Daniel Hanmer Wells, a fifty-year-old Latter-day Saint apostle, arrived in Liverpool, England, in August 1864 to preside over the church's missionary efforts in Europe.1 During his almost two years stay, he corresponded with Brigham Young on Latter-day Saint theology, the progress of missionary work, health matters, and a myriad of other subjects. A story Wells shared with Young reflects an interesting perspective on Latter-day Saint leadership's preoccupation with the poor of Europe and the American Civil War. This essay examines an extract from December 22, 1864, where Wells details “the Southern Bazaar,” a charity event held in Liverpool to raise money for the relief of Confederate prisoners of war.Wells had been an apostle and First Presidency member for seven years when Young asked him to go with his son, Brigham Young Jr., to preside over the European Mission to allow George Q. Cannon, a fellow apostle, to return from his long overseas assignments.2 This was Wells's first overseas trip and his first mission. Arriving in Liverpool was a shock to him. Upon his arrival he noted the “vast crowds of people to be seen everywhere we go.” For a man who had spent most of his life on the American frontier, Liverpool, with its over 440,000 people, was a significant change of scenery.3 Wells lamented to “think how few of them we can approach with the principles of life + salvation.”4 As mission president he “organized, attended, and spoke at conferences, assigned missionaries to the various areas within the country . . . trained new missionaries for their ministry work, ordained priesthood holders, called and released branch officers, wrote and answered correspondence to and from the missions as well as from Great Salt Lake City,” as well as edited the Saints publication The Millennial Star.5Unlike many of the other apostles, Wells had not served as a missionary in the British Isles. However, he interacted with British emigrants in Nauvoo and Utah. He likely heard stories from these emigrants, many of them poor, of the harsh conditions of industrial Europe. Many came from the great mill towns and cities of England and had only escaped through the efforts of Latter-day Saints to organize a massive emigration to the United States. Wells worked with, aided, and advised these people in his day-to-day life. He also took an active part in planning the yearly emigration. Wells also likely heard stories from returned American missionaries, including Brigham Young, who were appalled by the conditions of the working-class poor of England as industrialization swallowed up goods and human lives to feed the hungry appetite of an increasingly global market. For these American missionaries, nothing could be more distinct from their small towns and farms than England's factory towns.All these factors likely influenced Wells as he wrote to Brigham Young on December 22, 1864. After reporting the state of missionary efforts and the preparations being made for the upcoming year's emigration of British and other European Latter-day Saints to the United States, Wells commented on the “Southern Bazaar” held at St. George's Hall in Liverpool.According to historians, Liverpool “did much to aid the Confederacy” by supplying blockade runners and promoting the cotton trade's survival.6 Though at times overstated (the city had a strong pro-Northern faction as well), Liverpool had a very vocal population of pro-Southern advocates.7 Pro-Confederate sympathizers and expatriate Southerners organized the bazaar in the neoclassical St. George's Hall. They wanted to gain support for the South's cause by raising money for the Southern Prisoners’ Relief Fund (SPRF).8 It opened on October 18, 1864, and lasted four days. Numerous Liverpool elites patronized it, ranging from the merchants to members of the aristocracy.9 Organizers set up ten “stalls” on each side of the hall and two under a “large central tent” reflecting the twelve Confederate states. British and expatriate Southern women staffed them, the Southern women providing a human connection to the South for the upper-class British citizens who attended.10 The stalls were ornate and covered in gifts from across Great Britain, Europe, and even the northern United States. They were also filled with crafts and memorabilia such as a songbook of Confederate songs and a Shetland Pony.11 The hall was draped in Confederate colors and rebel flags were arranged alongside the Union Jack. Portraits of Confederate generals, particularly of Robert E. Lee, abounded in the hall and a “silver centre piece” with various Confederate symbols that included a female personification of the Confederacy, was proudly displayed. As crowds milled through the hall, Willie Pape, the Prince of Wales pianist, played on “the Great Organ” and on the piano. “Streather's Band” also contributed their talents to the festivities. Food was plentiful and the environment refined.12 One writer noted, “The bazaar . . . opened yesterday with a success which gives promise of a very splendid