The final
fourteen months of Joseph Smith’s life were marked by
important developments in the growth of , Illinois, and
in the doctrine and practices of . These months were some of the
busiest and most complex of Joseph Smith’s life, as he functioned in
his roles of president and trustee-in-trust of the church, mayor of
Nauvoo, lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion, and candidate for
the presidency.
During this time, violence both threatened and real increased
against Joseph Smith and other members of the church, culminating in
the murder of Joseph and his brother in , Illinois,
on 27 June 1844. The journals of
Joseph Smith presented in this volume are an essential source for
understanding this critical period of Mormon history as well as the
life and thought of the church’s founding leader in the time leading
up to his death.
Joseph Smith’s journals during this
period were kept exclusively by his private secretary, . Richards had been
one of the principal writers for Smith’s earlier journals, and
by September 1843 he was
also serving as the church historian, church recorder, Nauvoo city
recorder, and clerk of the municipal court. Until late in the
journal, many entries document relatively few events—often only
one—for each day rather than provide a comprehensive account of
Joseph Smith’s activities. Most entries in Richards’s own journal
for this period are even shorter, suggesting that the brevity of the
entries in Joseph Smith’s journal resulted more from Richards’s
journal-keeping style than from a lack of familiarity with Smith’s
activities. Because of Richards’s terse style, we often know more
about Smith’s activities through other individuals’ journals and
other sources than we do through his own journal. Longer, more
detailed entries toward the end of the journal probably resulted
from Richards’s own interest in the growing number and seriousness
of the threats against Joseph Smith beginning in January 1844. Unless otherwise noted,
the first-person pronouns that occur in the journal refer to Joseph
Smith and probably reflect Richards’s conscious effort to make this
document Smith’s personal journal.
Though appears to have either
participated in or witnessed most of the events he documented, he at
times he wrote retrospectively or from secondhand information. Occasionally, such practices resulted
in factual error. Only on rare occasions was
Richards not personally aware of Smith’s actions; Richards, for
example, remained in
in June 1843 while Joseph Smith and his wife visited relatives in , Illinois, some 130
miles northeast of Nauvoo.
The trip to was ill timed. That
same month, a special term of the circuit court in , Missouri,
indicted Joseph Smith for treason committed
during the “Mormon War” in 1838. Based
on the indictment, governor issued a requisition
to governor calling for
Smith’s extradition to for trial—the third
such call to return Joseph Smith to Missouri in as many years. The
requisition resulted in his arrest on 23
June 1843, news of which began a massive rescue effort in
that ended
with Smith’s release at a habeas corpus hearing before the Nauvoo
Municipal Court on 1 July.
Because of ’s physical separation from
Joseph Smith during much of the
third extradition attempt, little of this drama appears in the
journal. Later entries and sources, however, indicate Smith’s
continued concern about enemies in . Referencing the
three extradition attempts, for example, the City Council
passed an ordinance on 8 December
1843 stating that anyone found guilty of attempting to
arrest Joseph Smith or others for alleged activities in Missouri in
the 1830s would be
incarcerated for life in the city prison. Another ordinance
passed later in the month authorized the mayor to “select and have
in readiness for every emergency” forty policemen, and a third
required that all warrants originating outside of Nauvoo receive the
signature of Nauvoo’s mayor before they could be served in the
city. While these measures appear to have been
a direct result of both real and rumored efforts to extradite Joseph
Smith to Missouri, they also appear to have been influenced by the
news that Missourians had crossed the into (where Nauvoo
was located) and kidnapped two Mormons, and his father, , on the grounds that Daniel had stolen two horses
in Missouri a few years earlier. Father and son eventually returned
safely to , but not before residents of Nauvoo
had petitioned to somehow prevent
Missourians “from committing further violence upon the citizens of
Illinois.”
