Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June
27, 1844) was an American religious leader
and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day
Saint movement. When he was 24, he published
the Book of Mormon, and he had attracted tens
of thousands of followers and founded a religion
that continues to the present by the time
of his death 14 years later.
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. By 1817,
he had moved with his family to the burned-over
district of western New York, an area of intense
religious revivalism during the Second Great
Awakening. Smith said he experienced a series
of visions, including one in which he saw
"two personages" (presumably God the Father
and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel
directed him to a buried book of golden plates
inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of
an ancient American civilization. In 1830,
Smith published what he said was an English
translation of these plates called the Book
of Mormon. The same year he organized the
Church of Christ, calling it a restoration
of the early Christian church. Members of
the church were later called "Latter Day Saints"
or "Mormons", and Smith announced a revelation
in 1838 which renamed the church as the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west,
planning to build a communalistic American
Zion. They first gathered in Kirtland, Ohio
and established an outpost in Independence,
Missouri which was intended to be Zion's "center
place". During the 1830s, Smith sent out missionaries,
published revelations, and supervised construction
of the Kirtland Temple. The collapse of the
church-sponsored Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking
Company and violent skirmishes with non-Mormon
Missourians caused Smith and his followers
to establish a new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois,
where he became a spiritual and political
leader. In 1844, Smith and the Nauvoo city
council angered non-Mormons by destroying
a newspaper that had criticized Smith's power
and practice of polygamy. Smith was imprisoned
in Carthage, Illinois where he was killed
when a mob stormed the jailhouse.
Smith published many revelations and other
texts that his followers regard as scripture.
His teachings discuss the nature of God, cosmology,
family structures, political organization,
and religious collectivism. His followers
regard him as a prophet comparable to Moses
and Elijah, and several religious denominations
consider themselves the continuation of the
church that he organized, including The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the
Community of Christ.
== Life ==
=== Early years (1805–27) ===
Joseph Smith Jr. was born on December 23,
1805 in Sharon, Vermont to Lucy Mack Smith
and her husband Joseph Sr., a merchant and
farmer. Modern DNA testing of Smith's relatives
suggests that his family were of Irish descent,
as he carried a rare Y-DNA marker within Haplogroup
R1b which is found almost entirely in people
of Northwestern Irish descent.Smith suffered
a crippling bone infection when he was seven
and used crutches for three years. The family
moved to the western New York village of Palmyra
in 1816–17, after an ill-fated business
venture and three years of crop failures,
and they eventually took a mortgage on a 100-acre
(40 ha) farm in the nearby town of Manchester.
The region was a hotbed of religious enthusiasm
during the Second Great Awakening. Between
1817 and 1825, there were several camp meetings
and revivals in the Palmyra area. His parents
disagreed about religion, but the family was
caught up in this excitement. Smith said that
he became interested in religion by age 12.
As a teenager, he may have been sympathetic
to Methodism. With other family members, Smith
also engaged in religious folk magic, which
was a relatively common practice in that time
and place. Both his parents and his maternal
grandfather reportedly had visions or dreams
that they believed communicated messages from
God. Smith said that, although he had become
concerned about the welfare of his soul, he
was confused by the claims of competing religious
denominations.Years later, Smith claimed to
have received a vision that resolved his religious
confusion. In 1820, while praying in a wooded
area near his home, he said that God, in a
vision, had told him his sins were forgiven
and that all contemporary churches had "turned
aside from the gospel." Smith said he told
the experience to a preacher, who dismissed
the story with contempt. The event would later
grow in importance to Smith's followers, who
now regard it as the first event in the gradual
restoration of Christ's church to earth. Until
the 1840s, however, the experience was largely
unknown, even to most Mormons. Smith may have
originally understood the event simply as
a personal conversion.
According to his later accounts, Smith was
visited by an angel named Moroni, while praying
one night in 1823. Smith said that this angel
revealed the location of a buried book made
of golden plates, as well as other artifacts,
including a breastplate and a set of interpreters
composed of two seer stones set in a frame,
which had been hidden in a hill near his home.
Smith said he attempted to remove the plates
the next morning, but was unsuccessful because
the angel returned and prevented him. Smith
reported that during the next four years,
he made annual visits to the hill, but each
time returned without the plates.Meanwhile,
the Smith family faced financial hardship,
due in part to the death of Smith's oldest
brother Alvin, who had assumed a leadership
role in the family. Family members supplemented
their meager farm income by hiring out for
odd jobs and working as treasure seekers,
a type of magical supernaturalism common during
the period. Smith was said to have an ability
to locate lost items by looking into a seer
stone, which he also used in treasure hunting,
including several unsuccessful attempts to
find buried treasure sponsored by a wealthy
farmer in Chenango County, New York. In 1826,
Smith was brought before a Chenango County
court for "glass-looking", or pretending to
find lost treasure. The result of the proceeding
remains unclear as primary sources report
various conflicting outcomes.While boarding
at the Hale house in Harmony, Pennsylvania,
Smith met and began courting Emma Hale. When
Smith proposed marriage, Emma's father, Isaac
Hale objected, primarily because he believed
Smith had no means to support Emma. Smith
and Emma eloped and married on January 18,
1827, after which the couple began boarding
with Smith's parents in Manchester. Later
that year, when Smith promised to abandon
treasure seeking, Hale offered to let the
couple live on his property in Harmony and
help Smith get started in business.Smith made
his last visit to the hill on September 22,
1827, taking Emma with him. This time, he
said he successfully retrieved the plates.
He said the angel commanded him not to show
the plates to anyone else, but to translate
them and publish their translation. Smith
said the translation was a religious record
of indigenous Americans, and were engraved
in an unknown language, called reformed Egyptian.
He also told associates that he was capable
of reading and translating them.Although Smith
had left his treasure hunting company, his
former associates believed he had double crossed
them and taken the golden plates for himself,
which they believed should be joint property.
After they ransacked places where they believed
the plates could be hidden, Smith decided
to leave Palmyra.
