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Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder and prophet of the Latter Day Saint movement. In the late 1820s, Smith announced that an angel had given him a book of golden plates engraved with a religious chronicle of ancient American peoples in an unknown language. He also said he had received a pair of seer stones in which he could see the translation, which he published in 1830 as the Book of Mormon. On the basis of this book and other revelations, he founded a church in western New York, claiming it to be a restoration of primitive Christianity.

Moving the church in 1831 to Kirtland, Ohio, Smith attracted hundreds of converts, who came to be called Latter Day Saints. Some of these he sent to establish a holy city of "Zion" in Jackson County, Missouri. In 1833, Missouri settlers expelled the Saints from Zion, and a paramilitary expedition Smith led to recover the land was unsuccessful. Fleeing an arrest warrant in the aftermath of a Kirtland financial crisis, Smith joined the remaining Saints in Far West, Missouri. However, tensions escalated into a violent conflict in 1838 with the old Missouri settlers. Believing the Saints to be in insurrection, the governor ordered their expulsion from Missouri, and Smith was imprisoned on capital charges.

After escaping state custody in 1839, Smith led the Saints to build the city of Nauvoo, Illinois on Mississippi River swampland, where he became mayor and commanded a large militia. In early 1844, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. That summer, after the Nauvoo Expositor criticized his power and new doctrines, such as plural marriage, Smith and the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of the newspaper as a nuisance. In a futile attempt to check public outrage, Smith first declared martial law, then surrendered to the governor of Illinois. He was killed by a mob while awaiting trial in Carthage, Illinois.

Smith's followers believe he was a great prophet who saw God and angels, and they regard his revelations as scripture. His teachings include unique views on the nature of godhood, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His legacy includes several religious denominations, which collectively claim a growing membership of nearly 14 million worldwide.^[1]

Life

Early years (1805–1827)

Joseph Smith, Jr. was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith, a working class couple.^[2] Stricken with a crippling bone infection at age eight, he hobbled on crutches as a child.^[3] In 1816–17, the Smith family moved west to the village of Palmyra in western New York.^[4] By July 1820, the family obtained a mortgage for a 100-acre (40 ha) farm in the nearby town of Manchester,^[5] an area that had fueled repeated religious revivals during this time known as the Second Great Awakening.^[6]

Smith and his family participated in the sectarian fervor and spiritual mystery of their day.^[7] Although he may never have joined a church in his youth,^[8] Joseph Smith participated in church classes^[9] and read the Bible. With his family, he took part in religious folk magic,^[10] a common practice but one condemned by many clergymen.^[11] Like many people of that era,^[12] both his parents and his maternal grandfather had mystical visions or dreams that they believed communicated messages from God.^[13] Smith later said that he had his own first vision in 1820, in which God told him his sins were forgiven^[14] and that all churches were false.^[15]

The Smith family supplemented its meager farm income by treasure-digging,^[16] likewise relatively common in contemporary New England.^[17] Joseph claimed an ability to use seer stones for locating lost items and buried treasure.^[18] To do so, Smith would put a stone in a white stovepipe hat and would then see the required information in reflections given off by the stone.^[19] In 1823, while praying for forgiveness from his "gratification of many appetites,"^[20] Smith said he was visited at night by an angel named Moroni, who revealed the location of a buried book of golden plates as well as other artifacts, including a breastplate and a set of silver spectacles with lenses composed of seer stones, which had been hidden in a hill named Cumorah near his home.^[21] Smith said he attempted to remove the plates the next morning but was unsuccessful because the angel struck him down with supernatural force.^[22]

During the next four years, Smith made annual visits to Cumorah, only to return without the plates because he claimed that he had not brought with him the "right person" required by the angel.^[23] Meanwhile, Smith continued to travel western New York and Pennsylvania, being paid to search for precious metals;^[24] in 1826, he was tried in Chenango County, New York, for the crime of pretending to find lost treasure.^[25] During one of these treasure quests, he met Emma Hale and, on January 18, 1827, eloped with her because her parents disapproved of the match.^[26] Claiming his stone told him that Emma was the key to obtaining the plates,^[27] Smith went with her to the hill on September 22, 1827. This time, he said, he retrieved the plates and placed them in a locked chest.^[28] He said the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else but to publish their translation, reputed to be the religious record of indigenous Americans.^[29] Although by then Smith had left his treasure hunting company,^[30] his former associates believed he had double-crossed them by taking for himself what they considered joint property.^[31] They ransacked places where a competing treasure-seer said the plates were hidden,^[32] and Smith soon realized that he could not accomplish the translation in Palmyra.^[33]

Founding a church (1827–30)

In October 1827, Smith and his pregnant^[34] wife moved from Palmyra to Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania,^[35] aided by money from their well-to-do neighbor Martin Harris.^[36] Living near his disapproving in-laws,^[37] Smith transcribed some of the "reformed Egyptian" characters he said were engraved on the plates and dictated their translations to his wife.^[38]

Smith with his face in a hat — Joseph Smith dictating the Book of Mormon by reading reflections in a seer stone at the bottom of his hat.

For at least some of his earliest translation, Smith said he used a "Urim and Thummim",^[39] a pair of seer stones he said were buried with the golden plates.^[40] Later translation, however, was with a single chocolate-colored stone he had found in 1822 and used for treasure hunting.^[41] In a manner similar to his method for finding treasure,^[42] he claimed he translated by gazing at the stone or stones in the bottom of his hat, excluding all light so that he could see the translated words.^[43] The plates themselves were not directly consulted.^[44] Smith usually translated in full view of witnesses, but sometimes concealed the process by raising a curtain or dictating from another room.^[45]

Smith may have considered giving up the translation because of opposition from his in-laws,^[46] but in February 1828, Martin Harris arrived to spur him on^[47] by taking the characters and their translations to a few prominent scholars.^[48] Harris claimed that one of the scholars he visited, Charles Anthon, initially authenticated the characters and their translation, then recanted upon hearing that Smith had received the plates from an angel.^[49] Although Anthon denied this,^[50] Harris returned to Harmony in April 1828 motivated to act as Smith's scribe.^[51]

Translation continued until mid-June 1828, until Harris began having doubts about the existence of the golden plates.^[52] Harris importuned Smith to let him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members.^[53] Harris then lost the manuscript—of which there was no copy—at about the same time as Smith's wife Emma gave birth to a stillborn son.^[54] Smith said the angel had taken away the plates and he had lost his ability to translate^[55] until September 22, 1828, when they were restored.^[56]

Smith did not begin translating again in earnest until April 1829, when he met Oliver Cowdery, a teacher and dowser,^[57] who now became Smith's scribe.^[58] The two of them translated full time between April and early June 1829,^[59] and then moved to Fayette, New York where they continued to work at the home of Cowdery's friend Peter Whitmer. When the translation spoke of an institutional church and a requirement for baptism, Smith and Cowdery baptized each other,^[60] years later claiming that John the Baptist had appeared and ordained them to a priesthood.^[61] Translation was completed around July 1, 1829.^[62] Knowing that potential converts to the planned church might find Smith's story of the plates incredible,^[63] Smith asked a group of eleven witnesses, including Martin Harris and male members of the Whitmer and Smith families, to sign a statement testifying that they had seen the golden plates.^[64] Secular scholars argue that the witnesses thought they saw the plates with their "spiritual eyes", or that Smith showed them something physical like fabricated tin plates, or that they signed the statement out of loyalty or under pressure from Smith.^[65] According to Smith, the angel Moroni took back the plates after Smith was finished using them.^[66]

The translation, known as the Book of Mormon, was published in Palmyra on March 26, 1830, by printer E. B. Grandin.^[67] Martin Harris financed the publication by mortgaging his farm.^[68] Soon thereafter on April 6, 1830, Smith and his followers formally organized the Church of Christ,^[69] and small branches were established in Palmyra, Fayette, and Colesville, New York.^[70] The Book of Mormon brought Smith regional notoriety,^[71] but also strong opposition by those who remembered Smith's money-digging and his 1826 trial near Colesville.^[72] Soon after Smith reportedly performed an exorcism in Colesville,^[73] he was again tried as a disorderly person but was acquitted.^[74] Even so, Smith and Cowdery had to flee Colesville to escape a gathering mob. Probably referring to this period of flight, Smith told years later of hearing the voices of Peter, James, and John who he said gave Smith and Cowdery an apostolic authority.^[75]

When Oliver Cowdery and other church members attempted to exercise independent authority^[76]—as when Book of Mormon witness Orson Hyde used his seer stone to locate the American New Jerusalem prophesied by the Book of Mormon^[77]—Smith responded by establishing himself as the sole prophet.^[78] Smith disputed Hyde's location for the New Jerusalem,^[79] but dispatched Cowdery to lead a mission to Missouri to find its true location^[80] and to proselytize the Native Americans.^[81] Smith also dictated a lost "Book of Enoch", telling how the Biblical Enoch had established a city of Zion of such civic goodness that God had taken it to heaven.^[82]

On their way to Missouri, Cowdery's party passed through the Kirtland, Ohio area and converted Sidney Rigdon and over a hundred members of his Disciples of Christ congregation,^[83] more than doubling the size of the church.^[84] Rigdon visited New York and quickly became second in command of the church,^[85] to the discomfort of Smith's earlier followers.^[86] In the face of acute and growing opposition in New York, Smith announced that Kirtland was the "eastern boundary" of the New Jerusalem,^[87] and that the Saints must gather there.^[88]

Life in Ohio (1831–38)

When Smith moved to Kirtland, Ohio in January 1831,^[89] his first task^[90] was to bring the Ohio congregation within his own religious authority^[91] by quashing the new converts' exuberant exhibition of spiritual gifts.^[92] Rigdon's congregation of converts included a prophetess that Smith declared to be of the devil.^[93] Prior to conversion, the congregation had also been practicing a form of Christian communism, and Smith adopted a communal system within his own church, calling it the United Order of Enoch.^[94] At Rigdon's suggestion,^[95] Smith began a revision of the Bible in April 1831,^[96] on which he worked sporadically until its completion in 1833.^[97] Rectifying what Rigdon perceived as a defect in Smith's church,^[98] Smith promised the church's elders that in Kirtland they would receive an endowment of heavenly power.^[99] Therefore, in the church's June 1831 general conference,^[100] he introduced the greater authority of a High ("Melchizedek") Priesthood to the church hierarchy^[101]

Angry men surrounding Smith at night — A mob tarred and feathered Joseph Smith in 1832.

The church grew as new converts poured into Kirtland.^[102] By the summer of 1835, there were fifteen hundred to two thousand Mormons in the vicinity of Kirtland^[103] expecting Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial kingdom.^[104] Though Oliver Cowdery's mission to the Indians was a failure,^[105] he sent word he had found the site for the New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri.^[106] After he visited there in July 1831, Smith agreed and pronounced the county's rugged outpost^[107] Independence to be the "center place" of Zion.^[108] Rigdon, however, disapproved of the location, and for most of the 1830s, the church was divided between Ohio and Missouri.^[109] Smith continued to live in Ohio but visited Missouri again in early 1832 in order to prevent a rebellion of prominent Saints, including Cowdery, who believed Zion was being neglected.^[110] Smith's trip was hastened^[111] by a mob of residents led by former Saints who were incensed over the United Order and Smith's political power.^[112] The mob beat Smith and Rigdon unconscious and tarred and feathered them.^[113]

The old Jackson Countians resented the Mormon newcomers for various political and religious reasons.^[114] Mob attacks began in July 1833,^[115] but Smith advised the Mormons to patiently bear them^[116] until a fourth attack, which would permit vengeance to be taken.^[117] Nevertheless, once they began to defend themselves,^[118] the Mormons were brutally expelled from the county.^[119] Under authority of revelations directing Smith to lead the church like a modern Moses to redeem Zion by power^[120] and avenge God's enemies,^[121] he led to Missouri a paramilitary expedition, later called Zion's Camp.^[122] When the camp found itself outnumbered, Smith retreated and produced a revelation explaining that the church was unworthy to redeem Zion in part because of the failure of the recently-disbanded^[123] United Order.^[124] Redemption of Zion would have to wait until after the elders of the church could receive another endowment of heavenly power,^[125] this time in the Kirtland Temple^[126] then under construction.^[127]

Zion's Camp was a major failure^[128] that stunned Smith for months^[129] and resulted in a crisis in Kirtland.^[130] But Zion's Camp also led to a transformation in Mormon leadership and culture.^[131] Just before Zion's Camp left Kirtland, Smith disbanded the United Order^[132] and changed the name of the church to "Church of Latter Day Saints".^[133] After the Camp returned, Smith drew heavily from its participants to establish five governing bodies in the church, all of equal authority to check one another.^[134] He also produced fewer revelations, relying more heavily on the authority of his own teaching,^[135] and he altered and expanded many of the previous revelations to reflect recent changes in theology and practice, publishing them as the Doctrine and Covenants.^[136] Smith also "translated" a papyrus obtained from a traveling mummy show, later published as the Book of Abraham.^[137] The Saints built the Kirtland Temple at great cost,^[138] and at the temple's dedication in March 1836, they participated in the prophesied endowment, a scene of visions, angelic visitations, prophesying, speaking and singing in tongues, and other spiritual experiences.^[139] During the period, 1834–1837, Smith was at relative peace with the world.^[140]

Nevertheless, after the dedication of the Kirtland temple, Smith's life "descended into a tangle of intrigue and conflict"^[141] when, in late 1837, a series of internal disputes led to the collapse of the Kirtland Mormon community.^[142] Since 1835, the church had publicly denied accusations that members were practicing polygamy,^[143] but behind the scenes, a rift developed between Smith and Oliver Cowdery over the issue.^[144] Smith had by some accounts been teaching a polygamy doctrine as early as 1831.^[145] Some time after 1830 when the adolescent Fanny Alger started working as a serving girl in the Smith household, Smith entered a relationship with her,^[146] and by 1833 he may have married her.^[147] Cowdery, one of the few who knew about this relationship, called it a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair,"^[148] a characterization Smith rejected.^[149]

Even more troubling was Kirtland's financial state. Building the temple left the church deeply in debt, and Smith was hounded by creditors.^[150] When Smith heard about treasure hidden in Salem, Massachusetts, he traveled there to search for it after receiving a revelation that God had "much treasure in this city"^[151] and that Smith would be given power to pay his debts.^[152] After a month, he returned empty-handed.^[153] Smith then turned to wildcat banking, establishing the Kirtland Safety Society in January 1837, which issued bank notes capitalized in part by real estate.^[154] Relying on a revelation, Smith invested heavily in the notes^[155] and encouraged the Saints to buy them as a religious duty.^[156] The bank failed within a month.^[157] As a result, the Kirtland Saints suffered intense pressure from debt collectors and severe price volatility.^[158] Smith was held responsible for the failure, and there were widespread defections from the church,^[159] including many of Smith's closest advisers.^[160] After a warrant was issued for Smith's arrest on a charge of banking fraud, Smith and Rigdon fled Kirtland for Missouri on the night of January 12, 1838.^[161]

Life in Missouri (1838–39)

After leaving Jackson County, the Saints in Missouri established the town of Far West. Smith's plans to redeem Zion in Jackson County had lapsed by 1838,^[162] and after Smith and Rigdon arrived in Missouri, Far West became the new Mormon "Zion."^[163] In Missouri, the church also received a new name: the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints",^[164] and construction began on a new temple.^[165] Soon after Smith and Rigdon arrived at Far West, hundreds of disaffected Saints in Kirtland, suddenly realizing "the enormity of their loss," followed them to Missouri.^[166] But Smith was unable to reconcile with many of oldest and most prominent leaders of the church, and he purged those critics who had not yet resigned.^[167]

Though Smith hated violence, his experiences led him to believe that his faith's survival required greater militancy against anti-Mormons and Mormon traitors.^[168] With his knowledge and at least partial approval,^[169] recent convert Sampson Avard formed a covert organization called the Danites^[170] to intimidate Mormon dissenters and oppose anti-Mormon militia units.^[171] Sidney Rigdon was working to restore the United Order, but lawsuits by Oliver Cowdery and other dissenters threatened that plan.^[172] After Rigdon's "Salt Sermon" ordered Mormons to "trample [the dissenters] into the earth",^[173] the Danites expelled these dissenters from the county^[174] with Smith's approval.^[175] In a keynote speech at the town's Fourth of July celebration, Rigdon issued similar threats against non-Mormons, promising a "war of extermination" should Mormons be attacked.^[176] After Rigdon's oration, Smith shouted "Hosannah!"^[177] and allowed the speech to be published as a pamphlet.^[178]

Rigdon's July 4 oration produced a flood of anti-Mormon rhetoric in Missouri newspapers and stump speeches during the political campaign leading up to the August 6, 1838 Missouri elections.^[179] In Daviess County, where Mormon influence was increasing because of their new settlement of Adam-ondi-Ahman,^[180] this election descended into violence when non-Mormons sought to prevent Mormons from voting. Although there were no immediate deaths,^[181] the election scuffles initiated the Mormon War of 1838,^[182] which quickly escalated as non-Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms.^[183] Meanwhile, under Smith's general oversight and command,^[184] the Danites and other Mormon forces pillaged non-Mormon towns.^[185] Before a cheering crowd of Saints, Smith declared that should there be non-Mormon attacks, Mormons would establish their "religion by the sword" and that he would be "a second Mohammed."^[186] His angry rhetoric possibly stirred up greater militancy among Mormons than he intended.^[187] When Mormons attacked the Missouri state militia at the Battle of Crooked River,^[188] Governor Boggs ordered that the Mormons be "exterminated or driven from the state."^[189] Before word of this order got out, non-Mormon vigilantes surprised and killed about 40 Mormons, including children, in the Haun's Mill massacre, effectively ending the war.^[190]

On November 1, 1838, the Saints surrendered to 2,500 state troops, and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state.^[191] Smith was court-martialed and nearly executed for treason, but militiaman Alexander Doniphan, who was also the Saints' attorney, probably saved Smith's life by insisting that he was a civilian.^[192] Smith was then sent to a state court for a preliminary hearing,^[193] where several of his former allies, including Danite commander Sampson Avard, turned state's evidence.^[194] Smith and five others, including Rigdon, were charged with "overt acts of treason,"^[195] and transferred to the jail at Liberty, Missouri to await trial.^[196]

Smith's months in prison with Rigdon strained their relationship,^[197] and Brigham Young rose in prominence as Smith's defender.^[198] Under Young's leadership, about 14,000 Saints^[199] made their way to Illinois and searched for land to purchase.^[200] Smith bid his time writing contemplative statements directed mainly to Mormons.^[201] He did not deny responsibility for the Danites, but he said he had been ignorant of Avard's extreme militancy.^[202] Though it had not been an issue in his preliminary hearing, he denied rumors of polygamy,^[203] as he quietly planned how to reveal the principle to his followers.^[204] Many Saints now considered Smith a fallen prophet, but he assured them he still had the heavenly keys.^[205] He directed the Saints to collect and publish all their stories of persecution, and to moderate their antagonism to non-Mormons.^[206] Smith and his companions tried to escape at least twice during their four-month imprisonment,^[207] but on April 6, 1839, on their way to a different jail after their grand jury hearing, they succeeded by bribing the sheriff.^[208]

Life in Nauvoo, Illinois (1839–44)

The Mormon expulsion was an embarrassment to Missouri,^[209] and Illinois was happy to welcome the refugees^[210] who gathered along the banks of the Mississippi.^[211] Smith purchased high-priced swampy woodland in the hamlet of Commerce^[212] and urged his followers to move there.^[213] Promoting the image of the Saints as an oppressed minority,^[214] he unsuccessfully petitioned the federal government for help in obtaining reparations.^[215] During a malaria epidemic, Smith anointed the suffering with oil and blessed them;^[216] but he also sent off the ailing Brigham Young and other members of the Quorum of the Twelve to missions in Europe.^[217] These missionaries found many willing converts in Great Britain, often factory workers, poor even by the standards of American Saints.^[218]

On horseback, Smith leads soldiers bearing flags — Depiction of Joseph Smith, Jr. at head of the Nauvoo Legion.

