Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: On June 27, 1844 at around 5pm a mob stormed Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were being held. And within minutes they were dead. But what if the murder weapon was not a gun but the actual legal system itself? Welcome to Informed Saints. I'm Jasmine, this is Stephen and Neil. And apparently there was a conspiracy to murder Joseph Smith long before the Nauvoo expositor, long before 1844. That, that goes back quite a ways. So help us understand, Stephen, when did this conspiracy to murder Joseph Smith even begin?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Yes, dare we call it the Carthage Conspiracy?
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Dun dun dun.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: There's even a book about it, right. That we will just kind of highlight here.
[00:00:43] Speaker C: Written by a familiar name, guy by
[00:00:45] Speaker B: the name of Dallin H. Oaks. I don't know, never heard of the guy. Maybe an up and comer here in, I don't know, he's saying studies or whatever. Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill about the trial of the accused assassins of Joseph Smith. And there's other publications we can touch on kind of the background leading up to Carthage, the road to Carthage. Right. But yes, Jasmine, many Latter Day Saints have like a vague sense of like oh yeah, Joseph Smith was in Carthage in the jail and then he was killed. And that's really sad. And they have like a nebulous sense of why he was in the jail.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: And then critics will be like, oh, it was because of polygamy and the Nauvoo Expositor tried to expose him and all of that scandal was. But apparently it goes way before that,
[00:01:23] Speaker B: goes way before that. So I think what we can do for today's episode, in fact I would
[00:01:27] Speaker C: just say not only does it go before that, but you could argue that the Expositor was a deliberate provocation that was intended to bring about these events.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Well, certainly the response to the suppression of the paper was. And this is a lot what Dallin H. Oaks and other scholars have talked about.
So yeah, let's just kind of frame this a little bit here with a little bit of background to leading up to Carthage. I also want to preface what we're going to say today with this observation or statement.
So we're talking about like the legal system in Illinois and this gets really acrimonious and it's a lot of kind of he said, he said type of allegations. Right.
Joseph Smith accuses people and they accuse him back and so forth. And we have corroboration for some of this but not a lot of it. So it really is kind of who do you believe in some of these accusations.
If you have Joseph Smith derangement syndrome and your like default assumption is that prophet man bad and everything he does is bad and everything and everything is
[00:02:25] Speaker A: biased through that lens and everything is biased.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: If that's your bias, then like, I don't think anything we say here is gonna convince you that maybe it's not a good thing to use the law to like, you know, murder people, murder people and have a conspiracy to get people killed. So hopefully we can present some evidence that gives you a little bit more of an objective perspective on why it was bad that Joseph Smith and Hyrum were killed in Carthage. So with all that said, let's actually start in 1840 in Nauvoo.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: So this is years before Joseph Smith.
[00:02:52] Speaker C: Three years.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Three years before we're in Carthage. 1841 is the first of three attempts by the state of Missouri to extradite Joseph Smith back to Missouri to stand trial for charges of everything from treason to larceny to vandalism, destroying property, threatening people, et cetera. Right.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Why would they want to get him back to Missouri? Like do any of those charges hold weight? Was he actually doing vandalism, larceny?
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Well, it stems from the Mormon War of 1838. Right. Mormon War.
The reason why Joseph gets imprisoned in Liberty Jail is because of that war between Latter Day Saints and the state militia. Right. And things like that. So yes, there are accusations that Joseph Smith and other Latter Day Saints, including Latter Day Saint leaders, were directly responsible for all these bad things that like the Danites did and that Mormon militiamen did. Right. Burning down farms and stealing property and threatening people.
[00:03:44] Speaker C: And again, just like with the legal stuff more directly leading up to Joseph Smith's death, a lot of it is just like he said, he said sort of stuff. It just depends on like who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the Latter Day Saint accounts about what happened or are you going to believe like the Missourians accounts of what happened? Right, that's right.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: Really burning farms and stuff doesn't sound very peachy keen. Yeah, it sounds like there are accusations going both ways. And the Latter Day Saint perspective is, I mean it was in self defense, retaliation, like there was back and forth
[00:04:16] Speaker B: going on in other cases. In other cases, from the Latter Day same perspective, these are charges that are being manufactured for the like the thinly veiled attempt to just like murder Mormons in Missouri. Right. Like remember we have the scene called the extermination order issued against the Latter Day Saints of Missouri. So it's kind of Hard to think that the Missourians and the Missouri government is just like these objective, neutral people. Just, we just want to bring justice, you know, or whatever. So you can understand from a Latter Day Saint perspective, especially if you experienced that in Missouri, if you had fled across the river into Illinois, why you'd be a little skittish to want to go back to Missouri for a fair and impartial jury trial. Right.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: Why you wouldn't expect to actually get a fair and impartial trial there in Missouri. And from what I understand as part of these extradition attempts, at least what the rumors that Latter Day Saints were hearing were that they were really just trying to get Joseph back over into Missouri so they could kill him.