=== Founding a church (1827–30) ===
In October 1827, Smith and his wife moved
from Palmyra to Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania,
aided by a relatively prosperous neighbor,
Martin Harris. Living near his in-laws, Smith
transcribed some characters that he said were
engraved on the plates, and then dictated
a translation to his wife.In February 1828,
Martin Harris arrived to assist Smith by transcribing
his dictation. Harris also took a sample of
the characters to a few prominent scholars,
including Charles Anthon. Harris said Anthon
initially authenticated the characters and
their translation, but then retracted his
opinion after learning that Smith claimed
to have received the plates from an angel.
Anthon denied Harris's account of the meeting,
claiming instead that he had tried to convince
Harris that he was the victim of a fraud.
In any event, Harris returned to Harmony in
April 1828, and continued as Smith's scribe.However,
by June 1828, Harris began having doubts about
the project, fueled in part by his wife's
skepticism. Harris convinced Smith to let
him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript
to Palmyra to show a few family members, including
his wife. Harris lost the manuscript, of which
there was no other copy. As punishment for
losing the manuscript, Smith said that the
angel returned and took away the plates, and
revoked his ability to translate. During this
period, Smith briefly attended Methodist meetings
with his wife, until a cousin of hers objected
to inclusion of a "practicing necromancer"
on the Methodist class roll.
Smith said that the angel returned the plates
to him in September 1828. In April 1829, he
met Oliver Cowdery, who replaced Harris as
his scribe, and resumed dictation. They worked
full time on the manuscript between April
and early June 1829, and then moved to Fayette,
New York, where they continued to work at
the home of Cowdery's friend, Peter Whitmer.
When the narrative described an institutional
church and a requirement for baptism, Smith
and Cowdery baptized each other. Dictation
was completed about July 1, 1829.Although
Smith had previously refused to show the plates
to anyone, he told Martin Harris, Oliver Cowdery,
and David Whitmer that they would be allowed
to see them. These men, known collectively
as the Three Witnesses, signed a statement
stating that they had been shown the golden
plates by an angel, and that the voice of
God had confirmed the truth of their translation.
Later, a group of Eight Witnesses — composed
of male members of the Whitmer and Smith families
— issued a statement that they had been
shown the golden plates by Smith. According
to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates
once Smith finished using them.
The completed work, titled the Book of Mormon,
was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830,
by printer E. B. Grandin. Soon after, on April
6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally
organized the Church of Christ, and small
branches were established in Palmyra, Fayette,
and Colesville, New York. The Book of Mormon
brought Smith regional notoriety and opposition
from those who remembered the 1826 Chenango
County trial. After Cowdery baptized several
new church members, the Mormons received threats
of mob violence; before Smith could confirm
the newly baptized members, he was arrested
and brought to trial as a disorderly person.
He was acquitted, but soon both he and Cowdery
fled to Colesville to escape a gathering mob.
In probable reference to this period of flight,
Smith said that Peter, James, and John had
appeared to him and had ordained him and Cowdery
to a higher priesthood.Smith's authority was
undermined when Oliver Cowdery, Hiram Page,
and other church members also claimed to receive
revelations. In response, Smith dictated a
revelation which clarified his office as a
prophet and an apostle, and which declared
that only he held the ability to give doctrine
and scripture for the entire church. Shortly
after the conference, Smith dispatched Cowdery,
Peter Whitmer, and others on a mission to
proselytize Native Americans. Cowdery was
also assigned the task of locating the site
of the New Jerusalem.On their way to Missouri,
Cowdery's party passed through northeastern
Ohio, where Sidney Rigdon and over a hundred
followers of his variety of Campbellite Restorationism
converted to Mormonism, more than doubling
the size of the church. Rigdon soon visited
New York and quickly became Smith's primary
assistant. With growing opposition in New
York, Smith gave a revelation stating that
Kirtland was the eastern boundary of the New
Jerusalem, and that his followers must gather
there.
=== Life in Ohio (1831–38) ===
When Smith moved to Kirtland, Ohio in January
1831, he encountered a religious culture that
included enthusiastic demonstrations of spiritual
gifts, including fits and trances, rolling
on the ground, and speaking in tongues. Smith
brought the Kirtland congregation under his
own authority and tamed these outbursts. Rigdon's
followers had also been practicing a form
of communalism, which Smith adopted, calling
it the United Order. Smith had promised church
elders that in Kirtland they would receive
an endowment of heavenly power, and at the
June 1831 general conference, he introduced
the greater authority of a High ("Melchizedek")
Priesthood to the church hierarchy.
Converts poured into Kirtland. By the summer
of 1835, there were fifteen hundred to two
thousand Mormons in the vicinity, many expecting
Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial
kingdom. Though his mission to the Indians
had been a failure, Cowdery reported that
he had found the site of the New Jerusalem
in Jackson County, Missouri. After Smith visited
in July 1831, he agreed, pronouncing the frontier
hamlet of Independence the "center place"
of Zion. Rigdon, however, disapproved, and
for most of the 1830s the church remained
divided between Ohio and Missouri. Smith continued
to live in Ohio, but visited Missouri again
in early 1832 to prevent a rebellion of prominent
church members who believed the church in
Missouri was being neglected. Smith's trip
was also hastened by a mob of Ohio residents
who were incensed over the United Order and
Smith's political power; the mob beat Smith
and Rigdon unconscious, tarred and feathered
them, and left them for dead.In Jackson County,
existing Missouri residents resented the Mormon
newcomers for both political and religious
reasons. Tension increased until July 1833,
when non-Mormons forcibly evicted the Mormons
and destroyed their property. Smith advised
them to bear the violence patiently until
after they were attacked multiple times, after
which they could fight back. After armed bands
exchanged fire, killing one Mormon and two
non-Mormons, the old settlers brutally expelled
the Mormons from the county.Smith ended the
communitarian experiment and changed the name
of the church to the "Church of Latter Day
Saints," before leading a small paramilitary
expedition called Zion's Camp, to aid the
Missouri Mormons. As a military endeavor,
the expedition was a failure; the men were
outnumbered and suffered from dissension and
a cholera outbreak. Nevertheless, Zion's Camp
transformed Mormon leadership, and many future
church leaders came from among the participants.After
the Camp returned, Smith drew heavily from
its participants to establish five governing
bodies in the church, all originally of equal
authority to check one another. Among these
five groups was a quorum of twelve apostles.
