Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism, and an important religious and political figure during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1827, Smith began to gather a religious following after announcing that an angel had shown him a set of golden plates describing a visit of Jesus to the indigenous peoples of the Americas. In 1830, Smith published what he said was a translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon, and the same year he organized the Church of Christ.

For most of the 1830s, Smith lived in Kirtland, Ohio, which remained the headquarters of the church until the cost of building a large temple, financial collapse, and conflict with disaffected members encouraged him to gather the church to the Latter Day Saint settlement in Missouri. There, tensions between Mormons and non-Mormons escalated into the 1838 Mormon War. Smith and his people then settled in Nauvoo, Illinois where they began building a second temple. After being accused of practicing polygamy, and of aspiring to create a theocracy, Smith, as mayor of Nauvoo and with the support of the city council, directed the suppression of a local newspaper that had published accusations against him, leading to his assassination by a mob.

Smith's followers consider him a prophet and have canonized some of his revelations as sacred texts on par with the Bible. His legacy includes several religious denominations, the largest of which, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has millions of adherents.

Life

Early years

Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith. In 1816, the family moved to the village of Palmyra in western New York, and soon obtained a mortgage for a 100-acre farm in the nearby town of Manchester in 1818. This area experienced intense religious activity during the Second Great Awakening. Although he may never have joined any church during his youth, he participated in church classes, read the Bible, and was influenced by the contemporary folk religion of the area. According to Smith, he received his First Vision around 1820, a vision in which he said he saw and heard the voice of Jesus. Although this experience was unknown to all but a few of Smith's followers until after his death, his accounts later acquired important theological significance within the Latter Day Saint movement.

Joseph Smith and the other male members of the Smith family supplemented their farm income by running a local "cake and beer shop" and by taking odd jobs. In particular, the Smiths made money by participating in the early New England "craze for treasure hunting". Joseph claimed the ability to use seer stones for locating lost items and buried treasure. To do so, Smith would put a stone in a white stovepipe hat and would then "see the required information in reflections given off by the stone". In 1823, Smith said he was visited at night by an angel named Moroni, who revealed to him the location of a buried book of golden plates, as well as other artifacts including a breastplate and a set of silver spectacles with lenses composed of seer stones, hidden in a hill near his home. Smith said the angel told him this book of golden plates contained a religious record of the indigenous Americans. Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel struck him down with supernatural force.

During the next several years, Smith said he made annual visits to Cumorah to meet with the angel, but the angel would not relinquish the plates. Meanwhile, Smith continued to travel around western New York and Pennsylvania working as a "glass looker." During one of these jobs, he met Emma Hale and married her on January 18, 1827. (Emma eventually gave birth to seven children, three of whom died shortly after birth; the Smiths also adopted twins.) (See Children of Joseph Smith, Jr.) On September 22, 1827 Smith went to the hill Cumorah in a final attempt to obtain the plates. This time he said he retrieved them and placed them in a locked chest. He said the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else but to publish their translation. Believing they should have a share in any proceeds from the plates, Smith's treasure seeking associates began to ransack places they thought the plates might be hidden, and Smith soon realized that he could not perform this translation in Palmyra.

1827 to 1830: Organizing the Church

Translating the Golden Plates

In October 1827, Smith and his wife moved from Palmyra to Harmony, Pennsylvania, with the financial assistance of their wealthy neighbor Martin Harris. Smith took with them a box he said contained the golden plates. In Harmony, he began transcribing some of the characters he said were engraved on the plates, in a language he called "Reformed Egyptian." Smith said that he used the "Urim and Thummim" (the silver spectacles with lenses made of seer stones) for translation during this early period, but there are no witnesses of Smith using such spectacles for translation. Many witnesses did directly observe Smith translating using the same or similar method that he had previously used during his earlier profession as a treasure hunter: he would gaze at a seer stone in the bottom of his hat, excluding all light so that he could reportedly see the translation reflecting off the stone. There were times when Smith concealed his translation process by, for example, raising a curtain or calling out the dictation from another room. During the translation process, the plates themselves were reportedly hidden in the nearby woods.

