| Joseph Smith | |
|---|---|
Portrait, c. 1842 | |
| 1st President of the Church of Christ (later the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)[1] | |
| April 6, 1830 – June 27, 1844 | |
| Successor | Disputed; Brigham Young, Sidney Rigdon, Joseph Smith III, and at least four others each claimed succession. |
| End reason | Death |
| 2nd Mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois | |
| In office | |
| May 19, 1842[2] – June 27, 1844 | |
| Predecessor | John C. Bennett |
| Successor | Chancy Robison[3] |
| Political party | Independent |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Joseph Smith Jr. December 23, 1805 Sharon, Vermont, U.S. |
| Died | June 27, 1844 (aged 38) Carthage, Illinois, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Gunshot wound |
| Resting place | Smith Family Cemetery, Nauvoo, Illinois, U.S. 40°32′26″N 91°23′33″W / 40.54052°N 91.39244°W |
| Spouse(s) | Multiple others (possibly 27–49; exact number is uncertain)[4][5] |
| Children | |
| Parents |
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| Relatives |
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| Signature | |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Joseph Smith |
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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, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death, 14 years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religion that continues to the present with millions of global adherents.
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. By 1817, he had moved with his family to Western New York, an area of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. Smith reported experiencing a series of visions, beginning with one in 1820, during which he saw "two personages" (whom he eventually described as God the Father and Jesus Christ). In 1823 he said he was visited by an angel who directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published 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 that 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 communal 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. Because of the collapse of the church-sponsored Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company, violent skirmishes with non-Mormon Missourians, and the Mormon extermination order, Smith and his followers established a new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he became a spiritual and political leader. In 1844, when the Nauvoo Expositor criticized Smith's power and practice of polygamy, Smith and the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of their printing press, inflaming anti-Mormon sentiment. Fearing an invasion of Nauvoo, Smith rode to Carthage, Illinois, to stand trial, but he was killed when a mob stormed the jailhouse.
During his ministry, Smith published numerous documents and texts, many of which he attributed to divine inspiration and revelation from God. He dictated the majority of these in the first-person and said they were the writings of ancient prophets or expressed the voice of God; Smith's followers believed this, and they accepted his teachings as prophetic and revelatory. Several of these texts have been canonized by denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement which continue to treat them as scripture. Smith's teachings discuss God's nature, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious community and authority. Mormons generally regard him as a prophet comparable to Moses and Elijah. Several religious denominations identify as the continuation of the church that he organized, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and the Community of Christ.
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Main article: Early life of Joseph Smith |
Smith was born on December 23, 1805, on the border between South Royalton and Sharon, Vermont, to Lucy Mack Smith and her husband Joseph Smith Sr., a merchant and farmer.[6][7] He was one of 11 children. At the age of seven Smith suffered a crippling bone infection and, after receiving surgery, used crutches for three years.[8] After an ill-fated business venture and three successive years of crop failures culminating in the 1816 Year Without a Summer, the Smith family left Vermont and moved to Western New York, taking out a mortgage on a 100-acre (40 ha) farm in the townships of Palmyra and Manchester.[9]
The region was a hotbed of religious enthusiasm during the Second Great Awakening.[10][11] Between 1817 and 1825, there were several camp meetings and revivals in the Palmyra area.[12] Smith's parents disagreed about religion, but the family was caught up in this excitement.[13] Smith said that he became interested in religion by age 12. As a teenager, he may have been sympathetic to Methodism.[14] With other family members, Smith also engaged in religious folk magic, which was a relatively common practice in that time and place.[15] Both his parents and his maternal grandfather reportedly had visions or dreams that they believed communicated messages from God.[16] Smith said that, although he had become concerned about the welfare of his soul, he was confused by the claims of competing religious denominations.[17]
Years later, Smith wrote that he had received a vision that resolved his religious confusion.[18] He said that in 1820, while he had been praying in a wooded area near his home, God and Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him his sins were forgiven and that all contemporary churches had "turned aside from the gospel."[19] Smith said he recounted the experience to a preacher, who dismissed the story with contempt.[20] This first vision would later grow in importance to Smith's followers, who now regard it as the first event in the restoration of Christ's church to Earth. Until the 1840s, however, Smith's accounts of the vision were largely unknown to most Mormons,[21] and Smith himself may have originally considered it a personal conversion.[22]