[00:05:12] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:05:12] Speaker C: There were literally plots to kill him over there.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: There was reason to believe that it was.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: And so, you know, Joseph. Joseph was actually very adept at using like habeas corpus laws and stuff like that to.
To kind of prevent them from being able to extradite him.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Right, exactly. So. So there's three attempts, 1841, 1842. Famously, that's the one where Governor Boggs was nearly murdered. There was another Governor Boggs, and guys like John C. Bennett was claiming that, you know, Joseph Smith sent Porter Rockwell to go murder Boggs. And so there was another attempt to get him back then, and then another one in 1843 where he was like, basically kidnapped and the Nauvoo Legion had to like, stop them from going over the river. Like, he came pretty close in 1843. But Neil mentioned habeas corpus. We should just define that real quick because pretty much in these instances, that's what stopped Joseph from getting over extradited into Missouri.
Being the very adept scholar, lawyer and legal scholar that I am, I can tell you all about habeas corpus. I apologize to all of our lawyer listeners here who are probably going to cringe when I try to explain this, but in my bar exam of Google that I used to try to find out, basically, habeas corpus, it's the idea that you have the body that's literally in Latin. Right. So you have a prisoner in the prison system, but you have to justify it through another impartial judge. It's a way to ensure that you just aren't disappearing people into the prison system, that you want them to go away.
And it goes back to the Magna Carta.
[00:06:46] Speaker C: Right.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: There's a long history. The punchline is to kind of explain it in layman's terms. Imagine if mom and dad grounded you indefinitely in your room and they didn't tell you why they were grounding you. You could issue a writ of habeas corpus where you appeal to a third party like Aunt Susie to review whether the imprisonment is legal and justified. And if not, then you get set free.
[00:07:08] Speaker C: Right, right.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Makes sense.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: So in a nutshell, again, apologies to the lawyers who are cringing, but that's the idea. So Joseph is able to use the habeas corpus principle in the Nauvoo municipal court system to thwart the extradition. And not even Nauvoo. Also Springfield.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Yeah, he does it outside, you know, outside Nauvoo. But yeah, it basically, it requires the people who have detained you. They. They have to take you before an independent judge and basically say, hey, you've got to justify the warrant and the charges for taking me right now.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: And if you can't do it right now on the spot. Right. Like you're you, then the prisoner goes free. Right.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: So he uses habeas corpus, he thwarts those extradition attempts.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: Then how does he end up in Carthage?
[00:07:54] Speaker B: So he ends up in Carthage beginning basically early 1844.
Again, there's kind of a long process here, and it involves basically six men. William and Wilson Law, Robert and Charles Foster and Francis. And is it Chauncey Higbee? I think I'm pronouncing his name, yes. Chauncey. Yeah, Chauncey Higby.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: And are these members of the church?
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Everybody but Charles Foster. So, like, William Law's in the first presidency.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: What?
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Uh huh. And they are prominent leaders in Nauvoo. They are business owners. They're like. All of them are lawyers, too, which would kind of. Or most of them are lawyers.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: They're adept at using the law. Using the law to their ends.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Yeah. And so for various reasons, they have individual and collectively falling out with Joseph Smith. So.
[00:08:40] Speaker A: But they're still actively in the church at the time?
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Well, some of them are.
[00:08:44] Speaker C: They actually set up like a separate church.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Around this time.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: Around this time.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: So like the, the Higbees, especially Chauncey Higby, they kind of fall in with John C. Bennett back in 1842. They kind of get swayed by him. So they're already kind of, you know, in this precarious situation, kind of. Yeah. Apostate kind of situation. But like, you know, William Law, he's. I don't think he's removed from the first president to like, What, January of 1844 or something?
[00:09:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it was pretty, pretty, pretty.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: You know, close up to Carthage. The punchline is these guys have falling out with Joseph Smith. A big part of the reason why is over. Like plural marriage, right? That Joseph is privately teaching and introducing. And when they catch wind of it, or in William Law's case, it appears when Joseph attempts to sort of bring William Law into plural marriage, it kind of fries his brain and he goes nuts, kind of understandably, it's scandalous for a lot of people, right? It's hard for people, but that's one of the things that kind of precipitates them into becoming Joseph Smith's mortal enemies, essentially, right? So one thing in the work that we can recommend here in these two books, Sustaining the Law, and then this was republished in Joseph Smith Life Lived in Crescendo by Joseph Bentley, who's a legal historian and legal expert, he kind of tracks the fact that like Starting in early 1844, the laws and the Higbee's and the Fosters have both kind of petty and substantive grievances with Joseph Smith on legal things, right? Everything from like, you know, property disputes or in one case, I think one of the Foster brothers, if I miss, if I remember, was kind of slapped with a charge for using foul language in public or whatever. So kind of petty things, but also serious things like allegedly William Law threatening Joseph Smith's life and things like that, right? So there's these various kind of head on collisions they have with Joseph smith in early 1844 that will get them to realize we can use the law, being as we are adept in the law as lawyers here in Illinois, not over in Missouri, but here locally, right, In Hancock county, basically we can use lawfare against Joseph Smith and that is what is setting us up towards eventually Carthage in June, right? So kind of.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: And I tend to assume that the law is intended to preserve justice and to make sure people are treated fairly. How is can it be weaponized in this case?
