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QUARKS
TO CULTURE

TYLER VOLK
QUARKS
TO CULTURE
How We Came to Be
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK

Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2017 Tyler Volk
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Volk, Tyler.
Title: Quarks to culture : how we came to be / Tyler Volk.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016045624 | ISBN 9780231179607 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780231544139 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Life—Origin.
Classifi cation: LCC QH325 .V588 2017 | DDC 576.8/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045624

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America

Cover design: Faceout Studio

To Amelia
and everyone in
my metagroup of love

Preface ix
PART 1. COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
1. NATURAL CHAPTERS AND NESTED SCALES 3
2. THE CORE THEME: COMBOGENESIS 11
PART 2. TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
3. A BIG BANG START OF THINGS AND RELATIONS 23
4. THE NUCLEONS, WITH IMMORTAL PROTON AND
FRAGILE NEUTRON 33
5. ATOMIC NUCLEI FROM MUTUAL AID 41
6. ATOMS WITH SPACE-FILLING, ELECTRIC MANDALAS 49
7. AN EXPANDING CORNUCOPIA OF MOLECULES 57
8. SIMPLE CELLS LAUNCH LIFE AND EVOLUTION 67
9. THE SEXY EUKARYOTIC CELL 79
CONTENTS

VIII CONTENTS
10. MULTIPLE RAMPS TO THE COMPLEX MULTICELLULAR
ORGANISM 91
11. ANIMAL SOCIAL GROUPS WILD WITH POSSIBILITIES 101
12. TRIBAL METAGROUPS AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION 113
13. TRANSPLANTABLE AGROVILLAGES 127
14. GEOPOLITICAL STATES, MASTERS OF ACQUISITION
AND MERGER 137
PART 3. DYNAMICAL REALMS AND THEMES
15. DYNAMICAL REALMS AND THEIR BASE LEVELS 149
16. ALPHAKITS: ATOMIC, GENETIC, LINGUISTIC 157
17. THEMES IN EVOLUTIONARY DYNAMICS 167
18. CONVERGENT THEMES OF COMBOGENESIS 183
EPILOGUE: WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE? 195
Acknowledgments 207
Glossary 211
Notes 215
Bibliography 231
Index 241
A Graphic Concept Summary can be found between pages 78 and 79

T
his work is a new study of patterns, systems, things. My original
impetus was to write a direct follow-up to an earlier book, Metapat-
terns Across Space, Time, and Mind .
1
In that work, I had permitted
myself the freedom of a high-fl ying bird, seeking themes and similarities
across fi elds of natural science and even social sciences and humanities.
Metapatterns are scale-bridging patterns, with ties to geometric ar-
rangements of parts in wholes. Th ese patterns oft en recur in biology and
cultural systems because of properties they have that can off er functional
advantages. Examples include spheres, tubes, borders, organizational
centers, and cycles.
Progress, I felt, would emphasize patterns that come about from evo-
lutionary processes versus those that do not. Th at idea did turn out to be
a key motif here. But the conceptual zygote from which this new work
grew truly took off with a simple insight about the body. A question I had
walked up to in the earlier work turned into an expansive doorway.
Th e metapattern called “layers” concerns the widely found pattern of
a nested hierarchy (or, as I prefer, holarchy) of parts and wholes in the
most general sense. In my earlier work, I had guessed there might be fun-
damental layers (levels) but had left hanging the question about how to
fi nd them. Now I realized that the question could be put into very con-
crete form by thinking from a particular angle about things in the human
body and also about time .
As you go down into the body, you go back in time: from the body
inward to cells, to molecules, and then to atoms. Passing from life to
PREFACE

X PREFACE
physics, each fi rst type in this series of nested things came into exis-
tence earlier.
Th at’s interesting, I said to myself. Would it be possible to discern fun-
damental levels? Let’s reverse the list, going from ancient to modern time.
Can one start at the simplest things of physics and ratchet along a course
in time that simultaneously progresses outward in scale? And perhaps
during this tally, let’s not halt at our bodies as a terminal level but con-
tinue the logic on up to larger patterns that we as bodies and minds par-
ticipate in, such as the social systems of complex culture.
Jacob Bronowski, scientist, master explainer, and bridge between the
natural sciences and the humanities, developed in Th e Ascent of Man a
concept that he named “stratifi ed stability.” I still recall evenings in the
mid-1970s when I was between architecture school and future graduate
work in earth systems science and ripe for hearing about deep patterns
in nature. A group of friends and I lounged weekly, glued to the thirteen
televised episodes covering the ideas in Bronowski’s book. Th e words
from one episode still ring for me: “Nature works in steps. Th e atoms
form molecules. . . . [T]he cells make up . . . the simple animals. . . .
[S]table units that compose one level or stratum are the raw material
for . . . higher confi gurations . . . a ladder from simple to complex by steps,
each of which is stable in itself. . . . I call [this] Stratifi ed Stability .”
2

Bronowski did not attempt to count the strata (and he died young, at
age sixty-six in 1974, still in the fullness of his powers). In addition, he ap-
plied his concept in ways both similar and dissimilar to my pursuit. For
instance, in details not quoted here, it is clear that he did not distinguish,
as I will, between the arrival of new confi gurations within a level and the
transition to new levels.
3
And I want a term that emphasizes a repeated
process in the forming of fundamental levels. Th erefore, for better or
worse, I have coined an active word: combogenesis .
Combogenesis is the combination and integration of things from a
prior level to make a new level of things. As described in this book, a se-
quence of such events of combogenesis has over time produced an in-
creasingly expansive nestedness of things from the simplest particles of
physics, such as quarks, to the geopolitical state in human culture.
To be sure, many have remarked on and explored the attribute of nest-
edness. Aft er chemists found the atom, physicists discovered it had parts,

PREFACE XI
and one of those parts, the nucleus, had parts, and those parts contained
quarks. Th e search for deeper layers of the onion continues apace.
Th e book Th e Major Transitions of Evolution by Maynard Smith and
Eörs Szathmáry galvanized biologists to seek principles in such transi-
tions, a signifi cant number of which involve an increase in the degree of
nestedness.
4
Bronowski had earlier noted one such transition: cells
evolved to animals composed of cells.
An aspect of Bronowski’s insight was that the process of combining and
integrating could link the fi elds of physics, chemistry, and biology. His
friend and colleague Jonas Salk, of polio vaccine fame, even extended the
concept of building up into culture.
5
Th is is also my purpose here. Th ough
the older idea from cultural scholars that humanity progressed in a distinct
series—small bands enlarged into tribes, and tribes grew into states—has
been judged too simplistic, we can acknowledge that over human history
social scale remarkably increased and created more complex nestings.
In Consilience: Th e Unity of Knowledge , the biologist and writer Edward
O. Wilson developed the metaphor of a thread that could be passed
Thing of
new level
Things of
prior level
Combogenesis
Geopolitical states
Agrovillages
Tribal metagroups
Animal social groups
Multicellular organisms
Eukaryotic cells
Prokaryotic cells
Molecules
Atoms
Atomic nuclei
Nucleons
Fundamental quanta
Time
FIGURE P.1
Twelve levels of the grand sequence, shown as concentric rings. Each level was cre-
ated from an event of combogenesis, with a generic event shown on the right. Com-
bogenesis repeated as a rhythm that went from the fundamental quanta (quarks,
etc.) to geopolitical states by a series of levels whose initial things combined and
integrated things from previous levels. (On the right, the combined components are
shown as a trio inside the thing or system at the upper, new level only for simplicity’s
sake.)

XII PREFACE
seamlessly from physics to culture.
6
I won’t get into any hurried debate
about reductionism versus holism here (good science—and any good
scholarship, I would add—works with both ideas), but one of Wilson’s
concerns was to point out where the thread of our understanding has
gaps as worthy sites for young researchers to position themselves in.
If we combine Wilson’s thread of connectivity with Bronowski’s strat-
ifi ed stability and the ongoing, vigorous wrestling with concepts of nest-
edness in physics, biology, and cultural studies, we might expect a worth-
while quest would be to examine transitions and levels not just within
any one large fi eld but also across the whole shebang of phenomena from
physics through biology to culture. I made such an examination for this
book, and I call this run of transitions and levels the grand sequence . Th e
grand sequence crosses the foundational structures of physics, the won-
ders of major inventions of life and evolution, and the majesty and enig-
mas of major cultural transitions.
Here I also off er a dose of intellectual thanks to systems theorists and
thinkers—for example, those who have forged new territory in the topics
of complexity, emergence, self-organization, networks, and all related
inquiries that seek descriptive or formal mathematical commonalities
across nominally disparate fi elds or phenomena.
7
I greatly admire this
kind of work. But I do not engage in parsing it and comparing it point by
point to what I am proposing here. For example, I do not regularly use
the terms emergence and synergy , which are used elsewhere.
8
My focus is
not on general emergence, networks, or synergy as a topic or topics (vast!).
I am instead trying to do something rather simple, almost architec-
tural. Can I fi nd a foundation? If so, what does it have that allows the
walls? Th en what do the walls have that allow the roof? I want to ask about
things and relations in a grand sequence from quarks to culture, using
combogenesis as an iterative or rhythmic theme. Can we defi ne funda-
mental levels? You might think of these levels as specifi c categories of
emergence or perhaps as the major transitions of biology extended in-
ward into chemistry and physics and outward to culture.
I have done a share of math modeling in my work with the global car-
bon cycle and advanced life support,
9
but I’m not doing math here. It
wasn’t relevant for my architectural approach. I instead try to stay on
course with the logic of the concepts I propose and discuss: innovations

PREFACE XIII
of things and relations at each level. I naturally try to draw on the best
scholarship wherever I think I have found it. If there is anything new
here, it’s in my synthesis. And perhaps it’s in the webs of questions the
approach leads to. It has been a thrill for me to attempt to balance my in-
tegrative synthesis with an examination of the state of knowledge in var-
ious fi elds.
Th e book has three parts. Part 1 introduces the goal of defi ning an
overall sequence from quarks to culture and develops the general concept
of combogenesis, the process of combination and integration of things
that results in levels, each with new things or systems that possess new
relations.
Part 2 unfolds each of twelve levels derived from combogenesis. I pro-
vide my understanding of the cosmically patentable accomplishments
achieved at each level. How did these accomplishments facilitate the next
event of combination and integration? I aim to weave established science
with more than a few outstanding mysteries. Just attempting to review
the knowns and unknowns of these levels made me revel in every scale of
nature and culture so much more than I had previously. I tend to be a
reveler in these matters, anyway, so it takes a great deal to ramp up my
enthusiasm even higher. I hope some of this feeling gets conveyed to you.
Finally, aft er I have fl eshed out the levels in part 2, I seek out additional
themes and parallels across those levels in part 3. I propose a trio of dy-
namical realms in the grand sequence: the realm of physical law, the realm
of biological evolution, and the realm of cultural evolution. Each realm
consists of multiple levels and its own special base level. I use these realms
within the grand sequence to reinterpret generalized evolutionary dy-
namics, aided by a pattern that I call the alphakit because it is both ge-
netic and linguistic. And there is more to uncover by using the special
base levels as anchors for novel inquiry. Finally, I ask if my fi ndings can
help frame what is happening in today’s world, where a transformative
future seems to be manifesting itself at an ever more rapid rate.
I hope my readers are in the creative class in the widest possible sense,
from artists to complexity theorists, intellectuals in all fi elds, “big-
history” educators, social scientists, humanists, natural scientists, systems
thinkers, technologists, writers, musicians, lay scholars, spiritual seekers—
anyone with passionate interests in the big picture. Th is is easy to say, but

XIV PREFACE
I mean it. For instance, I have always warmed to opportunities at my
university to teach courses that bring me in contact with students from
a diversity of fi elds and interests. I also hope that those interested in pop-
ular or semipopular writings in physics, biological evolution, and human
origins will want to join in my exploration of the grand sequence and its
implications. I hope to avoid any grievous injustice to anyone’s specialty.
I know I have left out favorite nuances and debates, but I hope any slip-
ups will not aff ect the general argument.
I have tried to write in a welcoming, jargon-free style, carefully defi n-
ing and deploying any key new concepts. I use technical terms for fi nd-
ings crucial to the relevant fi elds of scholarship. I hope I have adequately
guided readers through the main concepts of those fi elds by sticking to
results. Also, I had to coin some terminology, but only when I knew I
would be using a given new word oft en and would gain from having a
shorthand for certain key concepts developed in the book.
I have written this book in part to satisfy a dual longing: for a narra-
tion of how we came to be and of our place in the lived universe as well as
for the logic and operating principles that have powered that narration.
In this work, these operating principles are very general. Perhaps they
will seem philosophical. Fine! I sometimes think of them as topological-
functional, based in words and images that describe patterns of systems.
However one might categorize them, I use the principles to derive and
explore a sequence of levels from physics to life and biological evolution
and on to our legacy of cultural transitions. May any answers in this work
also serve as guides to more questions, with the potential for opening awe
and individual inquiry.