The religion also attracted a few wealthy and influential converts, including John C. Bennett, M.D., the Illinois quartermaster general.^[219] Bennett used his connections in the Illinois legislature to obtain an unusually liberal charter for the new city,^[220] which Smith named "Nauvoo" (Hebrew נָאווּ, meaning "to be beautiful").^[221] The charter granted the city virtual autonomy, authorized a university, and granted Nauvoo habeus corpus power—which saved Smith's life by allowing him to fend off extradition to Missouri^[222] from which he was still a fugitive.^[223] The charter also authorized the Nauvoo Legion an autonomous militia^[224] with actions limited only by state and federal constitutions.^[225] "Lieutenant General" Smith and "Major General" Bennett became its commanders,^[226] thereby controlling by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois.^[227] Smith, who was often a poor judge of character,^[228] made Bennett Assistant President of the church,^[229] and Bennett was elected Nauvoo's first mayor.^[230] Though Mormon general authorities controlled Nauvoo's civil government, the city promised an unusually liberal guarantee of religious freedom.^[231]

People enter and leave the ornate Nauvoo Temple — Smith planned the construction of the Nauvoo Temple, but it was not completed until after his death.

The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the dead in 1840,^[232] and in 1841, construction began on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering lost ancient knowledge.^[233] An 1841 revelation promised the restoration of the "fulness of the priesthood,"^[234] and in May 1842, Smith inaugurated a revised endowment or "first anointing."^[235] The endowment resembled rites of freemasonry that Smith had observed two months earlier when he had been initiated into the Nauvoo Masonic lodge.^[236] At first the endowment was open only to men, who once initiated became part of 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."^[237] Smith also elaborated on his plan for a millennial kingdom, no longer envisioning the building of Zion in Nauvoo.^[238] He now viewed Zion as encompassing all of North and South America,^[239] all Mormon settlements being "stakes"^[240] of Zion's metaphorical tent.^[241] Zion also became became less a refuge from an impending Tribulation than a great building project.^[242] 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.^[243]

In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman as a plural wife, and during the next two and a half years he may have married thirty additional women,^[244] ten of whom were already married to other men.^[245] and about a third of them teenagers, including two fourteen-year-old girls.^[246] Meanwhile he publicly and repeatedly denied that he advocated polygamy.^[247] Smith told at least some of his potential wives that marriage to him would ensure their spiritual exaltation.^[248] Although Smith's first wife Emma may have known about some of these marriages, she almost certainly did not know the extent of Smith's polygamous activities.^[249] Smith kept the doctrine of plural marriage secret except for potential wives and a few of his closest male associates,^[250] including Bennett. Smith's plural relationships were preceded by a "priesthood marriage", which Smith believed legitimized the relationships and made them non-adulterous. Bennett, on the other hand, ignored even perfunctory ceremonies.^[251] When embarrassing rumors of "spiritual wifery" got abroad, Smith forced Bennett's resignation as Nauvoo mayor. In retaliation, Bennett wrote "lurid exposés of life in Nauvoo."^[252]

By mid-1842, popular opinion had turned against the Saints.^[253] Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal became a sharp critic after Smith attacked the paper.^[254] When Lilburn Boggs, the Governor of Missouri, was shot by an unknown assailant on May 6, 1842, many suspected Smith's involvement^[255] because of rumors that Smith had predicted his assassination.^[256] Evidence suggests that the shooter was Porter Rockwell, a former Danite and one of Smith's bodyguards.^[257] Smith went into hiding, but he ultimately avoided extradition to Missouri because any involvement in the crime would have occurred in Illinois.^[258] Rockwell was tried and acquitted.^[259] In June 1843, Illinois Governor Thomas Ford issued an extradition writ against Smith, but Smith countered with a Nauvoo writ of habeus corpus.^[260] Ford later wrote that this incident caused a majority of Illinois residents to favor expelling Mormons from Illinois.^[261]

In 1843, Emma reluctantly allowed Smith to marry four women who had been living in the Smith household—two of whom Smith had already married without her knowledge.^[262] Emma also participated with Smith in the first "sealing" ceremony, intended to bind their marriage for eternity.^[263] However, Emma soon regretted her decision to accept plural marriage and forced the other wives from the household,^[264] nagging Smith to abandon the practice.^[265] In response, Smith dictated a revelation^[266] declaring that if Emma refused to accept Smith's other wives, she would be "destroyed."^[267] When Smith's brother Hyrum presented the revelation to Emma, she abused him.^[268] Nevertheless, in the fall of 1843, after Smith allowed women to be initiated into the Anointed Quorum,^[269] Emma participated with Smith in the first second anointing.^[270] According to Smith, this ritual was the prophesied "fulness of the priesthood" in which participants were ordained "kings and priests of the Most High God" and thus fulfilled what Smith called "[a] perfect law of Theocracy."^[271] The Anointed Quorum became Smith's advisory body for political matters.^[272]

In December 1843, under the authority of the Anointed Quorum,^[273] Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense.^[274] Then, Smith announced his own third-party candidacy for President of the United States, suspending regular proselytizing^[275] and sending out the Quorum of the Twelve and hundreds of other political missionaries.^[276] In March 1844, following a dispute with a federal bureaucrat,^[277] Smith organized the secret Council of Fifty^[278] with authority to decide which national or state laws Mormons should obey.^[279] The Council was also to select a site for a large Mormon settlement in Texas, California, or Oregon,^[280] where Mormons could live under theocratic law beyond other governmental control.^[280] In effect, the Council was a shadow world government,^[281] a first step toward creating a global "theodemocracy."^[282] One of the Council's first acts was to ordain Smith as king of this millennial monarchy.^[283]

Death

Smith boldly extends a sabre towards the sky, standing on a platform in front of a large crowd — General Joseph Smith addressing the Nauvoo Legion shortly before his death in 1844

Pepper-box pistol used by Joseph Smith to defend himself on June 27, 1844

By the spring of 1844, a rift had developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates,^[284] most notably his trusted counselor William Law and Robert Foster, a general of the Nauvoo Legion.^[285] Law and Foster disagreed with Smith about how to manage Nauvoo's theocratic economy,^[286] and both believed Smith had proposed marriage to their wives.^[287] After the dissidents organized, and one of them was heard predicting an uprising in Nauvoo,^[288] Smith excommunicated them on April 18, 1844.^[289] The dissidents formed a competing church^[289] and the following month procured grand jury indictments against Smith for polygamy and other crimes in Carthage, the county seat.^[290] In response, Smith and his followers unleashed a barrage of defamation against the dissidents,^[290] and in a public sermon, Smith vehemently denied he had more than one wife.^[291] After the dissidents published a prospectus for a new newspaper that referred to Smith as a "self-constituted monarch,"^[292] the Council of Fifty offered to reinstate Law, but he refused to return to the church unless it renounced polygamy.^[293]

Therefore, on June 7, 1844, the dissidents published the first and only issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, calling for reform within the church.^[294] The paper decried polygamy and Smith's new "doctrines of many Gods" (taught recently in his King Follet discourse)^[295] and alluded to Smith's kingship,^[296] promising to present evidence of its allegations in succeeding issues.^[297] At a meeting of the Nauvoo city council, Smith again denied that the church was practicing polygamy.^[298] On the theory that the paper threatened to bring the countryside down on the Mormons,^[299] the council ordered the Nauvoo Legion to destroy the Expositor's printing press as a public nuisance.^[300]

Smith lies dead in front of a building with the second-floor window open

The murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith

Smith failed to foresee that suppressing the paper would sooner incite riots than allowing it to continue publishing.^[301] Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident call to arms by Thomas C. Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal.^[302] Fearing an uprising, Smith mobilized the Nauvoo Legion on June 18 and declared martial law. Carthage responded by mobilizing its small detachment of the state militia, and Illinois Governor Thomas Ford appeared, threatening to raise a larger militia unless Smith and the Nauvoo city council surrendered themselves.^[303] After instructing his clerk to hide or destroy the minutes of the Council of Fifty and ordering the Anointed Quorum to burn their temple garments,^[304] Smith fled across the Mississippi River. Nevertheless, under pressure from Emma and other Saints, he returned and surrendered to Ford. On June 23, Smith and his brother Hyrum were taken to Carthage to stand trial for inciting a riot.^[305] Once the Smiths were in custody, the charges were increased to treason against Illinois.

Smith and Hyrum were held in Carthage Jail.^[306] On the morning of 27 June 1844, Smith sent a letter ordering the Nauvoo Legion to attack Carthage and free him, but the acting commander quietly disobeyed the order.^[307] Later that day, an armed group with blackened faces stormed the jail and killed Hyrum instantly with a shot to the face.^[308] Smith fought back with a pepper-box pistol that had been smuggled into the prison^[309] but was shot while jumping from a window, then shot and killed as he lay on the ground.^[310] Smith was buried in Nauvoo.^[311] Five men were tried for his murder; all were acquitted.^[312]

Distinctive views and teachings

Cosmology and theology

Smith taught that all existence was material,^[313] including a world of "spirit matter" so fine that it was invisible to all but the purest mortal eyes.^[314] Matter, in Smith's view, could neither be created nor destroyed;^[315] the creation involved only the reorganization of existing matter.^[316] Like matter, "intelligence" was co-eternal with God, and human spirits had been drawn from a pre-existent pool of eternal intelligences.^[317] Nevertheless, spirits were incapable of experiencing a "fulness of joy" unless joined with corporeal bodies.^[318] Embodiment, therefore, was the purpose of earth life.^[319] The work and glory of God, the supreme intelligence,^[320] was to create worlds across the cosmos where inferior intelligences could be embodied.^[321]

Though Smith at first taught that God the Father was a spirit,^[322] he eventually viewed God as an advanced and glorified man,^[323] embodied within time and space^[324] with a throne situated near a star or planet named Kolob, and measuring time at the rate of a thousand years per Kolob day.^[325] Both God the Father and Jesus were distinct beings with physical bodies, but the Holy Spirit was a "personage of Spirit."^[326] Through the gradual acquisition of knowledge,^[327] those who were sealed to their exaltation could eventually become coequal with God.^[328] The ability of humans to progress to godhood implied a vast hierarchy of gods.^[329] Each of these gods, in turn, would rule a kingdom of inferior intelligences, and so forth in an eternal hierarchy.^[330]

The opportunity to achieve godhood extended to all humanity; those who died with no opportunity to accept Latter Day Saint theology could achieve godhood by accepting its benefit in the afterlife through baptism for the dead.^[331] Children who died in their innocence were guaranteed to rise at the resurrection and rule as gods without maturing to adulthood.^[332] 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,^[333] where they would serve those who had achieved godhood.^[334]

Religious authority and ritual

Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational restorationism.^[335] He saw his teachings and the Church of Christ as a restoration of early Christian ideals that had been lost in a great apostasy.^[336] At first, the power of Smith's church rested mainly on religious experience and charismatic authority, with little sense of hierarchy.^[337] Though the early church had many potential prophets,^[338] Smith was the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as Moses".^[339] In the mid-1830s, he began teaching that the church's three priesthoods (Melchizedek, Aaronic, and Patriarchal)^[340] derived their authority from either angelic visitations or lineage.^[337]

Smith believed that for members of the priesthood to have spiritual gifts and authority commensurate with the Biblical apostles, they must be "endowed with power from on high."^[341] Thus, in 1831 Smith inducted many church elders into the Melchizedek or High Priesthood.^[342] The endowment doctrine evolved through the 1830s,^[343] and in 1842, Smith introduced the Nauvoo endowment, an elaborate ceremony containing symbolism similar to that of Freemasonry.^[344] The endowment was extended to women in 1843,^[345] though Smith never clarified whether women could be ordained to priesthood offices.^[346]

Smith thought these endowments were best performed in temples. Also associated with the High Priesthood were the sealing powers of Elijah, which included the power to seal Mormons to their godhood and exaltation,^[347] the key to baptism for the dead,^[348] and the mechanism whereby priesthood marriages could become eternal.^[349] The most important ritual of the sealing power, which Smith called the "fullness of the priesthood," was the second anointing, which sealed couples to their eternal godhood and virtually guaranteed their salvation.

Smith also extended his authority to church members' economic lives. For instance, he tried to implement a form of religious communism, called the United Order, requiring Saints to consecrate all their property to the church. After this system proved a conspicuous failure, he instituted a tithing system to support the church.^[350]

Theology of family

Smith gradually unfolded a theology of family relations called the "New and Everlasting Covenant"^[351] that superseded all earthly bonds.^[352] Smith taught that outside the Covenant, marriages were simply matters of contract,^[353] and Mormons outside the Covenant would be mere ministering angels to those within, who would be gods.^[354] To fully enter the Covenant, a man and woman must participate in a "first anointing," a "sealing" ceremony, and a "second anointing."^[355] When fully sealed into the Covenant, Smith said that no sin nor blasphemy (other than the eternal sin) could keep them from their "exaltation," that is, their godhood in the afterlife.^[356] According to Smith, only one person on earth at a time—in this case, Smith—could possess this power of sealing.^[357]

Smith taught that the highest exaltation would be achieved through "plural marriage" (polygamy),^[354] which was the ultimate manifestation of this New and Everlasting Covenant.^[358] Plural marriage allowed an individual to transcend the angelic state and become a god^[359] by gaining an "eternal increase" of posterity.^[354] Smith taught and practiced this doctrine secretly but always publicly denied it.^[360] Nevertheless, Smith taught that once he revealed the doctrine to anyone, failure to practice it would be to risk God's wrath.^[361]

History and eschatology

Smith taught that during a Great Apostasy, the Bible had degenerated from its original inerrant form, and the "abominable church", led by Satan, had perverted true Christianity.^[362] He viewed himself as the latter-day prophet who restored those lost truths via the Book of Mormon^[363] and later revelations. He described the Book of Mormon as a literal "history of the origins of the Indians."^[364] The book called the Indians "Lamanites," a people descended from Israelites who had left Jerusalem in 600 BCE^[365] and whose skin pigmentation was a curse for their sinfulness.^[366] Though Smith first identified Mormons as gentiles, he began teaching in the 1830s that the Mormons, too, were literal Israelites.^[367]

Smith also claimed to have regained lost truths of sacred history through his revelations and revision of the Bible. For example, he taught that the Garden of Eden had been located in Jackson County, Missouri, that Adam had practiced baptism, that the descendants of Cain were "black," that Enoch had built a city that was taken to heaven, that Egypt was discovered by the daughter of Ham, that the descendants of Ham were denied the Patriarchal Priesthood, that Abraham had discovered astronomical truths by peering into a Urim and Thummim, that King David had been denied his godhood because of his sin, and that John the Apostle would walk the earth until the Second Coming of Jesus.

Looking to the future, Smith declared that he would be an instrument in fulfilling Nebuchadnezzar's statue vision in the Book of Daniel: that he was the stone that would destroy secular government, which he would then replace with a theocratic Kingdom of God.^[368] Smith taught that this political kingdom would be multidenominational and "democratic" so long as the people chose wisely; but there would be no elections.^[369] Though Smith was crowned king, Jesus would periodically appear during the Millennium as the ultimate ruler. Following a thousand years of peace, Judgment Day would be followed by a final resurrection, when all humanity would be assigned to one of three heavenly kingdoms.

Race, government, and public policy

Except for a pro-slavery essay published over his name in 1836,^[370] Smith strongly opposed slavery.^[371] In his 1844 presidential campaign, he advocated abolishing slavery by 1850 and compensating slaveholders.^[372] He did not believe blacks to be genetically inferior to whites, although he opposed miscegenation.^[373] Smith welcomed both freemen and slaves into his church,^[374] but he opposed the baptism of slaves without permission of their masters.^[375] Smith also ordained free black members into the priesthood.^[376]

Smith believed that U.S. constitutional rights had been inspired by God and were "the Saints' best and perhaps only defense."^[377] However, he did not think these rights were always adequately protected and believed the U.S. federal government ought to have greater power to enforce religious freedom.^[378] Yet although Smith believed democracy better than tyranny, he also taught that a theocratic monarchy was the ideal form of government.^[379]

On matters of public policy, Smith favored a strong central bank and high tariffs to protect American business and agriculture. Smith disfavored imprisonment of convicts except for murder, preferring efforts to reform criminals through labor; he also opposed courts martial for military deserters. He supported capital punishment but opposed hanging,^[380] preferring execution by firing squad or beheading in order to "spill [the criminal's] blood on the ground, and let the smoke thereof ascend up to God."^[381]

Ethics and morality

Smith introduced as revelations from God a number of behavioral guidelines for church members. Among these were guidelines which he called the "Word of Wisdom," which recommended that Saints avoid liquor, wine (except sacramental wine), tobacco, meat (except in times of famine or cold weather), and "hot drinks."^[382] But Smith and other church leaders of the time did not always follow this counsel.^[383] Smith's revelations treated sexual sins, including adultery, almost as seriously as murder;^[384]

Smith taught that those who kept the laws of God had "no need to break the laws of the land,"^[385] but this principle was not absolute. Smith also taught that an act wrong in one context might be right in another because "[w]hatever God requires is right, no matter what it is."^[386] For instance, the Book of Mormon approved the killing of a man and appropriation of his property because the killer had been moved by the Holy Spirit.^[387] Smith believed he might occasionally violate laws and ethical norms in order to serve what he perceived as a higher religious purpose.^[388]

Legacy

Impact

Historians regard Joseph Smith as one of the most imaginative, charismatic, and controversial leaders in American religious history.^[389] To Latter Day Saints, however, Smith is a prophet and apostle of at least the stature of Moses, Elijah, Peter and Paul.^[390] Indeed, because of his perceived role in restoring the true faith prior to the Millennium, and because he was the "choice seer" who would bring the lost Israelites to their salvation,^[391] modern Mormons regard Smith as second in importance only to Jesus.^[392]

During his lifetime, Smith's role in the Latter Day Saint religion was comparable to that of Muhammad in early Islam.^[393] After his death, the Saints believed he had died to seal the testimony of his faith and considered him a martyr.^[394] His theological importance within the Latter Day Saint movement then only increased.^[395] Mormon leaders began teaching that Smith was already among the gods,^[396] and some considered Smith to be an incarnation of the Holy Spirit,^[397] a doctrine now taught by Mormon fundamentalists.^[395] Of all Smith's visions, Saints gradually came to regard his First Vision as the most important because it inaugurated his prophetic calling and character.^[398]

Religious denominations

Smith's death led to schisms in the Latter Day Saint movement.^[399] Smith had proposed several ways to choose his successor,^[400] but while a prisoner in Carthage, it was too late to clarify his preference.^[401] Smith's brother Hyrum, had he survived, would have had the strongest claim,^[402] followed by Joseph's brother Samuel, who died mysteriously a month after his brothers.^[403] Another brother, William, was unable to attract a sufficient following.^[404] Smith's sons Joseph III and David also had claims, but Joseph III was too young and David was yet unborn.^[405] The Council of Fifty had a theoretical claim to succession, but it was a secret organization.^[406] Some of Smith's ordained successors, such as Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, had left the church.^[407]

The two strongest succession candidates were Sidney Rigdon, the senior member of the First Presidency, and Brigham Young, senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve. Most of the Saints voted for Young,^[408] who led his faction to the Utah Territory and incorporated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose membership surpassed 13 million members in 2007.^[409] Rigdon's followers are known as Rigdonites.^[410] Most of Smith's family and several Book of Mormon witnesses temporarily followed James J. Strang,^[411] who based his claim on a forged letter of appointment,^[412] but Strang's following largely dissipated after his assassination in 1856.^[413] Other Saints followed Lyman Wight^[414] and Alpheus Cutler.^[415] Many members of these smaller groups, including most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III and formed what is now known as the Community of Christ, which now has about 250,000 members. As of 2010^[update], adherents of the denominations originating from Joseph Smith's teachings number approximately 14 million.

