future of a civilized settlement in that valley.”[xxxv]

Caton recounts that he studied Fremont’s book in the “first session of the Legislature after the murder of Joseph Smith.”[xxxvi] This was likely in December 1844 because Smith was murdered in Carthage, Illinois on June 27, 1844 and the Illinois legislature held its first regular session in Springfield beginning December 2, 1844 and continuing throughout that month.[xxxvii] Caton states that while both political parties “petted and caressed” the Mormons to secure their votes upon their arrival in Illinois, that situation quickly changed.[xxxviii] Nevertheless, Caton notes that some—called “Jack-mormons”—“were friendly to [the Mormons] and defended them through thick and thin.”[xxxix]

According to Caton, at least one “Jack-mormon” served in the Illinois legislature in 1844: J.B. Backenstos. While Backenstos sought to “look after [the Mormons’] interests” in the legislature, Caton writes that Backenstos “had a very difficult task on his hands, as [the Mormons] had become as generally odious as they had been popular before.”[xl] As a result, Caton recounts that “a number of leading Mormons, headed by Brigham Young, were at the Capitol to assist and advise Backenstos” in late 1844.[xli]

It appears, based on Caton’s reminiscences, that he may have played a very important role in the historical and religious turning point that resulted in the Latter-day Saints’/Mormon’s exodus from Navuo and their fortuitous settlement in the Salt Lake Valley. Caton writes that he “met Backenstos one morning in the rotunda of the State House, when on my way to the Supreme Court room.”[xlii] Caton asked Backenstos “how he was getting along in his efforts for his Mormon constituents; he replied that things looked very bad; that everybody was down on them; that both political parties were vieing [sic] with each other in their efforts to oppress them; that nobody would listen to reason or justice or even common humanity, and that they were already driven to extremities.”[xliii]

Caton recalls that during this conversation with Backenstos in the rotunda of the State Capitol regarding the dire state of affairs facing the Latter-day Saints/Mormons, Caton had Fremont’s report “under [his] arm.”[xliv] He writes that it “occurred to me that the Salt Lake country, in the midst of the Rocky Mountains, would afford [the Mormons] a secluded retreat where they could run things their own way without interference from the outside world for the next hundred years.”[xlv] Backenstos asked Caton for Fremont’s report and Caton “gave him the book when I had turned down the leaves at those places where the valley of the Salt Lake is described.”[xlvi]

As the two gentleman parted, Caton writes, Backenstos took Fremont’s report to the Mormon leaders with Caton’s “suggestions for their examination and consideration.”[xlvii] Backenstos returned the book “[a]t the end of perhaps two weeks . . . with the thanks of his elders, who, he said were so favorably struck with my suggestion that they had already determined to send an exploring party to the valley of the Salt Lake the next spring.”[xlviii] After this was done, and “a favorable report was made,” “the removal was commenced and prosecuted as rapidly as that could be effected, under the leadership of Brigham Young.”[xlix]

Caton’s role in the exodus was “called to [his] mind” when he found Fremont’s report some “twenty years later, when overhauling a box of books for which I could not find room on the shelves of [his] library.”[l] It occurred to Caton “that here was incident of sufficient historic value to entitle it to record among the archives of our State.”[li] As a result, Caton says that he “wrote it out on the fly-leaf in this copy of Fremont’s report as being the book which first suggested the removal of the Mormons to the Salt Lake Valley, and he presented it to the Chicago Historical Society.”[lii] Notably, the Chicago Historical Society still has Caton’s copy of Fremont’s report and it contains, written in pencil on the first few pages, Caton’s “fly-leaf” note, dated August 1, 1873.[liii]

Caton’s description of his personal involvement in the exodus to the Salt Lake Valley does not appear in Esplin’s article; yet many of the events described in both writings tend to corroborate each other. Both reference Fremont’s report and both note the particular turmoil of the period beginning in 1844 and continuing in 1845. Likewise, Esplin recounts Young discussing a westward move in January 1845, which is consistent with Caton’s description of providing Fremont’s book to Backenstos in December 1844 and receiving it back two-weeks later with an indication that the Mormons planned to explore the area the next Spring.

