Joseph Smith’s foundational spiritual experiences
were in the past when he began keeping a journal in November 1832. He had already organized a church in a log home in western
in April 1830 and set in motion
ambitious efforts to preach throughout the world and gather the converted in one
location in preparation for the imminent return of the Lord.
Seven years later, when the last of the five journals
published in this volume concluded, Smith and his followers had built a in , Ohio,
and launched missionary efforts not only in the eastern but also in and England. They had weathered
internal dissension, external opposition, evacuation of Kirtland, and expulsion from
each of the two gathering centers they had established in , and persisted as a viable religious
movement despite repeatedly being forced to leave their homes. By fall 1839, the Latter-day Saints numbered about
sixteen thousand, operated with a well-defined leadership and doctrinal structure,
and had begun to establish Smith’s final and most successful community, , Illinois.
When the first entry in Joseph
Smith’s first journal was made in 1832, the
establishment of a gathering place in ,
Missouri, was well under way. The Book of Mormon, Smith’s first published work,
prophesied that Gentiles who received the true gospel would assist descendants of
the Book of Mormon peoples—usually called “Lamanites” by the Mormons—to build a New
Jerusalem, which would be a center for gathering the righteous. Smith announced as early as September
1830 that this city would be located near the western boundaries of the
. In late 1830,
he dispatched missionaries to American Indians living immediately west of . This mission established a westward
trajectory for the Mormons, following the pattern of thousands of other Americans,
and would lead to designation of the gathering place in 1831.
On the way west from , the missionaries
stopped in northeastern to share their message with Reformed Baptist
minister and his congregations in Mentor and . This
apparent diversion had far-reaching effects on the development of Mormonism. Rigdon
had long been involved in the Christian restorationist movement and had only
recently broken with one of its leading lights, . As Rigdon and
many of his followers converted to the new faith, Ohio soon became a more promising
base of operations than New York, where persecution and the Smith family’s financial
difficulties thwarted the church’s efforts. Revelations in December 1830 and January 1831 mandated gathering the
Latter-day Saints to Ohio, where they were to seek sanctification, receive further
revelation, and be “endowed with power from on high,” all of which would empower
them to “go forth among all nations” and play an essential role in the salvation of
the house of Israel.
From the time Joseph Smith arrived in in February 1831, “the Gathering” knit together Mormon
belief and experience. Latter-day Saint converts came to understand the gathering as
a divine work of calling out the elect from the world—Babylon—to build communities
of believers—Zion and her stakes—who would construct temples and prepare for the
imminent return and millennial reign of Christ. Places where the Saints gathered
would provide refuge from the destruction expected prior to the Second Coming and
function as centers of collective strength from which the word could go forth to
warn the world. Gathering made conversion to Mormonism no longer analogous
to joining other Christian congregations: Mormonism involved changing location as
well as belief.
While the Mormons began moving to ,
the missionaries to the Lamanites were scouting a location for the gathering place
in that was
envisioned in their original mandate. In July 1831,
Smith officially designated the frontier village of ,
Jackson County—the eastern terminus of the Santa Fe Trail—as
the center of Zion and the site for the New Jerusalem. Most Saints who had migrated from to Ohio, as well as many of the Ohio converts, moved to .
Though Smith maintained his headquarters in , the
Mormon population in Missouri, numbering about eight hundred souls by November 1832, soon exceeded that in Kirtland. Counter to the spirit of freewheeling democratic capitalism that
characterized at the time, the Latter-day Saints
sought to care for the poor collectively, balancing community needs with private
stewardship. Temporal concerns were also spiritual, Smith declared. But despite
strenuous efforts on the part of Smith and other leaders, the reforms faltered, and
the economic blueprint remained a largely unrealized ideal.
These were the circumstances of Joseph
Smith and the church when in November 1832
he began keeping his first journal. Covering two momentous years, this fragmentary,
personal record provides information about Smith’s relationships and attitudes but
only a piecemeal narrative of his activities. Evident here are the themes of
insufficient resources and competing priorities that surface repeatedly throughout
the journals of this volume. Maintaining and developing both Zion in and
in
Ohio—more than eight hundred miles apart—with the limited resources of the infant
church and the rudimentary transportation and communication systems of the day
imposed enormous logistical challenges. Anchored in revelation, both gathering places were indispensable—at least for the
present—and yet together they put a nearly unbearable strain on the church.