[00:11:03] Speaker B: So yeah, let's use one example here, which is a charge of adultery that's brought against Joseph Smith by William Law.
I believe it's royal law, right? But one of these dissidents, he. So Joseph Smith is secretly practicing plural marriage. And again there's an article here in this book sustaining the Law about like adultery is a legal offense in 1840s in Illinois.
If you're William Law and you know that Joseph is secretly practicing plural marriage, you can try to use that fact to charge him with adultery, which he does. And that's one example where you could try to use the law to undermine or diminish Joseph Smith, right? Throw him in jail, get him in all sorts of trouble. That's an example of lawfare.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: So is that what they used to get him into Carthage, or were there other accidents?
[00:11:50] Speaker B: No, there was others.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: So what they're doing to your question about how you can use the law for nefarious purposes here, of course, the law exists to try and maintain order, to preserve justice. That's its purpose. Right. But I mean, even today, people can abuse the law for various reasons and use it for their own ends and agendas.
And basically what they're doing is Joseph Smith in Nauvoo has this.
It's like a stronghold. He's got the Nauvoo Legion.
He basically. He controls the courts. He controls, you know, he's the mayor.
I think he actually is the municipal judge as well.
Or at least if he isn't, his friends are. Right. I can't really remember how the law was set up, but I feel like elected officials were also just functioning as judges. And I think that was actually pretty normal for the time, as I recall. But he's got this stronghold in Nauvoo where he's kind of untouchable.
And so what they're doing is they're bringing charges to the county seat in the Hancock county seat in Carthage. And the purpose is honestly not even to get him found guilty on any of these charges. The purpose is to get him out of Nauvoo because they know he's untouchable in Nauvoo. Cause what's going on outside, beyond this little circle, at the same time is over in Warsaw. You've got Thomas Sharp, the editor of the Warsaw Signal, who is whipping up anti Mormon frenzy.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:17] Speaker C: And like, he's just writing all of these negative articles about Joseph Smith and
[00:13:23] Speaker B: thinly veiled calls for violence cases. End of May 1844, we would not be surprised to hear the death of Joseph Smith by violent means. Like, come on. You know, it's so transparently obviously what he's trying to do there. Right? Gee, it sure would be bad if Joseph Smith got murdered by a mob. Am I right, fellas? You know what I mean? It's like that kind of thing.
[00:13:41] Speaker C: Exactly. And so what they're doing is they're trying to get him out of Nauvoo so he's away from that protection so that these mobs that have been whipped up into a frenzy over the danger of Joseph Smith and the risk he poses to their freedom or whatever it is they're being convinced of, where he's vulnerable to attack by Those mobs.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: So I mean, it sounds like this isn't an honest, good faith effort to resolve a grievance or to seek fairness under the law, but rather they're just trying to throw whatever accusations will say stick to get him out of Nauvoo. So what would you say to someone who says like, well, it sounds like Nauvoo maybe had a lot of biases because Joseph controlled the court. Maybe they were just looking for an impartial, fair scenario to.
[00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And honestly, like, if I wanted to steel man that perspective for a minute here, I could understandably, to an extent, I could understand somebody saying, look, Joseph does have all this political power and protection in Nauvoo.
He's untouchable. He's like Emperor Palpatine. I am the Senate. Right. Like you could see somebody kind of thinking that about Joseph Smith in the context of Nauvoo. That's certainly the perspective that the laws
[00:14:46] Speaker C: and the funds have.
[00:14:49] Speaker B: However, like, think about it from the Latter Day Saint perspective here. What did they just go through in Missouri?
[00:14:55] Speaker A: Literal extermination.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: Literal extermination. And they tried their best to work within the law when they were sort of the minority in the law.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: Right.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Does that make sense? Right. They, they don't have real power in Missouri.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: And don't they even try to appeal to the President of the United States?
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Yes, they do. And what does he do?