QUARKS
TO CULTURE

1
COMBOGENESIS AND
A GRAND SEQUENCE
H
ow did the simplest things in the universe transform into the riches
of culture we have today? Can a natural narrative provide an an-
swer? As a metaphor, consider things that build one aft er another
by events of a special class. At each event, smaller things (systems, enti-
ties) from prior levels combine into larger things on subsequent levels.
Th is general process is here called combogenesis : the births of new types
of entities by the coming together and integration of prior things. Taken
altogether, the fundamental or basic levels of combogenesis are called the
grand sequence .

SUMMARY: Within the body are living cells, and within the cells
are atoms. Going inward in scale of size takes us back in time to
the fi rst origins of these fundamental types of things. Can this
simple insight provide us with a general logic that we might use
to derive natural chapters in a narrative of the universe?
A UNIFIED NARRATIVE?
Who are we? Where did we come from?
As a start, consider the fl aring forth of space, time, energy, and matter
at the Big Bang. Billions of years later Earth’s pageantry of life thrived
and evolved, from ancient wriggling microbes to today’s roaring ele-
phants. Just a hair’s breadth in time prior to the present, the fl orescence
of conscious human minds eventually created today’s rich tapestries of
culture. How did all this happen?
Physicists, biologists, anthropologists, and others with viewpoints
based in specialized fi elds can off er answers for portions of this great
saga. Is there a way to unite all those parts into an integrated narrative?
Even more radically—and at the heart of this book’s fi ndings—can this
narrative contain what might be considered natural chapters? Is there a
way we can ask—poetically of course—the universe to be our narrator?
1
NATURAL CHAPTERS
AND NESTED SCALES

4 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
NARRATIVES WITH RHYTHMIC THEMES
Narratives that progress by the beats of general internal themes run
through many of the world’s ancient creation myths. Th e Bible has its fa-
mous seven days of creation. Th e Aztecs envisioned a series of worlds or
“suns” formed and then destroyed. Native Americans of the Southwest
tell about a fi nal emergence to us, upward through a sipapu , or portal,
perhaps inside the Grand Canyon, that followed previous climbs upward
with help from animals.
What these myths share is a succession of stages—in the form of days,
suns, portals—structured by a theme that operates in a repetitive cycle.
1

In contrast, a science-based narrative of where we come from seems to
lack any simple rhythm, but there are plenty of main events. An astro-
physicist would hail the point when the fi rst atoms condensed not long
aft er the Big Bang. A paleontologist would get us to gasp at the colossal
impact from space, which unleashed energy equivalent to a billion Hiro-
shima-leveling atomic bombs, extinguishing the dinosaurs and 90 percent
of all species from giant to microscopic. An archaeologist might regale us
with the epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Mesopotamia, the earliest re-
corded awareness of personal mortality.
Experts will have no problem identifying major events. But how are
those events determined to be the truly main ones? It seems to depend
on the narrator and fi eld of expertise.
Th ere is a new way to make this determination, I suggest, one that has
the potential for revealing an overall, integrating narrative with a rhyth-
mic theme that defi nes main events. Here the goal is not to invent a theme.
But does a theme present itself? If so, can it help us to understand our
place in nature?
Th e theme to be proposed, unlike the narrative devices of the ancient
creation myths, must tie together hard-won scientifi c knowns. As it turns
out, we will fi nd a succession of main events like those in many of these
myths. Th e events did not arrive at equal intervals of time like months in
a calendar or pulses of a song. Yet we will see a rhythm of sorts—let us
say a highly irregular cosmic heartbeat. And the results of each beat were
more cumulatively creative than the beats of your heart. Each beat pro-
duced a fundamental new level of being. We contain some of those levels.
And we live within others.

NATURAL CHAPTERS AND NESTED SCALES 5
LOOKING INWARD TO YOUR BODY’S LEVELS OF THINGS
I start with a thing immanently real, your own body.
Your body is a major type of thing. Billions of other individuals of
your same type— Homo sapiens —currently walk Earth. Indeed, you are
a member of many sets that increase in generality: You are an individual
human body. You are an individual animal body. You are an individ-
ual multicellular organism. You are an individual life form. And at a scale
of generality shared even with quarks and atoms, you are an individual
thing.
Inside your body live microscopic things called cells, more than 30
trillion of them.
2
(Let us not count the bacteria living on and inside you.)
If we ignore the issue of mutations, your cells carry the same DNA, yet
they radically diff er in size, shape, and function across your body’s tis-
sues and organs. During their choreographed dance that began with a
single fertilized human egg cell, the exploding populations of cells com-
munally aff ected each other. Th e result guided certain genes and thus
proteins into abundant expression in some cells but not in others. Th us,
you are constituted as a vast community of muscle cells, nerve cells, bone
cells, liver cells, and many other types of cells.
Let us travel more deeply down into the microcosm. What’s inside
cells? Both DNA and proteins are examples of the type of things called
molecules. Your cells typically contain tens of thousands of subtypes of
proteins. Furthermore, like all molecules, those proteins contain atoms.
So we can logically say that because molecules are inside cells, and be-
cause atoms are inside molecules, it’s the case that atoms are inside cells.
Because a typical cell of the human body contains about 300 trillion
atoms,
3
then (very roughly, within a factor of 10) there are about as many
atoms in each cell as there are cells in your body.
Physicists and chemists recognize atoms as an extraordinary, basic
type of thing. Th e properties and behaviors of atoms are relatively well
studied. At this point, to keep it simple, I focus on atoms as a crucial part
of the logic but come back to molecules in the next chapter when I need
to better refi ne the search for and defi nition of basic levels.
As noted, there is something fundamental about each of these scales
of things: (1) human body, (2) cell, (3) atom. Th ere is no debate here about
the essential roles each plays in our biological lives. Each is also essential

6 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
to our understanding of who we are. Furthermore, each type is quite gen-
eral, for each has many subclasses: many diff erent individual humans
who have many kinds of cells that contain many kinds of atoms. We
might lump the members of all these types and subclasses into one gigan-
tic, inclusive set of “all things,” but then we would have no distinctions to
work with. So I propose that in the search for natural chapters in a nar-
rative of the universe, we look for some of the most general types of things
that are vital to our existence—for example, the types that form the basis
for some of the earliest lessons typically learned in science classes. Atoms
and cells surely headline that bill.
SYSTEMS AS THINGS: TERMINOLOGY
Th ere is no perfect term for what I want to discuss. So far I have been talk-
ing about types of “things.” And I have shown that these things tend to
physically contain smaller things inside them. A thing made of smaller
things, or components, is oft en called a “system.” Th e point made when
using this word system is to emphasize that bodies are systems of cells,
cells are systems of atoms, and atoms are systems of nucleons, and so
on—in any case, all contain coordinated, interacting internal parts. We
have not yet gotten to the guts of the atoms, but we will when we have
more purpose.
A word about this word system . It’s a good alternative to thing . So I do
use it. But when it is overused, it can feel a bit cold. It invokes mechanism.
It emphasizes the fact of a thing having parts but doesn’t embrace, well,
the whole thing. But does the word thing feel any warmer? How about
entity ? I have used the latter and will continue to do so. But it’s not the
best term. It conjures spooks. One might try to coin a new word. I was
going to shorten entity into ent until it was pointed out to me that Ents
are a race of creatures in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. We might tinker
with ontology , a term with ancient Greek roots used for the general study
of things and existence. So ontum perhaps? Th en, we could state that an
ontum (say, a cell) is made of smaller ontums (say, atoms).
Th e open-ended, nonspecifi c, plain-wrapper blandness of the word
thing might give it some advantage here in the quest for a preferred term.

NATURAL CHAPTERS AND NESTED SCALES 7
But I employ thing , system , entity , and occasionally even ontum as syn-
onyms. Whatever the word, what is important for the logic is the fact of
multiple scales of what can be called nesting or nestedness in the most
fundamental levels of being: systems nested inside systems, things nested
inside things.
Note that in the examples given, the existence of each scale of smaller
thing is necessary for the existence of the larger scales of nestedness. Th e
body does not just happen to have cells; the body is alive because it is a
coordinated system of living cells. To exist, our cells need the deeper-
down building blocks of atoms.
GOING BACK IN TIME BY GOING SMALLER IN SCALE
To more richly appreciate this nesting of fundamental ontums, let us con-
sider time . As we go inward—or downward (feel free to choose your own
term for this particular form of movement)—the deeper, smaller scales
of the microcosm take us back in time. Going inward is a form of time
travel. How so?
For focus, we can ask about the origin of any particular type of thing.
Consider multicellular animals, of which we are a member. Current esti-
mates from the science of biological evolution place the origin of multi-
cellular animals somewhere between 700 million to a billion years ago.
Next down in the scales discussed so far are the animal cells. Consider
them from the perspective of origins. Th ey, like the cells of all animals
and of plants and fungi, too, are members of a certain, particularly cru-
cial and complex type of cell that evolved roughly 2 billion years ago, per-
haps a bit earlier (much more detail on that membership is given later in
the book). Th ough the birth date for this wonderfully successful cell type
is still debated, it certainly came before the evolution of animals. We
know that because this same, general, complex type of cell is found in all
animals, plants, and fungi. It is therefore ancestral to all three (and more)
forms of multicellularity and thus to us, Homo sapiens .
How about the incomprehensibly tiny atoms? As noted, an astrophysi-
cist would hail their fi rst origin as a major event in the narrative of how
we came to be. Th e fi rst atoms came into existence when the average

8 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
temperature of the expanding universe cooled to about that of our sun’s
surface, roughly at the 400,000-year mark aft er the Big Bang, around
13.8 billion years ago. And the specifi c atoms of your body, at least most
of the atoms in you right now, originated during ejections of matter from
supernova stars from eras prior to the formation of Earth 4.6 billion
years ago.
Th erefore, as shown in fi gure 1.1, a logical sequence of nestedness cor-
relates with fi rst origins of each type or scale of each thing in time. A se-
quence of creation in time is also a sequence of enlargement in the sizes
of the systems created, illustrated by nested scales of bubbles. And all of
these levels coexist right now in your living body.
How each type was born is a distinct story, of course. Th ose fascinat-
ing details will matter a great deal later in this book. But not yet. Certain
variations among subclasses or subtypes are important, too. For now,
though, the point is simply this: for each general type of thing, there was
a time when it did not exist, and then it originated; aft er that, it did exist
and has ever since.
Perhaps think of the narrative like this. At one time early in the his-
tory of the universe, the atom was the most newsworthy, avant-garde
thing around. Th en billions of years later, the complex living cell emerged,
FIGURE 1.1
Th e origins of three fundamental types of things creates a sequence of an expanding
nesting of systems. Each circle or bubble simply symbolizes a generic type of thing or
system, regardless of scale.
Origin of atom Origin of cell Origin of animal
necessary for
Earlier than and
necessary for
Earlier than and

NATURAL CHAPTERS AND NESTED SCALES 9
at least on Earth, as the hottest avant-garde system—not only the newest
type of ontum but also the ancestor of all cells of our bodies as well as of
all cells of mushrooms and trees. And those ancestral cells were able to
come into existence only because atoms already existed—the atoms could
take on roles as atomic letters within the intertwined chemical reactions
inside the cells. Finally (so far in our logic), at some point aft er the origin
of complex cells, the multicellular organism originated as the avant-garde
entity, the most newsworthy thing on Earth, with a special nod to the
branch we call animals. A sequence in time was built by nesting in series
from smaller into larger.
■■■
Can there be a science or a study of everything? When physicists talk
about their quest for a theory of everything, they do not include the works
of Shakespeare. To physicists, a theory of everything would unify the un-
derstanding of fundamental subnano building blocks and connectors of
matter, energy, and especially the diff erent basic forces. But what if we
were to desire to include Shakespeare along with the quarks of physics as
a member of the set of things being studied? What if we were to truly em-
brace everything in a study of everything? Th en, would the phenomena
being studied involve pattern itself? I think so. Everything that can be
studied has pattern, from atoms to societies.
In this book, I am focused on innovations in the patterns that built up
into the pattern called the human being, but, as will become clear, I am
interested not just in the human but in humanity. Th is buildup might
seem important only from our viewpoint. But there are other vital sys-
tems that are also very ancient, such as the mighty Earth as a planet. Such
systems preceded the human body. “Don’t forget Earth!” my geochemist
colleague Peter Westbroek told me. Or we might pay respect to the entire
cosmos itself, which preceded any atom. Since the Big Bang, the universe’s
all-encompassing stature has never diminished. In fact, size-wise, the
universe continues to grow with the cosmic expansion, which is known
to be accelerating. Yes, we are nothing without the cosmos. And we would
be nothing without Earth. Every day we breathe Earth’s air and drink its
waters. So what about these huge systems that preceded us?