Smith gave a revelation saying that to redeem
Zion, his followers would have to receive
an endowment in the Kirtland Temple, and in
March 1836, at the temple's dedication, many
participants in the promised endowment saw
visions of angels, spoke in tongues, and prophesied.
In late 1837, a series of internal disputes
led to the collapse of the Kirtland Mormon
community. Smith was blamed for having promoted
a church-sponsored bank that failed. He was
also accused of engaging in a sexual relationship
with his serving girl, Fanny Alger. Building
the temple had left the church deeply in debt,
and Smith was hounded by creditors. Having
heard of a large sum of money supposedly hidden
in Salem, Massachusetts, Smith traveled there
and received a revelation that God had "much
treasure in this city". After a month, however,
he returned to Kirtland empty-handed.In January
1837, Smith and other church leaders created
a joint stock company, called the Kirtland
Safety Society Anti-Banking Company, to act
as a quasi-bank; the company issued bank notes
capitalized in part by real estate. Smith
encouraged the Latter Day Saints to buy the
notes, and he invested heavily in them himself,
but the bank failed within a month. As a result,
the Latter Day Saints in Kirtland suffered
intense pressure from debt collectors and
severe price volatility. Smith was held responsible
for the failure, and there were widespread
defections from the church, including many
of Smith's closest advisers. After a warrant
was issued for Smith's arrest on a charge
of banking fraud, Smith and Rigdon fled Kirtland
for Missouri in January 1838.
=== Life in Missouri (1838–39) ===
By 1838, Smith had abandoned plans to redeem
Zion in Jackson County, and after Smith and
Rigdon arrived in Missouri, the town of Far
West became the new "Zion". In Missouri, the
church also took the name "Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints", and construction
began on a new temple. In the weeks and months
after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West,
thousands of Latter Day Saints followed them
from Kirtland. Smith encouraged the settlement
of land outside Caldwell County, instituting
a settlement in Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess
County.
During this time, a church council expelled
many of the oldest and most prominent leaders
of the church, including John Whitmer, David
Whitmer, W. W. Phelps, and Oliver Cowdery.
Smith explicitly approved of the expulsion
of these men, who were known collectively
as the "dissenters".Political and religious
differences between old Missourians and newly-arriving
Mormon settlers provoked tensions between
the two groups, much as they had years earlier
in Jackson County. By this time, Smith's experiences
with mob violence led him to believe that
his faith's survival required greater militancy
against anti-Mormons. Around June 1838, recent
convert Sampson Avard formed a covert organization
called the Danites to intimidate Mormon dissenters
and oppose anti-Mormon militia units. Though
it is unclear how much Smith knew of the Danites'
activities, he clearly approved of those of
which he did know. After Rigdon delivered
a sermon that implied dissenters had no place
in the Mormon community, the Danites forcibly
expelled them from the county.In a speech
given at the town's Fourth of July celebration,
Rigdon declared that Mormons would no longer
tolerate persecution by the Missourians and
spoke of a "war of extermination" if Mormons
were attacked. Smith implicitly endorsed this
speech, and many non-Mormons understood it
to be a thinly-veiled threat. They unleashed
a flood of anti-Mormon rhetoric in newspapers
and in stump speeches given during the 1838
election campaign.On August 6, 1838, non-Mormons
in Gallatin tried to prevent Mormons from
voting, and the election-day scuffles initiated
the 1838 Mormon War. Non-Mormon vigilantes
raided and burned Mormon farms, while Danites
and other Mormons pillaged non-Mormon towns.
In the Battle of Crooked River, a group of
Mormons attacked the Missouri state militia,
mistakenly believing them to be anti-Mormon
vigilantes. Governor Lilburn Boggs then ordered
that the Mormons be "exterminated or driven
from the state". On October 30, a party of
Missourians surprised and killed seventeen
Mormons in the Haun's Mill massacre.
The following day, the Latter Day Saints surrendered
to 2,500 state troops and agreed to forfeit
their property and leave the state. Smith
was immediately brought before a military
court, accused of treason, and sentenced to
be executed the next morning; Alexander Doniphan,
who was Smith's former attorney and a brigadier
general in the Missouri militia, refused to
carry out the order. Smith was then sent to
a state court for a preliminary hearing, where
several of his former allies testified against
him.
Smith and five others, including Rigdon, were
charged with "overt acts of treason", and
transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri,
to await trial.Smith's months in prison with
an ill and whining Rigdon strained their relationship.
Meanwhile Brigham Young, the president of
the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, rose to
prominence when he organized the move of about
14,000 Mormon refugees to Illinois and eastern
Iowa.Smith bore his imprisonment stoically.
Understanding that he was effectively on trial
before his own people, many of whom considered
him a fallen prophet, he wrote a personal
defense and an apology for the activities
of the Danites. "The keys of the kingdom,"
he wrote, "have not been taken away from us".
Though he directed his followers to collect
and publish their stories of persecution,
he also urged them to moderate their antagonism
toward non-Mormons. On April 6, 1839, after
a grand jury hearing in Davis County, Smith
and his companions escaped custody, almost
certainly with the connivance of the sheriff
and guards.
=== Life in Nauvoo, Illinois (1839–44) ===
Many American newspapers criticized Missouri
for the Haun's Mill massacre and the state's
expulsion of the Latter Day Saints. Illinois
accepted Mormon refugees who gathered along
the banks of the Mississippi River, where
Smith purchased high-priced, swampy woodland
in the hamlet of Commerce. Smith also attempted
to portray the Latter Day Saints as an oppressed
minority, and unsuccessfully petitioned the
federal government for help in obtaining reparations.