[00:15:09] Speaker A: And it falls on deaf ears.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. So from their perspective, I think again, hopefully, unless we have Joseph derangement syndrome, where everything does is bad, maybe you could see a little bit why the Latter Day Saints would want to make Nauvoo a stronghold out of their sense of self protection and self preservation.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: But the government isn't going to.
[00:15:25] Speaker B: The state government's not going to help us. The federal government's not going to help us. We have to help ourselves. And so Nauvoo, the municipal system is set up in their minds to protect themselves from mobs and other from other injustices.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: This is. Yeah, this is exactly why the Nauvoo charter was set up the way it was. And, and John C. Bennett himself actually
[00:15:42] Speaker B: helped the one set it up.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: Help them get the Nauvoo charter set up so that Joseph and, and his friends and, and the Nauvoo Legion could wield the kind of power that they did.
But yeah, it's, it, it's, it's again, to steel man the position, it's totally understandable why people from the outside looking in, in Illinois, or even why people today Looking back on that, are looking at that and being like, yeah, that does actually seem like it's a little sus. Little sus. It's a little unfair. He's kind of stacked the deck in his favor. He's wielding a whole lot of power.
And. Yeah, so people were a little nervous about that. But again, I think you. You do have to understand this is coming from the background of these. These are these severe trauma. Yeah, severe trauma. They feel like the law failed them in Missouri.
They feel like the government failed them. And so they're trying to set something up here where they can actually. Where they feel like they have control and can protect themselves from that kind of treatment. And with the way things play out, you see, they had.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: They had a reason.
[00:16:40] Speaker C: They had a reason for it. They had a reason to be concerned about it.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: And so they throw all these charges against Joseph Smith, tries to see what sticks. What happens next.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: Well, we maybe need to go to now the Nauvoo Expositor. Right. So leading up to. So June 7, 1844, is when the first and only and last issue of the Nauvoo Expositor is issued.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: So this is 20 days before the actual 20 days.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: Yes. And it is published by the Laws and the Fosters and the Higbees and some others. But they're, again, these six guys. These, you know, six groups of. Three groups of brothers. Right. Are kind of the main drivers behind this. What is in the Nauvoo Expositor? Kind of everybody knows what it is, but, like, nobody's read it. It's kind of interesting. So we will look at it here of the Hebrews.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: It's too boring to actually read it.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
So there are three kind of major things that the Nauvoo Expositor is criticizing Joseph Smith for.
The first is, of course, plural marriage. Right.
William Law is to some degree a polygamy insider to kind of use Brian Hales terminology. Right.
And they have individuals who are also have some knowledge of plural marriage being practiced in Nauvoo. They're able to reproduce statements and affidavits from people. Right.
People who have seen the early copies of Section 132 and things like that that can describe its content. So you get those kinds of information in the Expositor. And of course, they think it's evil and vile and terrible that Joseph Smith is doing this. Right.
Number two, you have. They are critical of Joseph Smith's theology, specifically on things like plurality of gods and deification, exaltation, things that. Things like that. And then number Three, they are really critical of Joseph Smith's perceived political tyranny in Nauvoo. Right. So if you want to, you can call it the three polys, polygamy, polytheism, and politics. Right.
Did you like that? Yeah, I just came up with that. So the three kind of big things.
And maybe we can take a second here to go through and debunk some myths about the Nauvoo Expositor, shall we?
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Yes, please do so.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Again, people have a general sense of what the Nauvoo Expositor is, but let's. And we won't get too much into it because there's analysis in these articles and elsewhere that kind of breaks down. But I want to touch on a couple of things.
Myth number one, that Joseph Smith had the Nauvoo Expositor destroyed because he was trying to suppress the truth and hide the truth. Right. You get the narrative that the Nauvoo Expositor was like this bold, brave truth teller, and Joseph, this sniveling coward, wanted to hide it. The reason why that's a myth is because let's take the polytheism aspect of it. Plurality of gods.
So you mean to tell me that Joseph wants to suppress any knowledge that he's teaching plurality of gods while at the same time publicly sermonizing on plurality of gods at the King Follet Discourse, publishing the Book of Abraham in the Times and Seasons that discusses plurality of gods? Like, that charge doesn't make sense.
[00:19:31] Speaker A: It's not exactly exposing anything.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Right. There is a kernel of truth to the claim that Joseph is trying to suppress knowledge of plural marriage being practiced in Nauvoo. It is true that he's trying to keep that practice secret or private as he introduces it in Nauvoo.
Again, I think it's too cynical to say that he was, like, suppressing the truth in the sense that he didn't want anybody to know about plural marriage. Clearly he did. He's teaching it to people. He's privately introducing it one to one. And we have statements that indicate that had he been let to live long enough, he would have eventually publicly announced plural marriage. Right. So that's kind of myth number one. Myth number two, Joseph was violating the First Amendment by suppressing the Nauvoo Expositor. Right.
