by Alex Beam
It’s wonderful to have friends. Ron Koltnow, Roger Lowenstein, Charles Pierce, Joseph Finder, Steven Stark, John Burgess, David Taylor, James Parker, Mark Feeney, David Warsh, and Jennifer Schuessler cheered me on for several years. My friend of over forty years, Michael Carlisle, heard that a young editor named Benjamin Adams dreamed of commissioning a book on the historic but little understood assassination of Joseph Smith. Ben got his book, and he provided superb editorial guidance from beginning to end. I cherish my relations with Ben and his colleagues at PublicAffairs, with whom I have now collaborated three times. Susan Weinberg, Clive Priddle, and my droog from another lifetime, Peter Osnos, have always supported my work; marketing director Lisa Kaufman edited my last two books. Special thanks again to Jaime Leifer and Lindsay Fradkoff, for marketing and promotional support. Managing editor Melissa Raymond is the firm hand on the production tiller, aided for this project by Rachel King and the indefatigable and erudite copy editor Michele Wynn.
One of the underpinnings of Joseph Smith’s theology was his belief that families would meet again after death and live together for all eternity. I would like nothing more than to spend the remains of my days, and more, with my wife and three sons, who have been my constant friends and supporters for most of my life. I owe them a huge debt. Kirsten, Christopher, Eric, and Michael—I love you.
CHRONOLOGY
December 23, 1805: Joseph Smith is born in Sharon Township, Windsor County, Vermont.
January 18, 1827: Joseph elopes and marries Emma Hale.
Spring 1830: Publication of the Book of Mormon, establishment of the Church of Christ in upstate New York.
February 1831: Joseph moves the seat of his church government to Kirtland, Ohio.
May 1834: The church is renamed The Church of the Latter Day Saints.
January 1838: Joseph flees Kirtland after Mormon bank failure, reestablishes the church in Missouri. The church is renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
October 1838: Missouri Governor Boggs issues anti-Mormon Extermination Order, closely followed by the massacre of seventeen Saints at Haun’s Mill, Missouri.
Winter 1838–1839: Joseph imprisoned; Mormons flee across the Mississippi River to Illinois.
May 1839: Joseph joins the Mormons in their new town of Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois.
Spring 1841: Joseph cautiously unveils doctrine of “plural marriage” to his inner circle, marries Louisa Beaman, age twenty-six.
June 1841: “Anti-Mormon” political party founded in Hancock County.
May 28, 1843: Joseph seals his marriage to Emma “for time and eternity.” He now has approximately twenty-five other wives.
June 24, 1843: Missouri sheriffs arrest Joseph in Dixon, Illinois. Renowned Whig lawyer Cyrus Walker wins Smith’s freedom in return for the promise of Mormon votes in the forthcoming congressional election. Guided by revelation, the Saints vote en masse for Walker’s opponent, alienating both Whigs and Democrats.
January 29, 1844: Joseph announces his candidacy for president of the United States.
April 7, 1844: Joseph delivers the King Follett Discourse, explaining that “God himself was once as we are now” and that humans can aspire to divinity. Smith adds, “I don’t blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.”
April 21, 1844: Joseph’s former confidant William Law organizes the breakaway True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, decrying the heretical doctrines of the plurality of gods, and polygamy.
June 7, 1844: Law and fellow dissidents publish the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper, accusing Joseph Smith of “a perversion of sacred things.”
June 10, 1844: Acting on Smith’s instructions, the Nauvoo City Council orders the destruction of the Expositor newspaper and its printing press.
June 14, 1844: Thomas Sharp’s Warsaw, Illinois, Signal calls for “a war of extermination” against the Mormons.
June 18, 1844: In full military regalia, Lieutenant General Joseph Smith declares martial law in Nauvoo, telling the 2,000-man Nauvoo Legion that “I have unsheathed my sword.”
June 23, 1844: Joseph Smith flees Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi River to Iowa.
June 24, 1844: Smith returns to Nauvoo, agrees to travel to Carthage, Illinois, to face riot charges.
June 27, 1844: A mob storms the Carthage jail, killing Joseph and his brother Hyrum.
August 8, 1844: Brigham Young assumes control of the Mormon Church.
February 6, 1846: Young leads a small wagon train across the ice-choked Mississippi River, bound for the Mormons’ new home in the Utah Territory.
NOTES
1. FLIGHT
2Orrin Porter Rockwell . . . “shaggy and dangerous”: Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 330.
3Finally discerning his friend: Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell: Man of God, Son of Thunder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966), p. 109.
4“had shewn unto us the plates”: Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2003), p. 632.
4“If you will write the revelation”: Gary James Bergera, “‘Illicit Intercourse,’ Plural Marriage, and the Nauvoo Stake High Council, 1840–1844,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 23 (2003), p. 83ff.
5“The whole of America is Zion”: D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), p. 124.
6“People coming to Nauvoo expected”: William Wyl, Mormon Portraits (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing, 1886), p. 26.