By early 1828, Smith became discouraged with translating, prompting Martin Harris to visit Harmony in February 1828 to spur him on. Smith allowed Harris to take some of the transcribed characters to several well-known scholars to see if they could translate or authenticate them, but Harris was unable to get any assistance from the scholars. When Harris returned to Harmony, he acted as Smith's scribe from April 12 to June 14, 1828, until Smith had dictated 116 pages of manuscript. Acceding to relentless requests from Harris, Smith reluctantly allowed him to take the manuscript to Palmyra to assuage the growing skepticism of Harris' wife Lucy, who suspected Smith was trying to defraud her husband. When Harris returned, long overdue, he told Smith that the manuscript had disappeared. There were no copies. At about the same time, Smith's wife Emma gave birth to a stillborn son. Distraught over losing both his child and the manuscript, Smith may have briefly attended a Methodist church pastored by his wife's uncle. Smith also dictated a revelation stating that his gift to translate had been taken away and that the angel Moroni had taken back the plates and the Urim and Thummim.

Nevertheless, Smith said the angel returned the Urim and Thummim (and presumably the plates) on September 22, 1828, and that he continued to translate with Emma as his scribe. According to Emma, Smith never claimed to use the Urim and Thummim for translation after the loss of the 116 pages. Rather, Smith exclusively used the same dark seer stone that he had previously used during his earlier profession as a treasure hunter. On April 1829, Smith met Oliver Cowdery, who took over as scribe, and the two worked full time between April and June 1829 to prepare most of the translation.

Establishing a church

To Smith, the golden plates were more than just a curiosity; Smith viewed them as a "marvelous work…about to come forth among the children of men" It would be entitled the Book of Mormon, and form the basis for a new religion. In early June 1829, Smith and Cowdery moved to Fayette, New York to complete the translation, and Smith began to seek converts. When people believed, "they did not just subscribe to the book; they were baptized." But as Smith "began to seek converts the question of credibility had to be addressed again. Joseph knew his story was unbelievable." He had a revelation that others, known today as the Three Witnesses and the Eight Witnesses, would bear testimony to the existence of the plates—which they did in early July 1829. Finally, the Book of Mormon was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830 by printer E. B. Grandin. Martin Harris financed the publication by mortgaging his farm.

On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith and his followers formally organized as the Church of Christ, and small branches were established in Palmyra, Fayette, and Colesville, New York. There was strong opposition to the church, and in late June, Smith was again brought to court but acquitted. Perhaps it was to this period that Smith and Cowdery referred when they later said that they had received a visitation from Peter, James, and John, three apostles of Jesus, who appeared to them in order to restore the Melchizedek priesthood, which they said contained the necessary authority to restore Christ's church.

After founding the church, Smith began to publicize an experience he said he had had as a fourteen-year-old in 1820, when he received a theophany, an event more recent Latter Day Saints have called the First Vision. Smith recorded several different accounts of this experience, but the version of the First Vision later canonized by the LDS Church was not publicly revealed until 1842. Although the experience acquired immense theological importance in Latter Day Saint belief, "most early converts probably never heard about the 1820 vision."

In July 1831, Smith revealed that the church would establish a "City of Zion" in Native American territory near Missouri. In anticipation, Smith dispatched missionaries, led by Oliver Cowdery, to the area. On their way, they converted a group of Disciples of Christ adherents in Kirtland, Ohio led by Sidney Rigdon. To avoid growing opposition in New York, Smith moved the headquarters of the church to Kirtland.

1831 to 1834: Kirtland

Growth and persecution

Sidney Rigdon's supporters more than doubled the number of Latter Day Saints, and when the comparatively well-educated and oratorically gifted Rigdon became Smith's closest adviser, he aroused the resentment of some of Smith's earliest followers. The Kirtland saints also exhibited unusual spiritual gifts such as loud prophesying, speaking in unknown tongues, swinging from house joists, and rolling on the ground. With some difficulty, Smith managed to check the most extreme forms of religious enthusiasm.

Although while in Ohio, Smith and his family had to live as guests in other people's homes, Smith's revelations significantly increased. Following completion of the Book of Mormon, Smith rarely used his seer stone and now received revelations "whether a text lay before him or not." In the early 1830s Smith began reworking the King James Version of the the Bible. An addition to Genesis, called the Book of Moses, was not based on any purported ancient writings. Smith also collected his earlier revelations, which believers had begun to treat as sacred texts, and published them in 1833 as the Book of Commandments (later, the Doctrine and Covenants).