Family and descendants

Portrait of Emma Smith — Emma Hale Smith, like her husband, always publicly denied Smith's polygamy.^[416]^[417]

Smith legally wed Emma Hale Smith in 1826. She gave birth to seven children, the first three of whom (a boy Alvin in 1828 and twins Thaddeus and Louisa on 30 April 1831) died shortly after birth. When the twins died, the Smiths adopted twins, Julia and Joseph,^[418] whose mother had recently died in childbirth. (Joseph died of measles in 1832.)^[419] Joseph and Emma Smith had four sons who lived to maturity: Joseph Smith III (November 6, 1832), Frederick Granger Williams Smith (June 29, 1836), Alexander Hale Smith (June 2, 1838), and David Hyrum Smith (November 17, 1844, born after Joseph's death). As of 2010^[update], DNA testing has provided no evidence that Smith fathered any children from women other than Emma.^[420]

Throughout her life and on her deathbed, Emma Smith frequently denied that her husband had ever taken additional wives. Emma claimed that the very first time she ever became aware of a polygamy revelation being attributed to Joseph by Mormons was when she read about it in Orson Pratt's booklet The Seer in 1853.^[421] Emma campaigned publicly against polygamy and also authorized and was the main signatory of a petition in Summer 1842, with a thousand female signatures, denying that Joseph was connected with polygamy,^[422] and as president of the Ladies' Relief Society, Emma authorized publishing a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy and denying her husband as its creator or participant.^[423] Even when her sons Joseph III and Alexander presented her with specific written questions about polygamy, she continued to deny that their father had been a polygamist.^[424]

After Smith's death, Emma Smith quickly became alienated from Brigham Young and the church leadership, largely over property matters as it was difficult to disentangle Smith's personal property from that of the church.^[425] Her strong opposition to plural marriage "made her doubly troublesome."^[426] When most Latter Day Saints moved west, she stayed in Nauvoo, married a non-Mormon,^[427] and withdrew from religion until 1860, when she affiliated with what became the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now known as Community of Christ), which was first headed by her son, Joseph Smith III. Emma never denied Joseph's prophetic gift or her belief in the Book of Mormon.

