Stephen Douglas Prophecy

Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, an Illinois justice and politician made famous for a serious of political debates on slavery and state rights in 1858 and losing the US Presidential Election to Abraham Lincoln in 1860, was the subject of a very remarkable and well documented prophecy from the Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith (1805-1844).

Mr. Douglas was a presiding justice in western Illinois in the early 1840's and presided over several highly publisized trials and legal hearings where Joseph was being prosecuted by his enemies for trumped charges from the Missouri courts. Mr. Douglas was commended for his fairness on the bench and usually ruled in Joseph's favor, based on the points of law challenged. This included a very big trial at Monmouth IL in July 1843.

Soon thereafter, the two of them were having dinner together, where at Joseph made this very unique prophecy that if he failed to support the cause of the Latter-day Saints, he would fail miserably in politics.

Source: William Clayton's Journal (Joseph Smith's Secretary) / Recorded in (History of the Church, 5:393-394)

Dined with Judge Stephen A. Douglas, who is presiding at court. After dinner Judge Douglas requested President Joseph to give him a history of the Missouri persecution, which he did in a very minute manner, for about three hours. He also gave a relation of his journey to Washington city, and his application in behalf of the Saints to Mr. Van Buren, the President of the United States, for redress and Mr. Van Buren's pusillanimous reply, "Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you;" and the cold, unfeeling manner in which he was treated by most of the senators and representatives in relation to the subject, Clay saying, "You had better go to Oregon," and Calhoun shaking his head solemnly, saying, "It's a nice question—a critical question, but it will not do to agitate it."

The judge listened with the greatest attention and spoke warmly in depreciation of the conduct of Governor Boggs and the authorities of Missouri, who had taken part in the extermination, and said that any people that would do as the mobs of Missouri had done ought to be brought to judgment: they ought to be punished.

President Smith, in concluding his remarks, said that if the government, which received into its coffers the money of citizens for its public lands, while its officials are rolling in luxury at the expense of its public treasury, cannot protect such citizens in their lives and property, it is an old granny anyhow; and I prophesy in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints in the state of Missouri and punish the crimes committed by her officers that in a few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted, and there will not be so much as a potsherd left, for their wickedness in permitting the murder of men, women and children, and the wholesale plunder and extermination of thousands of her citizens to go unpunished, thereby perpetrating a foul and corroding blot upon the fair fame of this great republic, the very thought of which would have caused the high-minded and patriotic framers of the Constitution of the United States to hide their faces with shame. Judge, you will aspire to the presidency of the United States; and if ever you turn your hand against me or the Latter-day Saints, you will feel the weight of the hand of Almighty upon you; and you will live to see and know that I have testified the truth to you; for the conversation of this day will stick to you through life.

He [Judge Douglas] appeared very friendly, and acknowledged the truth and propriety of President Smith's remarks.