During the period of this first journal, Smith
led the Latter-day Saints toward realization of the promise announced in early 1831 that they would be endowed
with divine power in . For five years, they pursued an “endowment,”
an anticipated outpouring of spiritual gifts like the Pentecostal experience of the
apostles in the New Testament. Smith repeatedly called elders of the church together
for instruction and empowerment to help them with their responsibilities in the
ministry, but the fulfillment of the promise was not immediate. Revelations in December 1832 and January
1833 mandated the creation of sacred space, “a house of God” for a “school
of the prophets” in which to receive instruction, ordinances, and “edification,” as
part of the longed-for endowment. A revelation in June 1833
chastised the Saints for not having built such a space and dictated the dimensions
of the “house” in that came
to be known as the , or temple. Its construction required a major
expenditure of labor and money from a body of the Saints, who at that time numbered
only about 150 in Kirtland itself.
Joseph Smith envisioned temples—buildings dedicated
to God—as key religious and educational centers for the Saints. Three weeks after
excavation began for the in in June 1833, he sent a plat for an expanded city of Zion
to church leaders in . It
provided for twenty-four temples on three central squares and for lots to
accommodate an eventual population of fifteen to twenty thousand. He and his presidency mandated the
immediate construction of one of these temples in .
The Saints’ ability to sustain two such costly
construction projects was never tested. Conflict with non-Mormon neighbors in
made it impossible to build any temple there. A cultural chasm divided the Mormons,
largely northerners and easterners, from other Missourians, largely southerners and
westerners. The fissure corresponded to a growing polarization of the in terms of sectional politics and identity. The perceived threat of
Mormon economic and political dominance in the region, compounded by the insistence
of the Saints that their expansive plans were based on contemporary revelation from
God, aroused alarm. Local opposition to the Saints’ project of building Zion was
inflamed by suspicions that the Mormons would incite rebellion among slaves, ally
with Indians, and expand their landholdings and influence by force of arms. Verbal
and physical confrontation climaxed with the destruction of the Mormon press at
by
local vigilantes in July 1833 and the expulsion of
the Mormons from the county that November. Most
Mormons regrouped north of the in and
neighboring counties, awaiting assistance to return to their homes.
“Redeeming Zion” replaced building the temple in Zion as
an urgent priority for Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints. This meant
restoring the Saints to their
property and swelling their numbers with fellow believers from and
elsewhere to continue the project of preparing for Christ’s second coming. A February 1834 revelation called for the Saints to gather
an expeditionary force to escort the exiles back to Jackson County. Expecting that governor would assist by activating state militia, Smith and an “army” of
slightly more than two hundred men marched about eight hundred miles to in
spring 1834 but retreated after
state support failed to materialize. Before Smith returned to , a
revelation deferred the Mormons’ return to Jackson County until after the in Kirtland could be completed and the Saints
empowered.
In the ten months that elapsed between the end of Joseph
Smith’s first journal in 1834 and the start of
the second in 1835, the church sought through
outreach—proselytizing, fund raising, and attracting additional settlers to both
and —to
achieve their prophet’s goals of completing the in and
building a larger population base in areas near
from which to return to reestablish Zion. To support these efforts and the
administration of congregations outside the main gathering places, Smith directed
expansion of the church’s leadership. At the initial church organization in 1830, the only ecclesiastical officers were Joseph Smith as
“first elder” and as “second elder.” Within about five
years, church leadership included a presidency for Kirtland and the church as a
whole, another presidency for Missouri, a patriarch, bishops, high councils, and
“quorums” of additional priesthood officers. A Quorum of the Twelve and several
members of a Quorum of the Seventy were appointed in February 1835, chosen primarily from the ranks of veterans of the
expedition to Missouri. This newly constructed hierarchy administered both local and
general jurisdictions, and a lay priesthood that included most adult males and some
older youth shared responsibility for the success of the church’s activities.
Though self-taught and having little formal education,
Joseph
Smith cared about learning and promoted education in the Mormon community.
In ’s School of the Prophets and its 1835–1836 successor, the Elders School, Smith spearheaded instruction and
study in theology, English grammar, and other fields to better qualify himself and
the elders of the church for conducting God’s work and especially for proselytizing
worldwide. As construction of the in Kirtland neared completion and members of the lay
ministry gathered from and
elsewhere for training and spiritual preparation, Smith added yet another item to an
already full agenda: the study of Hebrew by many of the Mormon ministry under the
tutelage of a .
