Big Black Jackson was a familiar name by which we knew a man in Nauvoo who had wormed himself into the company and good graces of Joseph the Prophet. Jackson had done this and been a long time at it, with the wicked design from the beginning of getting Joseph into his power and thus destroy his life and usefulness on the earth.
Jackson had done many friendly and serviceable deeds to Joseph, and when he thought Joseph was completely off his guard and wrapped up in Jackson as a real friend, he asked Joseph out one evening, a little after dark, to talk confidentially. They walked leisurely along towards the Mississippi River, talking in a friendly manner, until they reached the top of the hill, a few rods from the river, when Joseph stopped and turned to Jackson saying, “I know what your design and object is tonight. Now don’t take your hands out of your pockets, nor make a motion like it, or I will show the power of God.”
Jackson obeyed.
“You have got a boat and men in readiness to kidnap me but you will not make out to do it. You have laid your plans very cunningly, but I have known you. Now leave me.”
I heard Joseph tell this circumstance a day or two after it happened. Jackson went and was seen no more about Nauvoo.
Hyrum Andrus, “Personal Glimpses of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” p 123; “Journal of Oliver B. Huntington, Books 15, 16, 17, 18”; “The Young Woman’s Journal,” IV (April, 1893) 320-21; George Q. Cannon, “The Life of Joseph Smith the Prophet,” (Salt Lake City, 1967), 531.