6“I love that man better”: Ibid., p. 378.
6“I investigated the case”: Brodie, No Man Knows, p. 289.
7“I am the only man that has ever”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed., rev., vol. 6 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), p. 409.
8“I am above the kingdoms of the world”: Roger Launius and John Hallwas, eds., Kingdom on the Mississippi Revisited: Nauvoo in Mormon History (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), p. 154.
8“When I look into the Eastern papers”: Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), p. 456.
9“we would not be surprised to hear”: Warsaw Signal (IL), May 29, 1844.
2. KING JOSEPH
14“Come on! ye prosecutors!”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed., rev., vol. 6 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), p. 408.
15“A mad mix of doctrines”: Harold Bloom, The American Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 111.
15Nor was meeting Jesus a unique occurrence: Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 22.
16Hale reviled the money-digging expedition: E. D. Howe, Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, NY, 1834), p. 263.
16“glorious beyond description”: Millennial Star 42, p. 190.
18the stock phrase, “It came to pass”: Mark Twain, Roughing It (New York: Harper Brothers, 1918), p. 110.
21He didn’t claim to be a full-time preacher: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 5, p. 265.
21they expected “to find him in his sanctum”: John G. Turner, Brigham Young, Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 31.
22“Newel K. Whitney! Thou art the man!”: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 1.
22lodging with the Whitneys: George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2011), p. 136.
22“about 70 of the brethren”: Scott H. Faulring, ed., An American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), p. 307.
23a young Gentile woman from Portsmouth: Charlotte Haven, “A Girl’s Letters from Nau
voo,” Overland Monthly 16 (December 1890).
23“He has unlimited influence”: John Hallwas and Roger Launius, Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1995), p. 34.
24converted . . . Campbellite preacher Sidney Rigdon: Richard Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), p. 127.
24“He had all the weaknesses”: Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 4 (Liverpool and London: F. D. and S. W. Richards, 1854), p. 78, rpt. 78, available online at http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/JournalOfDiscourses3/id/9599/rec/1.
25“Since this order has been preached”: Matthew Bowman, The Mormon People (New York: Random House, 2012), p. 76.
26“Universal satisfaction manifested”: Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 450.
27“We were washed and anointed”: Turner, Brigham Young, p. 86.
27postulants donned a special white garment: Brodie, No Man Knows, pp. 280–281.
27adapted and perverted the . . . Masonic ritual: David John Buerger, “The Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony,” Dialogue—A Journal of Mormon Thought 20 (4).
28“The secret of masonry is”: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 59.
28he had many secrets to keep: D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), p. 112.
28preached the most famous sermon of his life: Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, p. 534.
29“We suppose that God was God”: For text of King Follett sermon, see Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 302ff.
29“some of the most blasphemous doctrines”: Lyndon W. Cook, William Law: Biographical Essay; Nauvoo Diary; Correspondence; Interview (Orem, UT: Grandin Book, 1994), p. 49.
30decided to run for the presidency: Michael Marquardt, The Rise of Mormonism (Xulon Press, 2005), p. 625.
30“pardon every convict”: Susan Easton Black, “Nauvoo Neighbor: The Latter-day Saint Experience at the Mississippi River, 1843–1845,” BYU Studies 51 (3) (2012), p. 150.
30“General Smith is the greatest”: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 361.
31a different steamboat sounding: Black, “Nauvoo Neighbor,” p. 150.
31they dispatched surrogates: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 157.
32“governor of a new religious territory”: New York Herald, July 3, 1841.
32“purpose was . . . to govern the entire world”: Times and Seasons, May 1, 1844, and Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 6, p. 292.
33president pro tem of the world: Grant H. Palmer, “Did Joseph Smith Commit Treason in His Quest for Political Empire in 1844?” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 32 (2) (Fall/Winter 2012), p. 54.
33sounding out the Russians: Faulring, American Prophet’s Record, p. 290.
34expeditions are “attended with much expense”: Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy, p. 132.
3. ZION, ILLINOIS
37“The citizens responded to the call”: Wandle Mace, “Autobiography (1809–1846),” typescript, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, Utah, p. 13.
37neither medical training nor legal education: Susan Easton Black, “Isaac Galland: Both Sides of the River,” Nauvoo Journal (Fall 1996).
38“No man of understanding”: Maurine Carr Ward, “John Needham’s Nauvoo Letter: 1843,” Nauvoo Journal (Spring 1996).
38“the honored instrument”: Black, “Isaac Galland,” p. 5.
39“signifies a beautiful situation”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed., rev., vol. 4 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), p. 268.
39“literally a wilderness”: Ibid., vol. 3, p. 375.
39it was pestilential: Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 54.
40“soon expect to see flocking”: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 4, p. 213.
40“a sufficient quantity of ‘honey comb’”: Lyndon W. Cook, “Isaac Galland—Mormon Benefactor,” BYU Studies 19 (3) (Spring 1979).