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.[23] Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning, but was unsuccessful because the angel returned and prevented him.[24] Smith reported that during the next four years, he made annual visits to the hill, but, until the fourth and final visit, each time he returned without the plates.[25]
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.[26] 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.[27] 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 Josiah Stowell, a wealthy farmer in Chenango County, New York, starting in 1825.[28] In 1826, Smith was brought before a Chenango County court for "glass-looking", or pretending to find lost treasure; Stowell's relatives accused Smith of tricking Stowell and faking an ability to perceive hidden treasure, though Stowell attested that he believed Smith had such abilities.[29] The result of the proceeding remains unclear as primary sources report various conflicting outcomes.[30]
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; he believed Smith had no means to support Emma,[31] and he considered Smith a stranger who appeared "careless" and "not very well educated."[32] 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.[33]
Smith made his last visit to the hill shortly after midnight on September 22, 1827, taking Emma with him.[34] This time, he said he successfully retrieved the plates.[35] 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 plates were a religious record of Middle-Eastern indigenous Americans and were engraved in an unknown language, called reformed Egyptian.[36] He also told associates that he was capable of reading and translating them.[37]
Although Smith had left his treasure hunting endeavors, his former associates believed he had double crossed them and taken the golden plates for himself, which they believed should be joint property.[38] After they ransacked places where they believed the plates could be hidden, Smith decided to leave Palmyra.[39]
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Main article: Life of Joseph Smith from 1827 to 1830 |
In October 1827, Smith and Emma moved from Palmyra to Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania, aided by a relatively prosperous neighbor, Martin Harris.[40] Living near his in-laws, Smith transcribed some characters that he said were engraved on the plates and dictated translations to Emma.[41]
In February 1828, Harris arrived in Harmony, and he took a sample of the characters Smith had copied to a few prominent scholars, including Charles Anthon.[42] 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.[43] 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, seemingly convinced, and he began participating in the process as Smith's scribe.[44]
Although Harris and his wife Lucy Harris were early supporters, by June 1828, they began having doubts about the project. Harris persuaded Smith to let him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members, including his wife.[45] Harris lost the manuscript, of which there was no other copy.[46] Smith was devastated not only by the loss of the manuscript, but also the loss of his first son who had died shortly after birth.[47] As punishment for losing the manuscript, Smith said that the angel returned and took away the plates, and revoked his ability to translate.[48] 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.[49]
Smith said that the angel returned the plates to him in September 1828.[50] Smith performed some dictation of the Book of Mormon with Emma Smith scribing.[51] In April 1829, he met Oliver Cowdery; with Cowdery as scribe, Smith launched into a period of "rapid-fire translation".[52] 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.[53] When the narrative described an institutional church and a requirement for baptism, Smith and Cowdery baptized each other.[54] Dictation was completed about July 1, 1829.[55]
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.[56] 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.[57] According to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates once Smith finished using them.[58]
The completed work, titled the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra by printer E. B. Grandin and was first advertised for sale on March 26, 1830.[59] Soon after, on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ, and small branches were established in Manchester, Fayette, and Colesville, New York.[60] The Book of Mormon brought Smith regional notoriety and hostility from those who remembered the 1826 Chenango County trial.[61] 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 on charges of being a "disorderly person."[62] He was acquitted, but soon both he and Cowdery fled to Colesville to escape a gathering mob. Smith later claimed that, probably around this time, Peter, James, and John had appeared to him and had ordained him and Cowdery to a higher priesthood.[63]
Smith's authority was undermined when Oliver Cowdery, Hiram Page, and other church members also claimed to receive revelations.[64] 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.[65] Shortly after the conference, Smith dispatched Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, and others on a mission to proselytize Native Americans.[66] Cowdery was also assigned the task of locating the site of the New Jerusalem.[67]
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.[68] Rigdon soon visited New York and quickly became Smith's primary assistant.[69] With growing opposition in New York, Smith announced a revelation stating that his followers should gather to Kirtland, Ohio and there establish themselves as a people and await word from Cowdery's mission.[70]
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Main articles: Life of Joseph Smith from 1831 to 1834 and Life of Joseph Smith from 1834 to 1837 |
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.[71] Smith brought the Kirtland congregation under his own authority and tamed these outbursts. Rigdon's followers had also been practicing a form of communalism.[72] 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.[73]