Former and current difficulties with lay behind several other petitions issued from
during this
period. Between
December 1843 and the end of February 1844, Joseph Smith and others petitioned
several states—, , , , , and Tennessee—to use their
influence to help force Missouri to recompense the Mormons for the
losses they suffered there in the 1830s. At the same time, non-Mormon , a surveyor from
, Illinois,
petitioned Congress on behalf of the Saints to consider Missouri’s
crimes against the Mormons “and grant such relief as by the
Constitution and Laws you may have power to give.” In a separate document written in December 1843, the Nauvoo City Council
memorialized Congress to grant territorial status to Nauvoo until
the state of Missouri provided redress for Mormon losses and to
authorize Nauvoo’s mayor to call upon federal troops if necessary to
help the Nauvoo Legion “repel the invasion of mobs, keep the public
peace, and protect the innocent from the unhallowed ravages of
lawless banditti.” Like earlier appeals to Congress, none of these
efforts resulted in any tangible aid for the Saints.
In a separate action, Joseph Smith
instructed the in February 1844 to send a small
exploring party to the western reaches of the continent to find a
location where the Saints could move, build a city, and “have a
governme[n]t of [their] own.” Within six weeks, some twenty-nine men
either volunteered for the expedition or were assigned to go. Over the course of those six weeks,
however, the plan changed significantly. On 10 March, Joseph Smith received two
letters from and , who were harvesting lumber along the
in Wisconsin Territory for the construction of the House and
Nauvoo temple. Wight and Miller proposed that they and their
associates in be called to
preach the gospel in the southern
and other points south and to build a new settlement in the
Republic of Texas, which would serve as a
center of gathering. Using the letters as a springboard, Joseph
Smith and others met the following day and “agreed to look to some
place” where they could go “and establish a Theocracy either in
Texas or Oregon or somewhere in California.” The group also appointed a committee to
draft a constitution “according to the mind of God” that would serve
as “an ensign to the nations.” Under Smith’s direction, those
assembled then organized themselves into a council—later known most
often as the , but also as the
Kingdom of God or Council of the Kingdom—to oversee the
endeavor.
The Council of Fifty met on sixteen occasions between March and the
end of May 1844, often for the better part of an entire
day. In most cases,
recorded very little about the council’s proceedings in Joseph Smith’s journal, even though
both men attended the meetings. Extensive minutes kept by , however, provide
details about the council’s discussions and plans. According to, a member of the council as well as a in the church’s governing , the group’s ultimate goal was “to form
a theocracy according to the will of Heaven, planted without any
intention to interfere with any government of the world. . . . We
will hunt a spot somewhere on the earth where no other government
has jurisdiction and cannot interfere with us and there plant our
standard.” The council dealt with several
concerns, one of which was issuing yet another petition to Congress,
this one proposing a bill that would make Joseph Smith a member of
the Army and
authorize him “to raise a company of one hundred thousand armed
volunteers, in the United States and Territories” to protect
American interests in the West.
After its organization in March, the Council of Fifty also oversaw
Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for the presidency of the
, an effort
launched in earnest the previous month. Smith had accepted the
nomination from fellow church members in January 1844 after writing to leading Whig and
Democratic candidates two months earlier and asking them what their
“rule of action” would be toward the Latter-day Saints, particularly
in helping them obtain redress for the losses they had sustained
earlier in . Unsatisfactory answers from three
of the candidates, and silence from the other two, appear to have
been significant factors behind Joseph Smith’s decision to run.
Smith explained that he accepted the nomination because “no portion
of the government as yet has step[p]ed forward” to protect the
Saints from persecution and compensate them for their losses in
Missouri. “Under view of these things,” he told a small assembly in
February, “I feel it to be my
right & privilege to obtain what influence & power I can . .
. for the protection of injured innocence.” Joseph Smith proffered a
commitment to protect the rights of all people—not just the
Mormons—and expressed a desire to alter the United States
Constitution “to make it imperative on the officers to enforce the
protection of all men in their rights.” His expansive platform called for a
variety of legal, economic, military, and social reforms, as well as
for the annexation of both Texas and Oregon. Some of these
proposals, such as annexing Texas, reflected Democratic ideals;
others, such as abolishing slavery and annexing Oregon, were more
aligned with Whig priorities. Predictably, Smith’s platform also
argued that the president should have “full power to send an army to
suppress mobs” and that governors should not have to ask the
president for troops “in cases of invasion or rebellion.” Erroneously believing that his first choice of
a running mate, of , was ineligible for the office of vice president and
evidently not receiving a reply from his second choice, of Tennessee, Joseph Smith ultimately asked to run as his vice-presidential
candidate. A “state convention” held in on 17 May formally selected Smith and
Rigdon as candidates and resolved to hold a national convention in
in
July.