Notes

^ Dobner, Jennifer (April 10, 2009), Editor: Statistics show fast Mormon church growth, USA Today (LDS Church claims 13,508,509 members as of end of 2008); Community of Christ (2009), General Denominational Information, retrieved December 17, 2009 (second largest Latter Day Saint movement denomination claiming approximately 250,000 members).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 9, 30); Smith (1832, p. 1).
^ Smith (1853, pp. 62–65); Bushman (2005, pp. 20–22, 29).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 30).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 32–33). From about 1818 until after the July 1820 purchase, the Smiths squatted in a log home adjacent to the property. Id.
^ Shipps (1985, p. 7).
^ Brooke (1994, p. 129) ("Long before the 1820s, the Smiths were caught up in the dialectic of spiritual mystery and secular fraud framed in the hostile symbiosis of divining and counterfeiting and in the diffusion of Masonic culture in an era of sectarian fervor and profound millenarian expectation.").
^ Smith said that he decided in 1820, based on his First Vision, not to join any churches (Smith et al. 1839–1843, p. 4). However, (Lapham 1870) said that Smith's father told him his son had once become a Baptist).
^ Smith is known to have attended Sunday school at the Western Presbyterian Church in Palmyra (Matzko 2007). Smith also attended and spoke at a Methodist probationary class in the early 1820s, but never officially joined (Turner 1852, p. 214; Tucker 1876, p. 18).
^ Quinn (1998, p. 30)("Joseph Smith's family was typical of many early Americans who practiced various forms of Christian folk magic."); Bushman (2005, p. 51) ("Magic and religion melded in the Smith family culture."); Shipps (1985, pp. 7–8); Remini (2002, pp. 16, 33).
^ Quinn (1998, p. 31); Hill (1977, p. 53) ("Even the more vivid manifestations of religious experience, such as dreams, visions and revelations, were not uncommon in Joseph's day, neither were they generally viewed with scorn.").
^ Quinn (1988, pp. 14–16, 137).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 26, 36); Brooke, p. 1994); (Mack 1811, p. 25); Smith (1853, pp. 54–59, 70–74).
^ Smith (1832); Bushman (2005, p. 39) (When Smith first described the vision twelve years after the event, "[h]e explained the vision as he must have first understood it, as a personal conversion".)
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 3). This vision was generally unknown to early Latter Day Saints. See Bushman (2005, p. 39) (story was unknown to most early converts); Allen (1966, p. 30) (the first vision received only limited circulation in the 1830s). However, the vision story gained increasing theological importance within the Latter Day Saint movement beginning roughly a half century later. See Shipps (1985, pp. 30–32); Allen (1966, p. 43–69); Quinn (1998, p. 176) ("Smith's first vision became a missionary tool for his followers only after Americans grew to regard modern visions of God as unusual.").
^ Quinn (1998, p. 136).
^ Quinn (1998, pp. 25–26).
^ Quinn (1987, p. 173); Bushman (2005, pp. 49–51); Persuitte (2000, pp. 33–53).
^ Brooke (1994, p. 152–53); Quinn (1998, pp. 43–44); Bushman (2005, pp. 45–52). See also the following primary sources: Harris (1833, pp. 253–54); Hale (1834, p. 265); Clark (1842, p. 225); Turner (1851, p. 216); Harris (1859, p. 164); Tucker (1867, pp. 20–21); Lapham (1870, p. 305); Lewis & Lewis (1879, p. 1); Mather (1880, p. 199).
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 5) (writing that he "displayed the weakness of youth and the ~~corruption~~ foibles of human nature, which I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations ~~to the gratification of many appetites~~ offensive in the sight of God", deletions and interlineations in original); Quinn (1998, p. 136-38) (arguing that Smith was praying for forgiveness for a sexual sin to maintain his power as a seer); Smith (1994, pp. 17–18) (arguing that his prayer related to a sexual sin). But see Bushman (2005, p. 43) (noting that Smith did not specify which "appetites" he had gratified, and suggesting that one of them was that he "drank too much").
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 4).
^ Mormon historian Richard Bushman argues that "the visit of the angel and the discovery of the gold plates would have confirmed the belief in supernatural powers. For people in a magical frame of mind, Moroni sounded like one of the the spirits who stood guard over treasure in the tales of treasure-seeking." Bushman (2005, p. 50).
^ Quinn (1998, pp. 163–64); Bushman (2005, p. 54) (noting accounts stating that the "right person" was originally Smith's brother Alvin, then when he died, someone else, and finally his wife Emma).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 51–53).
^ Hill (1977, p. 1–2); Bushman (2005, p. 51–52); Revised Statutes of the State of New York, vol. 1, Albany, NY: Packard and Van Benthuysen, 1829, p. 638: part I, title 5, § 1 ("[A]ll persons pretending to tell fortunes, or where lost or stolen goods may be found,...shall be deemed disorderly persons.")
^ Bushman (2005, p. 53).
^ Quinn (1998, pp. 163–64); Bushman (2005, p. 54) (noting accounts stating that Emma was the key).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 60).
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, pp. 5–6).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 54) (Smith had assured Emma's father Isaac Hale that his treasure-seeking days were behind him).
^ Harris (1859, p. 167); Bushman (2005, p. 61).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 54) (treasure seer Sally Chase attempted to find the plates using her seer stone).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 60–61); Remini (2002, p. 55).
^ Remini (2002, p. 55).
^ Newell & Avery (1994, p. 2).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 62–63); Walker (1986, p. 35); Remini (2002, p. 55) (Harris' money allowed Smith to pay his debts and thus allowed him to move without being arrested for evading his creditors); Smith (1853, p. 113); Howe (1834).
^ Remini (2002, p. 56).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 63); Remini (2002, p. 56); Roberts (1902, p. 19);Howe (1834, pp. 270–71) (Smith sat behind a curtain and passed transcriptions to his wife or her brother).
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 9) (describing early translation with the Urim and Thummim from December 1827 to February 1828); Remini (2002, p. 57) (noting that Emma Smith said that Smith started translating with the Urim and Thummim and then eventually used his dark seer stone exclusively); Bushman (2005, p. 66); Quinn (1998, pp. 169–70) (noting that, according to witnesses, Smith's early translation with the two-stone Urim and Thummim spectacles involved placing the spectacles in his hat, and that the spectacles were too large to actually wear). In one 1842 statement, Smith said that "[t]hrough the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift, the power of God." (Smith 1842, p. 707). There is debate as to whether or not this statement is consistent with his known use of a seer stone other than the Urim and Thummim. (Quinn 1998, p. 175) argues that the term Urim and Thummim was a generic term early Mormons used to refer to all of Smith's seer stones. (Persuitte 2000, p. 81–83) interprets Smith to say that he translated the entire Book of Mormon with the two stones found with the plates, which would be in flat contradiction with his documented use of the chocolate-colored seer stone.
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 4) (stating that deposited with the plates were "two stones in silver bows" and stating that "these stones fastened into a breastplate constituted what is called the Urim & Thummim...."); Smith (1842, p. 707) (describing "a curious instrument which the ancients called 'Urim and Thummim,' which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate.").
^ (Quinn 1998, p. 171–73) (witnesses said that Smith shifted from the Urim and Thummim to the single brown seer stone after the loss of the earliest 116 manuscript pages); Persuitte (2000, p. 81–82) (none of the existing Book of Mormon transcript was created using the Urim and Thummim); Remini (2002, p. 57) (noting that Emma Smith said that after 1828, Smith used his dark seer stone exclusively).
^ Quinn (1998, p. 173) ("[T]he actual translation process was strikingly similar to the way Smith used the same stone for treasure-hunting.").
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 71–72); Marquardt & Walters (1994, pp. 103–04); Van Wagoner & Walker (1982, p. 52–53) (citing numerous witnesses of the translation process); Quinn (1998, pp. 169–70, 173) (describing similar methods for both the two-stone Urim and Thummim and the chocolate seer stone).
^ Van Wagoner & Walker (1982, p. 53) ("The plates could not have been used directly in the translation process."); Bushman (2005, pp. 71–72) (Joseph did not pretend to look at the 'reformed Egyptian' words, the language on the plates, according to the book's own description. The plates lay covered on the table, while Joseph's head was in the hat looking at the seerstone...."); Marquardt & Walters (1994, pp. 103–04) ("When it came to translating the crucial plates, they were no more present in the room than was John the Beloved's ancient 'parchment', the words of which Joseph also dictated at the time.").
^ Cole (1831); Howe (1834, p. 14).
^ Morgan (1986, p. 280).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 63) (Harris had a vision that he was to assist with a "marvelous work"); Roberts (1902, p. 19) (Harris arrived in Harmony in February 1828); Booth (1831) (Harris had to convince Smith to continue translating, saying, "I have not come down here for nothing, and we will go on with it").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 63–64) (the plan to use a scholar to authenticate the characters was part of a vision received by Harris; author notes that Smith's mother said the plan to authenticate the characters was arranged between Smith and Harris before Harris left Palmyra); Remini (2002, p. 57–58) (noting that the plan arose from a vision of Martin Harris). According to (Bushman 2005, p. 64), these scholars probably included at least Luther Bradish in Albany, New York (Lapham 1870), Samuel L. Mitchill of New York City ((Hadley 1829); Jessee 1976, p. 3), and Charles Anthon of New York City (Howe 1834, pp. 269–272).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 64–65); Remini (2002, p. 58–59).
^ Howe (1834, pp. 269–72) (Anthon's description of his meeting with Harris, claiming he tried to convince Harris that he was a victim of a fraud). But see Vogel (2004, p. 115) (arguing that Anthon's initial assessment was likely more positive than he would later admit).
^ Roberts (1902, p. 20).
^ These doubts were induced by his wife's deep skepticism. Bushman, p. 66).
^ Smith (1853, p. 117–18); Roberts (1902, p. 20).
^ During this dark period, Smith briefly attended his in-laws' Methodist church, but one of Emma's cousins "objected to the inclusion of a 'practicing necromancer' on the Methodist roll", and Smith voluntarily withdrew rather than face a disciplinary hearing. (Bushman 2005, pp. 69–70).
^ (Phelps 1833, sec. 2:4–5) (revelation dictated by Smith stating that his gift to translate was temporarily revoked); Smith (1832, p. 5) (stating that the angel had taken away the plates and the Urim and Thummim).
^ Smith (1853, p. 126).
^ Hill (1977, p. 86) (Cowdery had brought with him a "rod of nature," perhaps acquired while he was among his father's religious group in Vermont, who believed that certain rods had spiritual properties and could be used in divining."); Bushman (2005, p. 73) ("Cowdery was open to belief in Joseph's powers because he had come to Harmony the possessor of a supernatural gift" and his family had apparently engaged in treasure seeking and other magical practices.)Quinn (1998, p. 35-36, 121).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 74) (Smith and Cowdery began translating where the narrative left off after the lost 116 pages, now representing the Book of Mosiah. A revelation would later direct them not to re-translate the lost text, to ensure that the lost pages could not later be found and compared to the re-translation.).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 70-74).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 5–6, 38) (contrasting the 1829 view with the churchless Mormonism of 1828); Bushman (2005, p. 74–75).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 15–20) (noting that Mormon records and publications contain no mention of any angelic conferral of authority until 1834); Bushman (2005, p. 75) (posing Mormon apologetic theories for the five-year delay in mentioning the vision of John the Baptist).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 78).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 77) (Smith "began to seek converts the question of credibility had to be addressed again. Joseph knew his story was unbelievable.").
^ (Bushman 2005, pp. 77–79). There were two statements, one by a set of Three Witnesses and another by a set of Eight Witnesses. The two testimonies are undated, and the exact dates on which the Witnesses are said to have seen the plates is unknown.
^ Vogel (2004, pp. 466–69); Bushman (2005, p. 79).
^ Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 8).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 82).
^ (Bushman 2005, p. 80) (noting that Harris' marriage dissolved in part because his wife refused to be a party, and he eventually sold his farm to pay the bill.
^ Scholars and eye-witnesses disagree whether the church was organized in Manchester, New York at the Smith log home, or in Fayette at the the home of Peter Whitmer. Bushman (2005, p. 109); Marquardt (2005, pp. 223–23) (arguing that organization in Manchester is most consistent with eye-witness statements).
^ Phelps (1833, p. 55) (noting that by July 1830, the church was "in Colesville, Fayette, and Manchester").
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 80–82).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 117)(noting that area residents connected the discovery of the Book of Mormon with Smith's past career as a money digger);Brodie (1971) (discussing organized boycott of Book of Mormon by Palmyra residents, p. 80, and opposition by Colesville and Bainbridge residents who remembered the 1826 trial, p. 87).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 86) (describing the exorcism).
^ (Bushman 2005, pp. 116–17).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 24–26); (Bushman 2005, p. 118).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 120) ("Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmer family began to conceive of themselves as independent authorities with the right to correct Joseph and receive revelation.").
^ Roberts (1902, pp. 109–110).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 121); Phelps (1833, p. 67) ("[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses.").
^ Phelps (1833, p. 68) ("[I]t is not revealed, and no man knoweth where the city shall be built.").
^ Phelps (1833, p. 68) ("The New Jerusalem "shall be on the borders by the Lamanites."); Bushman (2005, p. 122) (church members knew that "on the borders by the Lamanites" referred to Western Missouri, and Cowdery's mission in part was to "locate the place of the New Jerusalem along this frontier").
^ Phelps (1833, p. 67–68) (Cowdery "shall go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them".).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 96) (noting that this was Smith's third attempt since the Book of Mormon at revealing "lost books", the first being the "parchment of John" produced in 1829, and the second the Book of Moses dictated in June 1830.
^ Bushman (2005, p. 124); Roberts (1902, pp. 120–124).
^ F. Mark McKiernan, "The Conversion of Sidney Rigdon to Mormonism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 5 (Summer 1970): 77. Parley Pratt said that the Mormon mission baptized 127 within two or three weeks "and this number soon increased to one thousand." McKiernan argues that "Rigdon's conversion and the missionary effort which followed transformed Mormonism from a New York-based sect with about a hundred members into one which was a major threat to Protestantism in the Western Reserve."
^ Brodie (1971, p. 96) ("When Rigdon read the Book of Enoch, the scholar in him fled and the evangelist stepped into the place of second in command of the millennial church.").
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 123–24); Brodie (1971, p. 96–97).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 97) (citing letter by Smith to Kirtland converts, quoted in Howe (1833, p. 111)). In 1834, Smith designated Kirtland as one of the "stakes" of Zion, referring to the tent–stakes metaphor of Isaiah 54:2.
^ Phelps (1833, pp. 79–80) ("And again, a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together in the Ohio, until the time that my servant Oliver Cowdery shall return unto them."); Bushman (2005, pp. 124–25); Brodie (1971, p. 96) (noting that Rigdon had urged Smith to return with him to Ohio).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 98–99, 116, 125) (Smith first lived with Newel K. Whitney in Kirtland, then moved in with John Johnson in 1831 in the nearby town of Hiram, Ohio, and by 1832 had secured a large estate in Kirtland).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 98) (citing LDS D&C 50 (Phelps 1833, pp. 119–23) as Smith's "first important revelation in Kirtland").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 99–100) (stating that Smith "appealed as much to reason as to emotion", and referred to Smith's style as "autocratic" and "authoritarian", but noted that he was effective in utilizing members' inherent desire to preach as long as they subjected themselves to his ultimate authority); Remini (2002, p. 95) ("Joseph quickly settled in and assumed control of the Kirtland Church.").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 99) (gifts included hysterical fits and trances, frenzied rolling on the floor, loud and extended glossalalia, grimacing, and visions taken from parchments hanging in the night sky); (Bushman 2005, pp. 150–52).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 100) (noting that the prophetess, named Hubbel, was a friend of Rigdon's)
^ Brodie (1971, p. 104–108) (stating that the United Order of Enoch was Rigdon's conception (p. 108)); Bushman (2005, pp. 154–55); Hill (1977, p. 131) (Rigdon's communal group was called "the family"); see also Phelps (1833, p. 118) (revelation introducing the communal system, stating, "For behold the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth is ordained for the use of man, for food, and for raiment, and that he might have in abundance, but it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another.").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 103) (stating that Rigdon suggested that Smith revise the Bible in response to an 1827 revision by Rigdon's former mentor Alexander Campbell).
^ Hill (1977, p. 131) (although Smith described his work beginning in April 1831 as a "translation," "he obviously meant a revision by inspiration").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 142) (noting that though Smith declared the work finished in 1833, the church lacked funds to publish it during his lifetime).
^ Prince (1995, p. 116).
^ Phelps (1833, p. 83); Bushman (2005, p. 125, 156, 308).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 111–13) (describing this conference as "the first major failure of his life" because he made irresponsible prophesies and performed failed faith healings, requiring Rigdon to cut the conference short).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 111); Bushman (2005, pp. 156–60); Quinn (1994, pp. 31–32); Roberts (1902, pp. 175–76) (On 3 June 1831, "the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the Elders." Annotation by Roberts gives an apologetic explanation.).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 101).
^ Arrington (1992, p. 21).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 101–02, 121).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 110) (describing the mission as a "flat failure").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 108).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 162); Brodie (1971, p. 109).
^ Smith et al. (1835, p. 154).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 115).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 119–22).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 180); Brodie (1971, p. 119).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 178–79); Remini (2002, p. 109–10).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 119) (noting that Smith may have narrowly escaped being castrated over some perceived intimacy between Smith and the sixteen year old sister of one of the mob's instigators); Bushman (2005, pp. 178–79) (arguing that the evidence for Smith's intimacy with the girl is thin). Bruised and scarred, Smith preached the following day as if nothing happened (Brodie (1971, p. 120); 2002, p. 110–11)).
^ These reasons included the settlers' understanding that the Saints' intended to appropriate their property and establish a Millennial political kingdom (Brodie (1971, pp. 130–31); Remini (2002, pp. 114)), the Saints' friendliness with the Indians (Brodie (1971, p. 130)); Remini (2002, pp. 114–15)), the Saints' perceived religious blasphemy (Remini 2002, p. 114), and especially the belief that the Saints were abolitionists (Brodie (1971, pp. 131–33); Remini (2002, pp. 113–14)).
^ Vigilantes tarred and feathered two church leaders, destroyed some Mormon homes, destroyed the Mormon press, then the westernmost American newspaper, including most copies of the unpublished Book of Commandments. (Bushman (2005, pp. 181–83); Brodie (1971, p. 115).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 135–36); Bushman (2005, p. 235).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 82–83) (Smith's August 1833 revelation said that after the fourth attack, "the Saints were "justified" by God in violence against any attack by any enemy "until they had avenged themselves on all their enemies, to the third and fourth generation.", citing Smith et al. (1835, p. 218)).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 83–84) (after the fourth attack on 2 November 1833, Saints began fighting back, leading to the Battle of Blue River on 4 November 1833).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 222–27); Brodie (1971, p. 137) (noting that the brutality of the Jackson Countians aroused sympathy for the Mormons and was almost universally deplored by the media).
^ Roberts (1904, p. 37) (February 1834 revelation: "[T]he redemption of Zion must needs come by power; [t]herefore, I will raise up unto my people a man, who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel,...and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power, and with a stretched out arm."); Brodie (1971, p. 146) ("Quick-springing visions of an army of liberation marching triumphantly into the promised land betrayed his sounder judgment."); Hill (1989, p. 44–45) (suggesting that although members of the camp expected to do battle, Smith might have hoped they could merely intimidate the Missourians by a show of force).
^ Smith et al. (1835, p. 237) (December 1833 revelation: Smith must "get ye straightway unto my land; break down the walls of mine enemies; throw down their tower, and scatter their watchmen. And inasmuch as they gather together against you, avenge me of mine enemies, that by and by I may come with the residue of mine house and possess the land."); Quinn (1994, pp. 84–85) (arguing that as of February 1834, the Saints were "free to take 'vengeance' at will against any perceived enemy").
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 146–58); Remini (2002, p. 115).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 141).
^ Roberts (1904, p. 108) (quoting text of revelation); Hill (1989, p. 44–45) (noting that in addition to failure to unite under the celestial order, God was displeased the church had failed to make Zion's army sufficiently strong).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 156–57); Roberts (1904, p. 109) (text of revelation).
^ Smith et al. (1835, p. 233) (Kirtland Temple "design[ed] to endow those whom [God] ha[s] chosen with power on high"); Prince (1995, p. 32 & n.104) (quoting revelation dated 12 June 1834 (Kirtland Revelation Book pp. 97–100) stating that the redemption of Zion "cannot be brought to pass until mine elders are endowed with power from on high; for, behold, I have prepared a greater endowment and blessing to be poured out upon them [than the 1831 endowment]").
^ Construction began in June 1833 (Remini 2002, p. 115), not long before the first attack on the Missouri Saints.
^ Brodie (1971, p. 159) (describing it as Smith's "second major failure").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 322) (Smith was "stunned for months, scarcely knowing what to do.").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 160); Quinn (1994, p. 87) (noting that in October 1834, Smith only gathered two votes in his failed election as Kirtland's coroner).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 85).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 141) ("In the Missouri debacle Joseph now saw a chance to erase the whole economic experiment—which in Kirtland had never yielded anything but trouble.").
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 147–48).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 161) (The five equal councils were "the presidency, the apostles, the seventies, and the two high councils of Kirtland and Missouri").
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 159–60) (comparing only 13 or so revelations after July 1834, several of them trivial, to the over 100 in the five years previous); Bushman (2005, p. 322, 419).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 5-6, 9, 15–17, 26, 30, 33, 35, 38–42, 49, 70–71, 88, 198); Brodie (1971, p. 141) (Smith "began to efface the communistic rubric of his young theology").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 170–75).
^ Remini (2002, p. 116) ("The ultimate cost came to approximately $50,000, an enormous sum for a people struggling to stay alive.").
^ (Bushman 2005, pp. 310–19); (Brodie 1971, p. 178) ("Five years before...[Joseph] had found a spontaneous orgiastic revival in full progress and had ruthlessly stamped it out. Now he was intoxicating his followers with the same frenzy he had once so vigorously denounced.")
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 165–66).
^ (Bushman 2005, p. 322).
^ Brooke (1994, p. 221) ("Ultimately, the rituals and visions dedicating the Kirtland temple were not sufficient to hold the church together in the face of a mounting series of internal disputes," citing the failure of Zion's camp, the Alger "affair," and new theological innovations).
^ Hill (1977, pp. 340–41) (noting that Smith confided to Brigham Young in Kirtland that "if I were to reveal to this people what the Lord has revealed to me, there is not a man or a woman that would stay with me.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 323–25); Hill (1977, p. 188) (noting that Benjamin F. Johnson "realized later that Joseph's polygamy was one cause of disruption and apostasy in Kirtland, although it was rarely discussed in public.").
^ Compton (1997, p. 27); Bushman (2005, p. 326); Hill (1977, p. 340).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 323) (noting that Alger was fourteen in 1830 when she met Smith, and her involvement with Smith was between that date and 1836, and suggesting that the relationship began as early as 1831).
^ Compton (1997, p. 26); Bushman (2005, p. 326) (noting Compton's date and conclusion); but see Smith (2008, pp. 38–39 n.81) (questioning whether Smith and Alger were actually married).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 181–82); Bushman (2005, p. 323–25).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 325).
^ (Bushman 2005, pp. 217, 329) (By 1837, Smith had run up a debt of over $100,000.).
^ Quinn (1998, pp. 261–64); Brodie (1971, p. 192); Bushman (2005, p. 328).
^ Roberts (1904, p. 465-66) (text of the revelation).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 328); Brodie (1971, p. 193).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 328).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 328) (Smith "had bought more stock than eighty-five percent of the investors".).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 195–96); Bushman (2005, p. 334).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 330) (noting that business started on 2 January 1837, business was floundering within three weeks, and payment stopped on 23 January 1837).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 331–32).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 332, 336–38). Richard Bushman notes that Heber C. Kimball claimed that in June 1837, not more than 20 men in Kirtland believed Smith was a prophet, but argues that this was an exaggeration, and that there were still "hundreds and probably thousands of loyal followers" during this time (Bushman 2005, p. 332).
^ The fallout included a couple of unseemly rows in the temple, including one occasion on which guns and knives were drawn (Bushman 2005, p. 339). When a leading apostle, David W. Patten, raised insulting questions, Smith slapped him in the face and kicked him into the yard (Bushman 2005, pp. 332, 337, 339). Even stalwarts Parley P. Pratt and Orson Pratt left the church for a few months (Bushman 2005, p. 332).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 207); Bushman (2005, pp. 339–40); Hill (1977, p. 216) (noting that Smith characterized the warrant as "mob violence...under the color of legal process").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 157) (After Zion's Camp disbanded, Smith had predicted that Zion would be redeemed on 11 September 1836); Hill (1977, pp. 181–82) (noting an account that Smith predicted in 1834 that Jackson County would be redeemed "within three years"); Bushman (2005, p. 384) (noting that by 1839, Smith "was giving up the campaign to recover Jackson County").
^ Roberts (1905, p. 24) (referring to the Far West church as the "church in Zion"); (Bushman 2005, p. 345) (The revelation calling Far West "Zion" had the effect of "implying that Far West was to take the place of Independence.")
^ Roberts (1905, p. 24); Quinn (1994, p. 628) (noting that some Kirtland dissenters had claimed that Smith had become the anti-Christ in 1834 when he changed the church's name from "Church of Christ" to "Church of Latter Day Saints," deleting the name of Jesus).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 210, 222–23).
^ Remini (2002, p. 125); Brodie (1971, p. 210) ("Joseph's going had left a void that they had found intolerable. With each passing week they remembered less of their prophet's financial ineptitude and more of his genial warmth and his magnetic presence in the pulpit.")
^ Marquardt (2005, p. 463) (listing Oliver Cowdery (Assistant President of the Church), Frederick G. Williams (First Presidency), David and John Whitmer (Book of Mormon witnesses and presidency of Missouri), William Phelps (presidency of Missouri), [[Martin Harris (Latter Day Saints)|]], Hiram Page, and Jacob Whitmer (Book of Mormon witnesses), and Lyman E. Johnson, John F. Boynton, Luke S. Johnson, and William E. McLellin (Quorum of the Twelve)); Remini (2002, p. 128); Quinn (1994, p. 93).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 92); (Brodie 1971, p. 213) ("From the bottom of his heart Joseph hated violence, but his people were demanding something more than meekness and compromise. It was common gossip among the old settlers that the Mormons would never fight; and Joseph came to realize that in a country where a man's gun spoke faster than his wits, to be known as a pacifist was to invite plundering."); (Bushman 2005, p. 355).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 93) (arguing that Smith and Rigdon were aware of the Danite organization and sanctioned their activities); Brodie (1971, pp. 215–16) (arguing that Sampson Avard had Smith's sanction); Hill (1977, p. 225) (concluding that Smith had at least peripheral involvement and gave early approval to Danite activities); (Bushman 2005, p. 346-51) (Danites were under oath to be "completely submissive" to the First Presidency.)
^ There are two explanations for the name: (1) that it was a reference to the vision of Daniel of a stone cut out of a mountain in Dan. 2:44–45 (Quinn (1994, p. 93); Brodie (1097, p. 215) (quoting Smith)), and (2) that it was a reference to the biblical Danites of Judges 18 (Brodie 1971, p. 216) (quoting Smith).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 93); Brodie (1971, p. 213) ("They would not only defend the Saints against aggression from the old settlers, but also act as a bodyguard for the presidency and as a secret police for ferreting out dissenters."); Remini (2002, p. 129).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 217).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 217–18); Quinn (1994, p. 94).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 218–19) (Danites issued a written death threat, and when that didn't work they surrounded the dissenters' homes and "ordered their wives to pack their blankets and leave the county immediately"); Quinn (1994, pp. 94–95).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 352) ("Joseph certainly favored evicting dissenters...").
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 222–23); Remini (2002, pp. 131–33).
^ Remini (2002, pp. 133).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 223); Quinn (1994, p. 96) (noting that Smith also advertised the speech in the church periodical).
^ Remini (2002, p. 133).
^ (Bushman 2005, p. 357) (noting that in Daviess County, Missouri, non-Mormons "watched local government fall into the hands of people they saw as deluded fanatics.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 345); Brodie (1971, pp. 225–26).
^ Remini (2002, p. 134); Quinn (1994, p. 96).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 227)
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 98–99, 101).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 97–98) (Mormon forces, primarily the Danites, pillaged Millport and Gallatin, and when apostles Thomas B. Marsh and Orson Hyde prepared an affidavit against these Mormon attacks, they were excommunicated); Brodie (1971, p. 232) (Wagons returned from Millport and Gallatin "piled high with 'consecrated property'".); Bushman (2005, p. 371) (Smith "believed his people could rightfully confiscate property in compensation for their own losses to the Missourians but no more".).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 230) (speech dated October 14, 1838 at the Far West town square); Bushman (2005, p. 352).
^ (Bushman 2005, pp. 370–72).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 364) ("Resisting a band of vigilantes was justifiable, but attacking a militia company was resistance to the state."); Quinn (1994, p. 100) (stating that the Extermination Order and the Haun's Mill massacre resulted from Mormon actions at the Battle of Crooked River); Brodie (1971, p. 234) (noting that Boggs was also told about Smith's "second Mohammed" speech and Mormon admissions that they had plundered Millport and Gallatin).
^ (Bushman 2005, p. 367) (Boggs' executive order stated that the Mormon community had "made war upon the people of this State" and that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace"). In 1976, Missouri issued a formal apology for this order (Bushman 2005, p. 398).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 365–66); Quinn (1994, p. 97).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 366–67); Brodie (1971, p. 239).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 367) (noting that Smith was saved by Alexander Doniphan, a Missouri militia leader who had acted as the Saints legal council (pp. 242, 344)); Brodie & 1971 (241).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 369); Brodie (1971, pp. 243–45).
^ (Bushman 2005, p. 369); (Brodie 1971, pp. 225–26).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 369).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 369–70).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 251). Smith bore his harsh imprisonment "stoically, almost cheerfully, for there was a serenity in his nature that enabled him to accept trouble along with glory," (Brodie (1971, p. 245); Bushman (2005, pp. 375–77)) whereas Rigdon was both sick and a whiner (Brodie 1971, p. 251).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 245–46).
^ Remini (2002, p. 138).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 248–50).
^ Remini (2002, pp. 136–37); (Brodie 1971, pp. 245).
^ (Brodie 1971, pp. 246) (noting, in addition, that Smith oddly denied the ubiquitous rumor of polygamy, which had not come up in his trial). The Danites dissolved in 1838, but their members formed the backbone of Smith's security forces in Nauvoo. (Quinn, pp. 101–02).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 246).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 252–53).
^ (Brodie 1971, pp. 245–46).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 377–78).
^ (Bushman 2005, p. 375); (Brodie 1971, pp. 250–51).
^ Brodie (2005, pp. 253–55) (The bribe was a jug of honey whiskey brought by Smith's brother Hyrum, which the sheriff used to get drunk while the prisoners escaped, and the promise of $800, which the Sheriff collected later.); (Bushman 2005, p. 382, 635–36).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 246–47, 259) (noting rebukes by Missouri and Illinois newspapers, and "press all over the country"); Bushman (2005, p. 398) (Mormons were depicted as a persecuted minority).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 248) ("There was chronic border friction between Missouri and Illinois, and the 'Suckers' welcomed the chance to demonstrate a nobility of character foreign to the despised 'Pukes'".).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 381) (Saints gathered near Quincy, Illinois.
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 383–84) (noting that the land had strategic importance as a possible major port).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 384).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 398–99); Brodie (1971, p. 259) (Smith "saw to it that the sufferings of his people received national publicity.").
^ Smith traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Martin Van Buren and Congress (Bushman (2005, pp. 392–94); Brodie (1971, p. 260)).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 385); Brodie (1971, p. 257). In 1841, malaria claimed the lives of one of Smith's brothers and his son, who died within eight days of each other (Bushman 2005, p. 425).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 258) (arguing that Smith was eager to reclaim some of the prestige that had been ceded to Brigham Young while Smith was imprisoned); (Bushman 2005, p. 386) (Though many of the apostles had malaria, Smith required them to covertly slip into hostile Missouri so that Far West, now deserted, would be their point of departure on exactly 26 April 1838.); Roberts (1905, pp. 46–47) (Revelation given in Far West in 1838: "Let them take leave of my saints in the city of Far West, on the twenty-sixth day of April next, on the building-spot of my house, saith the Lord.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 409); Brodie (1971, pp. 258, 264–65).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 410–11).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 412); Brodie (1971, p. 267–68).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 415). A similar Hebrew word appears in Isaiah 52: 7.
^ Quinn (1994, p. 110).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 273); Bushman (2005, p. 426). Prior to the charter, Smith had narrowly avoided two extradition attempts (Brodie (1971, pp. 272–73); Bushman (2005, pp. 425–26)).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 267); Bushman (2005, p. 412).
^ Quinn (1995, p. 106).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 271) (Smith "frequently jested about his outranking every military officer in the United States".); Bushman (2005, p. 259) (noting that Bennett had effective command of the Legion).
^ Quinn (1995, p. 106) (The Legion had 2,000 troops in 1842, 3,000 by 1844, compared to less than 8,500 soldiers in the entire United States Army.)
^ Ostling & Ostling (1999, pp. 11–12); Bushman (2005, p. 410) (Smith "had trouble distinguishing true friends from self-serving schemers", and incorrectly predicted that Bennett was "calculated to be a great blessing to our community.").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 268); Quinn (1995, p. 1067).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 411)
^ Quinn (1995, pp. 106–08).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 421); Brodie (1971, p. 282).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 448–49).
^ D&C 124:28.
^ Quinn (1994, p. 113).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 449); Quinn (1994, pp. 114–15).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 634).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 384) (Smith viewed Nauvoo as a compromise to his plan to build Zion).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 404).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 384).
^ The tent–stake metaphor was derived from Isaiah 54:2.
^ Bushman (2005, p. 415) (noting that the time when the Millennium was to occur lengthened to "more than 40 years".)
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 111–12).
^ Compton (1997, p. 11) (counting at least 33 total wives); Smith (1994, p. 14) (counting 42 wives); Brodie (1971, pp. 334–36) (counting 49 wives); Bushman (2005, pp. 437, 644) (accepting Compton's count, excepting one wife); Quinn (1994, pp. 587–88) (counting 46 wives); Remini (2002, p. 153) (noting that the exact figure is still debated).
^ Foster (1981); Quinn (1994); Compton (1997); Bushman (2005, p. 437); Launius (1988); Van Wagoner (1992); Newell & Avery (1994).
^ Compton (1997, p. 11); Remini (2002, p. 154); Brodie (1971, pp. 334–43).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 491).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 439); Hill (1977, p. 355).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 439).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 438) (Smith approached Joseph Bates Noble about marrying his wife's sister, Smith asked Bates to "keep quiet": "In revealing this to you I have placed my life in your hands, therefore do not in an evil hour betray me to my enemies." Noble performed the ceremony "in a grove near Main Street with Louisa in man's clothing.")
^ Brodie (1971, p. 310); Bushman (2005, p. 460) (Bennett told women he was seducing that illicit sex was acceptable among the Saints so long as it was kept secret). Bennett, a minimally trained doctor, also promised abortions to any who might became pregnant.
^ Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 12); Bushman (2005, pp. 461–62); Brodie (1971, p. 314).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 436).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 427–28).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 468). Boggs survived the attack.
^ Brodie (1971, p. 323) (noting rumors that Smith had predicted in 1840 that Boggs would meat a violent death within a year, and that Smith offered a $500 reward for his death); Quinn (1994, p. 113) (noting that Smith held Boggs responsible for the Haun's Mill massacre).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 113); Bushman (2005, p. 468) (stating the evidence was circumstantial).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 468–75).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 468).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 504–08).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 508).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 339); Bushman (2005, p. 494); Remini (2002, pp. 152–53).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 638) (first Mormon sealing); Bushman (2005, p. 494).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 339).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 340).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 495–96).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 340–341); Roberts (1909, pp. 505–06) ("A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith,...[that she] receive all those [wives] that have been given unto my servant Joseph.... But if [Emma] will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.")
^ Bushman (2005, p. 496).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 36) (arguing that Smith extended the priesthood to women through the Endowment, rather than through ordination).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 640).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 115).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 115–18).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 115–16) ("Such decisions were made by the formality of 'a vote' after the 'true order of prayer' and the announcement of God's revelation on the subject.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 511); Brodie (1971, p. 356); Quinn (1994, pp. 115–116) (noting that the Anointed Quorum also authorized "a proclamation to the kings of the earth", but Smith never sent it). Smith also threatened Congress. The Millennial Star later quoted Smith as having said that "if Congress will not hear our petition and grant us protection, they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them, and there shall be nothing left of them—not even a grease spot." Quoted in Brodie, 356.
^ Quinn (1994, p. 119)
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 118–19) (the Anointed Quorum chose Sidney Rigdon as Smith's running mate);Bushman (2005, pp. 514–15); Brodie (1971, pp. 362–64).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 121) (The day before the Council was organized, word reached Smith that a U.S. Indian agent was interfering with acquisition of lumber needed for the Nauvoo Temple).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 120–22) (noting that the Council was authorized by a revelation, and members committed to keep what Smith said during the organizational meeting secret); Bushman (2005, p. 519).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 121).
^ ^a ^b Bushman (2005, p. 517).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 521) (noting that in April, Smith prophesied "the entire overthrow of this nation in a few years," at which time his Kingdom of God would be prepared to take power); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 13) (As if they had just organized an independent state, Smith and the Council sent ambassadors to England, France, Russia, and the Republic of Texas); Remini (2002, p. 166).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 521–22) (noting use of the term theodemocracy); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 15) (council included only three non-Mormons, two of which were known counterfeiters).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 523)|Quinn (1994, p. 124). For a few months, the Council took over from the Anointed Quorum as the leading council of church government.Bushman (2005, p. 525).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 527–28).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 368) (noting that Law and Foster were also the chief city contractors); Bushman (2005, p. 528) (noting that Law had been was a member of the Anointed Quorum); Quinn (1994, p. 528) (Law was criticized in 1843 and then dropped from the Anointed Quorum in January 1844, but after being defended by Hiram Smith, rejected an April 1844 offer by Joseph Smith to be restored to church positions if he stopped opposing polygamy).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 368–69) (Law believed that Smith was misappropriating donations for the Nauvoo House hotel and neglecting other building projects despite the acute housing shortage, while Smith had no respect for building projects by Law and Foster.); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 14).
^ Brodie (1971) ("With sorrow and suspicion Law watched Joseph ever enlarging his circle of wives. Then the prophet tried to approach Law's own wife, Jane." (p. 369); Robert D. Foster came home and caught Smith having dinner alone with his wife, and after a confrontation where weapons were drawn, Mrs. Foster fainted and then said Smith had proposed to her (p. 371)); Van Wagoner (1992, p. 39); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 14); Bushman (2005, pp. 660–61) (noting that Smith claimed that Jane Law had proposed to him (660–61), citing Journal of Alexander Neibaur, 24 May 1844 (Smith claimed that Jane Law lured him into her house alone, embraced him, and proposed to him, but that Smith resisted her advances); also noting that Smith confronted Mrs. Foster with two witnesses and got her to say that during their dinner, Smith had made no sexual advances and had not "preached the spiritual wife doctrine" (530–31).)).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 371); Bushman (2005, p. 530); Williams, A.B. (15 May 1844), "Affidavit", Times and Seasons, vol. 5, no. 10, p. 541 (Affidavit stating, "Joseph H. Jackson said that Doctor Foster, Chauncy Higbee and the Laws were red-hot for a conspiracy, and he should not be surprised if in two weeks there should be not one of the Smith family left in Nauvoo").
^ ^a ^b Bushman (2005, p. 531).
^ ^a ^b Brodie (1971, p. 373).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 373); Bushman (2005, p. 538) (arguing that Smith may have felt justified denying polygamy and "spiritual wifeism" because he thought it was based on a different principle than "plural marriage"); Roberts (1912, pp. 408–412) (Smith stated, "I had not been married scarcely five minutes, and made one proclamation of the Gospel, before it was reported that I had seven wives....I have rattled chains before in a dungeon for truth's sake. I am innocent of all these charges, and you can bear witness of my innocence, for you know me yourselves....What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers." "This new holy prophet [Law] has gone to Carthage and swore that I had told him that I was guilty of adultery. This spiritual wifeism! Why, a man dares not speak or wink, for fear of being accused of this").
^ Quinn (1994, p. 137–38) (noting that the prospectus was published May 10, 1844, and that an informant within the Council of Fifty had told Law about Smith's ordination as king).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 138) (noting that the offer was presented by Sidney Rigdon, who did not have authority to concede polygamy).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 539); Brodie (1971, pp. 374) (arguing that given its authors' intentions to reform the church, the paper was "extraordinarily restrained" given the explosive allegations it could have raised).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 539); Brodie (1971, pp. 374–75).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 375) (stating that the Expositor contained "an unmistakable allusion to Joseph's kingship"); Quinn (1994, pp. 139); Marquardt (2005);Marquardt (1999, p. 312).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 139) (noting that the publishers intended to emphasize the details of Smith's delectable plan of government" in later issues).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 377) (Smith declared that the 1843 revelation on polygamy referred to in the Expositor "was in answer to a question concerning things which transpired in former days, and had no reference to the present time").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 340–41).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 540); Brodie (1971, p. 377); Marquardt (2005); Marquardt (1999, p. 312).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 541) (Smith "failed to see that suppression of the paper was far more likely to arouse a mob than the libels. It was a fatal mistake.").
^ Warsaw Signal, June 14, 1844. ("Citizens arise, one and all!!! Can you stand by, and suffer such Infernal Devils! to rob men of their property and rights without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. Let it be made with Powder and Ball!!!."
^ Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 16).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 140, 145–46).
^ Ostlings, 17; Bushman, 546. Eight Mormon leaders accompanied Smith to Carthage: Hyrum Smith, John Taylor, Willard Richards, John P. Greene, Stephen Markham, Dan Jones, John S. Fullmer, Dr. Southwick, and Lorenzo D. Wasson. [1] All of Smith's associates left the jail, except his brother Hyrum, Richards and Taylor.
^ Joseph and Hyrum were accompanied in jail by John Taylor (Mormon) and Dr. Willard Richards, who were not prisoners.
^ Quinn (1994, p. 141) (Major General Jonathan Dunham "realized that such an assault by the Nauvoo Legion would result in two blood baths").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 550) ("Hyrum was the first to fall. A ball through the door struck him on the left side of the nose, throwing him to the floor.")
^ Brodie (1971, p. 393) ("Joseph discharging all six barrels down the passageway. Three of them missed fire, but the other three found marks."); Bushman & 2005 (2005, p. 549) (Smith received a smuggled six-shooter, and passed along a single-shot pistol to Hyrum).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 393–94); Bushman (2005).
^ Arrington and Bitton, 82; Remini, 174-75.
^ Bushman (2005, p. 552).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 419–20) (arguing that Smith may have been unaware of the other religious materialism arguments circulating in his day, such as those of Joseph Priestly).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 419); Brooke (1994, pp. 3–5); Smith (1830, p. 544) (story from the Book of Ether of Jesus revealing "the body of my spirit" to an especially faithful man, saying humanity was created in the image of his spirit body).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 420).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 421) (noting that Smith once taught the Earth was formed from broken-up pieces of prior planets).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 420–21); Widmer (2000, p. 119).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 420–21).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 421).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 455–56) (arguing that in Smith's theology, God's authority arose not from being an ex nihilo creator, but from having the greatest intelligence).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 421) (quoting Smith as saying, "God is Good & all his acts is for the benefit of infereir inteligences [sic]."); Bloom (1992, p. 101) ("Smith's God is hedged in by limitations and badly needs intelligences besides his own.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 420) (arguing that Smith's original view of a pure spirit God was traditionally Christian); Vogel, Dan, The Earliest Mormon Conception of God in Bergera (1989, pp. 17–33) (arguing that Smith's original view was modalism, Jesus being the embodied manifestation the spirit Father, and that by 1834 Smith shifted to a binitarian formulation favored by Sidney Rigdon, which also viewed the Father as a spirit); Alexander, Thomas, The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology in Bergera (1989, p. 53) (prior to 1835, Smith viewed God the Father as "an absolute personage of spirit").
^ Widmer (2000, p. 119); Alexander, Thomas, The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology in Bergera (1989, p. 539) (describing Smith's doctrine as "material anthropomorphism"); Bloom (1992, p. 101) ("Smith's God, after all, began as a man, and struggled heroically in and with time and space, rather after the pattern of colonial and revolutionary Americans.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 421) ("Piece by piece, Joseph redefined the nature of God, giving Him a form and a body and locating Him in time and space."); Bloom (1992, p. 101) ("Joseph Smith's God...is finite.... Exalted now into the heavens, God necessarily is still subject to the contingencies of time and space.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 455); Widmer (2000, pp. 70–90).
^ Roberts (1909, p. 325).
^ Larson (1978, p. 7 (online ver.)).
^ Widmer (2000, p. 119).
^ Widmer (2000, p. 119); Bushman (2005, p. 535).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 455–56, 535–37).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 422).
^ Larson (1978, p. 15 (online ver.)).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 199).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 443).
^ Brooke (1994, p. 33).
^ Remini (2000, p. 84).
^ ^a ^b Quinn (1994, p. 7).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 7–8).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 121, 175); Phelps (1833, p. 67) ("[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses.").
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 27–34); Bushman (2005, pp. 264–65).
^ Prince (1995, pp. 19, 115–116, 119) (noting influence of Sidney Rigdon in developing this idea); Gospel of Luke 24:49 (Authorized King James Version) ("And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endowed with power from on high.").
^ Brodie (1971, p. 111); Bushman (2005, pp. 156–60); Quinn (1994, pp. 31–32); Roberts (1902, pp. 175–76) (On 3 June 1831, "the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the Elders.").
^ Prince (1995, pp. 31–32, 121–31) (outlining evolution of the endowment idea in 1833 and 1836).
^ Ostling & Ostling (1999, pp. 194–95); Prince (1995, p. 146).
^ Prince (1995, p. 140).
^ Prince (1995, p. 201).
^ Brooke (1994, pp. 30, 194–95, 203, 208) (Smith introduced the sealing power in 1831 as part of the High Priesthood, and then attributed this power to Elijah after he appeared in an 1836 vision in the Kirtland Temple).
^ Brooke (1994, pp. 221, 242–43).
^ Brooke (1994, pp. 236).
^ Brodie, 106, 112, 121–22. In 1834, "Joseph began to efface the communistic rubric in his young theology. Since most copies of the Book of Commandments had been burned, it was easy for him to revise drastically the revelation of the United Order when it was republished in the enlarged Doctrine and Covenants in 1835. The Lord no longer demanded consecration of a man's total property, but only a donation of his 'surplus' over and above living expenses." (141)
^ Roberts (1909, pp. 502–07) (1842 revelation describing the New and Everlasting Covenant).
^ Foster (1981, pp. 161–62).
^ Foster (1981, pp. 161–62) (quoting a source stating that in Smith's view, sex within earthly marriages was not sinful if the marriage was cemented by bonds of love and affection, but sex could be sinful even within marriage if the partners were alienated from each other).
^ ^a ^b ^c Foster (1981, p. 145).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 497–98) (those who were married eternally were then "sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise" through the second anointing); Brooke (1994, pp. 256–57).
^ Roberts (1909, pp. 502–03); Bushman (2005, pp. 497–98) (the second anointing provided a guarantee that participants would be exalted even if they sinned); Brooke (1994, p. 257).
^ Roberts (1909, pp. 501) ("I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this Priesthood are conferred.")
^ Bloom (1992, p. 108) (polygamy and consequent progression towards godhood were "the true essence of becoming a Latter-day Saint, the heart of Mormon religion making.").
^ Bloom (1992, p. 105).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 185–86, 246, 307, 321, 344, 374, 377); Bushman (2005, p. 491) (Smith denied he was advocating polygamy).
^ Roberts (1909, p. 501, 507) ("A those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same;...and if ye abide not that covenant, then ye are damned." If a polygamist husband "teaches unto [his wife] the law of my Priesthood as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God, for I will destroy her."); Bushman (2005, p. 438) (noting the 1843 revelation about being "damned," and Smith's statements that unless he started to marry plural wives, an angel would slay him); Brodie (1971, p. 342) (The 1843 revelation "threatened destruction to any wife who refused to accept the new law".)
^ Hullinger (1992, p. 154).
^ Hullinger (1992, p. 154-54) (describing how the Book of Mormon solved various 19th century Biblical controversies).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 94); Roberts (1902, p. 315) ("The Book of Mormon is a record of the forefathers of our western tribes of Indians.").
^ Smith (1830, p. 51) (Jesus "cometh according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem."); Phelps (1833, p. 41) ("Lamanites are a remnant" of the Jews).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 43); Smith (1830, p. 73) (God "caused the cursing to come upon them... because of their iniquity.... [W]herefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, therefore the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.").
^ Brooke (1994, p. 213-14) (arguing that the shift occurred after 1832 and may have related to Oliver Cowdery's failed mission to the Missouri "Lamanites"); Shipps (1985, pp. 82–83) (arguing that the identification of the Saints as literal Israelites was in place prior to 1838).
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 356–57); Bushman (2005, p. 521); Bloom (1992, p. 90) (Smith identified himself as the stone).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 522–23).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 289, 327–28) (the essay "exhibited the conventional prejudiced of his day in asserting that blacks were cursed with servitude by a 'decree of Jehovah.'"); Hill (1977, p. 381) (noting that Smith did not want to be identified as an abolitionist, even when he disfavored slavery).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, p. 380, 383) (citing 1833 revelation stating that "it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another").
^ Hill (1977, p. 384).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, p. 384-85).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, p. 379).
^ Hill (1977, p. 379).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, pp. 381–82, 85).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 377).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 512).
^ Bushman (2005, p. 522).
^ Roberts (1902, p. 435).
^ Roberts (1909, p. 296).
^ Smith (1835, sec. LXXX, 207-08)
^ For instance, Smith drank wine "with relish" and noted his drinking in his journal "without apology." Brodie (1971, p. 289). Smith "himself liked a nip every now and then, especially at weddings." His own Mansion House, which operated a hotel, maintained a fully stocked barroom, and Nauvoo also had a brewery that advertised in the church newpaper." According to Smith's fellow prisoner John Taylor, "the prophet requested and drank wine at Carthage Jail the night before his was murdered in 1844." Ostling (1999, pp. 177–78).
^ Smith (1830, p. 332) Engaging a prostitute was "most abominable above all sins, save it be the shedding of innocent blood, or denying the Holy Ghost".
^ Phelps (1833, p. 135).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 88–89, 112).
^ Smith (1830, pp. 12–13).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 88–89).
^ Bloom (1992, pp. 96–99) (Smith "surpassed all Americans, before or since, in the possession and expression of what could be called the religion-making imagination", and had charisma "to a degree unsurpassed in American history".); Abanes (2003, p. 7) (noting that even Smith's harshest critics acknowledge his inventive genius); Persuitte (2000, p. 1) (calling Smith "one of the most controversial and enigmatic figures ever to appear in American history").
^ Widmer (2000, p. 97); Shipps (1985, p. 37) (making comparisons with Moses (law-giver), Joshua (commander of the "armies of Israel"), and Solomon (king)); Bushman (2005, p. xx) (describing Smith as "a biblical-style prophet—one who spoke for God with the authority of Moses or Isaiah."); Brodie (1971, p. vii) (noting that "[i]n official Mormon biographies he has been made a prophet of greater stature than Moses").
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 72–73, 116–17) (noting the "choice seer" prophecies in the Book of Mormon and Smith's revision of the Bible); Smith (1830, pp. 66–67) (claiming that the Biblical Joseph prophesied, "A seer shall the Lord my God raise up, who shall be a choice seer unto the fruit of my loins.… And his name shall be called after me; and it shall be after the name of his father. And he shall be like unto me; for the thing, which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand, by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation.").
^ Bushman (2005, p. 558) (quoting a tribute to Smith, probably by Taylor, stating that Smith "has done more, (save Jesus only,) for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it."); Smith, Joseph Fielding (December 1941), "The Historical Background of the Prophet Joseph Smith", Improvement Era: 717 ("No prophet since the days of Adam, save, of course, our Redeemer, has been given a greater mission.").
^ Weber, Max (1978), Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology, vol. 1, University of California Press, p. 446, ISBN 0520035003 (In his role as the founder of Mormonism, Smith "resembled, even in matters of detail, Muhammad."); Brodie (1971, p. 230) (speech dated October 14, 1838 at the Far West town square, in which Smith called himself "a second Mohammed"); Bushman (2005, p. 352).
^ Brodie (1971, p. 396–97).
^ ^a ^b Widmer (2000, p. 98).
^ Abanes (2003, pp. 174–75) (noting statements by Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young stating that Smith was one of the gods and that his permission was required for entry into heaven, and arguing that regard for Smith has not diminished among modern Mormons); Phelps, W.W. (1 August 1844), "Joseph Smith" (PDF), Times and Seasons, 5: 607 (an ode to Smith, now a popular Mormon hymn entitled Praise to the Man, describing him as "mingling with gods").
^ Swanson, Vern G., The Development of the Concept of a Holy Ghost in Mormon Theology in Bergera (1989, p. 97) (noting the minority view in the aftermath of Smith's death that he was an incarnation of the Holy Spirit
^ Allen (1966, p. 43–44) ("Next to the resurrection of Christ, nothing holds a more central place in modern Mormon thought than" the First Vision.... The most sacred event in church history, a belief in its literal reality is fundamental to belief in Mormonism itself."); Shipps (1985, p. 9, 32) (First Vision came to be regarded as the "initial episode in Mormon history", and "emerged as a symbol that could keep the slain Mormon leader at center stage"); Widmer (2000, p. 105).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 143); Brodie (1971, p. 398).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 143) ("He proposed more than one way for a member of the First Presidency to succeed him, left the relative priority of the founding quorums in an ambiguous balance, performed secret ordinations, and suggested more than one method by which a brother or son might succeed him."); Shipps (1985, pp. 83–84) (discussing several of the succession options).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 143).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 213) (after Smith was crowned king, Hyrum referred to himself as "President of the Church"), and Brigham Young agreed Hyrum would have been the natural successor.
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 152–54, 213); Bushman (2005, p. 555).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 213–26); Bushman (2005, p. 555) (William Smith "made a bid for the Church presidency, but his unstable character kept him from being a serious contender".).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 226–41) (outlining the sons' claims and noting, "Even Brigham Young acknowledged the claims of patrilineal succession and as a result never argued that the Quorum of Twelve had exclusive right of succession."); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 42).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 192–98) (before his death, Smith had charged the Fifty with the responsibility of establishing the Millennial kingdom in his absence; the Quorum of Twelve would eventually claim this "charge" as their own).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 187–91).
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 556–57).
^ Desert News "Addressing the New Mission Presidents Seminar on June 24, President Hinckley announced that LDS Church membership had reached 13 million." See also: Watson, F. Michael (2008), Statistical Report, 2007, http://www.lds.org, retrieved 2008-04-14, Total Membership: 13,193,999 {{citation}}: External link in |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Bushman (2005, pp. 557). The largest existing Rigdonitechurch is the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 211); Bushman (2005, p. 556) (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a seer stone, saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing polygamy). Strang's current followers consist of the tiny Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 210); Bushman (2005, p. 555).
^ Quinn (1994, p. 211); Bushman (2005, p. 556) (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a seer stone, saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing polygamy).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 198–203).
^ Quinn (1994, pp. 203–09).
^ Emma Smith claimed that the very first time she ever became aware of a polygamy revelation being attributed by Mormons to Joseph Smith was when she read about it in Orson Pratt's booklet The Seer in 1853, Saints' Herald 65:1044–1045
^ Church History, 3: 355–356.
^ Brodie (1971, pp. 110–11).
^ The adopted twins were born of Julia Clapp Murdock and John Murdock
^ Template:Cite article; Template:Cite article; name=Perego>Perego, Ugo A.; Myers, Natalie M.; Woodward, Scott R. (Summer 2005), "Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith, Jr.: Genealogical Applications" (PDF), Journal of Mormon History, 32 (2) Although Bushman suggested that Smith had married twenty-seven other women, there is no DNA evidence that Smith fathered any children by any woman other than Emma. Bushman, 493; Compton, 4–7; Remini, 153-54; Brodie, "The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith," Appendix C in No Man Knows My History, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), 457–88. Remini, 153. Brodie guessed that there might have been as many as 48 plural wives, but succeeding scholars have considered her numbers exaggerated. Remini said that the true number might have been as high as eighty-four, although many of these might have been "simply sacred sealings for eternity." Remini, 153. Smith's biography in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 3: 1337, says that Smith took at least twenty-eight plural wives. On her deathbed, Emma Smith denied that her husband had ever practiced polygamy.Church History, 3: 355–356.
^ Saints' Herald 65:1044–1045
^ Times and Seasons 3 [August 1, 1842]: 869
^ Times and Seasons 3 [October 1, 1842]: 940. In March 1844, Emma said, "we raise our voices and hands against John C. Bennett's 'spiritual wife system', as a scheme of profligates to seduce women; and they that harp upon it, wish to make it popular for the convenience of their own cupidity; wherefore, while the marriage bed, undefiled is honorable, let polygamy, bigamy, fornication, adultery, and prostitution, be frowned out of the hearts of honest men to drop in the gulf of fallen nature". The document The Voice of Innocence from Nauvoo. signed by Emma Smith as President of the Ladies' Relief Society, was published within the article Virtue Will Triumph, Nauvoo Neighbor, March 20, 1844 (LDS History of the Church 6:236, 241) including on her deathbed where 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". Church History3: 355–356
^ Van Wagoner (1992, pp. 113–115) As Fawn Brodie has written, this denial was "her revenge and solace for all her heartache and humiliation." (Brodie, 399) "This was her slap at all the sly young girls in the Mansion House who had looked first so worshipfully and then so knowingly at Joseph. She had given them the lie. Whatever formal ceremony he might have gone through, Joseph had never acknowledged one of them before the world." Newell and Avery wrote of "the paradox of Emma's position", quoting her friend and lawyer Judge George Edmunds who stated "that's just the hell of it! I can't account for it or reconcile her statements." (Newell & Avery 1994, p. 308)
^ Bushman (2005), 554. Brodie says that she "came to fear and despise" Brigham Young. Brodie, 399.
^ Bushman (2005), 554.
^ Bushman (2005), 554–55. Emma Smith married Major Lewis Bidamon, an "enterprising man who made good use of Emma's property." Although Bidamon sired an illegitimate child when he was 62 (whom Emma reared), "the couple showed genuine affection for each." Bushman (2205), 555.