I hear this all the time. How bad that Joseph Smith took away the First Amendment rights of these people by destroying the newspaper.
Okay, here's why that's a myth or why that's too simplistic.
In the 1840s, the First Amendment, as we consider it today kind of didn't exist in the sense of it was a federal amendment to the Constitution. And the predominant legal kind of framework and paradigm and is that the federal government cannot use these amendments to step in and to regulate local, state or municipal affairs over issues like suppressing libelous newspapers or whatever.
And here's your civics quiz for the day. Neil, when was the 14th Amendment passed? Because that's the amendment that really kind of changes the paradigm here on this.
[00:21:03] Speaker C: I, I think, I think it was 1886 if I'm wrong.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: 68.
[00:21:07] Speaker C: 68. Okay.
The 8 and the 6th.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: No, you're fine. But yeah, so the 14th amendment is what gets passed in 1868. It has the due process clause. Again, I'm simplifying it for the constitutional lawyers here. That's what kind of flips the paradigm where now federal amendments to the Constitution can be applied by the Supreme Court or higher courts to lower state.
[00:21:26] Speaker C: I do think it's important to know and I don't, I don't have the dates off the top of my head on this for sure. I think this may be talked about. There's an article in that sustaining the law book by Dallin H. Oaks legally suppressing the Nauvoo Expositor in 1844 that I think goes through some of this.
But if I'm recalling correctly, the amendment is passed in 1868, but its application, its interpretation by the Supreme Court to say, okay, the implication of this amendment is that everything in the Bill of Rights now applies to state and lower governments as well. That doesn't happen until sometime later. I can't remember exactly 1931.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: 1931 near V. Minnesota is a landmark Supreme Court case where there was a newspaper in Minnesota that was, that was slandering or libelously charging crazy things against the local city council.
And the city council stepped in to suppress the newspaper and the publishers of the newspaper appealed and went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court determined, yeah, the First Amendment protects these people's, these publishers, local city publisher to publish these things. Right. So there's a complicated legal history. This is all to say it's not as simple as evil. Joseph Smith suppressed the First Amendment rights of these guys.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: And it's not just like so it's not clear cut what the law would have. And if I'm remembering correctly, that's President Oaks conclusion when he was Scholar Oaks,
[00:22:47] Speaker B: I suppose Judge Lawyer Oaks.
[00:22:51] Speaker C: His conclusion is that it's not clear cut how the law would have ruled on a case like this.
And it is, I think, worth noting that there are precedents for this kind of thing in the 19th century. And there was an article a few years back by Craig Foster in the Interpreter that talked about some of these.
Noteworthy enough is the Latter Day Saint's own press.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Yes. In Missouri, which was suppressed in Missouri
[00:23:12] Speaker C: one where it was suppressed by violent means.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: So, yeah.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: So if the, if destroying a newspaper press isn't legally, you know, suppression of the press or it's not legally knocking against freedom of the press, isn't it still morally wrong to destroy a press? Like, what if people still feel icky about that?
[00:23:33] Speaker B: So we'll get to that in just a second here because, yes, we're going through the legal stuff here. Quick. The morality of the issue that was debated then and now still. Right. In terms of, or even like the, the tactical wisdom of whether it was
[00:23:45] Speaker C: really a good idea.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Whether it was a good idea or not. We'll get to in just a second what the, what the city council thought, what their rationale was.
But just to go back to what Neil said. Yeah. There are famous Examples in the 19th century of newspapers being suppressed because local citizens deemed the contents of the paper, in some cases either libelous. By the way, libel is not covered by the First Amendment, thank you very much. Like you cannot libel and defame people knowingly, but also content that was considered either inflammatory or a nuisance to the public peace. That's the language the city council uses. So there are debates raging in the 1830s and 40s. When is it acceptable and okay both under the law and morally? When is it acceptable and okay to step in and abridge other people's First Amendment rights to protect the rights of others? Okay, so we'll touch on a second the final myth. I kind of want to sort of, well, expose here, talk about here.
Again, I hear the claim that, like the Nauvoo Expositor publishers, they were neutral and unbiased and they were just, they
[00:24:47] Speaker C: just told the truth.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: They told the truth. That's all.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: They were telling the truth.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: They were just telling the truth. And bad, evil. Joseph Smith. I want to quote some things from the Nauvoo Expositor to kind of give you a sense of like, okay, is this like dispassionate, neutral, objective language here? So, boys and girls, put on your reading context clues, you know, abilities. Let's go through some statements and you tell me if this is just neutral, objective or if it's inflammatory or biased in some way. So Joseph Smith is running for president, you know, in June of 1844. Here's what they say about Joseph Smith as president. You are voting for a man who stands indicted and who is now held to bail for the crimes of adultery and perjury, he hadn't been committed. Of those crimes, by the way, two of the gravest known crimes known to our laws. Query not then for whom you are voting. It is for one of the blackest and basest scoundrels that has appeared upon the stage of human existence the since the days of Nero and Caligula.