result. No pains have been spared to make the display one of the most complete and effective ever seen in this country.” Throughout the event, reporters noted thousands of people swarming the hall, including some supporters of the United States. Pro-Confederate writers, such as Beresford Hopes, also contributed to the excitement of the crowds.13 One reporter called it “one of the prettiest sights” he had ever seen in the city.14 Confederates in the city were ecstatic at the outpouring of support from their friends in England.15 The bazaar garnered over £20,000 (the modern equivalent of approximately £3,000,000 in twenty-first-century currency).16Charity events among Britain's upper and middle classes were not unusual. However, the gaudiness and flare of this event seemed to top any other in the minds of Liverpool's pro-Southern press corps. However, unlike the reporters in Liverpool, Wells described little of the bazaar's atmosphere or what occurred at the event in his letter. He likely did not attend, but his residence at 42 Islington was less than a mile away from the festivities and he surely saw the crowds and read the press reports. While reporters fawned over the humanitarianism of the organizers and the wonder of the event, Wells seemed unimpressed and instead focused his remarks on those in the shadows of the great hall. He was concerned about the poor who watched hungrily as food was brought in and who could not even imagine what it would be like to have a pittance of the funds being amassed for the SPRF. He wrote: I could but reflect when I saw almost naked and destitute men, women + children begging for a scanty pittance, which crowded the way, even at the approach of the St. George's Hall where the Bazaar was held that its patrons might possibly find sufficient subjects to enlist there [sic] aid and sympathy nearer home. I think I would be safe in saying that ten times that amount might be used in this Town alone in cases of real distress in providing barely the commonest necessaries of life, such as food, raiment, shelter, fuel and bedding every month, and still many sick and suffering left to perish for want of a little assistance and yet they could pass by and refuse a poor mendicant a penny and pay five shillings entrance fee to aid the prisoners of war in a foreign country, who the [sic] probably not sharing the luxuries yet are presumed to have afforded to them the common necessaries of life and that without labor, being at the expense of the Government.17Wells's frustration that the wealthy could enter the bazaar but passed by hundreds of destitute people reflects how Latter-day Saint leaders felt about the Industrial Revolution's effects on society. While the Saints embraced the advances in technology, Wells and other leaders condemned the perceived greed and heartlessness on the part of the beneficiaries of industrialization. Wells was astounded that the elites of Liverpool could ignore the suffering surrounding them, while feeling sympathy to Confederates being taken care of by the federal government. Like other Latter-day Saint leaders, he had no warm feelings for the United States but had rejected Confederate overtures throughout the war and condemned them for their role in destroying the peace of the nation. The war had also threatened the emigration of the poor from Europe.18 He was surprised by this fascination of British elites with the Southern cause, while ignoring their own poor.There were more poor present than usual in Liverpool because of the drop in American produced cotton supplies to the city and the high price of Indian cotton.19 As Sven Beckert notes, “Tens of thousands of operatives soon found themselves out of work” with the collapse of the cotton trade.20 Many families went from poverty to absolute desperation. The bazaar was connected in Wells's mind to another event that to him reflected the elites’ inability to truly care for the poor. Wells wrote: I sometimes think one reason why the people [of] this country do not seek more thoroughly to relieve the poor, is the utter hopelessness of ever being able to effect a remedy for the evil. A few days ago there was a ship load of about 500 men about to sail from this port, who had been induced to go by a free passage wages after arrival in america [sic]. The papers being very sensitive regard to so much Emigration leaving for the States, and especially now during the war, started the cry of kidnapping for the Federal Army, and telegraphed to the Admiralty Court at London, and had the vessel stopped, after hauling the officers of the ship, the agents, and everybody else they could think of and find, even the coals, and frightening the friends and relatives of those who were thus going way, with the idea that they were going to be forced into the Army, after about a weeks most strenuous exertions of this sort, not finding any very big cat under the big white heap which they had themselves created, let the vessel go having induced about sixty persons out of the five hundred to return, who