10 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
Although the cosmos and Earth were vital to our creation (and remain
vital to our existence), they were not things on the direct line to us, in the
sense of classes of systems that progressed in a sequence from small to
large that took atoms to cells and cells to animals. Put another way, cos-
mos and Earth are not entire whole things that are literally internal parts
of us. Th e atoms of the cosmos—but not the cosmos itself—are inside us.
Th e molecules of Earth—but not Earth itself—are inside us. Atoms and
molecules, as types of very much smaller things within us, are on the
direct line of the narrative we will focus on here.
Why confi ne the search in this way? Th e goal is to fi nd the basic chap-
ters in the narrative of who we are and how we got here. Th e clue to dis-
covering these chapters might be in this building up from small to large
in a nested sequence of systems or things. It is only a clue, however. We
would still need to refi ne a logical model that can be engaged to fi nd the
sequence we seek.

SUMMARY: A concept is off ered: combogenesis . Events share a
certain kind of rhythm in the creation narrative from quarks to
culture. Each event combines and integrates prior things into
new, larger things. Each forges a new level of type of thing (sys-
tem, entity, ontum). Overall, as a series, these fundamental levels
constitute a grand sequence . New relations possessed by new
systems at a given level establish possibilities for systems on each
next, subsequent level. Th e aim is to use combogenesis as a frame-
work to proceed deliberately, to synthesize across various fi elds
of knowledge, and to explore how fundamental types of things
and relations came about in time.
SEEKING FUNDAMENTAL TYPES
Consider molecules: as noted, clearly one of the major types of things.
For the origin of life, biologists posit that cells originated not directly
from combinations of atoms but rather from combinations of molecules.
Th ose molecules contained atoms. So, refi ning the logic, to the sequence
of atoms, cells, and animals shown in the prior chapter, the origin of
molecules should be added in between the origins of atoms and cells.
Th is is done in fi gure 2.1.
Th e fi gure shows the nested bubbles again. Th at style of diagramming
levels would soon get overly complex as levels are added. So the fi gure also
shows an alternative method I oft en use: concentric circles. Individual
2
THE CORE THEME
Combogenesis

12 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
layers of circles from small to large represent small things (as types) nested
inside larger things (as types).
What do we learn from this insertion of the molecule’s origin into the
sequence? Will there simply be an infi nite number of possible insertions?
I don’t think that is the case. But we do learn that we require a more ex-
plicit method or model to guide how to determine the main events in
which types of entities came into existence.
COMBOGENESIS
Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to know, roughly, the main events of “com-
ing together” that took place from the Big Bang to us? Such knowledge
could help inform the narrative we tell by way of chapters that yielded the
universe we live in. Such knowledge, in other words, could be central to
an understanding of how we came to be.
FIGURE 2.1
Because atoms had to exist before they could connect into molecules, and because
molecules had to exist before cells, we can place the origin of molecules as a new
stepping-stone between the origins of atoms and cells.
Origin of animalOrigin of cellOrigin of moleculeOrigin of atom
necessary for
Earlier than and
necessary for
Earlier than and
necessary for
Earlier than and

THE CORE THEME 13
A phrase such as “coming together” is a bit awkward, despite a certain
sex appeal. And I don’t want to be limited to even wordier phrases, such as
“smaller whole systems merging into new, larger whole systems.” A single
word for the theme should help keep the fl ow of logic on track when the
investigations start digging into variations of detail in the types of things.
So I use the following word: combogenesis . Th e idea is genesis by com-
bination. Th e word riff s off the informal term for a small, cooperative jazz
group, combo . Why coin a term? Quite simply, I haven’t found any cur-
rent word for the concept I want to discuss.
1

Combogenesis is the genesis of new types of things by combination
and integration of previously existing things. See fi gure 2.2, which shows
the basic features to be described.
In this work, the word combogenesis is applied exclusively to the major
new types of entities generated along the sequence that includes the most
fundamental types of things from quarks to culture. You might decide to
use the word when you cook and combine ingredients in a recipe. But if
I have coined a term, I can restrict its use at least in this book. And as I
Things and relations
(prior level)
New thing
(new level)
Combogenesis
New relations
FIGURE 2.2
Th e circles on the left are the things (systems, entities) of a prior level. Th e dashed
lines represent the relations they have with each other and with all things in their
environment. Th e single larger circle on the right is the new type of thing (system,
entity) on the new level, which results from combination and integration, combo-
genesis ; the wavy lines radiating from the circle represent the new kinds of relations
it has and is capable of having.

14 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
have said, though Earth and the cosmos are vital, I’m not interested in all
systems, only the special ones that you will see as you read.
To fl esh out what intrigues me requires a few additional terms. Again,
see fi gure 2.2. I have already been using one term: level . It appears, for
better or worse, more than fi ve hundred times. I needed a word to desig-
nate a type, a category, a set of fundamental things or systems at various
scales of sizes. Examples used so far are the level of the atoms, the level
of molecules, the level of cells, and the level of multicellular organisms
(which include animals, plants, fungi). An event of combogenesis takes
participants from a previous level and integrates them into a new general
type of thing on a given new level.
A certain distinction is important: once new things reach a certain
level, additional new kinds (subclasses) of those new things can be and
most usually are created within that same level. Th us, in this book the
evolution of multicellular animals from cells is an event of combogenesis,
but the evolution of mammals from reptiles is not because that change
took place within the level of multicellularity. As another example, con-
sider subclasses within the level called molecules. Although molecules can
be made directly from atoms (members of the previous level, which are
at a smaller fundamental scale), most molecules within the vast complex
landscape of their subclasses get forged during chemical reactions among
other subclasses of molecules and thus all within the level of molecules.
NEW RELATIONS
With these concepts of events of combogenesis, levels, and new types of
things, the overall scheme of combogenesis is utterly diff erent from, say,
a gravitational buildup. Consider large planets forming from gradual ac-
cretion of smaller gravity-possessing masses, a process that begins with
tiny dust particles in the formation of solar systems. In this progression,
during the buildup, gravity merely becomes greater and greater in over-
all magnitude. (Yes, it’s a diff erent story when a star ignites.)
In contrast to a gradual increase in gravity during a planet’s accretion,
in the phenomena I seek to bring to light by applying the model of combo-
genesis, the new things at each level are much more than just larger in size.
Th ey are new phenomena. Of course, what is new and what is meant by

THE CORE THEME 15
new at each level will have to be made clear as we progress. But one portion
of our inquiry that should never be neglected is the characterization of the
new relations that come about with the new things on each new level.
Th ings have relations with other things in their surroundings. By “re-
lations,” I mean whatever interactions a thing has or is capable of having
with other things.
2
Relations include, for example, the forces of physics, a
cell’s importation of nutrients, a rabbit’s ability to run away from a coy-
ote. Relations include people talking or taking actions fi rst vetted in their
imaginations. Relations diff er among things, and to a large degree they
brand those things. As far as we know, atoms do not talk (in language),
and though the force of gravity exists among people because they have
masses, it can be set aside for, say, most discourse of politics. To a large
degree, the narrative of quarks to culture is an awesome development of
innovations in relations.
In fi gure 2.2, dashed lines represent relations possessed by the smaller
things on the left . Wavy lines branching out from the “new thing” on the
right, aft er combogenesis, show the relations it possesses. Th e contrast be-
tween the two styles of radiating lines, dashed and wavy, symbolizes the
creation of new, unique relations by the things at each new level. Again,
those wavy lines on the right will prove key to the analysis (and to what
happened in our universe), and I will have much more to say about the
new relations in part 2 once the evidence is in about what they are and
how they operate for the levels examined.
One reason the production of new relations is so important is that this
feature of the concept of combogenesis leads to a way to have iterations
or rhythms of the general process of combination and integration. Th e
new things with their new relations on the right side of fi gure 2.2 will be-
come the things and relations on a new (imagined) left -hand side in the
next iteration at a subsequent and even larger scale. Th e process can be
considered helical: a sequence of change or development of new things
and relations is generated through the repeating, cyclic theme.
THE GRAND SEQUENCE
I introduce one more special term. As noted, the result of this process,
applied recursively or iteratively—to say it once more in slightly diff erent

16 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
words—creates out of the integration of prior, smaller-scale systems a
nesting of increasingly larger systems. Th e result: a sequence in time is
linked to a certain kind of nestedness in space. (Recall that going inside
the body is going back in time.) Now I suggest that this sequence itself
deserves a name. At the very least, I need to be able to refer to it.
Th e sequence could be considered a path of the construction and cre-
ation of things from the simplest particles of physics to us. But a philoso-
pher-colleague cautioned me about the term path . It implies, said Bill
Ruddick, that the universe’s creation of things followed some preestab-
lished, perhaps preordained path. Th is is not true as a judgment I would
be willing to defend. Yet neither is it without at least a smidgen of valid-
ity: to an extent, certain beats of the theme were more inevitable or caus-
ally necessary than others, as I hope I can make clear.
Trying to be sensitive to terminology, therefore, for the entire sequence
itself, I off er a word borrowed from a wonderful book by the physicists
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow titled Th e Grand Design .
3
I call
the sequence, with its overall series of levels, the grand sequence . Th ose
two words do not have to imply a predetermined path. It is a sequence.
And it is grand. It got to us.
SYSTEMS LARGER THAN THE HUMAN BODY
IN THE GRAND SEQUENCE
How many basic levels of things were created in the grand sequence by
the rhythms of combogenesis? What was new about each of these levels?
What innovative relations did the new things have that made it possible
for each subsequent event of combining and integrating? Suggested an-
swers to these questions require applying the theme, which I do in subse-
quent chapters.
But, fi rst, a note on something implied in this book’s title. I have men-
tioned the term culture several times yet have stopped the analysis in the
fi gures so far at the animal body, of which we are examples. Let’s move
outward. Considering our bodies as constituents within other, larger
systems surely brings us to cultural systems or social systems or what
some might prefer to call “sociocultural systems.” In this book, I simply

THE CORE THEME 17
use the word culture . I suggest several levels of culture in the grand
sequence.
Individual people nested within a much larger group is strikingly il-
lustrated in the famous frontispiece to Th omas Hobbes’s seminal book on
political theory, Leviathan or Th e Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common
Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil (1651).
4
Th e image in fi gure 2.3 shows the
geopolitical state in the symbolic form of a giant, crowned superbeing.
His body contains the people. Th e idea is that the people are parts of a
national or political body. Th e relationship between the people and sys-
tem, embodied in the image of the ruler,
5
is the subject of Hobbes’s book,
FIGURE 2.3
Portion of the frontispiece of Leviathan (1651) by Th omas Hobbes, with one part
magnifi ed to better highlight the people, who are like cells in a body. Here they are
inside the geopolitical state, symbolized by the giant ruler responsible for holding
the system together, for better or worse.

18 COMBOGENESIS AND A GRAND SEQUENCE
and this relationship is still a heated heart of political debates all over the
planet. But for our purposes here, we simply witness this picture as social
nesting. If you are roughly typical, you are a part inside larger things,
whether you like it or not (depending how your work day is going)—
Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents .
Humans have been physically human for roughly 200,000 years. Th us,
the human body preceded the creation of larger social units, such as the
sprawling geopolitical states of ancient Sumer, Peru, and China, all of
which were more recent than 10,000 years ago. Are we to the giant sys-
tems we live in like cells to bodies? Or like atoms to molecules? Certainly
in each nested pair, the smaller originated before the larger and is con-
tained in the larger (atoms in molecules, cells in bodies, human bodies in
geopolitical states). But did the grand sequence go from the human body
directly to the geopolitical state? Or were other levels of fundamental
things created in between? Will we fi nd that we need to insert other levels,
similar to the way we inserted molecules between atoms and biological
cells?
■■■
Th e plan is to use this model or theme of combogenesis to investigate fun-
damental types of things as chapters of creation. Please note this is a logi-
cal model, not a mathematical one. And although I developed it to let the
universe be the narrator, it is not possible, of course, to avoid my personal
subjectivity in applying the organizing theme. My most questionable
choice, I believe, was to start this quest itself—that is, to seek a theme that
can synthesize a unifi ed narrative from quarks to culture based on well-
established facts. Of course, and apropos to caveats and confi dence about
my suggestions in this book, I am open to improved precision in the fu-
ture, from other thinkers and as new fi ndings from the disciplinary fi elds
emerge, to help distinguish types of things and possible intervening levels
among the things.
Th is scheme might seem very anthropocentric—this defi ning of a
“grand” sequence as the concentric rings that led from simple things of
physics to Homo sapiens in their modalities of cultural being. It is anthro-
pocentric. Heck, yes, sure it is. A central target of ancient creation myths

THE CORE THEME 19
was to explain how humans came to exist here on the cosmic scene. And
today we, the living, are no less curious to fi nd an answer to this grand
question.
To satisfy this curiosity, I hope it is clear that I intend to use the con-
cept of combogenesis as a tool to help address issues that arise in attempt-
ing to discern the main transitions and levels of the grand sequence. Th at
will take place in part 2. Levels and new things with new relations—all
will be the subjects of an inquiry whose range is both inside us and out-
side us.
In part 3, assuming part 2 provides us with a superfamily of phenom-
ena that share the property of being levels in the grand sequence, I start
asking about connections among the members of that superfamily. In
other words, we might eventually seek connections among subthemes
within the theme of combogenesis. Perhaps we will understand a bit bet-
ter the overall pattern-based, theory-of-everything nature of this amaz-
ing reality we inhabit and have helped form.