Neutral and objective.
[00:25:44] Speaker C: Well, hey, bassist is actually a compliment to David.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, These days. Yeah. How about this? The people of the state of Illinois will consequently see the necessity of repealing the charter of Nauvoo. Gosh. Calling for appealing the Nauvoo charter. That's definitely objective and unbiased and not a political thing at all.
How about the way these guys talk about plural marriage? Right?
So when they describe the process of how Joseph approaches women to introduce them to plural marriage and in many cases write a proposition to become plural wives or so forth. It's a little bit of a longer quote, but I think it's worth sort of getting it. Okay. So it is a notorious fact that many females in foreign climes and in countries to us unknown, even in the most distant regions of the Eastern hemisphere, have been induced by the sound of the gospel to forsake friends and embark upon a voyage across the waters that lie stretched over the greater portion of the globe, et cetera, et cetera. And then when they come to Nauvoo, it is taught them on their arrival at this. Or what is taught them on their arrival at this place. They are visited by some of the strikers. Strikers is language from the New Testament, from Titus 1:7, meaning a quarrelsome or evil man visited by some of the strikers. For we know not what else to tell them to call them. And they are requested to hold on and be faithful. They are requested to meet with brother Joseph or some of the 12 at some insulated point, or at some particularly described place on the bank of the Mississippi, or at some other room which wears upon its front positively no admittance. The harmless, inoffensive and unsuspecting creatures are so devoted to the prophet they do not dream of the deep laid and fatal scheme which prostrates happiness and renders death itself desirable. They are told, after having been sworn in one of the most solemn manners, never to divulge what is revealed to them, with the penalty of death attached to Almighty God, has revealed to them that she should be his Joseph's spiritual wife. The prophet and his devotees in this way are gratified. The next step to avoid public exposition from the common course of things. They are sent away for a time until all is well, after which they return as from a long visit.
And then he says, those whom no power or influence could seduce, except they be wielding some kind of individual feigning to be a God. Right. Look for her after a little while, meaning the woman that he's propositioning and you will find friendship. Weeping over her untimely grave. But no one knows of the mental malady that previously sapped her strength. So easy a prey to the spoiler. It goes on like this, right?
[00:28:25] Speaker A: That hasn't even happened.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: What I love about ex Mormon and anti Mormon critiques like this is how sexist they are.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: How they just assume just how brainwashed
[00:28:33] Speaker B: and mindless poor helpless brainwashed women that
[00:28:36] Speaker A: just can't possibly have actually like used their own mental faculties to make an informed decision.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Make decision, but no one knows the cause except the foul fiend who perpetrated the diabolical deed. Does that sound like unbiased, neutral, objective language to you?
[00:28:50] Speaker A: And reporting diabolical basist and black evil scoundrel.
[00:28:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: Untimely grave. So you get, you get why this is absolutely not just some independent, brave truth tellers just telling the factual evidence of what's happening here. Right? These guys are so. Say what you want about polygamy, Right. These guys obviously don't like it. This kind of stuff is absolutely inflammatory at a minimum. Right. If not libelous. Right. Under the legal definition, to claim like
[00:29:18] Speaker A: that women are going to be dying,
[00:29:20] Speaker C: they're just going to be disappeared.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: Alive.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Right.
So anyways, you get the point here. So this kind of helps set up what the city council is dealing with when they decide what are we gonna do about the Nauvoo Expositor. Okay.
[00:29:33] Speaker C: And I do think, again, this is a point where you gotta. You've gotta remember the context outside of Nauvoo. Right.
And the sentiment that's going around being
[00:29:43] Speaker B: stoked by Thomas Jones, John C. Bennett.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: John C. Bennett and all of these people, especially around claims about marriage, plural marriage and things like that.
And so you have a paper like this publishing very inflammatory accounts and things like that in kind of this powder keg environment.
And they're worried this is going to get disseminated out there and what are the people of Hancock county going to do?
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:10] Speaker C: In reaction to this again.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: And what's what's on the minds of the Latter Day Saints and Nauvoo. They've just come from Missouri.
Right. They are thinking, and we know this, we can get to what the city council decides. They are concerned that if this publication, the way that it's framing this and talking about this, the narratives it's creating about what's happening in Navu, if this is allowed to persist, they are deeply concerned this will lead to violence and mobs that we will whip up. This will whip up the state in a frenzy and we're going to have Missouri 2.0 if we allow this to persist. Right. So again, agree or disagree with the tactical decision to suppress the paper.