In early 1831, revelations instructed Smith to organize a new social system, called the United Order, in preparation for the coming millennium. Members were required to consecrate their property to the church so that "every man may receive according as he stands in need." "The experiment was a failure, and the two-year existence of the system was about average for the various communal experiments being undertaken in the period."
By 1832, the twenty-six-year-old Smith led an organization of about a thousand followers. Not only were the burdens of his office beyond his experience, some disaffected former followers accused Smith of dictatorial ambition, deceiving the credulous, and the intent to take their frontier property. On March 24, they encouraged a mob to drag Smith and Rigdon from their beds and beat them unconscious. Smith was tarred and feathered and narrowly escaped being castrated. The attack encouraged him to accelerate a trip to Missouri.

Zion in Missouri

In the summer of 1831, Smith claimed to have received a revelation that the eventual Zion for Latter Day Saints would be in Independence, Missouri, at the time a ragged village of no more than twenty dwellings. During his 1832 visit, Smith had to dampen hard feelings among his subordinates there, but he was also able to found the first Mormon newspaper, the Evening and Morning Star, at the time the westernmost newspaper in the United States.

The rough pioneers of Missouri found Smith's prophecies about Zion threatening. They tarred and feathered two church leaders, and vigilantes destroyed Mormon homes, effectively forcing the Saints to move to Clay County. Smith tried to organize a military response from Kirtland—a revelation had told him that "the redemption of Zion must needs come by power"—but the trek of what came to be called Zion's Camp ended with nothing accomplished.

For the next several years, Smith's attention was split between Ohio and Missouri, but his family lived in Kirtland. There, under his direction, the Saints sacrificed to build a stone temple. For a few months after its completion in early 1836, this first temple was the scene of visions, angelic visitations, prophesying, speaking and singing in tongues, and other spiritual experiences. But economically the Kirtland temple was "a disaster," money that might have been used for the City of Zion was channeled into a costly building project. Both Smith and his church went deeply in debt, and Smith was "hounded by his creditors ever after."

After the dedication of the Kirtland temple, Smith's life "descended into a tangle of intrigue and conflict.". Following his death in 1844, both friend and foe agreed that sometime during this period Smith privately married Fanny Alger, a serving girl in the Smith household, as a plural wife, a relationship that Oliver Cowdery referred to in 1838 as a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair."

After the Saints were driven from Jackson County, Missouri, Smith was "stunned for months, scarcely knowing what to do." In August 1836, he received a revelation that there was "much treasure" in Salem, Massachusetts. Hoping he might find it with his seer stone, he and his closest associates left the financially troubled Kirtland community for the East. By September they were back in Kirtland; they returned with no treasure.

A more common expedient for raising money on the frontier was wildcat banking. Smith did not have enough capital to obtain a state charter, but he printed notes anyway and circulated them in January 1837. The Kirtland Safety Society failed within a month. The notes had Smith's signature on them, and he was personally blamed for the fiasco. The onset of a nationwide panic in 1837 also encouraged creditors to pursue their debtors vigorously. Many Latter Day Saints, including prominent leaders who had invested in the banking scheme, became disaffected and either left the church or were excommunicated. There were even a couple of unseemly rows in the temple, including one occasion on which guns and knives were drawn. When a leading apostle, David W. Patten, raised insulting questions, Smith slapped him in the face and kicked him into the yard. After a warrant was issued for Smith's arrest on the charge of bank fraud, Smith and Rigdon fled Kirtland for Missouri on the night of January 12, 1838.

1835 to 1838: Missouri

After being forced from Clay County, the Missouri Saints had established themselves slightly north and east in Caldwell and Daviess Counties. Mormons from New York, Ohio, and Canada streamed to this frontier territory, and Smith encouraged the pioneers "with a revelation promising to 'make solitary places to bud and to blossom, and to bring forth in abundance.'" Smith even called the new settlement around Far West, the "church in Zion," "implying that Far West was to take the place of Independence."