2
TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL
LEVELS
P
ostulating a rhythm in a natural narrative from quarks to culture
leads to questions: Can specifi c levels of the grand sequence be
identifi ed? What things with relations came “up” from the previous
level as potential players in each next step of combination and integra-
tion? On each level, what were the most crucial new relations possessed
by the new things? How exactly were those relations capable of making
the new things combine into still larger things of the next successive
level?
Here, in part 2, I make cases for twelve levels in the grand sequence
and off er answers to these questions for each of these levels. Each level
gets an individual chapter so that I can focus on the most relevant as-
pects of innovations of things and relations. I aim for consistent descrip-
tions, using the concepts within the overall theme of combogenesis and
lingering a bit on aspects of each level that I have found fascinating as
well as special. As a result, I hope to show that the logic of combogenesis
does warrant the concept of a grand sequence made from a repeating
theme.
Aft er that, in part 3, I focus on a second aim. I turn to other themes
shared by some but not all levels within the grand sequence. But we can’t

22 TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
examine those themes until aft er we have more “data” on the twelve
levels here:
1. Fundamental quanta
2. Nucleons: protons and neutrons
3. Atomic nuclei
4. Atoms
5. Molecules
6. Prokaryotic cells
7. Eukaryotic cells
8. Complex multicellular organisms
9. Animal social groups
10. Tribal metagroups
11. Agrovillages
12. Geopolitical states

SUMMARY: Th is deep base level to the grand sequence consists
of the set of fundamental quanta that make up what physicists
call the Standard Model. Th e model has an ordered array of
quarks, electrons, gluons, photons, and other basic entities. Built
into the fabric of our universe, the quanta in the array are orga-
nized by a primordial twoness: matter-fi eld quanta and force-fi eld
quanta. Th is remarkable start with basic “things” that interact is
beaming with prospects for combogenesis.
THE ENIGMATIC, FUNDAMENTAL QUANTA
In the beginning, as currently known by astrophysicists, the Big Bang’s
primordial burst came about 13.8 billion years ago. As the energy density
of the universe started rapidly to diminish, like orders arriving from a
fi xed menu, the fundamental quanta emerged into existence in rather
quick succession. Th ese basic things were unimaginable in count but
relatively few in terms of their basic types.
Modern physicists describe these quanta with an enormously success-
ful theory called the Standard Model. Frank Wilczek, physics Nobelist,
says that “Standard Model” is a “grotesquely modest name for one of hu-
mankind’s greatest achievements.”
1
Given such awe, I am tempted to call
this theory the Magical Mojo Model. But here, in honor of the legacy of
terms accepted by experts, the Standard Model it will be.
3
A BIG BANG START OF
THINGS AND RELATIONS

24 TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
What are these quanta? Even what to call them can be contended.
Oft en designated the fundamental “particles,” they are not particles in the
usual sense we nonphysicists would likely understand. Any of the quanta
can be real or virtual. In their virtual manifestations, they fl ash in and
out of existence, from the vacuum or from interactions with real parti-
cles or even with other virtual particles. Some quanta have mass; some are
massless. None of them has a known size. I adopt terms from physicist
Bruce Schumm,
2
who calls the gamut of these enigmatic things “quanta.”
In addition, within the Standard Model the quanta are divided into a
primal and complementary duality—technically, the fermions and the
gauge bosons. Again, in Schumm’s evocative phrases, the two types are
(1) matter-fi eld quanta and (2) force-fi eld quanta. Th is division into two
basic subsets within the overall set rules over how the quanta enable the
fi rst event of combogenesis. Th erefore, aft er giving some crucial and pro-
vocative background, I get into how they work together.
Here I list the set of the fundamental matter-fi eld quanta and force-fi eld
quanta in these two categories. For our purposes, not all members are
FIGURE 3.1
Th e starter level to the grand sequence: the Standard Model of particle physics, with
two sets of fundamental quanta: matter-fi eld quanta force-fi eld quanta (“things,”
but they are also “relations”). A deeper, prior level is suspected but not established
(the “current mystery”). Th e term interconversion is used in these fi gures as a short-
hand for processes that change types of things within the new level, as discussed in
the text for each specifi c level. Here interconversion is specifi ed according to the
laws of particle physics.
Force-ﬁeld quanta
mediate interactions
Interconversion
New
relations
Current mystery
Matter-ﬁeld
quanta: quarks,
electrons, etc.;
and force-ﬁeld
quanta: gluons,
electrons, etc.

A BIG BANG START OF THINGS AND RELATIONS 25
equally important. But some, as explained, stand out as main players. And
all are vital as members of the Standard Model, an integrated, empirically
verifi ed theory. Some names are recognizable even to nonphysicists. Th e
Higgs boson, an integral part of the Standard Model, does not fi t in either
of the two categories, but it is shown in the more detailed Standard Model
in the fi rst fi gure of this book’s center insert. Note that the matter-fi eld
quanta come in groups of three, which physicists call “generations.”
UP-QUARK-LIKE MATTER-FIELD QUANTA, IN INCREASING MASS FROM
LEFT TO RIGHT
u p q u a r k c h a r m q u a r k t o p q u a r k
DOWN-QUARK-LIKE MATTER-FIELD QUANTA, IN INCREASING MASS FROM
LEFT TO RIGHT
d o w n q u a r k s t r a n g e q u a r k b o t t o m q u a r k
ELECTRON-LIKE MATTER-FIELD QUANTA, IN INCREASING MASS FROM
LEFT TO RIGHT
e l e c t r o n m u o n t a u
NEUTRINO-LIKE MATTER-FIELD QUANTA, ORDERED WITH
ELECTRON-TYPE PARTNERS
e l e c t r o n n e u t r i n o m u o n n e u t r i n o t a u n e u t r i n o
FORCE-FIELD QUANTA
g l u o n p h o t o n W a n d Z g a u g e b o s o n s
Note : Th e Higgs boson, though now in the Standard Model, is not in this set.

26 TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
A couple comments of particular relevance:
Th e quantum world is not like the situation with human height, weight,
or eye color, which can be infi nitely varied. All electrons have exactly
the same magnitude of electric charge. All up quarks have exactly the
same magnitude of electric charge (diff erent from the electron) and color
charge (more on color soon, which electrons do not possess). Indeed, we
defi ne the types of quanta by the invariance of properties within each
type. Th e quanta seem reduced to a minimal complexity, with just a few
precise mathematical qualities.
Down in this abyss of the nano–nano, the “things” might be consid-
ered mathematical objects. Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), refl ecting
back on his discoveries of quantum mechanics, said he “felt almost giddy
at the thought that I now had to probe this wealth of mathematical struc-
tures nature had so generously spread out before me.”
3
Living physicist
Max Tegmark emphasizes that the basis of reality is mathematics.
4
If only
the English poet John Keats were still with us. In “Ode to a Grecian Urn,”
he memorializes the aphorism “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Today,
Keats might be moved to write “Ode to the Standard Model,” conclud-
ing that “matter is math, math matter.”
Th e fundamental quanta are a weird opening act to the grand se-
quence. Of the quanta that have mass, physicist Lisa Randall calls that
mass “an enormous mystery.”
5
For physicist Martinus Veltman, the “great-
est puzzle of elementary particle physics today” is the three generations
of each of the types of the matter-fi eld quanta.
6
Th ere are also ongoing
questions about fundamental constants whose values come from mea-
surement but are not understood by theory.
Physics Nobelist Richard Feynman famously said when describing the
universe implied by the weird fi ndings of particle physics, “If you don’t
like it, go somewhere else—perhaps to another universe where the rules
are simpler.”
7
No worries, Richard, we like it!
QUARKS IN US
We turn now to the general type of matter-fi eld quanta called “quarks”
for a bit of detail because quarks are key players to watch in the next level.

A BIG BANG START OF THINGS AND RELATIONS 27
Like all the quanta, quarks exist in a realm bizarre to the typical daily
lives of coff ee, cars, and cash. Nevertheless, perhaps because of electric-
ity, few people have problems with the concept of one of the other types
of matter-fi eld quanta, the electrons. Even fewer take issue with the con-
cepts of the much larger atoms or molecules. But the mention of “quarks”
oft en gets puzzled looks. Yet without quarks there would be no atoms, no
molecules, no living cells, and defi nitely no coff ee-stoked, cash-carrying,
car-driving people.
As you can see in the tables outlining the types of quanta and their
names, quarks have been bestowed with whimsical names: “up,” “down,”
“charm,” “strange,” “top,” and “bottom.” Th e physicist Murray Gell-Mann
borrowed the fabricated word quark from Irish writer James Joyce.
Quarks come in two subtypes (up and down), each with three genera-
tions. And they all have their antimatter counterparts, the antiquarks.
Furthermore, each quark can possess at any moment one of a trio of dif-
ferent color charges (red, green, or blue) because a quark alternates colors
during interactions with other quarks and with gluons. I say more later
on this color that is not real color.
Th eir sizes? Not established. Experiments have been able to determine
that if quarks are sizable, they are smaller than 10
−

18
meters (a billionth
of a billionth of a meter).
8
Quarks might be “points.” What does that
mean? A scale so infi nitesimal is a pain to wrap your head around. But
try shrinking your head, fi rst to the size of the period at the end of this
sentence. And then make that same relative jump in scale about six more
times to reach the 10
−

18
meters scale. Th at’s the maximum. Th e reality is
likely even crazier.
All quarks have mass. But why they have the precise masses established
is an ongoing enigma for physicists, as Lisa Randall emphasizes.
9
Th eir
masses do come into the story in the next chapter and in a way that I
think you’ll fi nd mind blowing.
In addition to mass, all quarks possess electric charge. Th at character-
istic seems at least a bit familiar. Th e electric charge of an electron is de-
fi ned as −1 unit (the “negative” is only a convention to contrast it with the
complementary property of a positive electric charge). Relative to an elec-
tron’s charge, quarks have an either +⅔ or −⅓ electric charge. So quarks’
fractional electric charges are odd. Th e enigma there is fortunate, though,

28 TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
for, as becomes apparent over the next few chapters, what happens when
quarks combine works out nicely for us humans.
All quarks possess another basic attribute called “weak isospin.” Like
electric charge, weak isospin is a conserved property during interactions.
It has the same mathematical behavior as angular momentum, but phys-
icists emphasize that we should not think of quarks as literally pirouet-
ting. Weak isospin facilitates the conversion of some types of quarks into
other types during certain interactions. Fortunately for us, though weak
isospin is crucial to the universe, it is not crucial to the main focus of our
narrative.
Finally, of huge consequence, quarks possess color charge or, simply,
color. Th e scene gets increasingly bizarre. Th e term color charge does not
at all refer to our familiar visual color but rather is physicists’ playful ap-
pellation for a basic property possessed by all quarks in equal amounts.
In the well-vetted theory of quantum chromodynamics, there are three
“fl avors” of color: red, green, and blue.
In our familiar world, we have experience with electric charges. Sparks
fl y if we touch two ends of a wire connected to the two poles of a battery—
good to recall if we are lost in the woods, need to make fi re, and have a
battery and proxy for a wire. Electric (or electromagnetic) charges come
in pairs: two poles to a magnet; two ends of a battery; electricity with its
positive and negative charges; positive sodium and negative chloride
ions from table salt dissolved in water (indeed, many substances dissolve
in water specifi cally because they separate into negatively and positively
charged ions).
In contrast, the tripleness of quarks’ color charge might seem very odd
to us because of our familiarity with this doubleness of electromagnetic
phenomena. And unlike an electron that has only negative electrical
charge, a quark can and does have all three types of color charge, but only
one color at a time. In interaction with other quarks, a quark is a kaleido-
scope that rotates in a rapid-fi re way among the three colors. Perhaps U.S.
politics could take a cue from quarks and diversify away from strict
dichotomization.
Naming the types of quark “color” red, green, and blue might seem
like more physicist zaniness, an inside joke. But there is some method to
this nomenclatural madness, which we will see at the fi rst event of com-
bogenesis in the next chapter.