[00:30:47] Speaker C: And I honestly.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: You can see what's on their mind and why this is a real concern for them when they make the decision. And by the way, it's not Joseph Smith steps in and just unilaterally demands to destroy the paper. It's the city council that comes together.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: There's a. There's a very impassioned discussion for like two days.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Two days. They decide what to do.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: It's not spontaneous or rash.
[00:31:06] Speaker C: No.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:07] Speaker C: And I think it's like we understand the concerns and the fears and then we see the way things played out. And again, you see how I think clearly justified they were in having those concerns. But you also see that like, hindsight shows, well, they didn't end up preventing the kinds of things they wanted to
[00:31:22] Speaker B: do, they wanted to prevent in the first place.
[00:31:24] Speaker C: And so it does. You know, I think what it does raise questions of is how, like the environment was such that, like there maybe was almost no right decision to make. It was a.
It was kind of a lose, lose proposition.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: They let the newspaper people. There's violence.
[00:31:40] Speaker C: Joseph's enemies were going to spin any action they did or didn't do to their advantage. And it just didn't matter. It just didn't matter how he acted. I don't know.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: No.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: There may be people with other opinions,
[00:31:52] Speaker B: but so, so what do they do? They, they deem the paper a nuisance. Right. And that's kind of like a legal phrase.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: Legal term. Yeah. Public nuisance.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: And what the arguments that Dalliny Chokes and others have made is that it was probably within their legal rights to suppress publication of the paper but not destroy the printing press, which they then do. Right. So they, they physically destroy the press. They pie the type. They cast the type out in the streets. Right. To make it unusable.
That is where things go nuclear. Okay. So mid June we have charges of riot being filed against Joseph Smith by the publishers of the paper.
And there is a legal back and forth between both. Is it legal to suppress the paper and was it legal to destroy the press?
Dallin H. Oaks thinks that again, probably it was legal to suppress the paper. It probably was not legal to destroy the press. That's probably where there was overreach. And Joseph Smith, to Governor Ford, he says as much. He says, if it's determined by the law that we overstepped by destroying the paper, we will pay civil damage, we will restore property. However, they do dispute the riot charge. And again, in this legal scholarship, there are specific legal definitions for something to be a riot. But you know, to, to wrap it up here, this is what gets us. Well, initially it's what gets us in Carthage, but it's not what keeps them in Carthage. So in Nauvoo they have like three different hearings on the riot charge, including the. So first time they're all acquitted. Second time they're acquitted again. And you can understand again why outsiders
[00:33:22] Speaker C: are like, hey, the first time it's in Nauvoo, right?
[00:33:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: And the second time it's. It's still technically in Nauvoo. It's like just outside the.
The city. And it's with non Latter Day Saint Judge Wells, H. Wells, who actually does later join the church, if I'm remembering correctly. But at the time, he's not allowed at a saint.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: He's not allowed to say, but that's not good enough. That's not good enough either for Thomas Sharp and these guys, right? So they feel fed up. They feel that Joseph is just protecting his cronies from justice, basically. So they, they just, they agree. We will go to Carthage to hear this out. Right. At the county seat. We'll leave Nauvoo. There's a whole thing behind. Joseph says, I need protection from the governor, you know, and there's that back and forth. I need an escort. There's all that kind of stuff. The reason why Thomas Ford sort of has the sort of conniving, feckless reputation he has for a lot of people, especially Latter Day Saints, is his assurance will totally protect you, Joseph. Totally. Yeah, we, I can guarantee we'll protect you if you come to Carthage. And we know how that turns out.
[00:34:17] Speaker C: It's with those guarantees and those assurances that convinces Joseph to actually go.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: So we get to Carthage and again, another myth that people have is that he was put in Carthage jail for destroying the press. Actually, no, because they post bail in Carthage.
And in fact, the bail is exorbitant, by the way.
[00:34:37] Speaker C: They were supposed to, if I'm remembering right, I think they were supposed to hear. Have a hearing like then and there.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:34:43] Speaker C: But witnesses did not show up. And deliberately.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: The Higbees. Yeah, they don't show up.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they're trying to delay the proceeding.
[00:34:49] Speaker C: They're trying to delay the proceedings.
And so it's after that there's an exorbitant bail which they post.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: But they post and they're about to go.
[00:34:57] Speaker C: They're free to go.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
I think October is when they set the date for, for the trial.
Almost literally when they're back to go back to Nauvoo, we get a last minute treason charge by Justice Robert Smith there in Carthage. Treason? Why treason? Well, Joseph had called out the Nauvoo Militia, or the Nauvoo Legion to declare martial law on June 18.