Far West

The disaffection in Kirtland had spread to Missouri, and four of the earliest Mormon leaders, David and John Whitmer, William Phelps, and Oliver Cowdery were now expelled from the church, which had come under stronger influence of Sidney Rigdon. When the dissidents and their families lingered in Missouri, they were threatened by a group of semi-secret ruffians, the Danites, led by a cunning, resourceful, and unscrupulous recent convert, Sampson Avard, who put his band under oath to be "completely submissive" to Joseph Smith.

Once the dissidents had been driven out, Smith warned the Missourians that the Saints would not "be mobbed anymore without taking vengeance." As Fawn Brodie has written, "From the bottom of his heart Joseph hated violence, but his people were demanding something more than meekness and compromise." Furthermore, as Mormons increased in Daviess County, non-Mormons "watched local government fall into the hands of people they saw as deluded fanatics." On election day, August 6, 1838, a Missouri rabble-rouser incited a riot in which the Danites gave as good as (or better than) they got.

The Mormon War

Thereafter "the Saints were bullied and threatened," and they responded in kind. Latter Day Saint families were driven from their farms, and Saints burned buildings belonging to the Missourians. In October 1838 a Mormon contingent skirmished with the Richmond County militia at the Battle of Crooked River. Three Mormons and a Missourian were killed. Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs declared that the Mormons be "exterminated or driven from the state", an executive order for which there was no formal apology until 1976. A few days later a small party of Missourians surprised and massacred a Latter Day Saint settlement at Haun's Mill.

Far West was shortly surrounded by 2,500 militiamen. Smith, whose earlier "angry rhetoric [had] stirred the blood of more militant men," surrendered to the Missourians on November 1, 1838; and he and four associates were taken prisoner. Latter Day Saint property was confiscated and the Saints driven from Missouri by the spring of 1839.

Smith was held for four months in Liberty jail.

For a few hours Smith and his comrades were in real danger of being killed out of hand by the Missourians. Eventually the Mormon leaders were charged with "overt acts of treason" by a circuit court meeting in Richmond, where the majority of state witnesses were or had been Mormons. Chief among them was the former leader of the Danites, Sampson Avard, who whitewashed himself and heaped blame on Rigdon and Smith.

Liberty jail

The prisoners were then transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri, the Clay County seat, to await trial. Although he frequently called down imprecatory judgments on his enemies and perceived enemies, as Fawn Brodie has written, Smith bore his harsh imprisonment "stoically, almost cheerfully, for there was a serenity in his nature that enabled him to accept trouble along with glory." Smith wrote to his followers "with skill and tact" attempting to dispel the now current notion that he was a fallen prophet. Brigham Young later claimed that even Smith's brother William said he hoped that Joseph would never get out of the hands of his enemies alive. Smith and his companions also made two unsuccessful attempts to escape from jail before, on April 6, they were started under guard to stand trial in Daviess County.

Once the Latter Day Saints no longer posed a political threat, Missouri leaders realized that Mormon behavior could hardly be classified as treason whereas, as Fawn Brodie has written, the governor's "exterminating order stank to heaven." On the way to trial, the sheriff and guards agreed to get drunk on whiskey purchased by Joseph's brother Hyrum and looked the other way while their prisoners escaped.

1838 - 1844: Nauvoo, Illinois

In April 1839, Smith rejoined his followers who, having fled east from Missouri, had spread out along the banks of the Mississippi, near Quincy, Illinois. There, for both humanitarian and political reasons, the refugees had been welcomed. Purchasing waterlogged wilderness land on credit from two Connecticut speculators (who drove a hard bargain during this period of economic recession), Smith established a new gathering place for the Saints along the Mississippi in Hancock County. He renamed the area "Nauvoo", which he said meant "beautiful" in Hebrew. The soggy low land and river eddies were exceptional breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and the Saints suffered plagues of malaria in the summers of 1839, 1840, and 1841. (In 1841 malaria killed Joseph's brother Don Carlos and his namesake, Joseph's son Don Carlos, within a few days of one another.)

Late in 1839, Smith went to Washington to seek redress from the federal government for the Saints' losses in Missouri. He met briefly with President Martin Van Buren, but neither man seems to have thought much of the other, and the trip produced no reparations. Whatever sympathy Van Buren or Congress might have had for Mormon victims was canceled out by the importance of Missouri in the upcoming presidential election. Nevertheless, Smith shrewdly made Missouri a "byword for oppression" and "saw to it that the sufferings of his people received national publicity."