A BIG BANG START OF THINGS AND RELATIONS 29
PRIMORDIAL THINGS AND RELATIONS
This book is about the progression of an ever-larger nesting of levels
of things, from purely physical to biological and eventually to cultural.
For that progression to happen, things at all levels have to have relations.
And the quanta of the Standard Model do. For us and our quest for a
unifi ed narrative with potential rhythms from quarks to culture, here is
what we gain from the division of the fundamental quanta into matter-
fi eld quanta (which quarks belong to) and force-fi eld quanta: the universe
started with a basic creation and apportionment of things and relations.
Th e New York University physicist Allen Mincer described the situa-
tion for me: the matter-fi eld quanta toss force-fi eld quanta back and forth.
During this tossing, matter-fi eld quanta interact and alter each other in
various ways.
10

Mincer said the kind of interaction we call “repulsion” is the easiest to
understand metaphorically. You toss a heavy ball to someone, but you
jerk backward a bit from the release, and so does the catcher, who ab-
sorbs the momentum of the ball. In the microcosm of the quanta, this
tossing can create attraction or a moving closer as well as repulsion. Th at
kind of interaction is more diffi cult to intuit. Perhaps it is like the tossing
of a life preserver to a struggling swimmer at sea, by which two bodies
can be moved closer together—it is hoped—to safety.
Which specifi c matter-fi eld quanta toss which specifi c force-fi eld
quanta has to do with the kinds of properties possessed by the matter-
fi eld quanta. Quanta with color charge, such as quarks, toss gluons back
and forth. Quanta with electric charge, such as quarks and electrons, toss
photons back and forth. All the matter-fi eld quanta have weak isospin,
which allows them to toss the W and Z gauge bosons.
Th ere is no perfect metaphor or even language for this situation that
has been so well honed mathematically. Th e basic kinds of relations are
commonly called the “fundamental forces.” Many physicists now prefer
to say that the force-fi eld quanta “mediate” interactions among the matter-
fi eld quanta. Perhaps imagine rivers that carry sediments from mountains
to oceans. Or a marriage counselor, minister, or judge negotiating between
parties. Or bees pollinating fl owers.
Whatever metaphors our minds conjure or the terms we use from
physics, the big-picture point here is that despite what might seem to us

30 TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
humans as extremely nonstandard weirdness in the Standard Model, the
universe did us a good turn. For us, the bottom line has to do with things
and relations.
Th e situation is not as simple as matter-fi eld quanta = things, force-
fi eld quanta = relations. For example, the force-fi eld quanta called gluons
also have color charges and can interact with themselves. Indeed, as
Mincer described to me, all quanta are in some sense “things” that inter-
act. Th ey all have their properties that determine their interactions. I
noted the complexities involving real and virtual particles. We likely bias
our thinking about the situation because we tend to conceptualize struc-
tures in familiar see-and-touch kinds of way. Still, the matter-fi eld quanta
and force-fi eld quanta are a basic division of types that is crucial to how
the universe works.
■■■
At its primal birth, the stage of actors in our cosmos was rife with poten-
tial for higher-order structures. How simple it all began: a few basic math-
ematical properties seeded throughout a small array of types of entities.
We can take the array of fundamental quanta to constitute the base level
of the grand sequence (level 1, if you like).
Th e physicist Frank Close highlights what the fundamental quanta
give us: “Th e electrons and quarks are like the letters of Nature’s alphabet,
the basic pieces from which all can be constructed.”
11
Note the metaphor
of the alphabet. Th e analogy is spot-on. In both of these systems—alphabet
and quanta—simplicity generates complexity. I say more about this pat-
tern throughout the book.
Th e grand sequence has begun. All subsequent levels to come trace
their ancestry to the fundamental quanta of the Standard Model. Now all
we have to do is to follow the story of how these primordial things and
relations combined into larger structures.
Th is starter level is unique to what’s coming because—in our scheme—
its things do not derive from the combination and integration of smaller,
prior things. Why not? Well, I did specify “in our scheme.” In reality,
there could have been a prior level of constituents that we haven’t discov-
ered and confi rmed yet. Worldwide, top-notch physicists are volleying
speculations about this very question.

A BIG BANG START OF THINGS AND RELATIONS 31
Ideas and debates abound. One idea points to multidimensional strings
from which distinct vibrational modes created the fundamental quanta.
In yet another theoretical tack are hypotheses about entities called
“preons.” It is possible that solving any current mysteries will open doors
to yet deeper ones. Or maybe not. And then there is the enigma, as yet
unmentioned, of cosmic dark matter, probably an unknown class of fun-
damental particle. Let’s not even start into cosmic dark energy.
Basically, what preceded this deep base level, if anything, is mysteri-
ous. Proposed answers are not yet ready to be presented in introductory
textbooks. Th erefore, they are not for this book. Best sellers have helped
us nonphysicists glimpse the possibilities. But because I am not the one
to speak on these matters, I invoke a phrase from philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein, with apologies for slipping from the original context: “About
what one cannot speak, one must remain silent.”
12

Nuclear force,
+1 electric charge,
large mass
Prior
relations
New
relations
Quarks (from
matter-ﬁeld quanta)
Nucleons:
protons, neutrons
Interconversion
Energy repose
Full-on color
force, quark-gluon
interactions
FIGURE 4.1
Th e fi gure above shows the new level, with its new things” (nucleons) and new
“relations.” Interconversion: inside stars, in radioactivity, and in other nuclear
transmutations.

SUMMARY: Th ings that relate might integrate. Quarks and glu-
ons in the fundamental quanta combine to create the fi rst known
systems. Quarks connect via the gluons into objects that balance
the internal, superstrong color charges. Experiments have discov-
ered a “particle zoo” of more than a hundred types of simple
quark–gluon systems, with either doublets or triplets of quarks.
Yet from that impressive diversity only two species of quark trip-
lets emerge that are stable enough to become the real stuff from
which we are made: protons and neutrons. Protons by themselves
may well be immortal. But neutrons have a serious problem.
THE NUCLEONS
Following the birth of the universe, billions of years passed before cul-
ture blossomed, at least on Earth. But at the fi rst mere heartbeat of time,
new things were suddenly born from combogenesis. At a new level, these
things were the protons and neutrons.
Before the one-second mark aft er the Big Bang, quarks and gluons of
the Standard Model lived in a maelstrom hell of hells called a “quark–
gluon plasma.” Aft er that second, when the temperature of the expand-
ing universe dropped below about a trillion degrees Kelvin, naked quarks
and gluons were no more. Th ey jelled into protons and neutrons. Physi-
cists refer to this event as a “phase transition,” akin to water congealing
into ice. Because the average temperature of the cosmos kept on falling,
4
THE NUCLEONS, WITH IMMORTAL
PROTON AND FRAGILE NEUTRON

34 TWELVE FUNDAMENTAL LEVELS
this phase transition to protons and neutrons was like ice everlasting. A
nonreversing ratchet to a next stage had locked in.
1

At the end of chapter 3, I noted that it is not established that the fun-
damental quanta of the Standard Model are made of smaller things. Th us,
we can honor the protons and neutrons of the level discussed here as the
fi rst known systems on the grand sequence.
Protons and neutrons are collectively called “nucleons.” Th e word
nucleon refers to the atomic nucleus, which jumps ahead in our story and
shows the role the nucleons will soon play. But at the one-second mark of
time, the nucleons emerged as things unto themselves, the most avant-
garde “cool” items in existence, belonging, as we all do, to the greater cos-
mos but at this point not within larger structures.
Th e nucleons are therefore mighty special as the fi rst systems. What
nature of systems are they? And what capacities did they gain that were
so novel that they could lead along the road of time up into a next event
of combogenesis?
CREATING NUCLEONS FROM QUARKS AND GLUONS
To jell quarks into protons and neutrons by combination and integration,
only two types of quarks from the suite of six are usually cited in the reci-
pes: up quarks and down quarks. Each is respectively the lightest type
(by mass) of the three quarks in its group.
I say “usually cited in the recipes” because other kinds of quarks enter
the kitchen when we consider the bizarre goings-on inside protons and
neutrons. But fi rst we visit each recipe’s sticky sauce. It’s the gluon. Recall
that in the prior level quarks are members of the class of matter-fi eld
quanta, and gluons are of the class known as force-fi eld quanta.
Th e name “gluon” is apt among the oft en wacky monikers of particle
physics. Gluons are what physicists call the “mediators of interaction”
among things that possess color charge. Gluons are tossed back and forth
by quarks during bonding of the quarks (and of the gluons, as discussed
later). Such interaction manifests what is known as the “color force” or
“strong nuclear force” or oft en just “strong force.” Th e color force pulls
things together. In a sense, gluons glue quarks together.

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distinct course of conduct, the hearts of the people.
For general information, it may be well to say that there has never
been any cause for alarm as to the Latter-day Saints. The Legislature of
Illinois granted a liberal charter for the city of Nauvoo; and let every
honest man in the Union who has any knowledge of her say whether
she has not flourished beyond the most sanguine anticipations of all.
And while they witness her growing glory, let them solemnly testify
whether Nauvoo has wilfully injured the country, county or a single
individual one cent.
With the strictest scrutiny publish the facts, whether a particle of law
has been evaded or broken: virtue and innocence need no artificial
covering. Political views and party distinctions never should disturb
the harmony of society; and when the whole truth comes before a
virtuous people, we are willing to abide the issue.
We will here refer to the three late dismissals upon writs of habeas
corpus, of Joseph Smith, when arrested under the requisitions of
Missouri.
The first, in June, 1841, was tried at Monmouth, before Judge
Douglass, of the fifth judicial circuit; and as no exceptions have been
taken to that decision by this State or Missouri, but Missouri had
previously entered a nolle prosequi on all the old indictments against
the "Mormons" in the difficulties of 1838, it is taken for granted that
that decision was just.
The second, in December, 1842, was tried at Springfield before Judge
Pope in the United States District Court; and from that honorably
discharged, as no exceptions from any source have been made to those
proceedings, it follows as a matter of course that that decision was
just!
And the third, in July, 1843, was tried at the city of Nauvoo, before the
municipal court of said city; and as no exceptions to that discharge
have been taken, and as the governor says there is "evidence on the
other side to show that the sheriff of Lee County voluntarily carried

Mr. Reynolds (who had Mr. Smith in custody,) to the city of Nauvoo
without any coercion on the part of any one" it must be admitted that
that decision was just!
But is any man still unconvinced of the justness of these strictures
relative to the two last cases, let the astounding fact go forth, that Orin
Porter Rockwell, whom Boggs swore was the principal in his
assassination, and accessory to which Mr. Smith was arrested, has
returned home, "clear of that sin." In fact, there was not a witness to
get up an indictment against him.
The Messrs. Averys, who were unlawfully transported out of this State,
have returned to their families in peace; and there seems to be no
ground for contention, no cause for jealousy, and no excuse for a
surmise that any man, woman or child will suffer the least
inconvenience from General Smith, the charter of Nauvoo, the city of
Nauvoo, or even any of her citizens.
There is nothing for a bone of contention! Even those ordinances
which appear to excite the feeling of some people have recently been
repealed; so that if the "intelligent" inhabitants of Hancock County
want peace, want to abide by the governor's advice, want to have a
character abroad grow out of their character at home, and really mean
to follow the Savior's golden rule, "To do unto others as they would
wish others to do unto them," they will be still now, and let their own
works praise them in the gates of justice and in the eyes of the
surrounding world. Wise men ought to have understanding enough to
conquer men with kindness.
"A soft answer turns away wrath," says the wise man; and it will be
greatly to the credit of the Latter-day Saints to show the love of God,
by now kindly treating those who may have, in an unconscious
moment, done them wrong; for truly said Jesus, "Pray for thine
enemies."
Humanity towards all, reason and refinement to enforce virtue, and
good for evil are so eminently designed to cure more disorders of
society than an appeal to "arms," or even argument untempered with