41“wealthy immigrant from the slave States”: Thomas Ford, A History of Illinois, from Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847 (Chicago: S. C. Griggs, 1845), p. 280.
41“unambitious of wealth”: Ibid.
41“long, lank, lean, lazy”: Ibid., p. 281.
42“the abominable doctrine”: Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of Philip Hone, 1828–1851, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1927), p. 155.
42“increasing disregard of law”: D. Michael Quinn, ed., The New Mormon History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1992), p. 99.
43“We would rather be shot”: Ford, A History of Illinois, p. 249.
44it did issue honorary degrees: Susan Easton Black, “The University of Nauvoo, 1841–45,” Religious Educator 10 (3) (2009).
44its distinctive court system: Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi, p. 98.
45“growing like a mushroom”: John Hallwas and Roger Launius, Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mormon War in Illinois (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1995), p. 15.
47“We are a curiosity”: John G. Turner, Brigham Young, Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 301.
47built his two-story redbrick store: Roger Launius and Mark McKiernan, “Joseph Smith Jr.’s Red Brick Store,” Western Illinois Monograph Series, no. 5, Herald Publishing House, 2005, p. 17.
48secret rituals administered upstairs: Ibid., p. 31.
50“Mother found installed in the keeping-room”: Joseph Smith III, Joseph Smith III and the Restoration (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1952), p. 74.
50Lifting the trick stairs: Ibid., p. 25.
51The mummies, “frightfully disfigured”: Henry Caswall, The City of the Mormons, or, Three Days at Nauvoo in 1842 (London: Rivington, 1842), p. 28.
51“up a short, narrow stairway”: Charlotte Haven, “A Girl’s Letters from Nauvoo,” Overland Monthly 16 (December 1890).
52“trim looking old lady”: Eudocia Baldwin Marsh, “Mormons in Hancock County: A Reminiscence,” ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 64 (1) (Spring 1971), p. 38.
52“But serpents don’t have legs”: Haven, “A Girl’s Letters.”
53Bostonians Charles Francis Adams and Josiah Quincy: Josiah Quincy, “Joseph Smith at Nauvoo,” in Figures of the Past (Boston: Roberts Bros., 1896).
53“too much power to be safely trusted”: Ibid.
4. EVERYBODY HATES THE MORMONS
56“sound of a rushing mighty wind”: B. H. Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed., rev., vol. 2 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1978), p. 428.
57“The several companies presented”: Wandle Mace, “Autobiography (1809–1846),” typescript, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, Utah; Norton Jacobs, “Autobiography and Diary,” typescript, Harold B. Lee Library, Provo, Utah.
57“Smith had always shown great favor”: Eudocia Baldwin Marsh, “Mormons in Hancock County: A Reminiscence,” ed. Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 64 (1) (Spring 1971).
57“I am a son”: B. H. Roberts, The Rise and Fall of Nauvoo (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1900), p. 107.
58a mammoth success: Roberts, ed., History of the Church, vol. 4, p. 326ff.; also see Marsh, “Mormons in Hancock County”; Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994), p. 93; Glen Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 2002), p. 234; and Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Donald Q. Cannon, The Nauvoo Legion in Illinois: A History of the Mormon Militia, 1841–1845 (Norman, OK: Arthur Clark, 2010).
60“I lived at S
punky Point”: William Roscoe Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), p. 6.
60The novice newspaper owner Sharp: John Hallwas, “Thomas Gregg: Early Illinois Journalist and Author,” Western Illinois Monograph Series, no. 2, Western Illinois University, Macomb, 1983, p. 44; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 598.
61“the mean hypocritical human”: Jacobs, “Autobiography and Diary.”
61Sharp would prove . . . a formidable enemy: Thomas Gregg, History of Hancock County, Illinois, together with an outline history of the State, and a digest of State laws, vol. 2 (Chicago: Chapman, 1880), p. 750.
63“Come, Josey, fork over”: Marshall Hamilton, “Thomas Sharp’s Turning Point: Birth of an Anti-Mormon,” Sunstone (October 1989), p. 21.
63“make us feel right bad”: Warsaw Signal, June 9, 1841.
63“How military these people are”: Ibid., July 21, 1841.
64a powerful voting bloc: Ibid., June 23, 1841.
64“Mormon Joe and his Danite seraglio”: Ibid., July 31, 1844, and August 25, 1846.
64William entered the fray: D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), p. 220.
65the first issue of the Nauvoo Wasp: For accounts of April 6, see Jerry C. Jolley, “The Sting of the Wasp: Early Nauvoo Newspaper—April 1842 to April 1843,” BYU Studies 22 (4) (1982); Marshall Hamilton, “Thomas Sharp’s Turning Point: Birth of an Anti-Mormon,” Sunstone (October 1989); Annette Hampshire, “Thomas Sharp and Anti-Mormon Sentiment in Illinois, 1842–1845,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 72 (May 1979); Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 288.