Joseph Smith and his followers
found themselves involved in more local political concerns during
this period as well. Most consequential was the election of 7 August 1843, which pitted Whig
candidate against Democratic
candidate for the seat in the House of
Representatives for the district that
included . The day
before the election, Joseph Smith told a group of assembled Saints
that he had planned to support Walker, one of his attorneys and “an
old fri[e]nd,” and recounted the help he had received from Walker
after his arrest in two
months earlier. Following these remarks, however, he told the
congregation that “has had a testimo[n]y” that
it would be “better for this people to vote for hoge” than for
Walker and that he, Joseph, “never kn[e]w Hiram say he ever had a
revelation & it faild.” With strong Mormon support, Hoge won
the election handily, as did the Democratic candidates for most of
the contested county positions. The victories set off a violent
backlash from non-Mormons and Whigs in the county, who complained at
a meeting in the
following month that they “have had men of the most vicious and
abominable habits, imposed upon us, to fill our most important
county offices, by his [Joseph Smith’s] dictum, . . . that he may
the more certainly control our destinies, and render himself,
through the instrumentality of these base creatures of his
ill-directed power as absolutely a despot over the citizens of this
county, as he now is, over the serfs of his own servile clan.” The
meeting ultimately resolved to resist all future “wrongs” imposed by
the Saints “peaceably, if we can, but forcibly, if we must,” thus
helping to set the stage for violence the following year.
Despite growing opposition from without, Joseph Smith continued to instruct
faithful members of the church, delivering more than sixty public
addresses in the months covered by the journal presented in this
volume. Most of these discourses are noted in the journal, though
the detail with which
recorded their contents varies considerably. Joseph Smith delivered
most of these addresses to the general membership of the church in
various outdoor meeting places, although some, reflecting the
variety of activities in which he was engaged, were given to the
Legion, Nauvoo
policemen, or some other group. He spoke on a variety of topics,
often transitioning from religious themes to civic and political
ones within the same discourse. Prominent among the more temporal
concerns he addressed were his political views, the ongoing threats
of violence directed against him and his followers, and the
government’s inability to offer protection. He also defended the
Nauvoo city charter, which some citizens and
lawmakers wanted amended or revoked. Religious topics included
resurrection and salvation, as well as unique Mormon doctrines such
as baptism for the dead, other priesthood ordinances, and a complex,
multi-tiered heaven. On 7 April
1844, Joseph Smith delivered his well-known “King Follett
discourse,” in which he taught that God had a mortal past and that
humans could progress to godhood.
By 1843 it was not unusual for
several people to record his sermons, thereby providing historians
with a rich record of Joseph Smith’s theological ideas during the
last months of his life.
Continuing a practice he had begun earlier, Joseph Smith married several women
as plural wives during the first six months covered in the journal
presented here. Several of his
close associates, including and
, also married plural
wives in . While
relatively few members of the church were aware of these plural
marriages, rumors that something of the sort was taking place were
rampant, especially after
publicly accused Joseph Smith in 1842
of having multiple “spiritual” wives.
Believing the practice to be legitimate only under his direction as
prophet and church president, Joseph Smith emphasized the general
standard that “no man shall have but one wife” and directed Richards
to discipline “those who were preaching teaching . . . the doctrin
of plurality of wives” on their own. In a rare exception to his practice of
not noting plural marriages in Joseph Smith’s journal, Richards recorded in shorthand Smith’s
marriage to —Willard’s older
sister—on 12 June 1843, as well
as his own plural marriage to Susan Liptrot on
the same date. Though evidently
agreed to and even attended at least some of these marriages, carefully worded
entries in the journal and evidence from other sources indicate that
by the summer of 1843 she
would no longer countenance them. Most
of these plural marriages took place before 12 July 1843, the day Joseph Smith dictated the
revelation explaining that a man was permitted to have
multiple wives if God commanded it. After
two additional plural marriages—one in September and one in November—Smith appears to have
stopped marrying new plural wives.