friendship and the "one thing needful," that no vision for the future,
guideboard for the distant, or expositor for the present, need trouble
any one with what he ought to do.
His own good, his family's good, his neighbor's good, his country's
good, and all good seem to whisper to every person—the governor has
told you what to do—now do it.
The Constitution expects every man to do his duty; and when he fails
the law urges him; or, should he do too much, the same master rebukes
him.
Should reason, liberty, law, light and philanthropy now guide the
destinies of Hancock County with as much sincerity as has been
manifested for her notoriety or welfare, there can be no doubt that
peace, prosperity and happiness will prevail, and that future
generations as well as the present one will call Governor Ford a
peacemaker. The Latter-day Saints will, at all events, and profit by the
instruction, and call upon honest men to help them cherish all the love,
all the friendship, all the courtesy, all the kindly feelings and all the
generosity that ought to characterize clever people in a clever
neighborhood, and leave candid men to judge which tree exhibits the
best fruit—the one with the most clubs and sticks thrown into its
boughs and the grass trodden down under it, or the one with no sticks
in it, some dead limbs and rank grass growing under it; for by their
signs ye can know their fruit, and by the fruit ye know the trees.
Our motto, then, is Peace with all! If we have joy in the love of God,
let us try to give a reason of that joy, which all the world cannot
gainsay or resist. And may be, like as when Paul started with
recommendations to Damascus to persecute the Saints, some one who
has raised his hand against us with letters to men in high places may
see a light at noonday, above the brightness of the sun, and hear the
voice of Jesus saying, "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."
Intelligence is sometimes the messenger of safety. And, willing to aid
the governor in his laudable endeavors to cultivate peace and honor the
laws, believing that very few of the citizens of Hancock County will be

found in the negative of such a goodly course; and considering his
views a kind of manifesto, or olive leaf, which shows that there is rest
for the soles of the Saints' feet, we give it a place in the Neighbor,
wishing it God speed, and saying, God bless good men and good
measures! And as Nauvoo has been, so it will continue to be, a good
city, affording a good market to a good country; and let those who do
not mean to try the way of transgressors, say "Amen."
In addition to this in a note to the editor of the Neighbor, he advised that he
take no further editorial notice of the fulminations of the editor of the
Warsaw Signal against the people of Nauvoo, but recommended that the
advice of Governor Ford be honored, and that friendship and peace be
cultivated with all men.
The Prophet went further than this. He tendered the olive branch of peace
even to Missouri. He dictated the following to W. W. Phelps which was
published under the title—
A FRIENDLY HINT TO MISSOURI.
One of the most pleasing scenes that can transpire on earth, when a sin
has been committed by one person against another, is, to forgive that
sin; and then, according to the sublime and perfect pattern of the
Savior, pray to our Father in heaven to forgive also.
Verily, verily, such a friendly rebuke is like the mellow zephyr of
summer's eve—it soothes, it cheers and gladdens the heart of the
humane and the savage. Well might the wise man exclaim, "A soft
answer turneth away wrath;" for men of sense, judgment, and
observation, in all the various periods of time, have been witnesses,
figuratively speaking, that water, not wood, checks the rage of fire.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the
children of God." Wherefore, if the nation, a single state, community,
or family ought to be grateful for anything, it is peace.

Peace, lovely child of heaven!—peace, like light from the same great
parent, gratifies, animates, and happifies the just and the unjust; and is
the very essence of happiness below, and bliss above.
He that does not strive with all his powers of body and mind, with all
his influence at home and abroad, and to cause others to do so too, to
seek peace and maintain it for his own benefit and convenience, and
for the honor of his State, nation, and country, has no claim on the
clemency of man; nor should he be entitled to the friendship of woman
or the protection of government.
He is the canker-worm to gnaw his own vitals, and the vulture to prey
upon his own body; and he is, as to his own prospects and prosperity in
life, a felo-de-se of his own pleasure.
A community of such beings are not far from hell on earth, and should
be let alone as unfit for the smiles of the free or the praise of the brave.
* * * * * *
So much to preface this friendly hint to the State of Missouri; for,
notwithstanding some of her private citizens and public officers have
committed violence, robbery, and even murder upon the rights and
persons of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, yet
compassion, dignity, and a sense of the principles of religion among all
classes, and honor and benevolence, mingled with charity by high-
minded patriots, lead me to suppose that there are many worthy people
in that State who will use their influence and energies to bring about a
settlement of all those old difficulties, and use all consistent means to
urge the State, for her honor, prosperity, and good name, to restore
every person she or her citizens have expelled from her limits, to their
rights, and pay them all damage, that the great body of high-minded
and well-disposed Southern and Western gentlemen and ladies—the
real peacemakers of a western world, will go forth, good Samaritan-
like, and pour in the oil and wine, till all that can be healed are made
whole; and, after repentance, they shall be forgiven; for verily the
Scriptures say, "Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents,
more than over ninety-and-nine just persons that need no repentance."
* * * * * *

When you meditate upon the massacre at Haun's mill, forget not that
the constitution of your State holds this broad truth to the world, that
none shall "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the
judgment of his peers or the law of the land."
And when you assemble together in towns, countries, or districts,
whether to petition your legislature to pay the damage the Saints have
sustained in your State, by reason of oppression and misguided zeal, or
to restore them to their rights according to Republican principles and
benevolent designs, reflect, and make honorable, or annihilate, such
statute law as was in force in your State in 1838,—viz., "If twelve or
more persons shall combine to levy war against any part of the people
of this State, or to remove forcibly out of the State or from their
habitations, evidenced by taking arms and assembling to accomplish
such purpose, every person so offending shall be punished by
imprisonment in the penitentiary for a period not exceeding five years,
or by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and imprisonment in
the county jail not exceeding six months."
Finally, if honor dignifies an honest people, if virtue exalts a
community, if wisdom guides great men, if principle governs
intelligent beings, if humanity spreads comfort among the needy, and
if religion affords consolation by showing that charity is the first, best,
and sweetest token of perfect love, then, O ye good people of
Missouri, like the woman in Scripture who had lost one of her ten
pieces of silver, arise, search diligently till you find the lost piece, and
then make a feast, and call in your friends for joy.
With due consideration,
I am the friend of all good men,
JOSEPH SMITH.
Nauvoo, Ill., March 8, 1843.
Surely this was going as far in the interests of peace as men or God could
require him to go; but alas! there was to be no peace.

Footnotes
1. Matt. x: 34-40.
2. August, 1833, Doc. & Cov. Sec. xcviii.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
"IN PERIL AMONG FALSE BRETHREN."
THE winter of 1843-4 was big with events affecting the destinies of
Nauvoo. During that winter were set on foot conspiracies which culminated
in the destruction of Nauvoo. Men who stood nearest to the Prophet Joseph,
and who were bound in honor to defend his life, not bare the knives that
were to strike him down, combined together in secret covenant for his
overthrow.
Owing to the constant efforts of the Prophet's enemies in Missouri, to
capture him and drag him to Missouri where he might be murdered with
impunity, the force of police in Nauvoo was increased by the appointment
of forty night-guards to patrol the city. These made it less convenient for the
conspirators, who worked, as men ever do when engaged in such business
—in the darkness. The night guards several times came in contact with men
moving about the city in a manner which, to say the least, was suspicious;
and soon complaints were made by these same parties that the city
government was arbitrary and oppressive; they claimed that these night-
watchmen threatened their peace and even started rumors that Joseph had
appointed them for the purpose of intimidation.
Among others who complained of the appointment of night-watchmen was
William Marks, president of the Nauvoo stake. Joseph, in the course of a
speech made at a meeting of the city council at the time of the appointment
of the special watchmen, referred to the danger of invasion from Missouri
and incidentally remarked: "We have a Judas in our midst." This gave great
offense to both William Marks and the Law brothers. The Prophet in his
journal, when speaking of the circumstance, says: "What can be the matter
with these men? Is it that the wicked flee when no man pursueth, that hit
pigeons always flutter, that drowning men clutch at straws, or that
Presidents Law and Marks are absolutely traitors to The Church, that my
remarks should produce such excitement in their minds? Can it be possible

that the traitor whom Porter Rockwell reports to me as being in
correspondence with my Missouri enemies is one of my quorum [the First
Presidency]? The people in the town were astonished, almost every man
saying to his neighbor, 'Is it possible that Brother Law or Marks is a traitor,
and would deliver Brother Joseph into the hands of his enemies in
Missouri?' If not what can be the meaning of all this? The righteous are
bold as a lion."
[1]
In the spring of 1844, the Prophet was apprised by two young men, Denison
L. Harris and Robert Scott, the latter living in the family of William Law, of
a secret movement then on foot to take his life, and the lives of several
other leading men of The Church; among them the Prophet's brother,
Hyrum. These young men were invited to the secret meetings by the
conspirators, but before going, conferred with the Prophet, who told them to
go, but to take no part in the proceedings of these wicked men against
himself. They carried out his advice, and at the risk of their lives attended
the secret meetings three times, and brought to Joseph a report of what they
had witnessed.
[2]
In addition to the testimonies of these young men was that of M. G. Eaton,
who expressed a willingness to make affidavit that there was a plot laid to
kill Joseph Smith and others, and would give the names of those who had
concocted it. There was also one A. B. Williams who said the same thing.
These men went before Daniel H. Wells, at the time a justice of the peace,
and made affidavit that such a plot as I have spoken of existed. In their
statements they named as leaders of the movement, Chauncey L. Higbee, R.
D. Foster, Joseph H. Jackson, and William and Wilson Law. These names
correspond with those given by the young men before alluded to, except
they also name Austin Cowles, a member of the High Council, at Nauvoo,
as one of the active and leading conspirators.
These statements were shortly confirmed by the action of the conspirators
themselves, as they soon came out in open as well as secret opposition to
the leading Church authorities; and in March a number of them were
excommunicated for unchristianlike conduct. Among the number was
William Law, a member in the First Presidency, his brother Wilson Law; the
Higbee brothers, Chauncey L., and Francis M., and Dr. Robert D. Foster.

An effort was made by these apostates to organize a church after the pattern
of the true Church, by the appointment of apostles, prophets, presidents,
etc., but it failed miserably, their following was insignificant. These men
were desperately wicked; in addition to gross licentiousness they were
guilty of theft and of counterfeiting money. They brought much reproach
upon the city of Nauvoo, since their crimes were traced to her borders, and
that fact went far towards undoing the city's reputation abroad. But though
these men at one time, and indeed up to the time of their excommunication,
held high official positions in The Church and the city, their wickedness
was not sustained either by The Church laws or by the members of The
Church, or citizens of Nauvoo. It was known that there existed a band of
desperate men within the city, and these parties were suspected, but it
required some time to obtain proof sufficiently positive to act upon; and
where the counterfeiting was done was never learned.
The mask having at last fallen from the faces of this coterie of men, they
joined with the avowed enemies of the Saints outside of Nauvoo, and
openly advocated the repeal of the city charter, which but a short time
before they had assisted to obtain. They violated on several occasions the
city ordinances, resisted the city officers, and threatened the life of the
mayor. These disturbances led to the arrests and trials before the municipal
court, from which the accused generally appealed to the circuit courts; and
retaliated by counter arrests of the city authorities for false imprisonment,
defamation of character, etc. In all these cases the power of the municipal
courts to grant writs of habeas corpus was freely exercised, and released the
city authorities, as the actions were malicious, and without sufficient cause
on which to base the complaints. Thus the affairs of Nauvoo became more
and more complicated, and the bitterness constantly increased.
At last the disaffected parties imported a press into the city and proposed
publishing a paper to be called the Nauvoo Expositor. It avowed its
intention in the prospectus it published to agitate for the repeal of the
Nauvoo charter, and also announced that since its position in the city of the
Saints afforded it opportunities of being familiar with the abuses that
prevailed, its publishers intended to give a full, candid and succinct
statement of facts as they really existed in the city of Nauvoo, regardless of
whose standing in the community might be imperiled. The proprietors of

the paper were the band of conspirators already named, and Sylvester
Emmons was employed as editor.
The first, and indeed the only number of the Expositor was published on the
seventh day of June, 1844, and contained a most scandalous attack upon the
most respectable citizens of Nauvoo. It at once filled the entire city with
indignation, and the city council immediately took into consideration what
would be the best method of dealing with it. The result of the council's
meditations was this: Blackstone declared a libelous press a nuisance; the
city charter gave to city authorities the power to declare what should be
considered a nuisance and to prevent and remove the same; therefore it was
Resolved, by the city council of the city of Nauvoo, that the printing
office from whence issues the Nauvoo Expositor is a public nuisance,
and also all of said Nauvoo Expositors, which may be or exist, in said
establishment; and the mayor is instructed to cause said printing
establishment and papers to be removed without delay, in such manner
as he may direct.
On receiving this order the mayor issued instructions to the city marshal to
destroy the press without delay, and at the same time gave orders to
Jonathan Dunham, acting Major-General of the Nauvoo Legion, to assist
the marshal with the Legion if called upon to do so.
The marshal with a small force of men appeared before the Expositor
printing establishment, informed one or more of the proprietors of the
character of his mission, and demanded entrance into the building to carry
out his instructions from the mayor. This was denied and the door locked;
whereupon the marshal broke in the door, carried out the press, broke it in
the street, pied the type and burned all the papers found in the office, and
then reported to the mayor, who sent an account of these proceedings to the
governor of the State.
This act enraged the conspirators to a higher pitch of desperation. They set
fire to their buildings and then fled to Carthage, the county seat of Hancock
County, with the lie in their mouths that their lives were in danger in
Nauvoo, and that they were driven away from their homes. Fortunately the
police discovered the flames started by these incendiaries in time to

