The people

Who Joseph Smith Was

Mayor, lieutenant general, presidential candidate, and a prophet hunted by mobs. The whole 1844 record, from the Church’s own sources.

The point in one sentence

By the Church’s own record, in the spring of 1844 Joseph Smith was at once a prophet hunted by mobs and the mayor of Nauvoo, the lieutenant general of its militia, a candidate for President of the United States, and the man a secret council voted to receive as “our Prophet, Priest & King”; he said himself that he had “more to boast of than ever any man had,” and when the mob reached the jail he fired back. The one-line story of a gentle martyr leaves most of that out.

If you grew up in the Church, the picture you were probably given is a gentle one: a young prophet who saw a vision, was driven from town to town, and went “like a lamb to the slaughter” at Carthage. Those words are in scripture (D&C 135:4), and the danger he was in was real. This page shows the rest of what the Church’s own sources say about his last years.

What is true on the other side

Start here, because it is the strongest part of the story and it is real. Joseph Smith was not a man who held power in a quiet time. He held it while being hunted.

• The state tried to drive his people out. On October 27, 1838, Missouri’s governor ordered that the Saints be “exterminated or driven from the State if necessary.” In 1976 Missouri’s governor rescinded it, saying it “clearly contravened the rights to life, liberty, property and religious freedom” and expressing “deep regret for the injustice and undue suffering” it caused. (Church History Topics)
• He was jailed and mobbed. The Church’s biography says “In Ohio, critics tarred and feathered Joseph,” and that he “remained imprisoned through the winter of 1838–39” in Missouri. (Church History Topics)
• He was killed while in the state’s custody. “Governor Thomas Ford had promised them protection, but they felt uneasy being jailed in a hostile town.” “Five men were indicted for the murders and stood trial in Carthage in May 1845.” “Without Latter-day Saint witnesses, the prosecuting attorney could present little credible testimony, and he dismissed all the key evidence, leading the jury to acquit all five men.” The Church adds that “some scholars” view it “as a sham trial.” (Church History Topics)
• His closest followers stood with him. He was 38 when he died. John Taylor, who printed his campaign pamphlet, took four balls in the same room (D&C 135:2), and the Church’s canon calls the two brothers’ deaths a seal on their work (D&C 135, below).
• His 1844 platform was not self-serving on its face. The Church’s page says: “Joseph also called for the abolition of slavery in the United States by the government using revenues generated from the sale of federal lands in the western United States to purchase the freedom of enslaved men and women.” It also lists closing the prison system, a national bank, and expansion “conditioned upon receiving the consent of American Indians.” (Church History Topics)

The Church’s canon then makes its own claim about him, in the third verse: “Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.” (D&C 135:3) That is the standard this page measures the record against, and it is why the record matters.

The world he came from

To see why one man ended up holding so many offices, start with where the Saints had just been. They were driven out of Missouri in 1838 under the extermination order. Joseph “remained imprisoned through the winter of 1838–39.” Then “Joseph joined fellow Church members in Illinois… and then founded the city of Nauvoo, which grew quickly.”

The lesson the Saints took from Missouri is stated in the Church’s own essay: “As a result of their experience in Missouri, the Latter-day Saints created a large, state-sanctioned militia, the Nauvoo Legion, to protect themselves after they moved to Illinois.” (Gospel Topics Essay) The Illinois legislature “approved 16 December 1840” the charter that made the Legion and the city’s own court possible. (Joseph Smith Papers)

Seen from inside, each office was a wall against a mob. Seen from outside, it was one man holding the pulpit, the courtroom, the army, and a campaign. The Church’s own history page records that outside view in its own words: “in the young United States, politicians often worried minority groups could swing an election by voting as a bloc, which the early Saints often did,” and “many Americans were suspicious with the way Joseph Smith and later Brigham Young combined political and religious authority.” (Church History Topics) The dissenters who published the Nauvoo Expositor made the same complaint, and the Church’s page states it plainly: they “voiced their discontent with the practice of plural marriage, Joseph Smith’s teachings on the nature of God from his recent King Follett sermon, and his mixing of religious and civic authority in Nauvoo.”