amid the gibes of those who remained telling them “to go back to the workhouses and pick oakum” which they retaliated by saying they would make a pretty looking army to take Richmond, sure enough a large portion of those who remained were sent direct to the poorhouse in this Town, and subscriptions were solicited in the streets to raise money to defray the expense of sending them back, to their various parts of the Country where they had come from. These were all good able bodied young men, willing to work, but destitute of both money and employment, I think that since they would not let them go where they could get a living by their labor, when they had a chance, they had better use some of their Bazaar money to send them back with, and help them to live until they could get employment.21Elites’ efforts to prevent the poor men from travelling to America for work frustrated Wells. He felt not only did British elites ignore the poor in their own land, but they hindered the poor from seeking respite in another. Discouraged, Wells closed with, “But enough, all this with the corruptions which stalks abroad in the land, and a great deal more, is familiar to you; but if the Lord does not make the ears of the Nations tingle yet, and that before long, then I do not rightly descirn [sic] the signs of the times.”22Daniel H. Wells and other Latter-day Saints believed that Joseph Smith had correctly predicted the start of the Civil War in December 1832. Smith's prophecy indicated that the Civil War would be an early sign of the return of Jesus Christ to the earth. It would be followed by other signs described in the Bible and in other Latter-day Saint scriptures.23 Latter-day Saints believed that these “signs of the times” would warn the people of the earth to repent of their wickedness and prepare for a Zion society, or a world without poverty or inequality.By connecting Latter-day Saint millenarianism to the issue of industrialization and the Civil War, Wells demonstrates how even Latter-day Saints, who by and large were isolated in the Rocky Mountains, were overwhelmed by the seismic shifts in society. The bloodbath of the Civil War was an indication of even worse trials to come, such as international conflict and natural disasters, but also promised the return of their Savior. While Latter-day Saints had their own unique interpretation of wickedness, some of the critiques of the larger Western society were directed at the greed and callousness spurred by the growth of industrial capitalism. The bazaar was a small event, but it elicited a response based on deep theological convictions from Wells.Funds from the bazaar never made it across the Atlantic partially because United States Secretary of State William Seward refused to grant permission. The managers of the SPRF attempted to find other ways to get the funds to Confederate prisoners over the next year but were unsuccessful. The end of the war stifled pro-Confederate sympathies in the city.24 Wells continued to promote Latter-day Saint efforts to aid the poor by organizing passages for about 1,250 Saints in Europe. However, his mission was cut short soon after the end of the war. Brigham Young became increasingly concerned for Wells's health, as well as over brewing conflicts with federal officials and the growing Black Hawk War in central Utah. Early in the year, Young requested that Wells return to Utah. Wells booked a passage for himself, wife, and son and arrived in New York City on September 11, 1865. His return to Utah in October was celebrated by his family and the wider community. He settled back into his leadership roles and focused his energies on Utah's problems, though likely not forgetting what he had seen in England.25Brigham Young and his secretaries preserved countless letters from the 1860s. Historians have used these documents to better understand the issues facing Young and the Latter-day Saints in Utah. Letters like Wells's could be used to expand the Latter-day Saint perspective of the international effects of the Civil War and the shockwaves that went through the global economy during the brutal years of 1861–1865. These letters demonstrate Latter-day Saint leaders’ concern for the poor. This concern was augmented by the economic downturn following the economic upheavals in the early 1860s. For Latter-day Saints, economics was not and could not be disconnected from theology. The Civil War appears to have heightened Latter-day Saint concern with creating Zion, a utopia with a fair and just economy. The connection between the catastrophe of the Civil War, the economic turmoil of a rising industrial capitalism, and Latter-day Saint theology during the 1860s helped build toward the economic policies of the 1870s, particularly attempts at creating what they termed the United Order. Wells's simple letter, recounting how elites of Great Britain prioritized foreign rebels over the poor of their own nation, helps capture how all these factors converged for Wells from his vantage on 42 Islington Road.