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Morgan, Dale (1986), Walker, John Phillip (ed.), Dale Morgan on Early Mormonism: Correspondence and a New History, Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books.
Newell, Linda King; Avery, Valeen Tippetts (1994), Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (2nd ed.), University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252062914.
Ostling, Richard; Ostling, Joan K. (1999), Mormon America: The Power and the Promise, San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, ISBN 0-06-066371-5.
Persuitte, David (2000), Joseph Smith and the origins of the Book of Mormon, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., ISBN 0-7864-0826-X.
Phelps, W.W., ed. (1833), [[A Book of Commandments, for the Government of the Church of Christ]], Zion: William Wines Phelps & Co. {{citation}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help).
Prince, Gregory A (1995), Power From On High: The Development of Mormon Priesthood, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, ISBN 1-56085-071-X. {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help).
Quinn, D. Michael (1994), The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, ISBN 1-56085-056-6.
Quinn, D. Michael (1998), Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (2nd ed.), Salt Lake City: Signature Books, ISBN 1-56085-089-2.
Remini, Robert V. (2002), Joseph Smith: A Penguin Life, New York: Penguin Group, ISBN 0-670-03083-X.
Roberts, B. H., ed. (1902), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 1, Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
Roberts, B. H., ed. (1904), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 2, Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
Roberts, B. H., ed. (1905), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 3, Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
Roberts, B. H., ed. (1909), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 5, Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
Roberts, B. H., ed. (1912), History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, vol. 6, Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
Shipps, Jan (1985), Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-01417-0.
Smith, George D. (1994), "Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841–46: A Preliminary Demographic Report", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 27 (1).
Smith, George D (2008), Nauvoo Polygamy: "...but we called it celestial marriage", Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, ISBN 978-1560852018.
Smith, Joseph, Jr. (1830), The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon, Upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi, Palmyra, New York: E. B. Grandin{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). See Book of Mormon.
Smith, Joseph, Jr. (1832), "History of the Life of Joseph Smith", in Jessee, Dean C (ed.), Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, ISBN 1-57345-787-6 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |publication-year= ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
Smith, Joseph, Jr.; Mulholland, James; Thompson, Robert B.; Phelps, William W.; Richards, Willard (1839–1843), "History of the Church, Ms. A–1", in Jessee, Dean C (ed.), Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book (published 2002), ISBN 1-57345-787-6{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).
Smith, Joseph, Jr.; Cowdery, Oliver; Rigdon, Sidney; Williams, Frederick G., eds. (1835), Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints: Carefully Selected from the Revelations of God, Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. Williams & Co{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link). See Doctrine and Covenants.
Smith, Joseph, Jr. (1 March 1842), "Church History [Wentworth Letter]", Times and Seasons, 3 (9): 706–10{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link). See Wentworth letter.
Smith, Lucy Mack (1853), Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations, Liverpool: S.W. Richards. See The History of Joseph Smith by His Mother
Tucker, Pomeroy (1867), Origin, Rise and Progress of Mormonism, New York: D. Appleton.
Turner, Orsamus (1852), History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, and Morris' Reserve, Rochester, New York: William Alling.
Van Wagoner, Richard S.; Walker, Steven C. (Summer 1982), "Joseph Smith: The Gift of Seeing", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 15 (2): 48–68.
Van Wagoner, Richard S. (1992), Mormon Polygamy: A History (2 ed.), Salt Lake City: Signature Books, ISBN 978-0941214797.
Vogel, Dan (1994), "The Locations of Joseph Smith's Early Treasure Quests", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 27 (3): 197–231.
Vogel, Dan (2004), Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet, Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, ISBN 1-56085-179-1.
Widmer, Kurt (2000), Mormonism and the Nature of God: A Theological Evolution, 1830–1915, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