extinguish them, so that they failed to have the smoking ruins of their own
houses to support their story; but their misrepresentations spread like wild-
fire and inflamed the public mind, already blinded with prejudice against
the people of Nauvoo, to a point which made violence almost certain.
Francis M. Higbee made a complaint before Thomas Morrison, a justice of
the peace, against Joseph Smith and all the members of the Nauvoo city
council for riot committed in destroying the anti-Mormon press. The
warrant issued by the justice was served by Constable Bettisworth upon
Joseph Smith at Nauvoo. It required him and the others named in the
warrant to go before the justice issuing the warrant, "or some other justice
of the peace." Joseph called the attention of the constable to this clause in
the writ, and expressed a willingness to go before Esquire Johnson, or any
other justice of the peace in Nauvoo. But Bettisworth was determined to
take Joseph to Carthage before Justice Morrison, who had issued the writ.
Joseph was equally determined not to go, and petitioned the municipal court
for a writ of habeas corpus which was granted, and under it the prisoner
was honorably discharged. The other parties mentioned in the writ followed
his example and were also discharged.
Meantime indignation meetings were held first at Warsaw, and afterwards in
Carthage. The men who had used their uttermost endeavors, for more than
two years to incite the people to acts of mob violence against the Saints, had
now a popular war cry—"unhallowed hands had been laid upon the liberty
of the press." "The law had ceased to be a protection to lives or property in
Nauvoo!" "A mob at Nauvoo, under a city ordinance had violated the
highest privilege in the government; and to seek redress in the ordinary
mode would be utterly ineffectual." Therefore those in attendance upon
these meetings adopted resolutions announcing themselves at all times
ready to co-operate with their fellow-citizens in Missouri and Iowa to
exterminate, utterly exterminate the wicked and abominable Mormon
leaders, the authors of their troubles.
Committees were appointed to notify all persons in the respective
townships suspected of being the "tools of the Prophet to leave
immediately, on pain of instant vengeance." And it was further
recommended that the adherents of Joseph Smith as a body, be "driven from

the surrounding settlements into Nauvoo; that the Prophet and his miscreant
adherents should then be demanded at their hands; and, if not surrendered, a
war of entire extermination should be waged to the entire destruction, if
necessary for the mob's protection, of his adherents; and to carry out these
resolutions every citizen was called upon to arm himself."
The mass meeting at Carthage, which had adopted the Warsaw resolutions
was in full blast when the news arrived of the failure of Constable
Bettisworth, to drag the Prophet into their midst. This increased the
excitement, and poured more gall into the cup of bitterness. It was resolved
that the "riot" in Nauvoo was still progressing, and of such a serious
character as to demand executive interference; and therefore two discreet
citizens were appointed to go to Springfield and lay the case before
Governor Ford. But this appeal to the executive was not to interfere with
the resolutions before passed—active preparations for the extermination of
the Mormons were to be continued.
The authorities at Nauvoo also dispatched trusty messengers to Governor
Ford with truthful accounts of their proceedings, both as regards the
destruction of the press and their action in refusing to accompany Constable
Bettisworth to Carthage, that he might not be misled by a false
representation of the case, or influenced by the thousand and one falsehoods
that had been set on foot by the enemies of the Saints.
Both parties then appealed to the executive of the State: the mob for
assistance to carry out their murderous designs, and to give their
proceedings a coloring of lawful authority, and the citizens of Nauvoo for
protection against the combinations of their avowed enemies bent upon, and
publicly pledged to their extermination.
Without waiting the issue of this appeal, however, the mob forces in
Carthage, Warsaw and other localities began active operations by sending
their committees to the settlements of the Saints outside of Nauvoo, and
threatening them with destruction if they did not accept one of three
propositions: first, deny that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God, and take
up arms and accompany the mob to arrest him; second, gather up their
effects and forthwith remove to the city of Nauvoo; third, give up their arms
and remain quiet until the pending difficulties should be settled by the

expulsion of their friends. Usually a few days were given the people to
consider these propositions, which were utilized by the people in conferring
with the Prophet, to know what he advised under the circumstances. The
advice given, in its general purport was to yield up none of their rights as
American citizens to the demand of mobocrats, but to maintain their rights
wherever they were strong enough to resist the mob forces, and when they
were not strong enough, retreat to Nauvoo.
Besides the reports which came to Nauvoo from the Saints who were
threatened, the air was filled with rumors of mob forces collecting on every
hand. Great excitement was reported to exist in upper Missouri, the part of
that State from which the Saints had been driven but six years before; and it
was reported that the Missourians were going over into Illinois in large
numbers to assist the anti-Mormons in and around Carthage. That arms and
ammunition were sent over the Mississippi to the mob, is quite certain; and
it is also known that Walter Bagley, the tax-collector for Hancock County,
had spent some time in Missouri as an anti-Mormon agent and agitator;
seeking to bring about a concerted action between the old enemies of the
Saints, and those of like ilk in Illinois.
While these hostile preparations were being made for his destruction, and
the extermination of his people, those at all acquainted with the
temperament of the Prophet Joseph, might well know that he was not idle.
He kept an efficient corps of clerks busy copying reports and affidavits of
threatened violence and insurrection, and sent them to the governor, whom
he petitioned to come to Nauvoo and in person investigate the causes of the
disturbance. Information was also sent to the President of the United States,
acquainting him with the prospects of an insurrection, and an invasion of
Illinois by Missourians, and asking him for protection.
Nor was Joseph and his associates neglectful of anything that would have a
tendency to allay the excitement. Jesse B. Thomas, judge of the circuit in
which Hancock County was located, advised him to go before some justice
of the peace of the county and have an examination of the charges specified
in the writ issued by justice Morrison of Carthage, and that would take
away all excuse for a mob, and he would be bound to order them to keep
the peace. Some advised the Prophet to go to Carthage, but that he

emphatically refused to do. But he and all others named in justice
Morrison's warrant went before Squire Wells, a non-Mormon justice of the
peace, and after a thorough investigation of the case were acquitted.
In addition to these movements, a mass meeting was held in Nauvoo, at
which John Taylor was chairman. Pacific resolutions were adopted, denying
the misrepresentations of the apostates, and appointing men to go to the
neighboring towns and settlements to present the truth to the people and
allay excitement. These men were authorized to say that the members of the
city council charged with riot and the violation of law, were willing to go
before the circuit court for an investigation of their conduct in respect to the
Nauvoo Expositor, and refused not to be bound over for such a hearing. But
when this announcement was made and it was learned that Judge Thomas
had advised this course to allay excitement, the mob threatened that a
committee would wait upon the judge and give him a coat of tar and
feathers for giving such advice.
These pacific measures appearing to have little or no effect, and active
preparations for hostilities continuing on the part of the enemy, Nauvoo was
placed under martial law; the Legion was mustered into service, and Joseph
in person took command of it. He was in full uniform when he appeared
before the Legion, and mounting an unfinished frame building near the
Mansion, he took occasion to address the Legion and the people for about
an hour and a half; during which time he reviewed the events that had
brought upon Nauvoo the issue that confronted them.
To dispel any illusion that any of them might have that he was the only one
threatened, he said:
It is thought by some that our enemies would be satisfied by my
destruction, but I tell you as soon as they have shed my blood, they
will thirst for the blood of every man in whose heart dwells a single
spark of the spirit of the fullness of the Gospel. The opposition of these
men is moved by the spirit of the adversary of all righteousness. It is
not only to destroy me, but every man and woman who dares believe
the doctrines that God hath inspired me to teach to this generation—

Words which subsequent events will prove to have been prophetic. He also
said:
We have forwarded a particular account of all our doings to the
governor. We are ready to obey his commands, and we expect that
protection at his hands which we know to be our just due.
We may add also, that when a petition was sent to the governor to come to
Nauvoo in person to investigate the cause of the disturbance, the service of
the Legion was tendered him to keep the peace. But that Joseph had come
to a settled determination to maintain the rights of the people at all hazards,
and submit no longer to mob violence, may be clearly understood from the
spirit of these extracts from the speech made to the Legion on the occasion
of his taking command of it.
We are American citizens. We live upon a soil for the liberties of which
our fathers periled their lives and split their blood upon the battlefield.
Those rights so dearly purchased shall not be disgracefully trodden
under foot by lawless marauders without at least a noble effort on our
part to sustain our liberties. Will you stand by me to the death, and
sustain at the peril of our lives, the laws of our country, and the
liberties and privileges which our fathers have transmitted unto us,
sealed with their sacred blood? (Thousands shouted aye!) It is well. If
you had not done it, I would have gone out there, (pointing to the west)
and would have raised up a mighty people.
I call upon all men from Maine to the Rocky Mountains, and from
Mexico to British America, whose hearts thrill with horror to behold
the rights of free men trampled under foot, to come to the deliverance
of this people from the cruel hand of oppression, cruelty, anarchy and
misrule to which they have long been made subject. * * * I call upon
God and angels to witness that I have unsheathed my sword with a
firm and unalterable determination that this people shall have their
legal rights and shall be protected from mob violence, or my blood
shall be split upon the ground like water, and my body be consigned to
the silent tomb. While I live, I will never tamely submit to the
dominion of cursed mobocracy.

There was much more of a like tenor, but this is sufficient to show the
determination of the Prophet not to submit to the mobs then rising about
him; and the people warmly seconded his resolution.
At this juncture Joseph requested his brother Hyrum to take his family and
go with them to Cincinnati. But Hyrum demurred and said, "Joseph, I can't
leave you!" Joseph, turning to a number of brethren present, said: "I wish I
could get Hyrum out of the way, so that he may live to avenge my blood,
and I will stay with you and see it out." But Hyrum Smith was not the kind
of man to leave his brother now that the hour of his severest trial had come
upon him. His noble nature revolted at the thought, and though the spirit
had doubtless whispered Joseph that his life and that of Hyrum's would be
sacrificed in the impending crisis, his pathetic words, "Joseph, I can't leave
you!" bear testimony to the nobility of the soul that uttered them, and is a
witness to the strength of those bonds of love that bound him to his younger
brother. Moreover, in consequence of the Prophet's premonitions of his
approaching martyrdom, he had ordained his brother Hyrum to succeed him
in the presidency of The Church; and hence this consideration as well as his
affectionate regard for him as a brother doubtless led him to try to get
Hyrum out of harm's way.
[3]
Word was sent to Brigham Young, then on a mission in the eastern States, to
return to Nauvoo, and to communicate with the other Apostles and request
them also to return to Nauvoo, as likewise all the Elders, and as many more
good, faithful men as felt disposed to accompany them, to assist the Saints.
Thus every effort was being put forth by the people of Nauvoo to resist
oppression and maintain their rights.
Footnotes
1. Millennial Star, volume xxii: page 631. This Wm. Marks afterwards was
prominent among those who induced the Prophet to come back and deliver
himself up to his enemies after the Prophet had started west. After the
Prophet's death he joined the apostate James J. Strang in his attempt to lead
The Church, and still later was a principal factor in bringing into existence

the "Josephite" or "Reorganized Church." See the author's work on
"Succession in the Presidency of The Church."
2. A full account of this conspiracy written by Horace Cummings was
published in the Contributor, vol. v.
3. "If Hyrum had lived he would not have stood between Joseph and the
Twelve, but he would have stood for Joseph. Did Joseph ordain any man to
take his place? He did. Who was it? It was Hyrum. But Hyrum fell a martyr
before Joseph did."—Brigham Young, in a speech at the October conference
at Nauvoo, 1844. In Times and Seasons, Vol. v. p. 683.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
COMPLIANCE WITH THE DEMANDS OF
GOVERNOR FORD.
IN the midst of these preparations, a message was received from Governor
Ford, stating that he had arrived in Carthage in the interests of peace, and
hoped to be able to avert the evils of war by his presence; and that he might
the better judge of the situation he asked that well-informed and discreet
persons be sent to him at Carthage, where he had established for the time
his headquarters. This request of the governor's was gladly complied with
on the part of the people of Nauvoo; and John Taylor and Dr. J. M.
Bernhisel were appointed to represent their version of the situation, and for
that purpose were furnished with a copy of the proceedings of the city
council, and the affidavits of a number of citizens bearing on the subjects
that would likely be discussed.
These representatives of the citizens of Nauvoo, found the governor
surrounded by their enemies—the Laws, Fosters, and Higbees, besides
others living at Warsaw and Carthage. The only audience given to Messrs.
Taylor and Bernhisel was in the presence of these parties, by whom they
were frequently interrupted in the most insulting manner, and the parties
insulting and abusing them were unchecked by Governor Ford.
After the governor had heard the statements of these gentlemen and read the
documents presented by them, he sent a written communication to the
mayor, Joseph Smith, in which he said that by destroying the Expositor
press, the city council of Nauvoo had committed a gross outrage upon the
laws and liberties of the people, and had violated the Constitution in several
particulars. He also claimed that the municipal court of Nauvoo had
exceeded its authority in granting writs of habeas corpus. He accepted the
statement of the mob at Carthage that Joseph Smith refused to be tried by
any other court than the municipal court of Nauvoo, although he had before
him the most positive proof that Joseph was willing to go before any justice