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.[74] Though his mission to the Indians had been a failure, Cowdery and the other missionaries with him were charged with finding a site for "a holy city"; they found Jackson County, Missouri.[75] After Smith visited in July 1831, he pronounced the frontier hamlet of Independence the "center place" of Zion.[76] For most of the 1830s, the church centered in Ohio.[77] 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.[78] 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.[79]
In Jackson County, existing Missouri residents resented the Mormon newcomers for both political and religious reasons.[80] 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.[81] After armed bands exchanged fire, killing one Mormon and two non-Mormons, the old settlers forcibly expelled the Mormons from the county.[82]
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.[83] As a military endeavor, the expedition was a failure. The men struggled over unity, suffered from a cholera outbreak, and were severely outnumbered. Smith sent two church representatives to petition Missouri governor Daniel Dunklin for protection and support, but Dunklin declined. By the end of June, Smith deescalated the confrontation, sought peace with Jackson County's residents, and disbanded Zion's Camp.[84] Nevertheless, Zion's Camp transformed Mormon leadership: many future church leaders came from among the participants.[85]
After the Camp returned, Smith drew heavily from its participants to establish various governing bodies in the church.[86] Smith gave a revelation saying that to redeem Zion, his followers would have to receive an endowment in the Kirtland Temple.[87] In March 1836, at the temple's dedication, many participants in the endowment reported seeing visions of angels, speaking in tongues, and prophesying.[88]
In late 1837, a series of internal disputes led to the collapse of the Kirtland Mormon community.[89] Smith was blamed for having promoted a church-sponsored bank that failed. Oliver Cowdery (who by then was Assistant President of the Church)[90] also accused Smith of engaging in a sexual relationship with a teenage servant in his home, Fanny Alger.[91] Building the temple had left the church deeply in debt, and Smith was hounded by creditors.[92] Having heard of a large sum of money supposedly hidden in Salem, Massachusetts, Smith traveled there and announced a revelation that God had "much treasure in this city".[93] After a month, however, he returned to Kirtland empty-handed.[94]
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 banknotes partly capitalized by real estate.[95] Smith encouraged the Latter Day Saints to buy the notes, and he invested heavily in them himself, but the bank failed within a month.[96] 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.[97] 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.[98]
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Main article: Life of Joseph Smith from 1838 to 1839 |
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, in Caldwell County, became the new "Zion".[99] In Missouri, the church also took the name "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", and construction began on a new temple.[100] In the weeks and months after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West, thousands of Latter Day Saints followed them from Kirtland.[101] Smith encouraged the settlement of land outside Caldwell County, instituting a settlement in Adam-ondi-Ahman, in Daviess County.[102]
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.[103] Smith explicitly approved of the expulsion of these men, who were known collectively as the "dissenters".[104]
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.[105] Around June 1838, "ultra-loyal" Sampson Avard formed a covert organization called the Danites to intimidate Mormon dissenters and oppose anti-Mormon militia units.[106] Though it is unclear how much Smith knew of the Danites' activities, he clearly approved of those of which he did know.[107] After Rigdon delivered a sermon that implied dissenters had no place in the Mormon community, the Danites forcibly expelled them from the county.[108]
In a speech given at Far West’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.[109] Smith implicitly endorsed this speech,[110] 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.[111]
On August 6, 1838, non-Mormons in Gallatin tried to prevent Mormons from voting,[112] 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.[113] 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".[114] On October 30, a party of Missourians surprised and killed seventeen Mormons in the Haun's Mill massacre.[115]
The following day, the Latter Day Saints surrendered to 2,500 state troops and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state.[116] 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.[117] Smith was then sent to a state court for a preliminary hearing, where several of his former allies testified against him.[118] Smith and five others, including Rigdon, were charged with treason, and transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri, to await trial.[119]
Smith's months in prison with an ill and whining Rigdon strained their relationship. Meanwhile, Brigham Young - as president of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, one of the church's governing bodies - rose to prominence when he organized the move of about 14,000 Mormon refugees to Illinois and eastern Iowa.[120]
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".[121] Though he directed his followers to collect and publish their stories of persecution, he also urged them to moderate their antagonism toward non-Mormons.[122] 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.[123]
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Main article: Life of Joseph Smith from 1839 to 1844 |
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,[124] where Smith purchased high-priced, swampy woodland in the hamlet of Commerce.[125] Smith also attempted to portray the Latter Day Saints as an oppressed minority, and unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for help in obtaining reparations.[126] 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.[127]