The same revelation that explained the conditions under which a man
could take plural wives also explained the principle of eternal
marriage, whereby a man and a woman who were “sealed” as husband and
wife by one holding the proper priesthood authority would “pass by
the and the gods . . . to their exaltation and glory”
after death. Such sealings were an integral part of
many (perhaps all) of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages, as evidenced
by several of his plural wives later testifying that they had been
“married or sealed” to him “for time and eternity.” An entry in shorthand
in Joseph Smith’s journal suggests
that he and , who had been married civilly in
1827, were sealed for eternity on
28 May 1843. One of his close
associates, , was evidently sealed to his
wife the same day, and other trusted friends were sealed to their
current spouses over the ensuing months.
These sealing ceremonies generally took place in meetings of church
members who had earlier participated in rituals, or ordinances, that
would later be performed in the
temple. In Joseph Smith’s
journal, referred to meetings of
this group by a variety of names, including “,” “,” “council of the
quorum,” and “prayer meeting.”
Members of this group first met on 4 May
1842 when, in Richards’s words, Joseph Smith taught nine
men about the “ & , , and the
communications of . . . & all those plans & principles
by which any one is enabled to secure the fulness of those blessings
which has been prepared for the chu[r]ch of the first-born, and come
up, and abide in the prese[n]ce of Eloheim in the eternal
worlds.” This group met four more times by the end of June 1842, after
which it did not meet again until 26 May
1843, almost a year later. On this date, Joseph Smith
evidently repeated the same instruction to some of the same men,
probably to prepare them for the additional of being sealed to their wives. Several were
sealed just days later. In a separate ordinance performed the
following September, Joseph and
were “anointed &
ordd.
[ordained] to the highest and holiest order of the .” Other members of this
council—including all nine members of the Quorum of the Twelve who
were living in the area and their wives—eventually received the same
ordinance, which , a member of the
council, often referred to as a “second anointing” in his
journal. In addition to participating in these rituals,
the growing number of men and women invited to attend these meetings
often prayed together and received instructions from Joseph Smith
about teachings and doctrines related to the temple.
Joseph Smith spoke about the temple
and its ordinances in more public settings as well, and he
frequently urged church members to complete the construction of the
temple as soon
as possible so they could receive the promised blessings therein.
The effort to finish the temple extended well beyond the borders of
Nauvoo, with , , and several others harvesting lumber in
for the temple and authorized agents collecting money for its
construction from church members living elsewhere in the and . Stone for the walls and window arches
was one of the most pressing needs for the temple by June 1843, leading Joseph
Smith and others to repeatedly request men and means to quarry and
haul stone to the temple site.
By the winter of
1843–1844, the temple’s stone walls were “as high as the
arches of the first tier of windows all around” and Joseph Smith was
examining fringe designed for the temple’s pulpits. Up to this time the Mormons had also
been building the Nauvoo House, which was to be used as both a
private residence for Joseph Smith’s family and as a boardinghouse
or hotel for visitors to Nauvoo. Faced with limited resources, however, Smith
decided in March 1844 to halt
construction of the Nauvoo House until the temple was
completed. Church
leaders renewed their call for laborers and supplies for the temple
the following month, and on 4 May
1844
reported that four circular
windows of the temple’s upper story had been completed. While work on the temple appears
to have continued apace during the first half of 1844, Richards made fewer
references to it in the journal as he devoted more attention to the
growing opposition to Joseph Smith.
The opposition that Joseph Smith faced stemmed from a
variety of sources. Many non-Mormons in the area, for example, felt
the Municipal
Court had overstepped its authority on 1 July 1843 when it discharged
Joseph Smith from his arrest in .
Following the Democratic Party’s virtual sweep in the August 1843 county elections, others,
especially local Whigs, opposed Smith’s growing political influence
in western . In addition, rumors,
misunderstandings, and disagreements about the practice and validity
of plural marriage turned several influential Latter-day Saints
against the Mormon leader. Some church members also turned against
him over doctrinal developments—such as those taught in the King
Follett discourse—and over concern that his roles as president of
the church and mayor of Nauvoo represented a dangerous combination
of church and state. Joseph Smith’s tendency to speak freely and
publicly against his detractors—a habit his brother cautioned him about—also probably contributed to the
intensity of the opposition against him.