Several other parts of this man’s story have their own pages, so they are linked here and not repeated. The seer stone, the Bainbridge trial of 1826, and what the Church’s own essay says about his treasure-seeking years are on the translation page; the Church’s essay says “As a young man during the 1820s, Joseph Smith, like others in his day, used a seer stone to look for lost objects and buried treasure.” What the Expositor printed is on the polygamy page. The Kirtland bank is on the When Prophets Were Wrong page, and the persecution that surrounded him is on the persecution page.

What Joseph said about himself

Four weeks before he died, on May 26, 1844, Joseph preached at the Stand in Nauvoo amid escalating conflict with adversaries the Joseph Smith Papers name as Joseph H. Jackson, William Law, and Francis M. Higbee. Here is how Thomas Bullock’s notes begin, so that the famous line is read where it was said:

The exhibits

Church sources first, each quoted from the page itself and linked.

Carthage, the part the one-line version leaves out

Doctrine and Covenants 135, the official announcement, says Joseph “leaped from the window, and was shot dead in the attempt.” It does not mention a weapon. The Church’s fuller histories do, and they are not hiding it: the Church’s Saints volume says “Earlier in the day, visitors had smuggled two guns to the prisoners ... a six-shooter revolver and a single-shot pistol ... in case of an attack.” (The source’s dashes are shown as ellipses.) Here is the place, and the gun.

Check it yourself. Four of these six accounts say he fired; two do not mention a weapon. The accounts differ on wounds and deaths: Taylor says two or three were wounded and, he is informed, two died; the Church’s manual says three were wounded.

The common rebuttals

“He was a prisoner under attack. Of course he fired. Nobody should criticize that.”

Agreed, and this page does not. A man held in jail under a governor’s promise, with a mob coming up the stairs, who fires back, is doing what most people would do. The point is smaller than that. “Lamb to the slaughter” is how the story is usually told, D&C 135 does not mention the weapon, the Church’s own histories give a fuller picture, and the accounts differ on how many men were hit and whether any died. The record is bigger than the one-line version.

“The ‘king’ thing is anti-Mormon propaganda.”

It is the Church’s own Joseph Smith Papers that says the council “voted to receive JS as ‘our Prophet, Priest & King.’” Nothing here goes beyond that sentence. It is also true that the council’s stated job was protecting the Saints. The Church’s history page says the members chose him because they “anticipated that Joseph Smith would serve as both the religious and political leader of the government of the kingdom of God,” and adds that “Council participants understood that this action would have no immediate political consequences.” Both halves stand. That kingdom is understood, in the Church’s words, as a government in preparation for the millennial reign of Jesus Christ. Clayton’s word for the aim, as the Papers quote it, was “Theocracy.”

“The boast is taken out of context. He was quoting Paul.”

That is half right, and the half is shown above: he opened by reading 2 Corinthians 11 and saying “as Paul boasted.” The rest of the passage is also in his own words: he was “the only man that ever has been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam,” and “neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it.” Paul’s chapter lists shipwrecks and beatings, and also “the care of all the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:28), and he says he will glory in his “infirmities” (11:30). Joseph’s list is of one measure, a church that never left him, and he says it is a record no one else holds. Both the setting and the claim are real, and the page prints both.

What this means

Put the whole record on one table. A man born poor in Vermont; a church founded at 24; a state that ordered his people exterminated or driven out, and a jail winter in Missouri; a charter, a city, and an army the Church’s own essay says was built to protect them. Then, in 1844, a mayor who was also a chief justice, a lieutenant general, a presidential candidate whose campaign pamphlet carried his military rank, the man a council voted to receive as “Prophet, Priest & King,” a sermon with the words “more to boast of than ever any man had,” a press burned, a surrender, and a jail in which the Church’s histories say he fired a smuggled revolver at the men coming through the door, and in which a mob killed him and his brother while a governor’s promise failed.

The Church’s own sources do not show a quiet martyr. They show a man of enormous power, holding the pulpit, the courtroom, the army and a campaign at once, who was also in real danger and who fired back when the mob came.

The Church’s scripture sets the standard in D&C 135:3: he “has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.” His own sermon makes a claim of the same size, that he kept a whole church together as no one else ever had. The record on this page is what a reader holds up against both.