Smith also attracted a few wealthy and influential converts, including John C. Bennett, the Illinois quartermaster general.[128] Bennett used his connections in the Illinois legislature to obtain an unusually liberal charter for the new city, which Smith renamed "Nauvoo" (Hebrew נָאווּ, meaning "to be beautiful").[129] 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.[130] Though Mormon authorities controlled Nauvoo's civil government, the city guaranteed religious freedom for its residents.[131] The charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion, a militia whose actions were limited only by state and federal constitutions. Smith and Bennett became its commanders, and were styled Lieutenant General and Major General respectively. As such, they controlled by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois.[132] Smith made Bennett Assistant President of the church, and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's first mayor.[133]
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.[134] When embarrassing rumors of polygamy's practice (called "spiritual wifery" by Bennett) got abroad, Smith forced Bennett's resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett left Smith's following and published sensational accusations against Smith and his followers in Nauvoo.[135]
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.[136] An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fulness of the priesthood"; and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing".[137] 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.[138] 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".[139] 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.[140] Zion also became less a refuge from an impending tribulation than a great building project.[141] 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.[142]
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.[143] 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.[144] (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.[145] While this ended the Missourians' attempts at extradition, it caused significant political fallout in Illinois.[146]
In December 1843, Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense.[148] 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.[149] 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.[150] 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.[151]
According to researchers Ronald Romig and Lachlan Mackay, Smith posed for a daguerreotype by Lucian R. Foster sometime in 1844; the photograph was published in 2022 in the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal.[147]
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Main article: Death of Joseph Smith |
By early 1844, a rift developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates.[152] 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.[153] Both also said that Smith had proposed marriage to their wives.[154] Believing the dissidents were plotting against his life, Smith excommunicated them on April 18, 1844.[155] These dissidents formed a competing church and the following month, at Carthage, the county seat, they procured indictments against Smith for perjury (as Smith publicly denied having more than one wife) and polygamy.[156]
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.[157] 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.[158] It also attacked Smith's practice of polygamy, implying that Smith was using religion as a pretext to draw unassuming women to Nauvoo to seduce and marry them.[159]
Fearing the newspaper would provoke a new round of violence against the Mormons, the Nauvoo city council declared the Expositor a public nuisance and ordered the Nauvoo Legion to destroy the press.[160] Smith, who feared another mob attack, supported the action, not realizing that destroying a newspaper was more likely to incite an attack than any of the Expositor accusations.[161]
Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident call to arms from Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal and longtime critic of Smith.[163] 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.[164] Smith initially fled across the Mississippi River, but shortly returned and surrendered to Ford.[165] On June 23, Smith and his brother Hyrum rode to Carthage to stand trial for inciting a riot.[166] Once the Smiths were in custody, the charges were increased to treason, preventing them from posting bail.[167]
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,[168][169] before he sprang for the window.[170] 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.[171] Five men were later tried for Smith's murder, but were all acquitted.[172] Smith was buried in Nauvoo, and is interred there at the Smith Family Cemetery.[173]
After his death, non-Mormon newspapers were almost unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic.[174] Conversely, within Mormonism, Smith was remembered first and foremost as a prophet, martyred to seal the testimony of his faith.[175]
Smith attracted thousands of devoted followers before his death in 1844, and millions in the century that followed.[176] Among Mormons, he is regarded as a prophet on par with Moses and Elijah.[177] In a 2015 compilation of the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time, Smithsonian magazine ranked Smith first in the category of religious figures.[178]
Mormons and non-Mormons have produced a large body of scholarly work about Smith. In it, two conflicting characterizations of Smith have emerged: a man of God on the one hand, and on the other, a fraud preying on the ignorance and credulity of his followers.[179] Believers tend to focus on Smith's achievements and religious teachings, and minimize his personal defects; detractors and critics, meanwhile, 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 bipolar disorder (manic-depressive) illness that might explain his visions and revelations.[180] Many modern biographers disagree with these ideas.[181] More nuanced interpretations include viewing Smith as: a prophet who had normal human weaknesses; a "pious fraud" who believed he was called by God to preach repentance and felt justified inventing visions in order to convert people;[182] or a gifted "mythmaker" whose teachings were inspired by his nineteenth-century environment.[183] Biographers – Mormon and non-Mormon alike – agree that Smith was one of the most influential, charismatic, and innovative figures in American religious history.[184]