Caton’s description of his involvement in this historic event rests on facts which he personally experienced. He appears to have recognized the sensitivities his account might engender and thus carefully avoided any prophetical conclusions. Summing up his description and role, Caton wrote the following: “Everybody is aware that the Mormons claimed that they were first led to that retreat [in the Salt Lake Valley] by a divine inspiration or interposition, the truth of which I will not deny, but this book was the instrument selected by the author of the inspiration to effectuate his purpose, for it served to select the place and to point out the road to it.”[liv]

Conclusion

In this author’s view, it is always entertaining to stumble across historical “peculiarities” like the above. These stories are worth remembering and this particular story highlights Illinois’ status as an active midpoint between the Eastern and Western United States of America—not just geographically, but culturally, intellectually, and historically. This story also highlights the great role that Illinois’ legal profession plays in the history of our State, from ways expected and often referenced to ways unexpected and sometimes overlooked. Thanks are due to those “gentlemen of the bar” who, in the late 19th Century, encouraged Justice Caton to “note down these events” so that they aren’t forgotten or overlooked.

[i] The author thanks his father, Justice Robert L. Carter (Illinois’ Third District Appellate Court), for pointing him to Caton’s book and Caton’s account of his connection to this particular historical event. Like the author, Robert Carter was a law clerk for the Illinois Supreme Court. From 1974 to 1975, he served as a law clerk for Justice Howard C. Ryan. Unlike the Supreme Court’s clerks today and during the period during which the author served as a clerk—where the clerks typically review oral argument by video recording—the Court’s clerks in those years traveled to Springfield to watch oral argument. On occasion, the clerks stayed in apartments in the Supreme Court building in Springfield during the Court’s working term. During one of those trips to Springfield, Carter visited the Supreme Court’s library to work on cases for Justice Ryan. On one occasion, Carter—a true bibliophile—found Caton’s book and this story.

[ii] Available online at https://books.google.com/books?id=b_Q_AAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

[iii] The timing of Justice Caton’s service on the Court is described this way because Illinois Governor Thomas Carlin first appointed Caton to the Supreme Court in August 1842 to fill a seat left vacant when Justice Thomas Ford resigned to run for Governor. (https://www.illinoiscourthistory.org/resources/da2094ae-d05a-49e0-ad29-83261dbdeac8/bio_canton.pdf) Caton then lost an election for the seat seven months later to John M. Robinson. (Id.) Robinson soon died, however, and newly elected Illinois Governor Thomas Ford reappointed Caton to the Supreme Court in May 1843. (Id. at 3.) When the judiciary was reorganized under the 1848 Constitution, Caton was elected to the Supreme Court by the northern third of Illinois voters. (Id.)

[iv] See https://www.illinoiscourthistory.org/county-and-justice-directory/justices/justice-john-d-caton/justice-detail. Since its creation in 2007, the Commission has done outstanding work assisting and advising the Illinois Supreme Court in acquiring, collecting, preserving, and cataloging documents, artifacts, and information relating to the Illinois judiciary. One visit to the Commission’s website is likely all it will take to convince any student of history of the great value of the Commission’s efforts and contributions to the accessibility of Illinois’ history—ranging from collections of historical documents, to oral histories of Illinois judges, to live, interactive mock trials (focusing on key historical trials and events in Illinois) held throughout the state.

[v] See https://www.illinoiscourthistory.org/resources/da2094ae-d05a-49e0-ad29-83261dbdeac8/bio_canton.pdf at 1.

[vi] Id.

[vii] Early Bench and Bar of Illinois at 5.

[viii] See https://www.illinoiscourthistory.org/resources/da2094ae-d05a-49e0-ad29-83261dbdeac8/bio_canton.pdf at 2.

[ix] Id. at 5.

[x] See Early Bench and Bar of Illinois at Preface.

[xi] Id.

[xii] Id.

[xiii] Id.

[xiv] Id. at Index.

[xv] See https://www.lds.org/languages/eng/content/ensign/1988/07/a-place-prepared-in-the-rockies.

[xvi] Id.