External links

Joseph Smith at Find a Grave
Media related to Joseph Smith, Jr. at Wikimedia Commons
Works by Joseph Smith, Jr. at Project Gutenberg
JosephSmithPapers.org – An LDS Church project compiling primary documents relating to Joseph Smith.

Leaders of the Church of Christ, later called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
Founding president	Leader Claiming Succession Position in the Church of Christ Title & denomination Years
Joseph Smith, Jr. (1830–1844)
	Brigham Young was President of the Quorum of the Twelve President of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1844–1877
	Joseph Smith III was Direct Descendant of Joseph Smith, Jr. President of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints later called the Community of Christ 1860–1914
	James Strang was an Elder with a Letter of appointment President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) 1844–1856
	Sidney Rigdon was senior surviving member of the First Presidency Guardian of the Church of Christ later called the Church of Jesus Christ of the Children of Zion or Rigdonites 1844–1847

Political offices
Preceded by John C. Bennett	Mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois 1842–1844	Succeeded by Daniel Spencer

show

[1] Dobner, Jennifer (April 10, 2009), Editor: Statistics show fast Mormon church growth, USA Today (LDS Church claims 13,508,509 members as of end of 2008); Community of Christ (2009), General Denominational Information, retrieved December 17, 2009 (second largest Latter Day Saint movement denomination claiming approximately 250,000 members).

[2] Bushman (2005, pp. 9, 30); Smith (1832, p. 1).

[3] Smith (1853, pp. 62–65); Bushman (2005, pp. 20–22, 29).

[4] Bushman (2005, p. 30).

[5] Bushman (2005, pp. 32–33). From about 1818 until after the July 1820 purchase, the Smiths squatted in a log home adjacent to the property. Id.

[6] Shipps (1985, p. 7).

[7] Brooke (1994, p. 129) ("Long before the 1820s, the Smiths were caught up in the dialectic of spiritual mystery and secular fraud framed in the hostile symbiosis of divining and counterfeiting and in the diffusion of Masonic culture in an era of sectarian fervor and profound millenarian expectation.").

[8] Smith said that he decided in 1820, based on his First Vision, not to join any churches (Smith et al. 1839–1843, p. 4). However, (Lapham 1870) said that Smith's father told him his son had once become a Baptist).

[9] Smith is known to have attended Sunday school at the Western Presbyterian Church in Palmyra (Matzko 2007). Smith also attended and spoke at a Methodist probationary class in the early 1820s, but never officially joined (Turner 1852, p. 214; Tucker 1876, p. 18).

[10] Quinn (1998, p. 30)("Joseph Smith's family was typical of many early Americans who practiced various forms of Christian folk magic."); Bushman (2005, p. 51) ("Magic and religion melded in the Smith family culture."); Shipps (1985, pp. 7–8); Remini (2002, pp. 16, 33).

[11] Quinn (1998, p. 31); Hill (1977, p. 53) ("Even the more vivid manifestations of religious experience, such as dreams, visions and revelations, were not uncommon in Joseph's day, neither were they generally viewed with scorn.").

[12] Quinn (1988, pp. 14–16, 137).

[13] Bushman (2005, p. 26, 36); Brooke, p. 1994); (Mack 1811, p. 25); Smith (1853, pp. 54–59, 70–74).

[14] Smith (1832); Bushman (2005, p. 39) (When Smith first described the vision twelve years after the event, "[h]e explained the vision as he must have first understood it, as a personal conversion".)

[15] Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 3). This vision was generally unknown to early Latter Day Saints. See Bushman (2005, p. 39) (story was unknown to most early converts); Allen (1966, p. 30) (the first vision received only limited circulation in the 1830s). However, the vision story gained increasing theological importance within the Latter Day Saint movement beginning roughly a half century later. See Shipps (1985, pp. 30–32); Allen (1966, p. 43–69); Quinn (1998, p. 176) ("Smith's first vision became a missionary tool for his followers only after Americans grew to regard modern visions of God as unusual.").

[16] Quinn (1998, p. 136).

[17] Quinn (1998, pp. 25–26).

[18] Quinn (1987, p. 173); Bushman (2005, pp. 49–51); Persuitte (2000, pp. 33–53).

[19] Brooke (1994, p. 152–53); Quinn (1998, pp. 43–44); Bushman (2005, pp. 45–52). See also the following primary sources: Harris (1833, pp. 253–54); Hale (1834, p. 265); Clark (1842, p. 225); Turner (1851, p. 216); Harris (1859, p. 164); Tucker (1867, pp. 20–21); Lapham (1870, p. 305); Lewis & Lewis (1879, p. 1); Mather (1880, p. 199).

[20] Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 5) (writing that he "displayed the weakness of youth and the ~~corruption~~ foibles of human nature, which I am sorry to say, led me into divers temptations ~~to the gratification of many appetites~~ offensive in the sight of God", deletions and interlineations in original); Quinn (1998, p. 136-38) (arguing that Smith was praying for forgiveness for a sexual sin to maintain his power as a seer); Smith (1994, pp. 17–18) (arguing that his prayer related to a sexual sin). But see Bushman (2005, p. 43) (noting that Smith did not specify which "appetites" he had gratified, and suggesting that one of them was that he "drank too much").

[21] Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 4).

[22] Mormon historian Richard Bushman argues that "the visit of the angel and the discovery of the gold plates would have confirmed the belief in supernatural powers. For people in a magical frame of mind, Moroni sounded like one of the the spirits who stood guard over treasure in the tales of treasure-seeking." Bushman (2005, p. 50).

[23] Quinn (1998, pp. 163–64); Bushman (2005, p. 54) (noting accounts stating that the "right person" was originally Smith's brother Alvin, then when he died, someone else, and finally his wife Emma).

[24] Bushman (2005, p. 51–53).

[25] Hill (1977, p. 1–2); Bushman (2005, p. 51–52); Revised Statutes of the State of New York, vol. 1, Albany, NY: Packard and Van Benthuysen, 1829, p. 638: part I, title 5, § 1 ("[A]ll persons pretending to tell fortunes, or where lost or stolen goods may be found,...shall be deemed disorderly persons.")

[26] Bushman (2005, p. 53).

[27] Quinn (1998, pp. 163–64); Bushman (2005, p. 54) (noting accounts stating that Emma was the key).

[28] Bushman (2005, pp. 60).

[29] Smith et al. (1839–1843, pp. 5–6).

[30] Bushman (2005, pp. 54) (Smith had assured Emma's father Isaac Hale that his treasure-seeking days were behind him).

[31] Harris (1859, p. 167); Bushman (2005, p. 61).

[32] Bushman (2005, pp. 54) (treasure seer Sally Chase attempted to find the plates using her seer stone).

[33] Bushman (2005, pp. 60–61); Remini (2002, p. 55).

[34] Remini (2002, p. 55).

[35] Newell & Avery (1994, p. 2).

[36] Bushman (2005, p. 62–63); Walker (1986, p. 35); Remini (2002, p. 55) (Harris' money allowed Smith to pay his debts and thus allowed him to move without being arrested for evading his creditors); Smith (1853, p. 113); Howe (1834).

[37] Remini (2002, p. 56).

[38] Bushman (2005, p. 63); Remini (2002, p. 56); Roberts (1902, p. 19);Howe (1834, pp. 270–71) (Smith sat behind a curtain and passed transcriptions to his wife or her brother).

[39] Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 9) (describing early translation with the Urim and Thummim from December 1827 to February 1828); Remini (2002, p. 57) (noting that Emma Smith said that Smith started translating with the Urim and Thummim and then eventually used his dark seer stone exclusively); Bushman (2005, p. 66); Quinn (1998, pp. 169–70) (noting that, according to witnesses, Smith's early translation with the two-stone Urim and Thummim spectacles involved placing the spectacles in his hat, and that the spectacles were too large to actually wear). In one 1842 statement, Smith said that "[t]hrough the medium of the Urim and Thummim I translated the record by the gift, the power of God." (Smith 1842, p. 707). There is debate as to whether or not this statement is consistent with his known use of a seer stone other than the Urim and Thummim. (Quinn 1998, p. 175) argues that the term Urim and Thummim was a generic term early Mormons used to refer to all of Smith's seer stones. (Persuitte 2000, p. 81–83) interprets Smith to say that he translated the entire Book of Mormon with the two stones found with the plates, which would be in flat contradiction with his documented use of the chocolate-colored seer stone.

[40] Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 4) (stating that deposited with the plates were "two stones in silver bows" and stating that "these stones fastened into a breastplate constituted what is called the Urim & Thummim...."); Smith (1842, p. 707) (describing "a curious instrument which the ancients called 'Urim and Thummim,' which consisted of two transparent stones set in the rim of a bow fastened to a breastplate.").

[41] (Quinn 1998, p. 171–73) (witnesses said that Smith shifted from the Urim and Thummim to the single brown seer stone after the loss of the earliest 116 manuscript pages); Persuitte (2000, p. 81–82) (none of the existing Book of Mormon transcript was created using the Urim and Thummim); Remini (2002, p. 57) (noting that Emma Smith said that after 1828, Smith used his dark seer stone exclusively).

[42] Quinn (1998, p. 173) ("[T]he actual translation process was strikingly similar to the way Smith used the same stone for treasure-hunting.").

[43] Bushman (2005, pp. 71–72); Marquardt & Walters (1994, pp. 103–04); Van Wagoner & Walker (1982, p. 52–53) (citing numerous witnesses of the translation process); Quinn (1998, pp. 169–70, 173) (describing similar methods for both the two-stone Urim and Thummim and the chocolate seer stone).

[44] Van Wagoner & Walker (1982, p. 53) ("The plates could not have been used directly in the translation process."); Bushman (2005, pp. 71–72) (Joseph did not pretend to look at the 'reformed Egyptian' words, the language on the plates, according to the book's own description. The plates lay covered on the table, while Joseph's head was in the hat looking at the seerstone...."); Marquardt & Walters (1994, pp. 103–04) ("When it came to translating the crucial plates, they were no more present in the room than was John the Beloved's ancient 'parchment', the words of which Joseph also dictated at the time.").

[45] Cole (1831); Howe (1834, p. 14).

[46] Morgan (1986, p. 280).

[47] Bushman (2005, p. 63) (Harris had a vision that he was to assist with a "marvelous work"); Roberts (1902, p. 19) (Harris arrived in Harmony in February 1828); Booth (1831) (Harris had to convince Smith to continue translating, saying, "I have not come down here for nothing, and we will go on with it").

[48] Bushman (2005, p. 63–64) (the plan to use a scholar to authenticate the characters was part of a vision received by Harris; author notes that Smith's mother said the plan to authenticate the characters was arranged between Smith and Harris before Harris left Palmyra); Remini (2002, p. 57–58) (noting that the plan arose from a vision of Martin Harris). According to (Bushman 2005, p. 64), these scholars probably included at least Luther Bradish in Albany, New York (Lapham 1870), Samuel L. Mitchill of New York City ((Hadley 1829); Jessee 1976, p. 3), and Charles Anthon of New York City (Howe 1834, pp. 269–272).

[49] Bushman (2005, p. 64–65); Remini (2002, p. 58–59).

[50] Howe (1834, pp. 269–72) (Anthon's description of his meeting with Harris, claiming he tried to convince Harris that he was a victim of a fraud). But see Vogel (2004, p. 115) (arguing that Anthon's initial assessment was likely more positive than he would later admit).

[51] Roberts (1902, p. 20).

[52] These doubts were induced by his wife's deep skepticism. Bushman, p. 66).

[53] Smith (1853, p. 117–18); Roberts (1902, p. 20).

[54] During this dark period, Smith briefly attended his in-laws' Methodist church, but one of Emma's cousins "objected to the inclusion of a 'practicing necromancer' on the Methodist roll", and Smith voluntarily withdrew rather than face a disciplinary hearing. (Bushman 2005, pp. 69–70).

[55] (Phelps 1833, sec. 2:4–5) (revelation dictated by Smith stating that his gift to translate was temporarily revoked); Smith (1832, p. 5) (stating that the angel had taken away the plates and the Urim and Thummim).

[56] Smith (1853, p. 126).

[57] Hill (1977, p. 86) (Cowdery had brought with him a "rod of nature," perhaps acquired while he was among his father's religious group in Vermont, who believed that certain rods had spiritual properties and could be used in divining."); Bushman (2005, p. 73) ("Cowdery was open to belief in Joseph's powers because he had come to Harmony the possessor of a supernatural gift" and his family had apparently engaged in treasure seeking and other magical practices.)Quinn (1998, p. 35-36, 121).

[58] Bushman (2005, p. 74) (Smith and Cowdery began translating where the narrative left off after the lost 116 pages, now representing the Book of Mosiah. A revelation would later direct them not to re-translate the lost text, to ensure that the lost pages could not later be found and compared to the re-translation.).

[59] Bushman (2005, p. 70-74).

[60] Quinn (1994, p. 5–6, 38) (contrasting the 1829 view with the churchless Mormonism of 1828); Bushman (2005, p. 74–75).

[61] Quinn (1994, p. 15–20) (noting that Mormon records and publications contain no mention of any angelic conferral of authority until 1834); Bushman (2005, p. 75) (posing Mormon apologetic theories for the five-year delay in mentioning the vision of John the Baptist).

[62] Bushman (2005, p. 78).

[63] Bushman (2005, p. 77) (Smith "began to seek converts the question of credibility had to be addressed again. Joseph knew his story was unbelievable.").

[64] (Bushman 2005, pp. 77–79). There were two statements, one by a set of Three Witnesses and another by a set of Eight Witnesses. The two testimonies are undated, and the exact dates on which the Witnesses are said to have seen the plates is unknown.

[65] Vogel (2004, pp. 466–69); Bushman (2005, p. 79).

[66] Smith et al. (1839–1843, p. 8).

[67] Bushman (2005, p. 82).

[68] (Bushman 2005, p. 80) (noting that Harris' marriage dissolved in part because his wife refused to be a party, and he eventually sold his farm to pay the bill.

[69] Scholars and eye-witnesses disagree whether the church was organized in Manchester, New York at the Smith log home, or in Fayette at the the home of Peter Whitmer. Bushman (2005, p. 109); Marquardt (2005, pp. 223–23) (arguing that organization in Manchester is most consistent with eye-witness statements).

[70] Phelps (1833, p. 55) (noting that by July 1830, the church was "in Colesville, Fayette, and Manchester").

[71] Brodie (1971, pp. 80–82).

[72] Bushman (2005, p. 117)(noting that area residents connected the discovery of the Book of Mormon with Smith's past career as a money digger);Brodie (1971) (discussing organized boycott of Book of Mormon by Palmyra residents, p. 80, and opposition by Colesville and Bainbridge residents who remembered the 1826 trial, p. 87).

[73] Brodie (1971, p. 86) (describing the exorcism).

[74] (Bushman 2005, pp. 116–17).

[75] Quinn (1994, pp. 24–26); (Bushman 2005, p. 118).

[76] Bushman (2005, p. 120) ("Oliver Cowdery and the Whitmer family began to conceive of themselves as independent authorities with the right to correct Joseph and receive revelation.").

[77] Roberts (1902, pp. 109–110).

[78] Bushman (2005, p. 121); Phelps (1833, p. 67) ("[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses.").

[79] Phelps (1833, p. 68) ("[I]t is not revealed, and no man knoweth where the city shall be built.").

[80] Phelps (1833, p. 68) ("The New Jerusalem "shall be on the borders by the Lamanites."); Bushman (2005, p. 122) (church members knew that "on the borders by the Lamanites" referred to Western Missouri, and Cowdery's mission in part was to "locate the place of the New Jerusalem along this frontier").