Memorials to Smith include the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, Utah,[185] the Joseph Smith Memorial building formerly on the campus of Brigham Young University and the Joseph Smith Building that is currently on BYU campus,[186] and a granite obelisk marking his birthplace.[187]
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See also: Succession crisis (Latter Day Saints) and List of denominations in the Latter Day Saint movement |
Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis.[188] Smith had proposed several ways to choose his successor, but never clarified his preference.[189] Smith's brother Hyrum, had he survived, would have had the strongest claim, followed by Smith's brother Samuel, who died abruptly a month after Joseph and Hyrum.[190] Another brother, William, was unable to attract a sufficient following.[191] Smith's sons Joseph III and David would also have had claims, but Joseph III was too young and David was born after Smith's death.[192] The Council of Fifty had a theoretical claim to succession, but it was a secret organization.[193] Some of Smith's chosen successors, such as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, had already left the church.[194] Emma Smith and some members of the Anointed Quorum supported appointing Nauvoo stake president William Marks as church president, but Marks ultimately supported Sidney Rigdon's claim to succession instead.[195]
The two strongest succession candidates were Brigham Young, senior member and president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Sidney Rigdon, the senior remaining member of the First Presidency. In a church-wide conference on August 8, most of the Latter Day Saints present elected Young; they eventually left Nauvoo and settled the Salt Lake Valley.[196] Nominal membership in Young's denomination, named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), surpassed 16 million in 2018.[197] Smaller groups followed Sidney Rigdon and James J. Strang, who had based his claim on a letter of appointment ostensibly written by Smith (but which some scholars believe was forged).[198] Others followed Lyman Wight and Alpheus Cutler.[199] 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 the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (later renamed the Community of Christ), which now has about 250,000 members.[200][201]
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See also: List of Joseph Smith's wives and Children of Joseph Smith |
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.[202] The eldest, Alvin (born in 1828), died within hours of birth, as did twins Thaddeus and Louisa (born in 1831).[203] When the twins died, the Smiths adopted another set of twins, Julia Murdock and Joseph Murdock, whose mother had recently died in childbirth; Joseph Murdock Smith died of measles in 1832.[204] In 1841, Don Carlos, who had been born a year earlier, died of malaria, and five months later, in 1842, Emma gave birth to a stillborn son.[205]
Joseph and Emma had five children who lived to maturity: adopted Julia Murdock, Joseph Smith III, Frederick Granger Williams Smith, Alexander Hale Smith, and David Hyrum Smith.[206] Some historians have speculated—based on journal entries and family stories—that Smith fathered children with his plural wives. However, in cases where it has been possible, DNA testing of potential Smith descendants from wives other than Emma has been negative.[207]
After Smith's death, Emma Smith quickly became alienated from Brigham Young and the church leadership.[208] Emma feared and despised Young, and he was suspicious of her desire to preserve the family's assets from inclusion with those of the church and disliked her open opposition to plural marriage. Along with William Clayton, Young excluded Emma Smith from ecclesiastical meetings and from social gatherings.[209] When most Latter Day Saints moved west, she stayed in Nauvoo and married a non-Mormon, Major Lewis C. Bidamon.[210] Emma Smith 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 maintained her belief that Smith was a prophet and never repudiated her belief in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.[211]
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See also: Origin of Latter Day Saint polygamy, Mormonism and polygamy, and List of Joseph Smith's wives |
By some accounts, Smith had been teaching a polygamy doctrine as early as 1831, and there is evidence that Smith may have been a polygamist by 1835.[212] Although the church had publicly repudiated polygamy, in 1837 there was a rift between Smith and Oliver Cowdery over the issue.[213] Cowdery suspected Smith had engaged in a relationship with Fanny Alger, who worked in the Smith household as a serving girl.[214] Smith did not directly deny having a relationship, but he insisted he never admitted to adultery,[215] "Presumably," historian Richard Bushman argues, "because he had married Alger" as a plural wife.[216]
In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman.[217] During the next two-and-a-half years he secretly married or was sealed to about 30 or 40 additional women.[218] Ten of Smith's plural wives were between the ages of fourteen and twenty; others were over fifty.[219] Ten were already married to other men, and some of these polyandrous marriages were done with the consent of the first husbands.[220] Evidence for whether or not and to what degree Smith's polygamous marriages involved sex is ambiguous and varies between marriages; between Smith's busy life and keeping the plural marriages secret, private interactions between Smith and his polygamous wives were limited.[221] Some polygamous marriages may have been considered special religious marriages that would not take effect until after death.[222] The practice of polygamy was kept secret from both non-Mormons and most members of the church during Smith's lifetime.[223]