of the peace in Hancock County, except Justice Morrison of Carthage,
where an angry mob had collected, and were threatening his destruction,
and since the warrant was made returnable to the magistrate who issued it,
or any other justice in the county, the Prophet expressed a willingness to go
before any other justice, but very properly refused to go to Carthage. He
was even willing to be bound over to appear in the circuit court to answer
for the part he took in abating the Expositor press as a nuisance. Yet in the
face of these facts—in the face of the fact that all the parties charged with
riot had appeared before D. H. Wells, a justice of the peace and a non-
Mormon, and after investigation were acquitted—yet the governor charged
the members of the city council with refusing to appear before any other
than the municipal court of Nauvoo for an investigation. He demanded that
the mayor and all persons in Nauvoo accused or sued submit in all cases
implicitly to the process of the courts and to interpose no obstacles to an
arrest, either by writ of habeas corpus or otherwise. And in the case of the
mayor and a number of the city council charged with riot, he required that
they should be arrested by the same constable, by virtue of the same
warrant, and tried before the same magistrate, whose authority he insisted
had been resisted. "Nothing short of this," he added, "can vindicate the
dignity of violated law, and allay the just excitement of the people." Messrs.
Taylor and Bernhisel called his attention to the state of excitement in
Carthage, and informed him that there were men there bent on killing the
Prophet, and that to ensure his safety it would be necessary for him to be
accompanied by an armed force which would doubtless provoke a collision.
In answer to this the governor advised them to bring no arms, and pledged
his faith as governor, and that of the State, to protect those who should go to
Carthage for trial. He also made the same pledge in his written
communication to Joseph.
The conduct of the governor in thus adopting the reports of the enemies of
the citizens of Nauvoo, and menacing the city with destruction, if his
arbitrary commands were not complied with, created no small amount of
astonishment in Nauvoo. Joseph, however, wrote a courteous reply,
corrected the governor's errors, and also represented that the city council of
Nauvoo had acted on their best judgment, aided by the best legal advice
they could procure; but if a mistake had been made they were willing to
make all things right; but asked that the mob might be dispersed, that their

lives might not be endangered while on trial. Relative to going to Carthage,
however, Joseph pointed out the fact that the governor himself in his written
communication had expressed his fears that he could not control the mob;
"in which case," he went on to say, "we are left to the mercy of the
merciless. Sir, we dare not come for our lives would be in danger, and we
are guilty of no crime."
On a hasty consultation with his brother Hyrum, Dr. Richards, and Messrs.
Taylor and Bernhisel, after the return of the latter from their conference
with Governor Ford it was decided that Joseph should proceed to
Washington and lay the case before President Tyler, and he informed
Governor Ford of this intention in the letter above referred to. That plan,
however, at a subsequent council meeting was abandoned; as Joseph
received an inspiration to go to the West, and all would be well. He said to
the trusted brethren in that council:
The way is open. It is clear to my mind what to do. All they want is
Hyrum and myself; then tell everybody to go about their business, and
not collect in groups, but scatter about. There is no danger; they will
come here and search for us. Let them search; they will not harm you
in person or in property, and not even a hair of your head. We will
cross the river tonight and go away to the West.
This was between nine and ten o'clock on the night of the twenty-second of
June, and preparations were at once entered into to carry out this impression
of the Spirit. W. W. Phelps was instructed to take the families of the Prophet
and his brother to Cincinnati; and that night O. P. Rockwell rowed Joseph,
Hyrum and Dr. Richards over the Mississippi to Montrose, and then
returned with instructions to procure horses for them and make all
necessary preparations to start for "the great basin in the Rocky Mountains."
About ten o'clock the next day the governor's posse arrived in Nauvoo to
arrest Joseph, but not finding him it returned to Carthage, leaving a man by
the name of Yates to watch for the Prophet's appearing. This man said that if
the mayor and his brother were not given up, the governor had expressed a
determination to send his troops into the city and guard it until they were
found, if it took three years.

At this crisis, some of Joseph's friends instead of rendering him all possible
assistance to escape from his enemies, complained of his conduct as
cowardly and entreated him to return to Nauvoo and not leave them like a
false shepherd leaves his flock when the wolves attack them. The parties
most forward in making this charge of cowardice were Reynolds Cahoon,
L. D. Wasson and Hiram Kimball. Emma Smith, his wife, also sent a letter
by the hand of Reynolds Cahoon, entreating him to return and give himself
up, trusting to the pledges of the governor for a fair trial. Influenced by
these entreaties to return, and stung by the taunts of cowardice from those
who should have been his friends, he said: "If my life is of no value to my
friends, it is of none to myself." And after a brief consultation with
Rockwell and his brother Hyrum, against his better judgment, and with the
conviction fixed in his soul that he would be killed, he resolved to return;
and crossed over the river that evening to Nauvoo.
His first act after arriving in the beautiful city of which he was the chief
founder, was to send word to the governor, by the hand of Theodore Turley
and Jedediah M. Grant that he would be ready to go to Carthage as early on
the morrow as his (the governor's) posse could meet him—provided he
could be assured a fair trial, and his witnesses not be abused. That message
was delivered to the governor, and he decided at once to send a posse to
escort Joseph and his party to Carthage; but through the influence which
Wilson Law, Joseph H. Jackson and others of like character had over him,
he changed his good intention of sending a posse, and ordered Joseph's
messengers to return that night with orders to him to be in Carthage the next
day by ten o'clock without an escort; and he threatened that if Joseph did
not give himself up by that time, Nauvoo would be destroyed.
Owing to the jaded condition of their horses the messengers did not reach
Nauvoo until daylight of the twenty-fourth. After the orders of the governor
were delivered, the faithful brethren who reported them began to warn the
Prophet against trusting himself in the hands of his enemies, but he stopped
them and would not hear them further—he had decided on his course.
Early on the morning of the twenty-fourth Joseph and the members of the
city council, against whom complaints had been made before Justice
Morrison, accompanied by a few friends, started for Carthage to give

themselves up. As they passed the temple, the party paused, and the Prophet
looked with admiration upon the noble edifice and the glorious landscape,
which everywhere from that spot greets the eye, and then said: "This is the
loveliest place, and the best people under the heavens; little do they know
the trials that await them!" On the outskirts of the city they passed the home
of Squire D. H. Wells, who at the time was sick. Joseph dismounted and
called to see him. At parting the Prophet said to him cheerfully: "Squire
Wells, I wish you to cherish my memory, and not think me the worst man in
the world, either."
About ten o'clock the party arrived within four miles of Carthage and there
met a company of sixty mounted militiamen under the command of Captain
Dunn, on their way to Nauvoo with orders from Governor Ford to demand
the State arms in possession of the Nauvoo Legion. It was on the occasion
of meeting these troops that Joseph uttered those prophetic words:
"I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's
morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all
men. I shall die innocent, and it shall yet be said of me—he was murdered
in cold blood."
At the request of Captain Dunn he countersigned the governor's order for
the State arms. But the captain prevailed upon him to return to Nauvoo and
assist in collecting the arms, promising that afterwards the militia under his
command should escort himself and party into Carthage, and he would
protect them even at the risk of his own life, to which his men assented by
three hearty cheers. It is supposed that Captain Dunn feared the people in
Nauvoo might become exasperated and resent the indignity offered them in
demanding the surrender of the State arms. Hence his anxiety to have
Joseph return. A message was sent to the governor informing him of this
new move.
The arms were collected without any difficulty, though the people
unwillingly surrendered them, since disarming them and allowing their
enemies who had vowed their extermination to keep their arms, smacked of
treachery; but the order of the governor and of their Prophet-leader was
complied with.

The arms were taken to the Masonic Hall and stacked up, Quartermaster-
General Buckmaster receiving them.
This demand for the State arms stirred the fiery indignation of Squire Wells
to the very depths of his soul. He arose from his bed of sickness and carried
what State arms he had—a pair of horse-pistols—to the appointed place,
and threw them at the feet of Officer Buckmaster with the remark, "There's
your arms!" Then as he glared at the officer, he said: "I have a pair of
epaulets at home, and I have never disgraced them, either," and, too full of
righteous wrath for further speech, he walked away.
The arms collected, Captain Dunn thanked the people for their promptness
in complying with the demands of the governor, and promised them that
while they conducted themselves in such a peaceable manner they should
be protected. The company of militia accompanied by Joseph and his party
started for Carthage about six o'clock in the evening.
Passing the Masonic Hall where a number of the citizens of Nauvoo still
lingered, having been attracted there to witness the surrender of the State
arms, the Prophet Joseph raised his hat and said: "Boys, if I don't come
back, take care of yourselves. I am going like a lamb to the slaughter."
When the company was passing his farm Joseph stopped and looked at it
for a long time. Then after he had passed he turned and looked again, and
yet again several times. His action occasioned some remarks by several of
the company, to which, in reply he said: "If some of you had such a farm,
and knew you would not see it any more, you would want to take a good
look at it for the last time."
It was midnight when the party entered Carthage, but a militia company
encamped on the public square—the Carthage Greys—were aroused and
gave vent to profane threats as the company passed, of which the following
is a specimen: "Where's the d—n Prophet?" "Stand away, you McDonough
boys,
[1]
and let us shoot the d—n Mormons!" "G—d d—n you, old Joe,
we've got you now!" "Clear the way, and let us have a view of Joe Smith,
the Prophet of God. He has seen the last of Nauvoo, we'll use him up now!"
Amid such profanity and abuse, and violent threats, much of which was
overheard by Governor Ford, the Prophet's party proceeded to Hamilton's

hotel, which it entered and took quarters for the night. Under the same roof
were sheltered the wicked apostates of Nauvoo, J. H. Jackson, the Foster
brothers, the Higbees and the Laws, besides other desperate men who had
sworn to take the life of the Prophet.
The crowd which had followed the Nauvoo party from the public square
still hung round the Hamilton House yelling and cursing, and acting like
ravenous beasts hungry for their prey. Governor Ford pushed up a window
and thus addressed them: "Gentlemen, I know your great anxiety to see Mr.
Smith, which is natural enough, but it is quite too late tonight for you to
have that opportunity; but I assure you, gentlemen, you shall have that
privilege tomorrow morning, as I will cause him to pass before the troops
upon the square, and I now wish you, with this assurance, quietly and
peaceably to return to your quarters." In answer to this there was a faint
"Hurrah, for Tom Ford," and the crowd withdrew. They could afford to
wait. God's servants were in the hands of the merciless.
Footnotes
1. Captain Dunn's company was composed chiefly of men from
McDonough County, hence the remark.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE MARTYRDOM.
EARLY in the morning following their entrance into Carthage, Joseph, his
brother Hyrum and the other members of the Nauvoo city council named in
the warrant of arrest sworn out by the Higbees, voluntarily surrendered
themselves to constable Bettisworth. Shortly afterwards the Prophet was
again arrested by the same constable on a charge of treason against the State
and people of Illinois, on the oath of Augustine Spencer. Hyrum was
arrested on a similar charge, sworn out by Henry O. Norton. And thus the
difficulties thickened.
Soon after the second arrest, Governor Ford presented himself at their
rooms at the Hamilton house, and requested Joseph to accompany him, as
he desired to present him to the troops, to whom he had promised the night
before a view of the Prophet. The troops had been drawn up in two lines
and Joseph and Hyrum linking arms with Brigadier-General Miner R.
Deming passed down them, accompanied by their friends and a company of
Carthage Greys. They were introduced as General Joseph and General
Hyrum Smith. The Carthage Greys, a few minutes before, at the
headquarters of General Deming, had revolted and behaved in an
uproarious manner, but were pacified by the governor, and accompanied
him, General Deming and the Prophet and his party to where the other
troops were drawn up in line. Here they again revolted because the Brothers
Smith were introduced to the troops from McDonough County as
"Generals" Smith. Some of the officers of the Carthage Greys threw up
their hats, drew their swords and said they would introduce themselves to
"the d—ned Mormons in a different style." They were again pacified by the
governor, who promised them "full" satisfaction. But they continued to act
in such an insubordinate manner that General Deming put them under
arrest,
[1]
but afterwards released them without punishment.

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Quarks To Culture How We Came To Be Tyler Volk

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