Joseph Smith's Appeal to the President of the United States

Mobs were preparing to mobilize against the Saints at Nauvoo. So were units of the Illinois state militia. Joseph Smith had heard reports and seen signed affidavits that guns and other weapons were being trafficked from Missouri and Iowa into Illinois. The President of the United States is a powerful office and that he could use that power to immediately send federal troops to quell the impending crisis in western Illinois.