During the summer of 1839, while Latter Day
Saints in Nauvoo suffered from a malaria epidemic,
Smith sent Brigham Young and other apostles
to missions in Europe, where they made numerous
converts, many of them poor factory workers.
Smith also attracted a few wealthy and influential
converts, including John C. Bennett, the Illinois
quartermaster general. Bennett used his connections
in the Illinois legislature to obtain an unusually
liberal charter for the new city, which Smith
named "Nauvoo" (Hebrew נָאווּ, meaning
"to be beautiful"). The charter granted the
city virtual autonomy, authorized a university,
and granted Nauvoo habeas corpus power—which
allowed Smith to fend off extradition to Missouri.
Though Mormon authorities controlled Nauvoo's
civil government, the city promised an unusually
liberal guarantee of religious freedom. The
charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion,
an autonomous militia whose actions were limited
only by state and federal constitutions. "Lieutenant
General" Smith and "Major General" Bennett
became its commanders, thereby controlling
by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois.
Smith made Bennett Assistant President of
the church, and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's
first mayor.In 1841, Smith began revealing
the doctrine of plural marriage to a few of
his closest male associates, including Bennett,
who used it as an excuse to seduce numerous
women wed and unwed. When embarrassing rumors
of "spiritual wifery" got abroad, Smith forced
Bennett's resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In
retaliation, Bennett left Smith's following
and wrote "lurid exposés of life in Nauvoo".
The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal
innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the
dead in 1840, and in 1841, construction began
on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering
lost ancient knowledge. An 1841 revelation
promised the restoration of the "fulness of
the priesthood"; and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated
a revised endowment or "first anointing".
The endowment resembled rites of freemasonry
that Smith had observed two months earlier
when he had been initiated "at sight" into
the Nauvoo Masonic lodge. At first, the endowment
was open only to men, who were initiated into
a special group called the Anointed Quorum.
For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society,
a service club and sorority within which Smith
predicted women would receive "the keys of
the kingdom". Smith also elaborated on his
plan for a millennial kingdom. No longer envisioning
the building of Zion in Nauvoo, Smith viewed
Zion as encompassing all of North and South
America, with Mormon settlements being "stakes"
of Zion's metaphorical tent. Zion also became
less a refuge from an impending tribulation
than a great building project. In the summer
of 1842, Smith revealed a plan to establish
the millennial Kingdom of God, which would
eventually establish theocratic rule over
the whole earth.By mid-1842, popular opinion
had turned against the Mormons. After an unknown
assailant shot and wounded Missouri governor
Lilburn Boggs in May 1842, anti-Mormons circulated
rumors that Smith's bodyguard, Porter Rockwell,
was the shooter. Though the evidence was circumstantial,
Boggs ordered Smith's extradition. Certain
he would be killed if he ever returned to
Missouri, Smith went into hiding twice during
the next five months, before the U.S. district
attorney for Illinois argued that Smith's
extradition to Missouri would be unconstitutional.
(Rockwell was later tried and acquitted.)
In June 1843, enemies of Smith convinced a
reluctant Illinois Governor Thomas Ford to
extradite Smith to Missouri on an old charge
of treason. Two law officers arrested Smith,
but were intercepted by a party of Mormons
before they could reach Missouri. Smith was
then released on a writ of habeas corpus from
the Nauvoo municipal court. While this ended
the Missourians' attempts at extradition,
it caused significant political fallout in
Illinois.In December 1843, Smith petitioned
Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory
with the right to call out federal troops
in its defense. Smith then wrote to the leading
presidential candidates and asked them what
they would do to protect the Mormons. After
receiving noncommittal or negative responses,
Smith announced his own independent candidacy
for President of the United States, suspended
regular proselytizing, and sent out the Quorum
of the Twelve and hundreds of other political
missionaries. In March 1844 — following
a dispute with a federal bureaucrat — Smith
organized the secret Council of Fifty. Smith
said the Council had authority to decide which
national or state laws Mormons should obey.
The Council was also to select a site for
a large Mormon settlement in Texas, California,
or Oregon, where Mormons could live under
theocratic law beyond other governmental control.
=== Death ===
By early 1844, a rift developed between Smith
and a half dozen of his closest associates.
Most notably, William Law, Smith's trusted
counselor, and Robert Foster, a general of
the Nauvoo Legion, disagreed with Smith about
how to manage Nauvoo's economy. Both also
said that Smith had proposed marriage to their
wives. Believing the dissidents were plotting
against his life, Smith excommunicated them
on April 18, 1844. These dissidents formed
a competing church and the following month,
at Carthage, the county seat, they procured
indictments against Smith for perjury and
polygamy.On June 7, the dissidents published
the first (and only) issue of the Nauvoo Expositor,
calling for reform within the church and appealing
to the political views of the county's other
faiths as well as those of former Mormons.
The paper decried Smith's new "doctrines of
many Gods", alluded to Smith's theocratic
aspirations, and called for a repeal of the
Nauvoo city charter. It also attacked Smith's
practice of polygamy, implying that Smith
was using religion as a pretext to draw unassuming
women to Nauvoo in order to seduce and marry
them.Fearing the newspaper would bring the
countryside down on the Mormons, the Nauvoo
city council declared the Expositor a public
nuisance and ordered the Nauvoo Legion to
destroy the press. Smith, who feared another
mob attack, supported the action, not realizing
that destroying a newspaper was more likely
to incite an attack than any libel.
Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident
call to arms from Thomas C. Sharp, editor
of the Warsaw Signal and longtime critic of
Smith. Fearing an uprising, Smith mobilized
the Nauvoo Legion on June 18 and declared
martial law. Officials in Carthage responded
by mobilizing their small detachment of the
state militia, and Governor Thomas Ford appeared,
threatening to raise a larger militia unless
Smith and the Nauvoo city council surrendered
themselves. Smith initially fled across the
Mississippi River, but shortly returned and
surrendered to Ford. On June 23, Smith and
his brother Hyrum rode to Carthage to stand
trial for inciting a riot. Once the Smiths
were in custody, the charges were increased
to treason.