In some cases, Joseph Smith was able to peacefully
resolve differences with his opponents. In March 1843, for example, he accused of colluding with and other apostates
and threatened to disfellowship Rigdon from the church “unless
satisfa[c]tion was made.” The matter was apparently dropped
after Rigdon protested his innocence, but conflict resurfaced on
13 August 1843 when Joseph
Smith told a meeting of church members that he had heard from
gentlemen abroad that Rigdon had “made a covena[n]t” to betray him.
“I most solmnly proclaim the withdrawal of my fellowship from this
man, on the conditi[o]n that the foregoi[n]g be true,” Smith told
the assembled Saints, who then sanctioned his decision by a
unanimous vote. Two months later, however, following
appeals by , , , and Rigdon himself, the October of the church voted that Rigdon retain his
position as a counselor in the First Presidency. Joseph Smith told
the gathered Saints that he had not received “any material benefit”
from Rigdon as his counselor for some time and that while he was
willing to have Rigdon as a counselor, he still lacked confidence
“in his integrity and steadfastness, judging from their past
intercourse.” Though Rigdon apparently
did not play a prominent role in the First Presidency after this
time, the following year he actively participated in the Council of
Fifty and was Smith’s choice (albeit his third choice) for a running
mate in his presidential campaign.
Conflicts with other associates were resolved less
successfully. In early January 1844, Joseph Smith
informed that he had been removed from
the First Presidency and from the group that participated in temple
ordinances—both decisions evidently rooted in Law’s increasingly
strident opposition to Joseph Smith, especially over plural
marriage. At the same time,
conflict arose between Joseph Smith and influential lawyer and
businessman following a
5 January 1844 city council
meeting in which Smith accused Higbee of immoral conduct and of
“conniving with .” In addition, long-standing differences
between Joseph Smith and , a
prominent land speculator and physician, flared into open hostility
two months later, in part because Joseph Smith believed Foster’s
brother had written a letter
berating the Saints to the New York Weekly
Tribune. In spite of his efforts to bring about a
reconciliation in each case, Joseph Smith learned in late March of a
conspiracy against his life, spearheaded by William Law, his brother
, Robert D. Foster, , and Francis M.
Higbee’s brother Chauncey, who had been
excommunicated in 1842. The Laws and Robert D. Foster were
excommunicated the following month for “unchristianlike conduct,” as
was Francis M. Higbee in May. By that time the dissidents and their
supporters had proclaimed that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet and
organized a new church, with William Law as their president, Wilson
Law as one of his counselors, and Robert D. Foster and Francis M.
Higbee as members of a new quorum of twelve apostles.
Joseph Smith’s opponents also took
their grievances to the courts. On 6 May
1844, Smith was arrested by deputy sheriff
John Parker on a writ issued by the Hancock County Circuit Court on
complaint of Francis M. Higbee, who accused Joseph Smith of defaming
his character in the 5 January
city council meeting “and on divers other days and times with in one
year last past.” Two days later, the same day the Municipal
Court discharged Smith on a writ of habeas corpus, the clerk of the
Hancock County Circuit Court issued Smith a summons to appear before
the circuit court to answer the charge. Later in the month, Joseph Smith
learned the grand jury had indicted him for two offenses. The first
indictment, based largely on the testimony of , was for
perjury; the second, based largely on the
testimony of and and clearly related to Smith’s marriages to
and other women
as plural wives, was for adultery and fornication. In spite of Joseph Smith’s hope to
“meet [his] enemies—before the court and have [his] Indictments
invstigat [investigated],” none of these cases were resolved by the
time of his murder the following month.
In the 7 May 1844 entry of the
journal, noted the report
that had just obtained
“an opposition printing press” from , Ohio. Precisely one month later, on 7 June 1844, Foster and other
dissenters published the first and only issue of the Nauvoo
Expositor, a paper dedicated to providing its readers
with “a full, candid and succinct statement of facts, as they
exist in the city of Nauvoo, fearless of whose
particular case they may apply.” Setting their sights squarely on
Joseph Smith, the paper’s
publishers charged the Mormon leader with combining church and state
in , teaching
false doctrine, and marrying convert women as “spiritual”
wives. Persuaded by the argument that the paper’s
publishers were intending to “raise a mob” against Nauvoo by
publishing lies, on 10 June the
city council directed Smith, in his capacity as mayor of Nauvoo, to
“cause said printing establishment and papers to be removed without
delay”—an order Joseph Smith fulfilled by directing Nauvoo marshal
to destroy the
press. Greene reported later that evening that he and others “had
removd the press. type—& pinteed [printed] pape[r]s—&
fixtures into the street & fired them.”