[81] Phelps (1833, p. 67–68) (Cowdery "shall go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them".).

[82] Brodie (1971, p. 96) (noting that this was Smith's third attempt since the Book of Mormon at revealing "lost books", the first being the "parchment of John" produced in 1829, and the second the Book of Moses dictated in June 1830.

[83] Bushman (2005, p. 124); Roberts (1902, pp. 120–124).

[84] F. Mark McKiernan, "The Conversion of Sidney Rigdon to Mormonism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 5 (Summer 1970): 77. Parley Pratt said that the Mormon mission baptized 127 within two or three weeks "and this number soon increased to one thousand." McKiernan argues that "Rigdon's conversion and the missionary effort which followed transformed Mormonism from a New York-based sect with about a hundred members into one which was a major threat to Protestantism in the Western Reserve."

[85] Brodie (1971, p. 96) ("When Rigdon read the Book of Enoch, the scholar in him fled and the evangelist stepped into the place of second in command of the millennial church.").

[86] Bushman (2005, pp. 123–24); Brodie (1971, p. 96–97).

[87] Brodie (1971, p. 97) (citing letter by Smith to Kirtland converts, quoted in Howe (1833, p. 111)). In 1834, Smith designated Kirtland as one of the "stakes" of Zion, referring to the tent–stakes metaphor of Isaiah 54:2.

[88] Phelps (1833, pp. 79–80) ("And again, a commandment I give unto the church, that it is expedient in me that they should assemble together in the Ohio, until the time that my servant Oliver Cowdery shall return unto them."); Bushman (2005, pp. 124–25); Brodie (1971, p. 96) (noting that Rigdon had urged Smith to return with him to Ohio).

[89] Brodie (1971, p. 98–99, 116, 125) (Smith first lived with Newel K. Whitney in Kirtland, then moved in with John Johnson in 1831 in the nearby town of Hiram, Ohio, and by 1832 had secured a large estate in Kirtland).

[90] Brodie (1971, p. 98) (citing LDS D&C 50 (Phelps 1833, pp. 119–23) as Smith's "first important revelation in Kirtland").

[91] Brodie (1971, p. 99–100) (stating that Smith "appealed as much to reason as to emotion", and referred to Smith's style as "autocratic" and "authoritarian", but noted that he was effective in utilizing members' inherent desire to preach as long as they subjected themselves to his ultimate authority); Remini (2002, p. 95) ("Joseph quickly settled in and assumed control of the Kirtland Church.").

[92] Brodie (1971, p. 99) (gifts included hysterical fits and trances, frenzied rolling on the floor, loud and extended glossalalia, grimacing, and visions taken from parchments hanging in the night sky); (Bushman 2005, pp. 150–52).

[93] Brodie (1971, p. 100) (noting that the prophetess, named Hubbel, was a friend of Rigdon's)

[94] Brodie (1971, p. 104–108) (stating that the United Order of Enoch was Rigdon's conception (p. 108)); Bushman (2005, pp. 154–55); Hill (1977, p. 131) (Rigdon's communal group was called "the family"); see also Phelps (1833, p. 118) (revelation introducing the communal system, stating, "For behold the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air, and that which cometh of the earth is ordained for the use of man, for food, and for raiment, and that he might have in abundance, but it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another.").

[95] Brodie (1971, p. 103) (stating that Rigdon suggested that Smith revise the Bible in response to an 1827 revision by Rigdon's former mentor Alexander Campbell).

[96] Hill (1977, p. 131) (although Smith described his work beginning in April 1831 as a "translation," "he obviously meant a revision by inspiration").

[97] Bushman (2005, p. 142) (noting that though Smith declared the work finished in 1833, the church lacked funds to publish it during his lifetime).

[98] Prince (1995, p. 116).

[99] Phelps (1833, p. 83); Bushman (2005, p. 125, 156, 308).

[100] Brodie (1971, pp. 111–13) (describing this conference as "the first major failure of his life" because he made irresponsible prophesies and performed failed faith healings, requiring Rigdon to cut the conference short).

[101] Brodie (1971, p. 111); Bushman (2005, pp. 156–60); Quinn (1994, pp. 31–32); Roberts (1902, pp. 175–76) (On 3 June 1831, "the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the Elders." Annotation by Roberts gives an apologetic explanation.).

[102] Brodie (1971, p. 101).

[103] Arrington (1992, p. 21).

[104] Brodie (1971, pp. 101–02, 121).

[105] Brodie (1971, pp. 110) (describing the mission as a "flat failure").

[106] Brodie (1971, p. 108).

[107] Bushman (2005, p. 162); Brodie (1971, p. 109).

[108] Smith et al. (1835, p. 154).

[109] Brodie (1971, p. 115).

[110] Brodie (1971, p. 119–22).

[111] Bushman (2005, p. 180); Brodie (1971, p. 119).

[112] Bushman (2005, pp. 178–79); Remini (2002, p. 109–10).

[113] Brodie (1971, p. 119) (noting that Smith may have narrowly escaped being castrated over some perceived intimacy between Smith and the sixteen year old sister of one of the mob's instigators); Bushman (2005, pp. 178–79) (arguing that the evidence for Smith's intimacy with the girl is thin). Bruised and scarred, Smith preached the following day as if nothing happened (Brodie (1971, p. 120); 2002, p. 110–11)).

[114] These reasons included the settlers' understanding that the Saints' intended to appropriate their property and establish a Millennial political kingdom (Brodie (1971, pp. 130–31); Remini (2002, pp. 114)), the Saints' friendliness with the Indians (Brodie (1971, p. 130)); Remini (2002, pp. 114–15)), the Saints' perceived religious blasphemy (Remini 2002, p. 114), and especially the belief that the Saints were abolitionists (Brodie (1971, pp. 131–33); Remini (2002, pp. 113–14)).

[115] Vigilantes tarred and feathered two church leaders, destroyed some Mormon homes, destroyed the Mormon press, then the westernmost American newspaper, including most copies of the unpublished Book of Commandments. (Bushman (2005, pp. 181–83); Brodie (1971, p. 115).

[116] Brodie (1971, p. 135–36); Bushman (2005, p. 235).

[117] Quinn (1994, pp. 82–83) (Smith's August 1833 revelation said that after the fourth attack, "the Saints were "justified" by God in violence against any attack by any enemy "until they had avenged themselves on all their enemies, to the third and fourth generation.", citing Smith et al. (1835, p. 218)).

[118] Quinn (1994, pp. 83–84) (after the fourth attack on 2 November 1833, Saints began fighting back, leading to the Battle of Blue River on 4 November 1833).

[119] Bushman (2005, pp. 222–27); Brodie (1971, p. 137) (noting that the brutality of the Jackson Countians aroused sympathy for the Mormons and was almost universally deplored by the media).

[120] Roberts (1904, p. 37) (February 1834 revelation: "[T]he redemption of Zion must needs come by power; [t]herefore, I will raise up unto my people a man, who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel,...and ye must needs be led out of bondage by power, and with a stretched out arm."); Brodie (1971, p. 146) ("Quick-springing visions of an army of liberation marching triumphantly into the promised land betrayed his sounder judgment."); Hill (1989, p. 44–45) (suggesting that although members of the camp expected to do battle, Smith might have hoped they could merely intimidate the Missourians by a show of force).

[121] Smith et al. (1835, p. 237) (December 1833 revelation: Smith must "get ye straightway unto my land; break down the walls of mine enemies; throw down their tower, and scatter their watchmen. And inasmuch as they gather together against you, avenge me of mine enemies, that by and by I may come with the residue of mine house and possess the land."); Quinn (1994, pp. 84–85) (arguing that as of February 1834, the Saints were "free to take 'vengeance' at will against any perceived enemy").

[122] Brodie (1971, pp. 146–58); Remini (2002, p. 115).

[123] Brodie (1971, p. 141).

[124] Roberts (1904, p. 108) (quoting text of revelation); Hill (1989, p. 44–45) (noting that in addition to failure to unite under the celestial order, God was displeased the church had failed to make Zion's army sufficiently strong).

[125] Brodie (1971, pp. 156–57); Roberts (1904, p. 109) (text of revelation).

[126] Smith et al. (1835, p. 233) (Kirtland Temple "design[ed] to endow those whom [God] ha[s] chosen with power on high"); Prince (1995, p. 32 & n.104) (quoting revelation dated 12 June 1834 (Kirtland Revelation Book pp. 97–100) stating that the redemption of Zion "cannot be brought to pass until mine elders are endowed with power from on high; for, behold, I have prepared a greater endowment and blessing to be poured out upon them [than the 1831 endowment]").

[127] Construction began in June 1833 (Remini 2002, p. 115), not long before the first attack on the Missouri Saints.

[128] Brodie (1971, p. 159) (describing it as Smith's "second major failure").

[129] Bushman (2005, p. 322) (Smith was "stunned for months, scarcely knowing what to do.").

[130] Brodie (1971, p. 160); Quinn (1994, p. 87) (noting that in October 1834, Smith only gathered two votes in his failed election as Kirtland's coroner).

[131] Quinn (1994, p. 85).

[132] Brodie (1971, p. 141) ("In the Missouri debacle Joseph now saw a chance to erase the whole economic experiment—which in Kirtland had never yielded anything but trouble.").

[133] Brodie (1971, pp. 147–48).

[134] Brodie (1971, p. 161) (The five equal councils were "the presidency, the apostles, the seventies, and the two high councils of Kirtland and Missouri").

[135] Brodie (1971, pp. 159–60) (comparing only 13 or so revelations after July 1834, several of them trivial, to the over 100 in the five years previous); Bushman (2005, p. 322, 419).

[136] Quinn (1994, p. 5-6, 9, 15–17, 26, 30, 33, 35, 38–42, 49, 70–71, 88, 198); Brodie (1971, p. 141) (Smith "began to efface the communistic rubric of his young theology").

[137] Brodie (1971, p. 170–75).

[138] Remini (2002, p. 116) ("The ultimate cost came to approximately $50,000, an enormous sum for a people struggling to stay alive.").

[139] (Bushman 2005, pp. 310–19); (Brodie 1971, p. 178) ("Five years before...[Joseph] had found a spontaneous orgiastic revival in full progress and had ruthlessly stamped it out. Now he was intoxicating his followers with the same frenzy he had once so vigorously denounced.")

[140] Brodie (1971, pp. 165–66).

[141] (Bushman 2005, p. 322).

[142] Brooke (1994, p. 221) ("Ultimately, the rituals and visions dedicating the Kirtland temple were not sufficient to hold the church together in the face of a mounting series of internal disputes," citing the failure of Zion's camp, the Alger "affair," and new theological innovations).

[143] Hill (1977, pp. 340–41) (noting that Smith confided to Brigham Young in Kirtland that "if I were to reveal to this people what the Lord has revealed to me, there is not a man or a woman that would stay with me.").

[144] Bushman (2005, p. 323–25); Hill (1977, p. 188) (noting that Benjamin F. Johnson "realized later that Joseph's polygamy was one cause of disruption and apostasy in Kirtland, although it was rarely discussed in public.").

[145] Compton (1997, p. 27); Bushman (2005, p. 326); Hill (1977, p. 340).

[146] Bushman (2005, p. 323) (noting that Alger was fourteen in 1830 when she met Smith, and her involvement with Smith was between that date and 1836, and suggesting that the relationship began as early as 1831).

[147] Compton (1997, p. 26); Bushman (2005, p. 326) (noting Compton's date and conclusion); but see Smith (2008, pp. 38–39 n.81) (questioning whether Smith and Alger were actually married).

[148] Brodie (1971, p. 181–82); Bushman (2005, p. 323–25).

[149] Bushman (2005, p. 325).

[150] (Bushman 2005, pp. 217, 329) (By 1837, Smith had run up a debt of over $100,000.).

[151] Quinn (1998, pp. 261–64); Brodie (1971, p. 192); Bushman (2005, p. 328).

[152] Roberts (1904, p. 465-66) (text of the revelation).

[153] Bushman (2005, p. 328); Brodie (1971, p. 193).

[154] Bushman (2005, p. 328).

[155] Bushman (2005, p. 328) (Smith "had bought more stock than eighty-five percent of the investors".).

[156] Brodie (1971, p. 195–96); Bushman (2005, p. 334).

[157] Bushman (2005, p. 330) (noting that business started on 2 January 1837, business was floundering within three weeks, and payment stopped on 23 January 1837).

[158] Bushman (2005, pp. 331–32).

[159] Bushman (2005, pp. 332, 336–38). Richard Bushman notes that Heber C. Kimball claimed that in June 1837, not more than 20 men in Kirtland believed Smith was a prophet, but argues that this was an exaggeration, and that there were still "hundreds and probably thousands of loyal followers" during this time (Bushman 2005, p. 332).

[160] The fallout included a couple of unseemly rows in the temple, including one occasion on which guns and knives were drawn (Bushman 2005, p. 339). When a leading apostle, David W. Patten, raised insulting questions, Smith slapped him in the face and kicked him into the yard (Bushman 2005, pp. 332, 337, 339). Even stalwarts Parley P. Pratt and Orson Pratt left the church for a few months (Bushman 2005, p. 332).

[161] Brodie (1971, p. 207); Bushman (2005, pp. 339–40); Hill (1977, p. 216) (noting that Smith characterized the warrant as "mob violence...under the color of legal process").

[162] Brodie (1971, p. 157) (After Zion's Camp disbanded, Smith had predicted that Zion would be redeemed on 11 September 1836); Hill (1977, pp. 181–82) (noting an account that Smith predicted in 1834 that Jackson County would be redeemed "within three years"); Bushman (2005, p. 384) (noting that by 1839, Smith "was giving up the campaign to recover Jackson County").

[163] Roberts (1905, p. 24) (referring to the Far West church as the "church in Zion"); (Bushman 2005, p. 345) (The revelation calling Far West "Zion" had the effect of "implying that Far West was to take the place of Independence.")

[164] Roberts (1905, p. 24); Quinn (1994, p. 628) (noting that some Kirtland dissenters had claimed that Smith had become the anti-Christ in 1834 when he changed the church's name from "Church of Christ" to "Church of Latter Day Saints," deleting the name of Jesus).

[165] Brodie (1971, pp. 210, 222–23).

[166] Remini (2002, p. 125); Brodie (1971, p. 210) ("Joseph's going had left a void that they had found intolerable. With each passing week they remembered less of their prophet's financial ineptitude and more of his genial warmth and his magnetic presence in the pulpit.")

[167] Marquardt (2005, p. 463) (listing Oliver Cowdery (Assistant President of the Church), Frederick G. Williams (First Presidency), David and John Whitmer (Book of Mormon witnesses and presidency of Missouri), William Phelps (presidency of Missouri), [[Martin Harris (Latter Day Saints)|]], Hiram Page, and Jacob Whitmer (Book of Mormon witnesses), and Lyman E. Johnson, John F. Boynton, Luke S. Johnson, and William E. McLellin (Quorum of the Twelve)); Remini (2002, p. 128); Quinn (1994, p. 93).

[168] Quinn (1994, p. 92); (Brodie 1971, p. 213) ("From the bottom of his heart Joseph hated violence, but his people were demanding something more than meekness and compromise. It was common gossip among the old settlers that the Mormons would never fight; and Joseph came to realize that in a country where a man's gun spoke faster than his wits, to be known as a pacifist was to invite plundering."); (Bushman 2005, p. 355).

[169] Quinn (1994, p. 93) (arguing that Smith and Rigdon were aware of the Danite organization and sanctioned their activities); Brodie (1971, pp. 215–16) (arguing that Sampson Avard had Smith's sanction); Hill (1977, p. 225) (concluding that Smith had at least peripheral involvement and gave early approval to Danite activities); (Bushman 2005, p. 346-51) (Danites were under oath to be "completely submissive" to the First Presidency.)

[170] There are two explanations for the name: (1) that it was a reference to the vision of Daniel of a stone cut out of a mountain in Dan. 2:44–45 (Quinn (1994, p. 93); Brodie (1097, p. 215) (quoting Smith)), and (2) that it was a reference to the biblical Danites of Judges 18 (Brodie 1971, p. 216) (quoting Smith).

[171] Quinn (1994, p. 93); Brodie (1971, p. 213) ("They would not only defend the Saints against aggression from the old settlers, but also act as a bodyguard for the presidency and as a secret police for ferreting out dissenters."); Remini (2002, p. 129).

[172] Brodie (1971, p. 217).

[173] Brodie (1971, pp. 217–18); Quinn (1994, p. 94).

[174] Brodie (1971, pp. 218–19) (Danites issued a written death threat, and when that didn't work they surrounded the dissenters' homes and "ordered their wives to pack their blankets and leave the county immediately"); Quinn (1994, pp. 94–95).

[175] Bushman (2005, p. 352) ("Joseph certainly favored evicting dissenters...").

[176] Brodie (1971, pp. 222–23); Remini (2002, pp. 131–33).

[177] Remini (2002, pp. 133).

[178] Brodie (1971, pp. 223); Quinn (1994, p. 96) (noting that Smith also advertised the speech in the church periodical).

[179] Remini (2002, p. 133).

[180] (Bushman 2005, p. 357) (noting that in Daviess County, Missouri, non-Mormons "watched local government fall into the hands of people they saw as deluded fanatics.").

[181] Bushman (2005, p. 345); Brodie (1971, pp. 225–26).

[182] Remini (2002, p. 134); Quinn (1994, p. 96).

[183] Brodie (1971, p. 227)

[184] Quinn (1994, pp. 98–99, 101).

[185] Quinn (1994, pp. 97–98) (Mormon forces, primarily the Danites, pillaged Millport and Gallatin, and when apostles Thomas B. Marsh and Orson Hyde prepared an affidavit against these Mormon attacks, they were excommunicated); Brodie (1971, p. 232) (Wagons returned from Millport and Gallatin "piled high with 'consecrated property'".); Bushman (2005, p. 371) (Smith "believed his people could rightfully confiscate property in compensation for their own losses to the Missourians but no more".).

[186] Brodie (1971, p. 230) (speech dated October 14, 1838 at the Far West town square); Bushman (2005, p. 352).

[187] (Bushman 2005, pp. 370–72).

[188] Bushman (2005, p. 364) ("Resisting a band of vigilantes was justifiable, but attacking a militia company was resistance to the state."); Quinn (1994, p. 100) (stating that the Extermination Order and the Haun's Mill massacre resulted from Mormon actions at the Battle of Crooked River); Brodie (1971, p. 234) (noting that Boggs was also told about Smith's "second Mohammed" speech and Mormon admissions that they had plundered Millport and Gallatin).

[189] (Bushman 2005, p. 367) (Boggs' executive order stated that the Mormon community had "made war upon the people of this State" and that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace"). In 1976, Missouri issued a formal apology for this order (Bushman 2005, p. 398).

[190] Bushman (2005, pp. 365–66); Quinn (1994, p. 97).

[191] Bushman (2005, p. 366–67); Brodie (1971, p. 239).

[192] Bushman (2005, p. 367) (noting that Smith was saved by Alexander Doniphan, a Missouri militia leader who had acted as the Saints legal council (pp. 242, 344)); Brodie & 1971 (241).

[193] Bushman (2005, p. 369); Brodie (1971, pp. 243–45).

[194] (Bushman 2005, p. 369); (Brodie 1971, pp. 225–26).

[195] Bushman (2005, p. 369).

[196] Bushman (2005, pp. 369–70).

[197] Brodie (1971, p. 251). Smith bore his harsh imprisonment "stoically, almost cheerfully, for there was a serenity in his nature that enabled him to accept trouble along with glory," (Brodie (1971, p. 245); Bushman (2005, pp. 375–77)) whereas Rigdon was both sick and a whiner (Brodie 1971, p. 251).

[198] Brodie (1971, p. 245–46).

[199] Remini (2002, p. 138).

[200] Brodie (1971, p. 248–50).

[201] Remini (2002, pp. 136–37); (Brodie 1971, pp. 245).