In a bold stroke, Smith sent off the Twelve Apostles to Great Britain to serve as missionaries for the new faith. All left families in desperate circumstances struggling to establish themselves in Iowa or Illinois. While Smith had been imprisoned, Brigham Young, the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had with indefatigable skill, brought the believers out of Missouri, and the Saints "had obeyed him implicitly." But with Young and the others in Europe, Smith recovered his earlier prestige and authority. Meanwhile, the missionaries found many willing converts in Great Britain, often factory workers, poor even by the standards of American saints. These first trickled, then flooded, into Nauvoo, raising Smith's spirits.

In February 1841, Nauvoo received a charter from the state of Illinois, which granted the Latter Day Saints a considerable degree of autonomy. Smith threw himself enthusiastically into the work of building a new city. The charter authorized independent municipal courts, the establishment of a university, and the creation of a militia unit known as the "Nauvoo Legion." Smith dreamed of industrial projects, and even received a revelation commanding the building of a hotel, "that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein."

Doctrine

While burdened with the temporal business of creating a city, Smith also elaborated on the cosmology of the new religion. According to Richard Bushman, Smith moved from "a traditional Christian belief in God as pure spirit to a belief in His corporeality." In other words, Smith declared that God had a body of flesh and bone and taught that "the great principle of happiness consists in having a body."

Instead of affirming that there was an eternal God who had created matter, Smith taught that matter was eternal and that it was God who had developed through time and space. God only assembled the earth from preexisting materials and then had drawn on "a cohort of spirits from the pool of eternal intelligences to place upon it." Another striking doctrine revealed to Smith after 1840 was baptism for the dead, an attempt to join "the generation of humanity from start to finish" by bringing "saving ordinances to the millions who had died without their benefits." During the same period, Smith published the Book of Abraham, his translation of what later turned out to be an ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead that he had purchased from a traveling exhibitor in 1835. The Book of Abraham, canonized by the LDS Church after Smith's death, also emphasized the plurality of gods, pre-mortal existence, and the concept that the earth had been organized out of preexisting matter.

These doctrinal expansions culminated in a renewed effort to build another temple. Smith chose a site on a bluff in Nauvoo where he blessed the cornerstones in a public ceremony on April 6, 1841. In Kirtland, Smith had instituted rituals of washing and anointing, but in Nauvoo "the ceremonies were further elaborated to include baptism for the dead, endowments, and priesthood marriages." Smith had "a green thumb for growing ideas from tiny seeds," and "portions of the temple ritual resembled Masonic rites that Joseph had observed when a Nauvoo lodge was organized in March 1842 and that he may have heard about from Hyrum, a Mason from New York days."

Plural marriage

Revealed to Smith

The early years in Nauvoo had been a time of comparative peace and economic prosperity, but by mid-1842, Smith was entangled in the conflicts that ended with his death two years later. A year previous, Missouri courts had once again tried to extradite him on old charges that stemmed from the Mormon War. Although Stephen Douglas, then a member of the Illinois State Supreme Court, declared the writ of extradition void on a technicality, Smith "realized that popular opinion was turning against the Saints after two years of sympathy." Not surprisingly, Smith's praise for the Democrat Douglas first provoked opposition to the Mormons in a Whig newspaper, the Warsaw Signal, whose young editor, Thomas C. Sharp, Joseph then arrogantly and unwisely offended.

Emma Hale Smith. Although Joseph Smith probably married at least twenty-seven other women, throughout her life, and even on her deathbed, Emma Smith denied that her husband had ever practiced polygamy.

Of all Smith's innovations during the years immediately preceding his death, the one that received the most hostile reception was his institution of plural marriage. In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman as a plural wife, and during the next two and a half years, he may have married about thirty additional women, ten of them already married to other men. About a third of Smith's plural wives were teenagers, including two fourteen-year-old girls. Smith was "a charismatic, handsome man," and in Remini's words, he "seemed cheerful and gracious" to all. Because many husbands and fathers knew about these plural marriages, Smith must have convinced them that "they and their families would benefit spiritually from a close tie to the Prophet." Smith told one prospective wife that submitting to plural marriage would "ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father's household"; a father who gave his daughter in plural marriage was assured that the marriage would ensure "honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house both old and young." Furthermore, once sealed for eternity by priesthood authority, Smith revealed that such couples would continue to procreate in the next life, becoming, in effect, gods.