Polygamy caused a breach between Smith and his first wife, Emma.[224] Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich summarizes, "Emma vacillated in her support for plural marriage, sometimes acquiescing to Joseph's sealings, sometimes resisting."[225] Although Emma knew of some of her husband's marriages, she almost certainly did not know the full extent of his polygamous activities.[226] In 1843, Emma temporarily accepted Smith's marriage to four women of her choosing who boarded in the Smith household, but she later regretted her decision and demanded the other wives leave.[227] That July, at his brother Hyrum's encouragement, Joseph dictated a revelation which directed Emma to accept plural marriage; Hyrum delivered the transcription to Emma, but she rejected it and was furious.[228] Joseph and Emma were not reconciled over the matter until September 1843, after Emma began participating in temple ceremonies,[229] and after Joseph made other concessions to her.[230] The next year, in March 1844, Emma publicly denounced polygamy as evil and destructive, and though she did not directly disclose the secret practice of plural marriage, she insisted that people should heed only what Smith taught publicly – implicitly challenging Smith's private promulgation of polygamy.[231]
Despite her knowledge of polygamy, Emma Smith denied publicly that her husband had ever taken additional wives.[232] While Joseph Smith was alive, Emma spoke publicly against polygamy,[233] and she (along with multiple other signatories directly involved in polygamy) signed an 1842 petition denying that Smith or his church propagated polygamy.[234] After Joseph Smith's death, Emma continued denying his involvement with polygamy. When Joseph Smith III and Alexander Hale Smith specifically asked about polygamy in an interview with Emma Smith, she stated, "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".[235]
According to historian Richard Bushman, the "signal feature" of Smith's life was "his sense of being guided by revelation". Instead of presenting his ideas with logical arguments, Smith dictated authoritative scripture-like "revelations" and let people decide whether to believe.[236] Smith and his followers treated his revelations as being above teachings or opinions, and Smith acted as though he believed in his revelations as much as his followers.[237] Smith's first recorded revelation was a rebuke chastising Smith for having let Martin Harris lose 116 pages of Book of Mormon manuscript.[238] The revelation was written as if God were talking rather than as a declaration mediated through Smith; 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."[239]
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Main article: Book of Mormon |
The Book of Mormon has been called the longest and most complex of Smith's revelations.[240] Its language resembles the King James Version of the Bible. It is organized as a compilation of smaller books, each named after prominent figures in the narrative; its organization thereby resembles that of the Bible. Unlike the Bible, however, the compilation is integrated as a "uniform whole".[241][242] It tells the story of the rise and fall of a religious civilization beginning about 600 BC and ending in the fifth century.[241][243] The story begins with a family that leaves Jerusalem, just before the Babylonian captivity.[244] They eventually construct a ship and sail to a "promised land" in the Western Hemisphere.[245] There, they eventually divide into two factions: Nephites and Lamanites.[246] 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.[247][241]
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.[248] After the crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem, Jesus appears in the Americas, repeats the Sermon on the Mount, blesses children, and appoints twelve disciples.[249] The book ends with Moroni's exhortation to "come unto Christ".[250]
Early Mormons regarded the Book of Mormon as a companion to the Bible and a religious history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.[251] Parley P. Pratt said the book "filled my soul with joy and gladness", and he "esteemed the Book, or the information contained in it, more than all the riches of the world".[252] Other readers regarded the book as the work of a fanatic or fraud and thought it was derivative of Smith's surroundings; Alexander Campbell accused Smith of writing "in his Book of Mormon, every error and almost every truth discussed in New York for the last ten years."[253]
Scholars' assessments of the Book of Mormon vary. Some have considered the Book of Mormon a response to pressing cultural and environmental issues of Smith's times.[254] Historian Dan Vogel regards the book as being autobiographical in nature and resembling Smith's life and perceptions.[255] Biographer Robert V. Remini calls the Book of Mormon "a typically American story" that "radiates the revivalist passion of the Second Great Awakening."[256] Fawn M. Brodie suggested that Smith composed the Book of Mormon by drawing on sources of information available to him such as the 1823 book View of the Hebrews.[257] Others argue the Book of Mormon is more biblical than American; Richard Bushman writes that "the Book of Mormon is not a conventional American book" and that its "innermost structure" better resembles the Bible.[258] According to historian Daniel Walker Howe, the book's "dominant themes are biblical, prophetic, and patriarchal, not democratic or optimistic" like the prevailing American culture.[259] Jan Shipps argues that the Book of Mormon's "complex set of religious claims" provided "the basis of a new mythos" or "story" which early converts accepted and lived in as their world, thus departing from "the early national period in America into a new dispensation of the fulness of times".[260]
