Section 87, Place: Kirtland, Geauga County, Ohio.
Historical Note: Section 87, commonly known as "the prophecy on war," was received on Christmas Day 1832, some twenty-eight years before the American Civil War commenced at Fort Sumter on Charleston Bay in South Carolina.
In November 1832, before the reception of this revelation, South Carolina had adopted a States' Rights position intended to nullify federal regulations not in their interests (specifically, high tariffs on foreign imports, which protected northern manufacturing interests). In addition to the economic problems of the upcountry cotton planters, the wealthy rice aristocracy of the lowcountry had become sensitive to the beginnings of northern antislavery movements. Reacting to the protective tariffs and the agitation against slavery, radical South Carolinians saw nullification as the logical defense to the "tyranny" of the majority. On 24 November 1832 a special convention passed an Ordinanace of Nullification that prohibited the collecting of tariff duties in the state after 1 February 1833. Students of the period generally agree that the situation in South Carolina was explosive, and the passage in early March 1833 of a compromise tariff temporarily averted civil war.
Although Joseph Smith considered this action on the part of the South Carolina convention a "rebellion," he later clarified that the commencement of warfare prior to the Second Coming would arise through the slave question.
Brigham Young, who noted that section 87 was intentionally left out of the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, indicated that this revelation was received "when the brethren were reflecting and reasoning with regard to African slavery on this continent, and the slavery of the children of men throughout the world.".
Publication Note. Section 87 was first published in the Pearl of Great Price in 1851 and was included as section 87 in the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.
[Source: Cook, Lyndon, Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith: A Historical and Biographical Commentary of the Doctrine and Covenants, http://amzn.to/RevelationsofJosephSmith]
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