Smith surely "must have realized that plural marriage would inflict terrible damage, that he ran the risk of wrecking his marriage and alienating his followers." And for those in the larger world, plural marriage "would confirm all their worst fears" about Mormonism. "Sexual excess was considered that all too common fruit of pretended revelation."

Although Emma believed in Joseph's prophetic calling, she was displeased with his multiple marriages, especially since five of the women lived in the Smith household when he married them. Emma may have temporarily approved of Joseph's marriage to two sisters, Eliza and Emily Partridge, but even they were an "awkward selection" because Joseph had already married the sisters two months previous, and he had to go through another ceremony for Emma's benefit. Nevertheless, "from that hour," Emily later wrote, "Emma was our bitter enemy," and they had to leave the household. According to Smith's scribe, William Clayton, Joseph's brother Hyrum encouraged him to write down his revelation on plural marriage to present to Emma, and Joseph did so. When Hyrum presented Emma with the revelation, she abused him. Clayton reported that when Joseph reproved Emma for demanding from one plural wife a watch Joseph had given her, Joseph "had to use harsh measures to put a stop to [Emma's] abuse."

Throughout her life and on her deathbed, Emma Smith frequently denied that her husband had ever taken additional wives. Even when her sons Joseph III and Alexander presented her with specific written questions about polygamy, she continued to deny that their father had been a polygamist.

Revealed to others

Although Smith's teachings about plural marriage were expressed in strict confidentiality and only to his leadership, the more men and women who participated, the more likely it became that these secret marriages would be revealed to the Nauvoo community and, of course, to the larger world. By May 16, 1842, the New York Herald reported the rumor that "promiscuous intercourse" was being practiced in Nauvoo. Yet Smith might have been able to talk down these reports along with other salacious gossip had it not been for his erstwhile second-in-command, John Cook Bennett. Smith was not always a good judge of men, and Bennett shortly became Smith's nemesis, although Smith had first predicted that Bennett was "calculated to be a great blessing to our community."

After deserting a wife and three children and arriving in Nauvoo in 1841, Bennett had been baptized into the new religion. Emma never trusted him, but Joseph welcomed his assistance in acquiring the Nauvoo city charter. Soon Bennett became the first mayor of Nauvoo, “assistant president,” and Major General of the Nauvoo Legion. The latter Bennett threatened to use in challenging Missouri for restitution of the Saints’ lost property, suggesting to skittish gentiles that Mormons intended to use force of arms to accomplish their objectives. Unfortunately for Smith, Bennett also had an eye for women and made use of Smith’s new revelation to seduce the unwary, telling them that illicit sex was acceptable among the Saints so long as it was kept secret. And Bennett ignored even perfunctory wedding ceremonies.

Smith was incensed at Bennett’s activities and forced Bennett’s resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett remained in the area and wrote “lurid exposés of life in Nauvoo” that were first published in various newspapers and, later that year, compiled into a book. Even contemporaries could hardly escape the conclusion that Bennett was, as Fawn Brodie has called him, “a base and ignoble opportunist.” But the Ostlings note that “there was just enough of a kernel of truth to arouse internal suspicion and whip up anti-Mormon sentiment elsewhere.” Ostlings, 13. Non-Mormons looked with increasing uneasiness not only at reports of Mormon “free wifery” but at the comparative success of Nauvoo, the competent drilling of the Nauvoo Legion, and the growing political clout of the Saints.
Furthermore, on May 6, 1842, an unknown assailant shot former governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs three times in the head. Bennett named a rough Mormon loyalist, Porter Rockwell, as the gunman. Mormons assumed Boggs would die and considered his assassination a fulfillment of prophecy. The Nauvoo Wasp indiscreetly gloated that the person who “did the noble deed remains to be found out." Boggs refused to die, however, and when he recovered, he pressed Illinois governor Thomas Carlin to extradite Smith to Missouri. Smith once again went into hiding for some months until the U. S. Circuit Court in Springfield finally ruled that the extradition order was unconstitutional.

Political commitments

Nevertheless, Smith realized his current position was tenuous. Many citizens of Illinois were now determined to drive the Mormons out of the state. In December 1843, Smith petitioned Congress for the right to make Nauvoo an independent federal territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense. Then, probably unwisely, Smith also decided to desert both Whigs and Democrats, and announce his own candidacy for President of the United States, sending out the apostles to advertise his campaign. Meanwhile, he made plans to scout possible sites for a large Mormon settlement in Oregon or California.

In March 1844, Smith organized a secret Council of Fifty, a policy-making body based on what Smith called "Theodemocracy" and which was in effect a shadow government. One of the Council's first acts was to ordain Smith as King of the Kingdom of God. And, as if they had just organized an independent state, Smith and the Council sent ambassadors to England, France, Russia, and the Republic of Texas.Ostlings, 13. In April, Smith predicted "the entire overthrow of this nation in a few years."

Death

General Joseph Smith addressing the Nauvoo Legion shortly before his death in 1844.

Dissent in Nauvoo

Smith faced growing opposition among his former supporters in Nauvoo, and he "was stunned by the defections of loyal followers." Chief among the dissidents was William Law, Smith's second counselor in the First Presidency, who was well respected in the Mormon community. Law's disagreement with Smith was partly economic. But the most significant difference between the two was Law's opposition to plural marriage. There is even evidence that Smith propositioned the wives of both Law and his associate Robert D. Foster. Law and others gave testimonies at the county seat in Carthage that resulted in three indictments being brought against Smith, including one accusing him of polygamy. On May 26, just a few weeks before his death, Smith spoke before a large crowd of the Saints in front of the uncompleted temple and once again denied having any more than one wife.

Nauvoo Expositor

Unlike earlier dissenters Law had enough money to buy a printing press and publish a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor. Its only edition, published on June 7, 1844, contained affidavits testifying that the signers had heard Smith read a revelation giving every man the privilege of marrying ten virgins. The paper also attacked the attempt to "christianize a world by political schemes and intrigue" and denounced "false doctrines" such as "doctrines of many Gods," which, the paper said, Smith had recently revealed in his King Follett discourse. The newspaper also refused to "acknowledge any man as king or lawgiver to the church."

Smith declared the Expositor a "nuisance." On June 10, the Nauvoo city council passed an ordinance about libels; and Smith, as mayor, ordered the city marshal to destroy the paper. Press, type, and newspapers were dragged into the street and burned. Smith argued that destroying the paper would lessen the possibility of anti-Mormon settlers attacking Nauvoo; but he "failed to see that suppression of the paper was far more likely to arouse a mob than the libels. It was a fatal mistake."

Carthage Jail (c. 1885), where Smith was killed in 1844.

When the destruction of the Expositor was reported to Smith's journalistic enemy Thomas C. Sharp, his Warsaw Signal published a hysterical call to action: "Citizens arise, one and all!!! Can you stand by, and suffer such Infernal Devils! to rob men of their property and rights without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. Let it be made with Powder and Ball!!!"

Nauvoo Mormons feared reprisals from the non-Mormons, and non-Mormons were apprehensive about the Nauvoo Legion, especially after Smith, fearing for his life, declared martial law on June 18. Illinois Governor Thomas Ford, desperately trying to prevent civil war, then mobilized the state militia. The governor promised Smith that he would provide protection if Smith would stand trial at Carthage for the destruction of the newspaper. Smith ordered the Legion to disarm but then fled across the Mississippi to Iowa. Emma warned Joseph that Nauvoo residents believed he had left due to cowardice and that they feared reprisals from local mobs. Smith returned to Illinois on June 23, gave himself up, and was taken to Carthage to stand trial.

Assassination

Pepper-box pistol used by Joseph Smith to defend himself on June 27, 1844

Smith and three other Mormon prisoners were held in Carthage Jail in an upstairs room without bars. Both Hyrum and Joseph Smith had pistols that had been smuggled in by friends. On June 27, 1844, an armed group of men with blackened faces stormed the jail. As the mob broke into the room, Hyrum was shot in the face and killed. Smith pulled the trigger of his pepper-box six times, firing into the hall and wounding three men, but the mob continued to fire at Smith and the other Mormons. Smith prepared to jump from the second floor window, but was hit by a ball from the door, causing him to fall out the window. On the ground he stirred a bit; four men fired and killed him.