On June 27, 1844, an armed mob with blackened
faces stormed Carthage Jail where Joseph and
Hyrum were being held. Hyrum, who was trying
to secure the door, was killed instantly with
a shot to the face. Smith fired three shots
from a pepper-box pistol that his friend,
Cyrus Wheelock, had lent him, wounding three
men, before he sprang for the window. He was
shot multiple times before falling out the
window, crying, "Oh Lord my God!" He died
shortly after hitting the ground, but was
shot several more times before the mob dispersed.
Five men were later tried for Smith's murder,
but were all acquitted. Smith was buried in
Nauvoo, and is interred there at the Smith
Family Cemetery.
After his death, non-Mormon newspapers were
almost unanimous in portraying Smith as a
religious fanatic. Conversely, within Mormonism,
Smith was remembered first and foremost as
a prophet, martyred to seal the testimony
of his faith.
== Legacy ==
=== Impact ===
Smith attracted thousands of devoted followers
before his death in 1844, and millions in
the century that followed. Among Mormons,
he is regarded as a prophet on par with Moses
and Elijah. In a 2015 compilation of the 100
Most Significant Americans of All Time, Smithsonian
magazine ranked Smith first in the category
of religious figures.Mormons and ex-Mormons
have produced a large amount of scholarly
work about Smith, and to a large extent the
result has been two discordant pictures of
very different people: a man of God on the
one hand, and on the other, a fraud preying
on the ignorance of his followers. Believers
tend to focus on his achievements and religious
teachings, deemphasizing his personal defects,
while detractors focus on his mistakes, legal
troubles, and controversial doctrines. During
the first half of the 20th century, some writers
suggested that Smith might have suffered from
epileptic seizures or from psychological disorders
such as paranoid delusions or manic-depressive
illness that might explain his visions and
revelations. Many modern biographers disagree
with these ideas. More nuanced interpretations
include viewing Smith as: a prophet who had
normal human weaknesses; a "pious fraud" who
believed he was called of God to preach repentance
and felt justified inventing visions in order
to convert people; or a gifted "mythmaker"
who was the product of his Yankee environment.
Biographers, Mormon and non-Mormon alike,
agree that Smith was one of the most influential,
charismatic, and innovative figures in American
religious history.
Memorials to Smith include the Joseph Smith
Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, Utah,
the Joseph Smith Building on the campus of
Brigham Young University, and a granite obelisk
marking his birth place.
=== Religious denominations ===
Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis.
Smith had proposed several ways to choose
his successor, but had never clarified his
preference. Smith's brother Hyrum, had he
survived, would have had the strongest claim,
followed by Smith's brother Samuel, who died
mysteriously a month after his brothers. Another
brother, William, was unable to attract a
sufficient following. Smith's sons Joseph
III and David also had claims, but Joseph
III was too young and David was yet unborn.
The Council of Fifty had a theoretical claim
to succession, but it was a secret organization.
Some of Smith's chosen successors, such as
Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, had left
the church.The two strongest succession candidates
were Brigham Young, senior member and president
of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and
Sidney Rigdon, the senior member of the First
Presidency. In a church-wide conference on
August 8, most of the Latter Day Saints elected
Young, who led them to the Utah Territory
as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints (LDS Church). Membership in Young's
denomination surpassed 14 million members
in 2010. Smaller groups followed Sidney Rigdon
and James J. Strang, who had based his claim
on an allegedly forged letter of appointment.
Others followed Lyman Wight and Alpheus Cutler.
Many members of these smaller groups, including
most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced
in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith
III and formed what was known for more than
a century as the Reorganized Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints (now Community
of Christ), which now has about 250,000 members.
As of 2013, members of the denominations originating
from Smith's teachings number approximately
15 million.
== Family and descendants ==
The first of Smith's wives, Emma Hale, gave
birth to nine children during their marriage,
five of whom died before the age of two. The
eldest, Alvin (born in 1828), died within
hours of birth, as did twins Thaddeus and
Louisa (born in 1831). When the twins died,
the Smiths adopted another set of twins, Julia
and Joseph, whose mother had recently died
in childbirth; Joseph died of measles in 1832.
In 1841, Don Carlos, who had been born a year
earlier, died of malaria. In 1842, Emma gave
birth to a stillborn son. Joseph and Emma
had four sons who lived to maturity: Joseph
Smith III, Frederick Granger Williams Smith,
Alexander Hale Smith, and David Hyrum Smith.
Some historians have speculated—based on
journal entries and family stories—that
Smith may have fathered children with his
plural wives. However, all DNA testing of
potential Smith descendants from wives other
than Emma has been negative.Throughout her
life, Emma Smith frequently denied that her
husband had ever taken additional wives. Emma
said that the very first time she ever became
aware of a polygamy revelation being attributed
to Smith by Mormons was when she read about
it in Orson Pratt's periodical The Seer in
1853. Emma campaigned publicly against polygamy,
and was the main signatory of a petition in
1842, with a thousand female signatures, denying
that Smith was connected with polygamy. As
president of the Ladies' Relief Society, Emma
authorized publishing a certificate in the
same year denouncing polygamy, and denying
her husband as its creator or participant.
Even on her deathbed, Emma denied Joseph's
involvement with polygamy, stating, "No such
thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was
taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's
death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge
of ... He had no other wife but me; nor did
he to my knowledge ever have".After Smith's
death, Emma Smith quickly became alienated
from Brigham Young and the church leadership.
Young, whom Emma feared and despised, was
suspicious of her desire to preserve the family's
assets from inclusion with those of the church,
and thought she would be even more troublesome
because she openly opposed plural marriage.
When most Latter Day Saints moved west, she
stayed in Nauvoo, married a non-Mormon, Major
Lewis C. Bidamon, and withdrew from religion
until 1860, when she affiliated with the Reorganized
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,
first headed by her son, Joseph Smith III.
Emma never denied Smith's prophetic gift or
repudiated her belief in the authenticity
of the Book of Mormon.
== Revelations ==
According to the American historian and Mormonism
expert Richard Bushman, the "signal feature"
of Smith's life was "his sense of being guided
by revelation". Instead of presenting ideas
with logical arguments, Smith dictated authoritative
revelations and let people decide whether
to believe. Smith's teachings came primarily
through his claimed revelations, which read
like scripture: oracular and open to interpretation.
Smith and his followers viewed his claimed
revelations as being above teachings or opinions,
and it has been argued that Smith's actions
seemed to indicate that he believed in his
revelations as much as his most loyal followers.Smith
claimed that his first recorded revelation
was a rebuke from God for having let Martin
Harris lose 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript,
chastising him for "fearing man more than
God". The revelation was reportedly given
in the voice of God rather than as a declaration
mediated through Smith; and subsequent revelations
assumed a similar authoritative style, often
opening with words such as "Hearken O ye people
which profess my name, saith the Lord your
God."
=== Book of Mormon ===
The Book of Mormon has been called the longest
and most complex of Smith's revelations. It
is organized as a compilation of smaller books,
each named after its main named narrator or
a prominent leader. It tells the story of
the rise and fall of a religious civilization
beginning about 600 BC and ending in 421 AD.
The story begins with a family that leaves
Jerusalem, just before the Babylonian captivity.
They eventually construct a ship and sail
to a "promised land" in the Western Hemisphere.
There, they are divided into two factions:
Nephites and Lamanites. The Nephites become
a righteous people who build a temple and
live the law of Moses, though their prophets
teach a Christian gospel. The book explains
itself to be largely the work of Mormon, a
Nephite prophet and military figure. The book
closes when Mormon's son, Moroni, finishes
engraving and buries the records written on
the golden plates.Christian themes permeate
the work; for instance, Nephite prophets in
the Book of Mormon teach of Christ's coming,
and talk of the star that will appear at his
birth. After the crucifixion and resurrection
in Jerusalem, Jesus appears in the Americas,
repeats the Sermon on the Mount, blesses children,
and appoints twelve disciples. The book ends
with Moroni's exhortation to "come unto Christ".Early
Mormons understood the Book of Mormon to be
a religious history of the indigenous peoples
of the Americas. Smith's followers view it
as a companion to the Bible and an additional
witness of Christ, akin to a large apocryphal
work. Modern historian Fawn Brodie has called
the Book of Mormon a response to pressing
cultural and environmental issues of Smith's
times, saying that Smith composed the Book
of Mormon drawing from scraps of information
available to him. Dan Vogel, another historian,
says that the work is autobiographical in
nature.
Smith never said how he produced the Book
of Mormon, saying only that he translated
by the power of God and implying that he had
transcribed the words. The Book of Mormon
itself states only that its text will "come
forth by the gift and power of God unto the
interpretation thereof". As such, considerable
disagreement about the actual method used
exists. For at least some of the earliest
dictation, Smith is said to have used the
"Urim and Thummim", a pair of seer stones
he said were buried with the plates. Later,
however, he is said to have used a chocolate-colored
stone he had found in 1822 that he had used
previously for treasure hunting. Joseph Knight
said that Smith saw the words of the translation
while he gazed at the stone or stones in the
bottom of his hat, excluding all light, a
process similar to divining the location of
treasure. Sometimes, Smith concealed the process
by raising a curtain or dictating from another
room, while at other times he dictated in
full view of witnesses while the plates lay
covered on the table. After completing the
translation, Smith gave the brown stone to
Cowdery, but continued to receive revelations
using another stone until about 1833 when
he said he no longer needed it.Although the
Book of Mormon drew many converts to the church,
Fawn Brodie argued that the "book lives today
because of the prophet, not he because of
the book." Smith had assumed a role as prophet,
seer, and apostle of Jesus Christ, and by
early 1831, he was introducing himself as
"Joseph the Prophet". The language of authority
in Smith's revelations was appealing to converts,
and the revelations were given with the confidence
of an Old Testament prophet.
=== Moses and Abraham ===
Smith said that in June 1830, he received
a "revelation of Moses" in which Moses saw
"the world and the ends thereof" and asked
God questions about the purpose of creation
and man's relationship to God. This revelation
initiated a revision of the Bible on which
Smith worked sporadically until 1833 and which
remained unpublished at his death. Smith said
that the Bible had been corrupted through
the ages, and that his revision worked to
restore the original intent; it added long
passages rewritten "according to his inspiration".
While many changes involved straightening
out seeming contradictions or making small
clarifications, other changes added large
"lost" portions to the text. For instance,
Smith's revision nearly tripled the length
of the first five chapters of Genesis in what
would become the Book of Moses.The Book of
Moses begins with Moses' asking God about
the purpose of creation. Moses is told in
this account that God made the earth and heavens
to bring humans to eternal life. The book
also provides an enlarged account of the Genesis
creation narrative and expands the story of
Enoch, the ancestor of Noah. In the narrative,
Enoch speaks with God, receives a prophetic
calling, and eventually builds a city of Zion
so righteous that it was taken to heaven.
The book also elaborates and expands upon
foreshadowing the coming of Christ, in effect
Christianizing the Old Testament.In 1835,
Smith encouraged some Latter Day Saints in
Kirtland to purchase rolls of ancient Egyptian
papyri from a traveling exhibitor. Over the
next several years, Smith worked to produce
what he reported was a translation of one
of these rolls, which was published in 1842
as the Book of Abraham. The Book of Abraham
speaks of the founding of the Abrahamic nation,
astronomy, cosmology, lineage and priesthood,
and gives another account of the creation
story. The papyri from which Smith dictated
the Book of Abraham were thought to have been
lost in the Great Chicago Fire. However, several
fragments were rediscovered in the 1960s,
were translated by Egyptologists, and were
determined to be part of the Book of the Dead
with no connection to Abraham. The LDS Church
has proposed that Smith might have been inspired
by the papyri rather than have been translating
them literally, but prominent Egyptologists
note that Smith copied characters from the
scrolls and was specific about their meaning.
