Levi Ward Hancock: The Only General Authority to Enlist — His Journal Becomes the Living Witness of the Mormon Battalion (1846–1847)

When the call came in the summer of 1846 for Latter-day Saint men to enlist in the Mormon Battalion, Levi Ward Hancock (1803–1882) had every reason to decline. He was 43 years old. He had been in the Church since 1830 — among its earliest converts. He had participated in Zion's Camp in 1834. He had been called as one of the seven Presidents of the Seventy when that quorum was organized in 1835. He was traveling across Iowa with his family, his elderly mother-in-law, and other relatives who depended on him.

He enlisted anyway.

Levi Hancock was the only General Authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to serve in the Mormon Battalion. As such, he became the Battalion's unofficial chaplain and its spiritual anchor. He organized meetings, counseled soldiers against swearing and drunkenness, and preached to the entire company at nearly every opportunity. In one journal entry he describes gathering the entire Battalion, speaking to them about keeping their covenants, and having them raise their hands in covenant to do so.

But his most enduring contribution was his journal.

Hancock wrote almost daily during the march. He drew detailed sketches of the horizon and landscape from memory. He recorded not just facts but feelings, the music he played on his fife as they marched through Missouri towns, the storms that blew tents over and felled trees 'every way from us, but none in camp,' the spiritually searching moments when he paused to write:

'The Lord is good and merciful. He has shown himself so to me. Let me ever praise him and do all the good I can for his kingdom.'

He also composed original songs for the Battalion during the march, several of which survive and give insight into the soldiers' collective faith and spirit:

'The hand of friendship we extend / To every body round us / And to our Country we are friends / As it has ever found us.'

His journal is held by the Church History Museum and is one of the primary sources through which we know the interior spiritual life of the Mormon Battalion. After discharge, he returned to his family in Utah and continued serving in the Seventy until his death in 1882 at age 79.