The reaction of Joseph Smith’s enemies, both within
and without,
was immediate., one of the
paper’s publishers, charged Joseph and , ,
and several others with committing a riot, while armed men from
surrounding communities began gathering to , the
county seat of . Apprised of
the growing tension by letters and messengers, governor traveled to
Carthage as well, ostensibly to prevent violence between the Mormons
and their enemies. After reviewing the situation, Ford ordered
Joseph Smith and the others accused of riot to come to Carthage for
a hearing on the charge, even though they had already been
discharged from arrest by two different courts in Nauvoo. Fearing
they would be killed if they went to Carthage, Joseph Smith, his
brother Hyrum, and crossed the to
the night of
22–23
June to avoid arrest. ,
who had not been charged, accompanied them. In Iowa the men spoke
with , who had talked
with the captain of the posse that was to arrest the Smiths.
Bernhisel gave Joseph and Hyrum “greater assurance of protection” if
they were to go to Carthage and satisfied them that Ford had
“succeeded in bringing in subjection . . . to some extent” the men
who had gathered there. Abandoning their plan to travel to for
help, the two Smiths and Richards returned to Illinois and, in
company with others who were charged with riot, made their way to
Carthage, where they arrived shortly before midnight on 24 June.
The following morning, Joseph and were arrested on the charge of treason,
reportedly because Joseph Smith had put under martial
law a week earlier, when an attack by anti-Mormons appeared
imminent. After posting bail in the riot case later in the day, both
men—along with several of their supporters—were committed to the
debtors’ room on the first floor of the jailhouse
to await trial on the treason charge, which was not eligible for
bail. Two days later, still awaiting trial, Joseph and Hyrum Smith
were murdered in the jailhouse by an armed mob of between 150 and
250 men.
likely inscribed the last
entry recorded in Joseph Smith’s journal—dated 22 June 1844—shortly before he and
the others left for the night of
22–23
June. Evidently leaving Smith’s journal in Nauvoo,
Richards recorded in his own journal, in great detail, the events of
the following five days, probably intending to use it to fill in
Joseph Smith’s journal at some later time. These entries in
Richards’s journal are included as Appendix 1 in this volume.
Appendix 2 reproduces entries from a daily record kept by that focuses on
Joseph Smith’s activities during the nine days preceding his flight
from Nauvoo (14–22
June 1844). Clayton’s journal contains entries that
highlight his own activities on these same nine days, suggesting
that his record on Joseph Smith may be a second authorized journal
of Joseph Smith, though no evidence has been found indicating that
Smith commissioned Clayton to keep such a record. Appendix 3
includes draft notes made by Richards, some of which were later
incorporated in Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo journals.
For all their significance in Mormon history, the events in , Joseph Smith’s candidacy for the
presidency, the third attempt to extradite him to , and the Council of Fifty figure far less
prominently in his journal than more mundane activities such as
business transactions, pleasure trips, visits with American Indians,
conversations with friends, and observations on the weather. Many
entries deal with land transactions, some of which appear to be
connected to Joseph Smith’s role as trustee-in-trust for the church.
Others deal with issues arising from his position as mayor of , including
city council decisions and court rulings. The journals also show
Joseph Smith’s engagement with many of the larger political and
cultural issues of the time, such as abolitionism, the annexation of
Texas, communitarianism, and a national bank. True to form, kept most entries
quite brief, and his record is incomplete in many ways. Yet in their
terse recital of any given day’s events, his entries illustrate the
variety of activities in which Joseph Smith was involved and his
significance in the church, community, and region. The journal also
provides glimpses into the richness and vibrancy of life in Nauvoo
as well as the complexity of a society under tension, a society
whose finer features are often blurred in broader historical
narratives and thematic studies. The journal presented here is an
essential primary source for anyone interested in understanding one
of the most significant periods, and certainly the most significant
personality, in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints.