JOSEPH SMITH, JR.

Most Americans believe that America is a unique and special place. Some even see it as an especially blessed and “promised land”, believing that our nation was born of Divine intervention, that the founding fathers were inspired by The Almighty, and that our constitution is an inspired document. Perhaps no one was more convinced of that fact than the Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith.



Joseph Smith, Jr.
December 23, 1805—June 27, 1844

On the morning of June 27, 1844, a mob consisting of members from the local disbanded militia regiment of Warsaw blackened their faces and stormed the Carthage, Illinois jail and martyred Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his older brother Hyrum. This bloody murder was likely the culmination of the combined effects of the second “great awakening” of the 1820s and 1830s, and the antebellum political unrest in America.

In 1820, fourteen-year-old farm boy Joseph Smith came to local upstate New York prominence when he claimed to have beheld a vision of God the father and his son Jesus Christ. His claim made him unpopular with the local religious leaders. The new spiritual awakening, with its camp meetings and religious fervor, had already begun in this part of the American frontier. Though many believed Smith to be a charlatan, he found that some of his extended family and neighbors believed his story. In 1829, he published the Book of Mormon, which he claimed was a religious history of ancient Americans written on gold plates. He said that he had been given the plates by the angel, Moroni, who had lived anciently as a prophet in America. Again, most passed Smith off as a con man, but many read his book and were convinced of its veracity. In 1830, Smith organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was known by most people as the Mormon Church.

Joseph Smith attracted hundreds and then thousands of followers who loved him, but he was literally despised by many opposing religious leaders. Because of local persecution, Smith moved his church to Kirkland, Ohio, where after a brief stay and a number of difficulties (he was beaten and tarred and feathered), he moved the headquarters of his church to Jackson County, Missouri.

It was in Missouri that political differences with “old settlers” joined religious intolerance as a source of Mormon troubles. Missouri had been established as a slave state and the older residents did not like to see thousands of predominantly New England and anti-slavery religious “misfits” moving in and changing the political landscape. After a half dozen years of troubled existence at the hands of frontier Missourians (rape, murder, home-burnings, and looting) the Latter-day Saints left their homes, in1838, without remuneration for their properties and moved again to swamp land along the Mississippi River in southern Illinois. Missouri Governor, Lilburn Boggs had confiscated all of the Mormon’s firearms, arrested Joseph Smith and other church leaders on fraudulent charges, and issued an extermination order against all Mormons in the state of Missouri.

After over six months of imprisonment in the Liberty, Missouri jail, Smith and his fellows were found innocent and allowed to join his followers in Illinois. It was in Illinois that Smith accomplished some rather amazing things for a backwoods farm boy with a third grade education. Under his direction, the Latter-day Saints recovered worthless swampland at Commerce, Illinois and built the prosperous city of Nauvoo. He was elected mayor and general of the Nauvoo militia. The city charter issued by the state of Illinois was quite liberal, in that it allowed for a city militia. He laid out the city in grid fashion with wider than normal streets running north to south and east to west and larger than normal building plots for residences. The temple that was built under his direction was a beautiful structure that overlooked the Mississippi from the highest hill in the area.

In the six years before Smith’s death, Nauvoo grew to be the largest city in Illinois, even larger than Chicago. The city was lovely and the people hard working and began to be prosperous. By the late 1830s, proselytizing by Mormon missionaries had moved over seas and was especially successful in England, where virtually whole congregations were converted. European converts were instructed to come to America to help build “Zion.” New members swarmed in to the area in and around Nauvoo.

Initially, the older residents welcomed the “Saints.” Illinois Whigs and Democrats both hoped that they might bring the new Mormon voters into their respective political folds. But, eventually jealousy, fear of the growing political power of an unknown and unpredictable quality, and the ever-religious quirkiness of the Mormons (polygamy was now suspected), began to create friction and suspicion.

The year before he was killed, Smith announced his intention to run for the office of President of the United States. He was dissatisfied with the willingness of the federal government to recover losses suffered by his followers in Missouri. His feelings on slavery were well known. He prophesied in 1843 that a bloody war would start in the state of South Carolina over the question of slavery. He called for the annexation of Canada and Mexico. By June 27, 1844, Smith’s religious and political enemies in Illinois had had enough of him and his followers. Although Nauvoo’s city charter allowed the mayor the right to act against public nuisances, when Smith shut down a critical anti-Mormon newspaper called the Expositor, Illinois Governor Ford allowed Smith to be arrested on charges of treason. While in the Carthage jail and awaiting formal charges and supposedly under Ford’s protection, Smith and his brother were murdered.

Thousands mourned Smith’s death and the church that he organized continued to grow and spread around the world to a membership of 10 million worldwide to date. Smith had many detractors but he had many valiant followers that would, and did, follow him to the death. John Taylor, who was a witness of the murder and later a president of the church himself, wrote of the Smith brothers shortly after the event, “…their names will be classed among the martyrs of religion; and the reader in every nation will be reminded that the Book of Mormon, and this book of Doctrine and Covenants of the church, cost the best blood of the nineteenth century...” (Doctrine and Covenants: Section 135, vs. 6). It is lamentable that someone with the leadership skills of Joseph Smith, prophet or not, was a victim of his times; a time of supposed spiritual enlightenment, but also of political turmoil and religious intolerance, a time when government officials could turn a blind eye to or even be openly complicit in crimes against human rights. Perhaps, we are still not out of the woods yet.

Source material:
Allen, B. A. and Leonard, G. M. The story of the latter-day saints. Salt Lake City, Deseret Book Company.