Joseph Smith’s second journal, covering more than six
consecutive months from fall 1835 to
spring 1836, records the multitude of activities and concerns that filled
his days as he prepared his people for a hoped-for Pentecostal season. With daily
entries that Smith apparently dictated to scribes, this journal provides a connected
and much fuller narrative than the first. It covers institutional and spiritual
developments and provides revealing glimpses of Smith’s relationships with his
family.
Joseph Smith carefully laid the groundwork during the
winter of 1835–1836 for sacred
ordinances and spiritual experiences by focusing on discipline, unity, organization,
and individual sanctification. From within this highly structured setting, his
second journal describes the rituals and spiritual ecstasy experienced in
from January through early April
1836, culminating in the long-sought endowment in the . The diary concludes with an account of visions that he
and experienced in the temple on 3 April
1836. It tells that Jesus Christ appeared and accepted the temple, and
Moses, Elias, and Elijah each conferred “keys” upon Smith and Cowdery in
anticipation of the advent of the Millennium.
Smith instructed the now empowered Latter-day Saint
ministry to go forth as the Spirit directed them. During the two-year gap that
separated Smith’s second journal from his third, they cast their missionary net
widely, establishing the church in the British Isles in 1837. The Saints had initially anticipated an imminent
return to , perhaps backed
by a more impressive Mormon military force than before. Instead, now they sought
converts and marshaled resources to help purchase new land for Mormon settlement.
By summer 1836, the
continued influx of Saints into , Missouri, led the other local
residents to insist that the Mormons move elsewhere. Since neither nor Clay county could
serve as their gathering place, the Mormons looked to sparsely settled land to the
northeast, where, at the close of 1836, the legislature created
for Mormon settlement. Meanwhile, the Saints continued to build homes and
enterprises in ,
where the Mormon population swelled to about two thousand by
1838, eclipsing the local non-Mormon population of about twelve
hundred.
Despite continued gathering, growth, and doctrinal
development, all was not well. Informed by an Old Testament model of prophetic
leaders who exercised a broad scope of leadership powers, Joseph
Smith moved increasingly in the direction of theocracy. Some members of the
church felt a growing tension between the inspired direction of their prophet and
the American value of individual freedom. Vexing to many was Smith’s regulation of
political and economic matters, especially as economic challenges mounted. Rebellion
erupted when a
banking venture promoted by Smith failed just prior to the nationwide panic of 1837. Mormon enterprises succumbed and the Latter-day
Saints struggled as depression engulfed . Some of Smith’s closest
associates joined the ranks of the disillusioned, even attempting to depose him as
church leader. He rallied support and won votes of confidence from Mormon
congregations in both and , but dissidents
continued their efforts to undermine his leadership. From outside the church, , a non-Mormon businessman in the Kirtland area, instigated numerous
lawsuits against Smith, crippling him financially and constraining his freedom of
movement.
As conflict in mounted and arrangements for Mormon settlement in , Missouri, were
completed, Smith gave renewed emphasis to the imperative to gather to Zion. By late 1837, apostle , fearing for his life, left
for , and Smith himself was planning to move. Facing both threats of
physical violence and renewed legal harassment, on 12
January 1838 Joseph Smith and the presidency received a revelation to leave
Kirtland as soon as possible for Missouri.
Faithful Latter-day Saints were to follow. Smith, , and their families fled to
the new Mormon center at in Caldwell County. Other Kirtland Saints immigrated to Missouri
throughout the spring, summer, and
autumn.
Soon after his arrival in , Smith began a third journal. Incorporating key
minutes and correspondence, this first journal, spanning March to September 1838, documents his
reassertion of authority both in
before his departure and in Missouri, where he set about reestablishing a church
headquarters. In a form of documentary history, Smith’s clerk copied into this
record a series of letters, revelations, and other documents before settling into
more traditional journal entries. Operating in crisis mode in early 1838 prior to Smith’s arrival in
Far West but under his direction, the Latter-day Saints in had already
begun to counter the influence of leading dissidents there by removing the Missouri
presidency from office and excommunicating two of its members. Upon his arrival in
March 1838, Smith ratified these actions and moved
against the remaining dissident leaders. , , and other prominent Missouri Saints were excommunicated in Smith’s
presence that spring. Though Smith
had been slow to act against dissenters in in 1837, now he and his supporters acted decisively to right the ship. In
June, publicly denounced
excommunicants who still sought to undermine Smith’s leadership, and several fled
the county in response to threats of physical harm.
As the Mormon population continued to grow, with
converts arriving from as far away as , the Latter-day Saints expanded their
settlements and moved to establish more. Their hopes for a new Zion, however, were
short lived. They came up against the widespread determination of many Missourians
to confine the Mormons within a small, remote county of their own. The growth of
Mormon settlements in neighboring and Carroll
counties especially aroused ire. An August 1838
skirmish between Mormons and Missourians at the Daviess County voting polls
triggered a chain of incendiary rumors and responses. Joseph
Smith led a large body of armed men across county lines to seek assurances
that local Mormons could enjoy their civil rights in peace. For the moment, numbers
were now in their favor. Missourians from and
counties had been able to compel the Latter-day Saints to leave their counties where
the Saints were a small minority, but the sparsely settled inhabitants of Daviess
County could not expel the rapidly immigrating Saints without help from other
counties. Vigilantes from Daviess County used the
Latter-day Saints’ incursion into Daviess as the pretext for soliciting aid from
other counties to drive the Mormons out. Legal proceedings against Smith and
intervention by state militia to forestall violent confrontation averted a showdown
only temporarily.
As the conflict in escalated, another
scribe began Joseph Smith’s fourth journal, for September and October 1838. The first
week of this set of skeletal notes overlaps the final week of the third journal. The
third journal probably ended because Smith or his scribe left to aid endangered Saints in . Confining
itself to terse reporting of Smith’s whereabouts in a five-week period, the fourth
journal ends 6 October, just before Smith helped
evacuate the Mormon village of , Carroll County, which was under siege by an overwhelming vigilante
force, including many who were among those recently dispersed from Daviess
County. No journal
was kept during the Mormons’ chaotic final weeks in Missouri.
The debacle demonstrated the futility of Mormon appeals for aid from governor and emboldened a wide-ranging
coalition of anti-Mormon volunteers, who regrouped in . After two generals in the Missouri militia advised the Latter-day
Saints to fight their own battles because the generals’ troops could not be relied
upon for protection, the Saints started an aggressive
counteroffensive. In a preemptive strike, they first drove most of those who did not
share their faith out of Daviess County. Immediately south of , a company of
Mormon militia defeated and dispersed a unit of militia
that had previously taken Mormon prisoners. Rumors spread quickly that the Mormons
had annihilated the entire company. In the midst of this external conflict, two
leading apostles denounced Smith, charging him with ruthless aggression to
fulfill ambitions for power. The
perceived threat of more-widespread Latter-day Saint aggression enraged opponents
and alarmed the governor. Vigilantes from Daviess, ,
and other nearby counties massacred Mormon villagers in eastern Caldwell County, and
Boggs ordered an overwhelming contingent of state militia to restore peace by
subduing the perceived insurgency. If necessary, read the governor’s order, the
Mormons were to be “exterminated or driven from the state.” In early November 1838, Missouri’s “Mormon War” concluded
with the surrender of , the arrest and imprisonment of Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders,
and the beginning of forced exile of all practicing Mormons from the state.
While thousands of Latter-day Saints trudged eastward
through bitter cold toward ’s boundary at the
Mississippi River across from , Illinois, Smith
agonized over the lessons to be learned from the Saints’ crushing defeats in
Missouri and over the future of their movement. Why had God allowed such an
outcome? The practice of
gathering together in their own religiously based communities had repeatedly proven
hazardous; leaders among the Mormons who had left Missouri questioned whether it
should be continued.
Joseph Smith emerged from more than five months in
jails with a tenacious sense of purpose as he rejoined his refugee
people in . He soon
established a new gathering place, his last. Smith’s 1839 journal, the last in this volume, opens with Smith’s escape from
Missouri in April 1839. Through 15 October of that year, it reports his activities
during the founding of the Mormon community at
(later Nauvoo), Illinois, on a bend on the Mississippi River
some fifty miles north of Quincy. Brief entries, mostly from the perspective of the
scribe, outline Smith’s activities and travels, occasionally conveying the gist of a
sermon. Scarcely had the Latter-day Saints begun to regroup in and near their new
headquarters before malaria sickened many. Smith extended aid to the suffering and,
in a bold move for a difficult time, dispatched some of his most loyal and capable
leaders, the Quorum of the Twelve, to the British Isles to
find new converts. The gathering was resuming in earnest.