Epilogue

Aftermath

Certain the Mormons would retaliate, the people of Carthage deserted their town by nightfall. But the Mormons had been shattered by the loss of their leader. The bodies of Joseph and Hyrum were brought back to Nauvoo, and thousands of mourners filed by their coffins. Fearing desecration of the graves, church leaders decided to bury the men in the basement of the unfinished Nauvoo House. The coffins were filled with bags of sand and buried in the cemetery following a public funeral.

Charges were brought against five accused leaders of the mob that had killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and they stood trial in May 1845. The defense argued that no individuals could be held responsible because the assassins were carrying out the will of the people. The jury, which included no Mormons, acquitted the defendants.

Emma Smith quickly became alienated from the church, largely over property matters; it was difficult to disentangle Smith's personal property from that of the church. Her strong opposition to plural marriage "made her doubly troublesome." When the Mormons moved west, she stayed in Nauvoo, married a non-Mormon, and withdrew from religion until 1860, when her son, Joseph Smith III, stepped forward to lead what became the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (today, the Community of Christ). Emma never denied Joseph's prophetic gift or belief in the Book of Mormon.

Succession

After Joseph Smith's death, schisms threatened to rend the early Latter Day Saint church. Smith had not explicitly chosen a successor, although there is evidence that he had blessed his son Joseph III with the understanding that he would eventually succeed him. But the boy was only eleven when his father was murdered. William Clayton, one of Smith's confidants and secretaries, declared that Smith had recently said that if he and Hyrum were removed, a younger brother, Samuel H. Smith should be his successor. Samuel died a month later.Bushman (2005), 555. The "unstable character" of another brother, William Smith, prevented him from becoming a serious contender.
A fairly recent convert, James J. Strang, produced a counterfeit letter from Smith commissioning him to lead the church. Although Strang's previous relationship with Smith and the Saints had been minimal, he was able to produce revelations with a seerstone and discovered another set of supernatural writings, the Voree Plates. Strang attracted two thousand followers, including William Smith, Martin Harris, and John C. Bennett; but Strang was assassinated in 1856 after he began to practice polygamy.Bushman (2005), 556.
As the senior surviving member of the First Presidency, Sidney Rigdon had a strong claim to leadership. Although his relationship with Smith had been uneven since 1839, on hearing of his assassination, Rigdon rushed from Pittsburgh to Nauvoo. At an August 8 meeting of the Nauvoo congregation, Rigdon claimed he had had a vision in which the Lord had made him the "Guardian" of the late prophet. At the same meeting Brigham Young proposed that the Quorum of the Twelve, of which he was the senior member, should lead the church. The experienced Young and the Twelve were easily sustained as the Presidency. Later a legend grew that when Young rose to speak, members of the audience were struck by the similarity between his voice and mannerisms and those of the late prophet.

Young, who lacked the charisma of Smith, was an even greater motivator of men. As Arrington and Bitton have written, he had "a compulsion to organize and do."Arrington & Bitton, 85. In the next eighteen months, the Nauvoo Mormons accomplished as much work on the temple as had occurred in the previous three years under Smith. But by that time, persecution of the Saints resumed in earnest. The state legislature revoked the Nauvoo city charter, and there were barn-burning and crop-burning attacks on outlying settlements. It was clear that the Saints would have to leave Illinois. By the fall of 1846, Nauvoo was a virtual ghost town.

Legacy

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, adherents of the denominations originating from Joseph Smith's teachings numbered perhaps as many as fourteen million. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest with a self-reported membership of over thirteen million. The second largest is the Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), with about 250,000 members. Other groups which follow Smith's teachings have memberships numbering from dozens to tens of thousands.

See also

• Controversies regarding Mormonism

• Criticism of Joseph Smith Jr.

• History of the Latter Day Saint movement

• Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration (film)

• Joseph Smith, Jr. and Polygamy

• Lectures on Faith

• List of assassinated American politicians

• "Praise to the Man"

• Smith Political and Civic Family

• The Joseph Smith Papers