Smith never fully described how he produced the Book of Mormon, saying only that he translated by the power of God and implying that he had read words.[261] The Book of Mormon itself states only that its text will "come forth by the gift and power of God unto the interpretation thereof".[262] Accordingly, there is considerable disagreement about the actual method used. 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.[263] 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.[264] 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.[265] Sometimes, Smith concealed the process by raising a curtain or dictating from another room; at other times he dictated in full view of witnesses while the plates lay covered on the table or were hidden elsewhere.[266] After completing the translation, Smith gave the brown stone to Cowdery, but he continued to receive revelations using another stone until about 1833 when he said he no longer needed it.[267]
The Book of Mormon was influential in the church Smith founded. The book drew some converts to the movement, some adherents incorporated Book of Mormon phrases into their speech and writing, and its depiction of a Christian church provided an early model for the Church of Christ's ecclesiastical organization.[252] To early Mormons, the book verified Smith's claims to prophethood.[268] Smith accepted the world described by the Book of Mormon—one in which people preserved and recovered sacred records—as his own, and he adopted the role it described for him as a prophet, seer, and translator.[269] By early 1831, he was introducing himself as "Joseph the Prophet".[270] Smith voiced and promulgated the revelations with confidence, as if he were an Old Testament prophet, and the language of authority in Smith's revelations appealed to converts.[271]
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Main article: Book of Moses |
In June 1830, Smith dictated a "revelation of Moses", in which Moses saw "the world and the ends thereof" and asked God questions about the purpose of creation and humankind's relationship to God. This revelation initiated a revision of the Bible which Smith worked on sporadically until 1833, but which remained unpublished until after his death.[272] 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".[273] While many changes involved straightening out seeming contradictions or making small clarifications, other changes added large "lost" portions to the text.[274] For instance, Smith's revision nearly tripled the length of the first five chapters of Genesis in what would become the Book of Moses.[275]
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.[276] The book also elaborates and expands upon passages that foreshadow the coming of Christ, in effect Christianizing the Old Testament.[277]
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Main article: Book of Abraham |
In 1835, Smith encouraged some Latter Day Saints in Kirtland to purchase rolls of ancient Egyptian papyri from a traveling exhibitor. Smith said they contained the writings of the ancient patriarchs Abraham and Joseph. Over the next several years, Smith dictated to scribes what he reported was a revelatory translation of one of these rolls, which was published in 1842 as the Book of Abraham.[278] 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.[279]
The papyri associated with the Book of Abraham were thought to have been lost in the Great Chicago Fire, but several fragments were rediscovered in the 1960s. These were translated by Egyptologists and determined to be part of the Book of Breathing with no connection to Abraham.[280]
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See also: Book of Commandments, Doctrine and Covenants, and Kinderhook plates |
[The Holy Spirit] may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass.
—Joseph Smith[281]
According to Parley P. Pratt, Smith dictated his revelations, which were recorded by a scribe without revisions or corrections.[282] 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".[283] 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.[284]
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.[285] 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.[286] Another 1832 revelation "on Priesthood" was the first to explain priesthood doctrine.[287] 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.[288]
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).[289] The Word of Wisdom was not originally framed as a commandment, but a recommendation. As such, it was not strictly followed by Smith and other Latter Day Saints, though it later became a requirement in the LDS Church.[290] In 1835, Smith gave the "great revelation" that organized the priesthood into quorums and councils, and functioned as a complex blueprint for church structure.[291] 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.[292]
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.[293] The pace of formal revelations slowed during the autumn of 1833, and again after the dedication of the Kirtland Temple.[294] Smith moved away from formal written revelations spoken in God's voice, and instead taught more in sermons, conversations, and letters.[295] 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.[296]
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Main article: Teachings of Joseph Smith |
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See also: Mormon cosmology and Godhead (Latter Day Saints) |
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.[297] Matter, in Smith's view, could be neither 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.[298] 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.[299]
Though Smith initially viewed God the Father as a spirit,[300] he eventually began teaching that God was an advanced and glorified man,[301] embodied within time and space.[302] 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".[303] Through the gradual acquisition of knowledge, according to Smith, those who received exaltation could eventually become like God.[304] These teachings implied a vast hierarchy of gods, with God himself having a father.[305] 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.[306]