=== Other revelations ===
According to Parley P. Pratt, Smith dictated
revelations orally, and they were recorded
by a scribe without revisions or corrections.
Revelations were immediately copied, and then
circulated among church members. Smith's revelations
often came in response to specific questions.
He described the revelatory process as having
"pure Intelligence" flowing into him. Smith,
however, never viewed the wording to be infallible.
The revelations were not God's words verbatim,
but "couched in language suitable to Joseph's
time". In 1833, Smith edited and expanded
many of the previous revelations, publishing
them as the Book of Commandments, which later
became part of the Doctrine and Covenants.Smith
gave varying types of revelations. Some were
temporal, while others were spiritual or doctrinal.
Some were received for a specific individual,
while others were directed at the whole church.
An 1831 revelation called "The Law" contained:
directions for missionary work; rules for
organizing society in Zion; a reiteration
of the Ten Commandments; an injunction to
"administer to the poor and needy"; and an
outline for the law of consecration. An 1832
revelation called "The Vision" added to the
fundamentals of sin and atonement, and introduced
doctrines of life after salvation, exaltation,
and a heaven with degrees of glory. Another
1832 revelation "on Priesthood" was the first
to explain priesthood doctrine. Three months
later, Smith gave a lengthy revelation called
the "Olive Leaf" containing themes of cosmology
and eschatology, and discussing subjects such
as light, truth, intelligence, and sanctification;
a related revelation given in 1833 put Christ
at the center of salvation.Also in 1833, at
a time of temperance agitation, Smith delivered
a revelation called the "Word of Wisdom,"
which counseled a diet of wholesome herbs,
fruits, grains, a sparing use of meat. It
also recommended that Latter Day Saints avoid
"strong" alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and "hot
drinks" (later interpreted to mean tea and
coffee). The Word of Wisdom was not originally
framed as a commandment, but a recommendation.
As such, Smith and other Latter Day Saints
did not strictly follow this counsel, though
it later became a requirement in the LDS Church.
In 1835, Smith gave the "great revelation"
that organized the priesthood into quorums
and councils, and functioned as a complex
blueprint for church structure. Smith's last
revelation, on the "New and Everlasting Covenant",
was recorded in 1843, and dealt with the theology
of family, the doctrine of sealing, and plural
marriage.Before 1832, most of Smith's revelations
dealt with establishing the church, gathering
his followers, and building the City of Zion.
Later revelations dealt primarily with the
priesthood, endowment, and exaltation. The
pace of formal revelations slowed during the
autumn of 1833, and again after the dedication
of the Kirtland Temple. Smith moved away from
formal written revelations spoken in God's
voice, and instead taught more in sermons,
conversations, and letters. For instance,
the doctrines of baptism for the dead and
the nature of God were introduced in sermons,
and one of Smith's most famed statements about
there being "no such thing as immaterial matter"
was recorded from a casual conversation with
a Methodist preacher.
== Views and teachings ==
=== Cosmology and theology ===
Smith taught that all existence was material,
including a world of "spirit matter" so fine
that it was invisible to all but the purest
mortal eyes. Matter, in Smith's view, could
neither be created nor destroyed; the creation
involved only the reorganization of existing
matter. Like matter, Smith saw "intelligence"
as co-eternal with God, and taught that human
spirits had been drawn from a pre-existent
pool of eternal intelligences. Nevertheless,
spirits could not experience a "fullness of
joy" unless joined with corporeal bodies,
according to Smith. The work and glory of
God, then, was to create worlds across the
cosmos where inferior intelligences could
be embodied.Though Smith initially viewed
God the Father as a spirit, he eventually
began teaching that God was an advanced and
glorified man, embodied within time and space.
By the end of his life, Smith was teaching
that both God the Father and Jesus were distinct
beings with physical bodies, but the Holy
Spirit was a "personage of Spirit". Through
the gradual acquisition of knowledge, according
to Smith, those who received exaltation could
eventually become like God. These teachings
implied a vast hierarchy of gods, with God
himself having a father. In Smith's cosmology,
those who became gods would reign, unified
in purpose and will, leading spirits of lesser
capacity to share immortality and eternal
life.In Smith's view, the opportunity to achieve
exaltation extended to all humanity; those
who died with no opportunity to accept saving
ordinances could achieve exaltation by accepting
them in the afterlife through ordinances performed
on their behalf. Smith said that children
who died in their innocence would be guaranteed
to rise at the resurrection and receive exaltation.
Apart from those who committed the eternal
sin, Smith taught that even the wicked and
disbelieving would achieve a degree of glory
in the afterlife.
=== Religious authority and ritual ===
Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational
restorationism. He taught that the Church
of Christ restored through him was a latter-day
restoration of the early Christian faith,
which had been lost in the Great Apostasy.
At first, Smith's church had little sense
of hierarchy; his religious authority was
derived from visions and revelations. Though
Smith did not claim exclusive prophethood,
an early revelation designated him as the
only prophet allowed to issue commandments
"as Moses". This religious authority encompassed
economic and political as well as spiritual
matters. For instance, in the early 1830s,
he temporarily instituted a form of religious
communism, called the United Order, that required
Latter Day Saints to give all their property
to the church, which was divided among the
faithful. He also envisioned that the theocratic
institutions he established would have a role
in the worldwide political organization of
the Millennium.By the mid-1830s, Smith began
teaching a hierarchy of three priesthoods—the
Melchizedek, the Aaronic, and the Patriarchal.