And the claim was that was tantamount to treason against the state of Illinois. Never mind the fact that the Nauvoo Legion is part of the Illinois State Militia. Right. And ultimately the governor is over it. Right. Like this was. And Bentley and others appointed. This was so transparently bogus, this treason charge. There was no legal basis for it. There was no factual basis for it. Why are we doing treason, though? That's the movie question.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Bringing out the militia is to just like keep the peace while he's.
[00:35:46] Speaker C: Yeah, so what's going on is Thomas Sharp was literally holding rallies around the county where they were calling for the
[00:35:59] Speaker B: extermination of the Mormons, he says, on
[00:36:02] Speaker C: a Jewish calling for a war of extermination.
[00:36:04] Speaker B: Sound familiar?
[00:36:06] Speaker C: And they set a, they set a date for it. This is like kind of Third Nephi stuff, if you will. Third Nephi one. Right. They set a date for it. And so Joseph Smith, in preparation to defend Nauvoo, calls out the Nauvoo Militia. Yeah, that's the context of that.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So he gets slapped with the treason
[00:36:22] Speaker A: charge and yet it comes across as mutiny.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Or they're trying to paint it as mutiny. Yeah, they're trying to. Exactly. So that comes the charge and the million dollar question getting to the conspiracy. Why treason if there's no factual basis for it? If there's no legal basis for it. Well, the reason why treason is because it is a non bailable offense. And it's a capital offense too.
It is so transparently an effort by these guys at the last minute to keep Joseph in Carthage. The reason being why is because they wanted to kill him. Like let's make no bones about this. Right, Right. So Bentley gives good overview onto this. This whole treason charge. Absolutely scurrilous. Absolutely not justifiable by the law, but that will keep the brothers in Nauvoo. That is what leads us to then June 27th when he is martyred. Right. So again, to debunk the myth here, it's not just he destroyed the printing press and then went to Carthage and was killed. Right. No. There was a concerted effort by the legal system, by government officials and by private citizens of Hancock county to band together, dare I say, in a secret combination to keep this guy. Conspiracy in a conspiracy to keep this guy in Carthage so they could kill him.
And again, I hope that even if you think Joseph Smith was a false prophet, you think he was a fraud, he was a bad guy. Fine, you can think all that thing about the guy. Hopefully we can all agree it's bad to use lawfare to conspire to murder people just because you don't like him. Just because you don't like him. Hopefully we agree that's bad. Even with people we don't like or think are bad or false prophets.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:57] Speaker C: And I think like this, this article by Joseph Bentley that we've been talking about, by the way, the title is Road to Martyrdom. Joseph's Joseph Smith's Last Legal cases. It goes through pretty much all of this, or at least most of it. And there's a few other articles I think we've mentioned already.
It is, if I can, if I can use some slang here, it is a total red pill.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: Oh yeah, red pill.
[00:38:18] Speaker C: On like what was really going on.
It's like, honestly, I can't recommend it enough. It's very well documented.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:24] Speaker C: Very well researched.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: And runs so counter to a lot of the critical narratives you hear.
[00:38:29] Speaker C: Absolutely.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: The tick tock narratives you hear about this that has no historical or legal understanding of the complexity of what was actually.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: And then kind of is reveal to people who are like, well, Joseph deserved to die. So it's okay if they.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Oh yeah, that's a big mask off moment when you hear that from people. Well, he just kind of deserved. Really guys.
[00:38:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And I do think we didn't go. We don't need to go into this much. But it is worth noting like with the Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin Hill book here, the trial afterwards to supposedly bring the people who did this to justice. It's kind of a kangaroo court, the whole thing. Again, the book published by University of Illinois Press, by the way, it's not some Mormon apologist publisher.
The book is a red pill on just how bad of a miscarriage of justice the whole thing was.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Yeah. You can understand, if nothing else, why the Latter Day saints in the 1840s, after this, are just kind of fed up with all of it. Right. Like, this happened to us in Missouri. We tried to appeal to the federal government. Didn't work. This happened to us in Illinois. We tried to work with the governor of Illinois. You can understand why Governor Ford's not a popular guy in sort of Mormon historical consciousness. We tried it with the state level. Our prophets got murdered. Okay, see ya, everyone. And they just fail. We're just gonna leave. Yeah.
[00:39:42] Speaker C: You can kind of see it's part of the background context to everything that goes on in Utah after that with the, you know, the army coming out to Utah, the fear, the fear around that. The. The Mountain Meadow Massacre, which is a whole nother can of worms. I'm sure we'll do an episode on that eventually. But it's all part of that background. You have to understand Missouri and Illinois and the way things go down there.
[00:40:07] Speaker A: Deep trauma there.
[00:40:08] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: So if you do want to learn more about this and dive into the details, it is fascinating. You can read the article by Joseph Bentley, road to Martyrdom, Joseph Smith's last legal cases. And remember, you can study deeply, believe boldly. We'll see you next time.
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Time.