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 proxy ordinances performed on their behalf.[307] 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.[308]
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See also: Priesthood (Latter Day Saints), Freemasonry and the Latter Day Saint movement, and Endowment (Latter Day Saints) |
Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational restorationism.[309] 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.[310] At first, Smith's church had little sense of hierarchy and his religious authority was derived from his visions and revelations.[311] Though Smith did not claim exclusive prophethood, an early revelation designated him as the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as Moses".[312] 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 to the church all their property, to be divided among the faithful.[313] He also envisioned that the theocratic institutions he established would have a role in the worldwide political organization of the Millennium.[314]
By the mid-1830s, Smith began teaching a hierarchy of three priesthoods—the Melchizedek, the Aaronic, and the Patriarchal.[315] Each priesthood was a continuation of biblical priesthoods through patrilineal succession or ordination by biblical figures appearing in visions.[316] 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.[317] 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.[318] The endowment was extended to women in 1843, though Smith never clarified whether women could be ordained to priesthood offices.[319]
Smith taught that the High Priesthood's endowment of heavenly power included the sealing powers of Elijah, allowing High Priests to perform ceremonies with effects that continue after death.[320] For example, this power would enable proxy baptisms for the dead and marriages to last into eternity.[321] 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.[322]
During the early 1840s, Smith unfolded a theology of family relations called the "New and Everlasting Covenant" that superseded all earthly bonds.[323] 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 Godhood.[324] 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").[325] When fully sealed into the covenant, Smith said that no sin nor blasphemy (other than murder and apostasy) could keep them from their exaltation in the afterlife.[326] According to a revelation Smith dictated, God appointed only one person on Earth at a time—in this case, Smith—to possess this power of sealing.[327]
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.[328] 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.[329]
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."[330] 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.[331] In foreign affairs, Smith was an expansionist, though he viewed "expansionism as brotherhood" and envisioned expanding the United States with the permission of indigenous peoples and at the request of other sovereign peoples.[332] Concretely, Smith advocated for accepting Texas into the Union, claiming the disputed Oregon country, and someday incorporating Canada and Mexico into the United States.[333]
To protect US business and agriculture, Smith favored establishing high tariffs and a publicly-owned central national bank with democratically elected officers that would print currency but "never issue any more bills than the amount of capital stock in her vaults and the interest".[334][335]
Smith opposed imprisonment for debt or as a criminal penalty (except in the case of murder), recommended abolishing courts-martial for military deserters, and encouraged citizens to petition their state leaders to pardon all convicts.[334][336] He suggested that courts instead sentence convicts to labor on public works projects, such as building roads, and he proposed that providing education would make prisons obsolete.[337] He also advocated for amending the Constitution to provide a penalty of capital punishment for public officials who failed to aid people whose constitutional rights had been abridged.[334]
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 bloodshed, and would be replaced with a "theodemocratic" Kingdom of God.[338] 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.[339]
Throughout his life, Smith held differing positions on the issue of slavery.[340] Initially he opposed it, but during the mid-1830s, when the Mormons were settling in Missouri (a slave state), he justified slavery in an anti-abolitionist essay.[341] 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 that the federal government end slavery by 1850 by paid compensation of enslavers.[342]
However, biographer Donna Hills notes that Smith's "feelings were complex… and cannot be neatly classified as liberal."[343] He did not support black self-government and opposed interracial marriage.[344] Smith welcomed black Americans, enslaved and free, into church membership,[345] but instructed against baptizing enslaved people without permission from the enslavers.[346] He once said that black people "came into the world as slaves", but that this was a situational condition of enslavement rather than a permanent characteristic, and that black Americans were as capable of education as white Americans.[347]
Smith and other early Mormons believed racial division was a temporary estrangement of an initially united human family and considered Smith's religious movement a divinely ordained way to restore humanity to its original relationship.[348] However, they envisioned this unity in terms of a "white universalism" in which people of color and indigenous people would assimilate into whiteness and "overcome the legacy of spiritual inferiority of the cursed lineages into which" Smith and his followers believed people of color were born into.[349]
![Researchers claim that this daguerreotype by Lucian R. Foster shows Joseph Smith in 1844[147]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/23/Joseph_Smith_daguerreotype.jpg/440px-Joseph_Smith_daguerreotype.jpg)
![Smith was shot multiple times before and after falling from the window.[162]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Assassination_of_Joseph_Smith.jpg)