Each priesthood was a continuation of biblical
priesthoods through patrilineal succession
or ordination by biblical figures appearing
in visions. Upon introducing the Melchizedek
or "High" Priesthood in 1831, Smith taught
that its recipients would be "endowed with
power from on high", thus fulfilling a need
for a greater holiness and an authority commensurate
with the New Testament apostles. This doctrine
of endowment evolved through the 1830s, until
in 1842, the Nauvoo endowment included an
elaborate ceremony containing elements similar
to Freemasonry and the Jewish tradition of
Kabbalah. The endowment was extended to women
in 1843, though Smith never clarified whether
women could be ordained to priesthood offices.Smith
taught that the High Priesthood's endowment
of heavenly power included the sealing powers
of Elijah, allowing High Priests to effect
binding consequences in the afterlife. For
example, this power would enable proxy baptisms
for the dead and priesthood marriages that
would be effective into the afterlife. Elijah's
sealing powers also enabled the second anointing,
or "fulness [sic] of the priesthood", which,
according to Smith, sealed married couples
to their exaltation.
=== Theology of family ===
During the early 1840s, Smith unfolded a theology
of family relations called the "New and Everlasting
Covenant" that superseded all earthly bonds.
He taught that outside the Covenant, marriages
were simply matters of contract, and that
in the afterlife individuals married outside
the Covenant or not married would be limited
in their progression. To fully enter the Covenant,
a man and woman must participate in a "first
anointing", a "sealing" ceremony, and a "second
anointing" (also called "sealing by the Holy
Spirit of Promise"). When fully sealed into
the Covenant, Smith said that no sin nor blasphemy
(other than the eternal sin) could keep them
from their exaltation in the afterlife. According
to Smith, only one person on earth at a time—in
this case, Smith—could possess this power
of sealing.
Smith taught that the highest level of exaltation
could be achieved through "plural marriage"
(polygamy), which was the ultimate manifestation
of this New and Everlasting Covenant. Plural
marriage, according to Smith, allowed an individual
to transcend the angelic state and become
a god, accelerating the expansion of one's
heavenly kingdom.
==== Polygamy ====
By some accounts, Smith had been teaching
a polygamy doctrine as early as 1831, and
there is unconfirmed evidence that Smith was
a polygamist by 1835. Although the church
had publicly repudiated polygamy, in 1837
there was a rift between Smith and Oliver
Cowdery over the issue. Cowdery suspected
Smith had engaged in a relationship with his
serving girl, Fanny Alger. Smith never denied
a relationship, but insisted it was not adulterous,
presumably because he had taken Alger as a
plural wife.In April 1841, Smith wed Louisa
Beaman. During the next two-and-a-half years
he married or was sealed to about 30 additional
women, ten of whom were already married to
other men. Some of these polyandrous marriages
were done with the consent of the first husbands,
and some plural marriages may have been considered
"eternity-only" sealings (meaning that the
marriage would not take effect until after
death). Ten of Smith's plural wives were between
the ages of fourteen and twenty; others were
over fifty. The practice of polygamy was kept
secret from both non-Mormons and most members
of the church during Smith's lifetime.Polygamy
caused a breach between Smith and his first
wife, Emma. Although Emma knew of some of
her husband's marriages, she almost certainly
did not know the extent of his polygamous
activities. In 1843, Emma temporarily accepted
Smith's marriage to four women boarded in
the Smith household, but soon regretted her
decision and demanded the other wives leave.
In July 1843, Smith dictated a revelation
directing Emma to accept plural marriage,
but the two were not reconciled until September
1843, after Emma began participating in temple
ceremonies.
=== Political views ===
While campaigning for President of the United
States in 1844, Smith had opportunity to take
political positions on issues of the day.
Smith considered the U.S. Constitution, and
especially the Bill of Rights, to be inspired
by God and "the [Latter Day] Saints' best
and perhaps only defense.". He believed a
strong central government was crucial to the
nation's well-being and thought democracy
better than tyranny—although he also taught
that a theocratic monarchy was the ideal form
of government. In foreign affairs, Smith was
an expansionist, though he viewed "expansionism
as brotherhood".Smith favored a strong central
bank and high tariffs to protect American
business and agriculture. He disfavored imprisonment
of convicts except for murder, preferring
efforts to reform criminals through labor;
he also opposed courts-martial for military
deserters. He supported capital punishment
but opposed hanging, preferring execution
by firing squad or beheading.On the issue
of slavery, Smith took different positions.
Initially he opposed it, but during the mid-1830s
when the Mormons were settling in Missouri
(a slave state), Smith cautiously justified
slavery in a strongly anti-abolitionist essay.
Then in the early 1840s, after Mormons had
been expelled from Missouri, he once again
opposed slavery. During his presidential campaign
of 1844, he proposed ending slavery by 1850
and compensating slaveholders for their loss.
Smith said that blacks were not inherently
inferior to whites, and he welcomed slaves
into the church. However, he opposed baptizing
them without permission of their masters,
and he opposed interracial marriage.Smith
declared that he would be one of the instruments
in fulfilling Nebuchadnezzar's statue vision
in the Book of Daniel: that secular government
would be destroyed without "sword or gun",
and would be replaced with a "theodemocratic"
Kingdom of God. Smith taught that this kingdom
would be governed by theocratic principles,
but that it would also be multidenominational
and democratic, so long as the people chose
wisely.
== See also ==
Outline of Joseph Smith
Chronology of Mormonism
History of the Latter Day Saint movement
Smith family (Latter Day Saints)
List of founders of religious traditions
United States presidential election, 1844
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Works ==
"History of the Latter Day Saints," in I.
Daniel Rupp (ed.), He Pasa Ekklessia: An Original
History of the Religious Denominations at
Present Existing in the United States ... , Philadelphia,
J.Y. Humphreys, 1844.
== External links ==
Media related to Joseph Smith at Wikimedia
Commons
Works by Joseph Smith, Jr. at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Joseph Smith at Internet
Archive
Works by Joseph Smith at LibriVox (public
domain audiobooks)
Official LDS page about Joseph Smith
JosephSmithPapers.org—An LDS Church project
compiling primary documents relating to Joseph
Smith