[202] (Brodie 1971, pp. 246) (noting, in addition, that Smith oddly denied the ubiquitous rumor of polygamy, which had not come up in his trial). The Danites dissolved in 1838, but their members formed the backbone of Smith's security forces in Nauvoo. (Quinn, pp. 101–02).

[203] Brodie (1971, p. 246).

[204] Brodie (1971, p. 252–53).

[205] (Brodie 1971, pp. 245–46).

[206] Bushman (2005, p. 377–78).

[207] (Bushman 2005, p. 375); (Brodie 1971, pp. 250–51).

[208] Brodie (2005, pp. 253–55) (The bribe was a jug of honey whiskey brought by Smith's brother Hyrum, which the sheriff used to get drunk while the prisoners escaped, and the promise of $800, which the Sheriff collected later.); (Bushman 2005, p. 382, 635–36).

[209] Brodie (1971, p. 246–47, 259) (noting rebukes by Missouri and Illinois newspapers, and "press all over the country"); Bushman (2005, p. 398) (Mormons were depicted as a persecuted minority).

[210] Brodie (1971, p. 248) ("There was chronic border friction between Missouri and Illinois, and the 'Suckers' welcomed the chance to demonstrate a nobility of character foreign to the despised 'Pukes'".).

[211] Bushman (2005, p. 381) (Saints gathered near Quincy, Illinois.

[212] Bushman (2005, pp. 383–84) (noting that the land had strategic importance as a possible major port).

[213] Bushman (2005, pp. 384).

[214] Bushman (2005, p. 398–99); Brodie (1971, p. 259) (Smith "saw to it that the sufferings of his people received national publicity.").

[215] Smith traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Martin Van Buren and Congress (Bushman (2005, pp. 392–94); Brodie (1971, p. 260)).

[216] Bushman (2005, p. 385); Brodie (1971, p. 257). In 1841, malaria claimed the lives of one of Smith's brothers and his son, who died within eight days of each other (Bushman 2005, p. 425).

[217] Brodie (1971, p. 258) (arguing that Smith was eager to reclaim some of the prestige that had been ceded to Brigham Young while Smith was imprisoned); (Bushman 2005, p. 386) (Though many of the apostles had malaria, Smith required them to covertly slip into hostile Missouri so that Far West, now deserted, would be their point of departure on exactly 26 April 1838.); Roberts (1905, pp. 46–47) (Revelation given in Far West in 1838: "Let them take leave of my saints in the city of Far West, on the twenty-sixth day of April next, on the building-spot of my house, saith the Lord.").

[218] Bushman (2005, p. 409); Brodie (1971, pp. 258, 264–65).

[219] Bushman (2005, p. 410–11).

[220] Bushman (2005, p. 412); Brodie (1971, p. 267–68).

[221] Bushman (2005, p. 415). A similar Hebrew word appears in Isaiah 52: 7.

[222] Quinn (1994, p. 110).

[223] Brodie (1971, p. 273); Bushman (2005, p. 426). Prior to the charter, Smith had narrowly avoided two extradition attempts (Brodie (1971, pp. 272–73); Bushman (2005, pp. 425–26)).

[224] Brodie (1971, p. 267); Bushman (2005, p. 412).

[225] Quinn (1995, p. 106).

[226] Brodie (1971, p. 271) (Smith "frequently jested about his outranking every military officer in the United States".); Bushman (2005, p. 259) (noting that Bennett had effective command of the Legion).

[227] Quinn (1995, p. 106) (The Legion had 2,000 troops in 1842, 3,000 by 1844, compared to less than 8,500 soldiers in the entire United States Army.)

[228] Ostling & Ostling (1999, pp. 11–12); Bushman (2005, p. 410) (Smith "had trouble distinguishing true friends from self-serving schemers", and incorrectly predicted that Bennett was "calculated to be a great blessing to our community.").

[229] Brodie (1971, p. 268); Quinn (1995, p. 1067).

[230] Bushman (2005, p. 411)

[231] Quinn (1995, pp. 106–08).

[232] Bushman (2005, p. 421); Brodie (1971, p. 282).

[233] Bushman (2005, pp. 448–49).

[234] D&C 124:28.

[235] Quinn (1994, p. 113).

[236] Bushman (2005, pp. 449); Quinn (1994, pp. 114–15).

[237] Quinn (1994, p. 634).

[238] Bushman (2005, p. 384) (Smith viewed Nauvoo as a compromise to his plan to build Zion).

[239] Bushman (2005, p. 404).

[240] Bushman (2005, p. 384).

[241] The tent–stake metaphor was derived from Isaiah 54:2.

[242] Bushman (2005, p. 415) (noting that the time when the Millennium was to occur lengthened to "more than 40 years".)

[243] Quinn (1994, pp. 111–12).

[244] Compton (1997, p. 11) (counting at least 33 total wives); Smith (1994, p. 14) (counting 42 wives); Brodie (1971, pp. 334–36) (counting 49 wives); Bushman (2005, pp. 437, 644) (accepting Compton's count, excepting one wife); Quinn (1994, pp. 587–88) (counting 46 wives); Remini (2002, p. 153) (noting that the exact figure is still debated).

[245] Foster (1981); Quinn (1994); Compton (1997); Bushman (2005, p. 437); Launius (1988); Van Wagoner (1992); Newell & Avery (1994).

[246] Compton (1997, p. 11); Remini (2002, p. 154); Brodie (1971, pp. 334–43).

[247] Bushman (2005, p. 491).

[248] Bushman (2005, p. 439); Hill (1977, p. 355).

[249] Bushman (2005, p. 439).

[250] Bushman (2005, p. 438) (Smith approached Joseph Bates Noble about marrying his wife's sister, Smith asked Bates to "keep quiet": "In revealing this to you I have placed my life in your hands, therefore do not in an evil hour betray me to my enemies." Noble performed the ceremony "in a grove near Main Street with Louisa in man's clothing.")

[251] Brodie (1971, p. 310); Bushman (2005, p. 460) (Bennett told women he was seducing that illicit sex was acceptable among the Saints so long as it was kept secret). Bennett, a minimally trained doctor, also promised abortions to any who might became pregnant.

[252] Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 12); Bushman (2005, pp. 461–62); Brodie (1971, p. 314).

[253] Bushman (2005, p. 436).

[254] Bushman (2005, p. 427–28).

[255] Bushman (2005, p. 468). Boggs survived the attack.

[256] Brodie (1971, p. 323) (noting rumors that Smith had predicted in 1840 that Boggs would meat a violent death within a year, and that Smith offered a $500 reward for his death); Quinn (1994, p. 113) (noting that Smith held Boggs responsible for the Haun's Mill massacre).

[257] Quinn (1994, p. 113); Bushman (2005, p. 468) (stating the evidence was circumstantial).

[258] Bushman (2005, pp. 468–75).

[259] Bushman (2005, p. 468).

[260] Bushman (2005, pp. 504–08).

[261] Bushman (2005, p. 508).

[262] Brodie (1971, p. 339); Bushman (2005, p. 494); Remini (2002, pp. 152–53).

[263] Quinn (1994, p. 638) (first Mormon sealing); Bushman (2005, p. 494).

[264] Brodie (1971, p. 339).

[265] Brodie (1971, p. 340).

[266] Bushman (2005, pp. 495–96).

[267] Brodie (1971, p. 340–341); Roberts (1909, pp. 505–06) ("A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith,...[that she] receive all those [wives] that have been given unto my servant Joseph.... But if [Emma] will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.")

[268] Bushman (2005, p. 496).

[269] Quinn (1994, p. 36) (arguing that Smith extended the priesthood to women through the Endowment, rather than through ordination).

[270] Quinn (1994, p. 640).

[271] Quinn (1994, p. 115).

[272] Quinn (1994, p. 115–18).

[273] Quinn (1994, pp. 115–16) ("Such decisions were made by the formality of 'a vote' after the 'true order of prayer' and the announcement of God's revelation on the subject.").

[274] Bushman (2005, p. 511); Brodie (1971, p. 356); Quinn (1994, pp. 115–116) (noting that the Anointed Quorum also authorized "a proclamation to the kings of the earth", but Smith never sent it). Smith also threatened Congress. The Millennial Star later quoted Smith as having said that "if Congress will not hear our petition and grant us protection, they shall be broken up as a government and God shall damn them, and there shall be nothing left of them—not even a grease spot." Quoted in Brodie, 356.

[275] Quinn (1994, p. 119)

[276] Quinn (1994, pp. 118–19) (the Anointed Quorum chose Sidney Rigdon as Smith's running mate);Bushman (2005, pp. 514–15); Brodie (1971, pp. 362–64).

[277] Quinn (1994, p. 121) (The day before the Council was organized, word reached Smith that a U.S. Indian agent was interfering with acquisition of lumber needed for the Nauvoo Temple).

[278] Quinn (1994, p. 120–22) (noting that the Council was authorized by a revelation, and members committed to keep what Smith said during the organizational meeting secret); Bushman (2005, p. 519).

[279] Quinn (1994, p. 121).

[Bushman_2005_517-280] Bushman (2005, p. 517).

[281] Bushman (2005, p. 521) (noting that in April, Smith prophesied "the entire overthrow of this nation in a few years," at which time his Kingdom of God would be prepared to take power); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 13) (As if they had just organized an independent state, Smith and the Council sent ambassadors to England, France, Russia, and the Republic of Texas); Remini (2002, p. 166).

[282] Bushman (2005, pp. 521–22) (noting use of the term theodemocracy); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 15) (council included only three non-Mormons, two of which were known counterfeiters).

[283] Bushman (2005, p. 523)|Quinn (1994, p. 124). For a few months, the Council took over from the Anointed Quorum as the leading council of church government.Bushman (2005, p. 525).

[284] Bushman (2005, pp. 527–28).

[285] Brodie (1971, p. 368) (noting that Law and Foster were also the chief city contractors); Bushman (2005, p. 528) (noting that Law had been was a member of the Anointed Quorum); Quinn (1994, p. 528) (Law was criticized in 1843 and then dropped from the Anointed Quorum in January 1844, but after being defended by Hiram Smith, rejected an April 1844 offer by Joseph Smith to be restored to church positions if he stopped opposing polygamy).

[286] Brodie (1971, pp. 368–69) (Law believed that Smith was misappropriating donations for the Nauvoo House hotel and neglecting other building projects despite the acute housing shortage, while Smith had no respect for building projects by Law and Foster.); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 14).

[287] Brodie (1971) ("With sorrow and suspicion Law watched Joseph ever enlarging his circle of wives. Then the prophet tried to approach Law's own wife, Jane." (p. 369); Robert D. Foster came home and caught Smith having dinner alone with his wife, and after a confrontation where weapons were drawn, Mrs. Foster fainted and then said Smith had proposed to her (p. 371)); Van Wagoner (1992, p. 39); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 14); Bushman (2005, pp. 660–61) (noting that Smith claimed that Jane Law had proposed to him (660–61), citing Journal of Alexander Neibaur, 24 May 1844 (Smith claimed that Jane Law lured him into her house alone, embraced him, and proposed to him, but that Smith resisted her advances); also noting that Smith confronted Mrs. Foster with two witnesses and got her to say that during their dinner, Smith had made no sexual advances and had not "preached the spiritual wife doctrine" (530–31).)).

[288] Brodie (1971, p. 371); Bushman (2005, p. 530); Williams, A.B. (15 May 1844), "Affidavit", Times and Seasons, vol. 5, no. 10, p. 541 (Affidavit stating, "Joseph H. Jackson said that Doctor Foster, Chauncy Higbee and the Laws were red-hot for a conspiracy, and he should not be surprised if in two weeks there should be not one of the Smith family left in Nauvoo").

[Bushman_2005_531-289] Bushman (2005, p. 531).

[Brodie_1971_373-290] Brodie (1971, p. 373).

[291] Brodie (1971, p. 373); Bushman (2005, p. 538) (arguing that Smith may have felt justified denying polygamy and "spiritual wifeism" because he thought it was based on a different principle than "plural marriage"); Roberts (1912, pp. 408–412) (Smith stated, "I had not been married scarcely five minutes, and made one proclamation of the Gospel, before it was reported that I had seven wives....I have rattled chains before in a dungeon for truth's sake. I am innocent of all these charges, and you can bear witness of my innocence, for you know me yourselves....What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers." "This new holy prophet [Law] has gone to Carthage and swore that I had told him that I was guilty of adultery. This spiritual wifeism! Why, a man dares not speak or wink, for fear of being accused of this").

[292] Quinn (1994, p. 137–38) (noting that the prospectus was published May 10, 1844, and that an informant within the Council of Fifty had told Law about Smith's ordination as king).

[293] Quinn (1994, p. 138) (noting that the offer was presented by Sidney Rigdon, who did not have authority to concede polygamy).

[294] Bushman (2005, p. 539); Brodie (1971, pp. 374) (arguing that given its authors' intentions to reform the church, the paper was "extraordinarily restrained" given the explosive allegations it could have raised).

[295] Bushman (2005, p. 539); Brodie (1971, pp. 374–75).

[296] Brodie (1971, pp. 375) (stating that the Expositor contained "an unmistakable allusion to Joseph's kingship"); Quinn (1994, pp. 139); Marquardt (2005);Marquardt (1999, p. 312).

[297] Quinn (1994, pp. 139) (noting that the publishers intended to emphasize the details of Smith's delectable plan of government" in later issues).

[298] Brodie (1971, p. 377) (Smith declared that the 1843 revelation on polygamy referred to in the Expositor "was in answer to a question concerning things which transpired in former days, and had no reference to the present time").

[299] Bushman (2005, p. 340–41).

[300] Bushman (2005, p. 540); Brodie (1971, p. 377); Marquardt (2005); Marquardt (1999, p. 312).

[301] Bushman (2005, p. 541) (Smith "failed to see that suppression of the paper was far more likely to arouse a mob than the libels. It was a fatal mistake.").

[302] Warsaw Signal, June 14, 1844. ("Citizens arise, one and all!!! Can you stand by, and suffer such Infernal Devils! to rob men of their property and rights without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. Let it be made with Powder and Ball!!!."

[303] Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 16).

[304] Quinn (1994, pp. 140, 145–46).

[305] Ostlings, 17; Bushman, 546. Eight Mormon leaders accompanied Smith to Carthage: Hyrum Smith, John Taylor, Willard Richards, John P. Greene, Stephen Markham, Dan Jones, John S. Fullmer, Dr. Southwick, and Lorenzo D. Wasson. [1] All of Smith's associates left the jail, except his brother Hyrum, Richards and Taylor.

[306] Joseph and Hyrum were accompanied in jail by John Taylor (Mormon) and Dr. Willard Richards, who were not prisoners.

[307] Quinn (1994, p. 141) (Major General Jonathan Dunham "realized that such an assault by the Nauvoo Legion would result in two blood baths").

[308] Bushman (2005, p. 550) ("Hyrum was the first to fall. A ball through the door struck him on the left side of the nose, throwing him to the floor.")

[309] Brodie (1971, p. 393) ("Joseph discharging all six barrels down the passageway. Three of them missed fire, but the other three found marks."); Bushman & 2005 (2005, p. 549) (Smith received a smuggled six-shooter, and passed along a single-shot pistol to Hyrum).

[310] Brodie (1971, pp. 393–94); Bushman (2005).

[311] Arrington and Bitton, 82; Remini, 174-75.

[312] Bushman (2005, p. 552).

[313] Bushman (2005, p. 419–20) (arguing that Smith may have been unaware of the other religious materialism arguments circulating in his day, such as those of Joseph Priestly).

[314] Bushman (2005, p. 419); Brooke (1994, pp. 3–5); Smith (1830, p. 544) (story from the Book of Ether of Jesus revealing "the body of my spirit" to an especially faithful man, saying humanity was created in the image of his spirit body).

[315] Bushman (2005, p. 420).

[316] Bushman (2005, p. 421) (noting that Smith once taught the Earth was formed from broken-up pieces of prior planets).

[317] Bushman (2005, pp. 420–21); Widmer (2000, p. 119).

[318] Bushman (2005, pp. 420–21).

[319] Bushman (2005, p. 421).

[320] Bushman (2005, pp. 455–56) (arguing that in Smith's theology, God's authority arose not from being an ex nihilo creator, but from having the greatest intelligence).

[321] Bushman (2005, p. 421) (quoting Smith as saying, "God is Good & all his acts is for the benefit of infereir inteligences [sic]."); Bloom (1992, p. 101) ("Smith's God is hedged in by limitations and badly needs intelligences besides his own.").

[322] Bushman (2005, p. 420) (arguing that Smith's original view of a pure spirit God was traditionally Christian); Vogel, Dan, The Earliest Mormon Conception of God in Bergera (1989, pp. 17–33) (arguing that Smith's original view was modalism, Jesus being the embodied manifestation the spirit Father, and that by 1834 Smith shifted to a binitarian formulation favored by Sidney Rigdon, which also viewed the Father as a spirit); Alexander, Thomas, The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology in Bergera (1989, p. 53) (prior to 1835, Smith viewed God the Father as "an absolute personage of spirit").

[323] Widmer (2000, p. 119); Alexander, Thomas, The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology in Bergera (1989, p. 539) (describing Smith's doctrine as "material anthropomorphism"); Bloom (1992, p. 101) ("Smith's God, after all, began as a man, and struggled heroically in and with time and space, rather after the pattern of colonial and revolutionary Americans.").

[324] Bushman (2005, p. 421) ("Piece by piece, Joseph redefined the nature of God, giving Him a form and a body and locating Him in time and space."); Bloom (1992, p. 101) ("Joseph Smith's God...is finite.... Exalted now into the heavens, God necessarily is still subject to the contingencies of time and space.").

[325] Bushman (2005, p. 455); Widmer (2000, pp. 70–90).

[326] Roberts (1909, p. 325).

[327] Larson (1978, p. 7 (online ver.)).

[328] Widmer (2000, p. 119).

[329] Widmer (2000, p. 119); Bushman (2005, p. 535).

[330] Bushman (2005, pp. 455–56, 535–37).

[331] Bushman (2005, p. 422).

[332] Larson (1978, p. 15 (online ver.)).

[333] Bushman (2005, p. 199).

[334] Bushman (2005, p. 443).

[335] Brooke (1994, p. 33).

[336] Remini (2000, p. 84).

[Quinn_1994_7-337] Quinn (1994, p. 7).

[338] Quinn (1994, pp. 7–8).

[339] Bushman (2005, pp. 121, 175); Phelps (1833, p. 67) ("[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses.").

[340] Quinn (1994, pp. 27–34); Bushman (2005, pp. 264–65).

[341] Prince (1995, pp. 19, 115–116, 119) (noting influence of Sidney Rigdon in developing this idea); Gospel of Luke 24:49 (Authorized King James Version) ("And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endowed with power from on high.").

[342] Brodie (1971, p. 111); Bushman (2005, pp. 156–60); Quinn (1994, pp. 31–32); Roberts (1902, pp. 175–76) (On 3 June 1831, "the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the Elders.").

[343] Prince (1995, pp. 31–32, 121–31) (outlining evolution of the endowment idea in 1833 and 1836).

[344] Ostling & Ostling (1999, pp. 194–95); Prince (1995, p. 146).

[345] Prince (1995, p. 140).

[346] Prince (1995, p. 201).

[347] Brooke (1994, pp. 30, 194–95, 203, 208) (Smith introduced the sealing power in 1831 as part of the High Priesthood, and then attributed this power to Elijah after he appeared in an 1836 vision in the Kirtland Temple).

[348] Brooke (1994, pp. 221, 242–43).

[349] Brooke (1994, pp. 236).

[350] Brodie, 106, 112, 121–22. In 1834, "Joseph began to efface the communistic rubric in his young theology. Since most copies of the Book of Commandments had been burned, it was easy for him to revise drastically the revelation of the United Order when it was republished in the enlarged Doctrine and Covenants in 1835. The Lord no longer demanded consecration of a man's total property, but only a donation of his 'surplus' over and above living expenses." (141)

[351] Roberts (1909, pp. 502–07) (1842 revelation describing the New and Everlasting Covenant).

[352] Foster (1981, pp. 161–62).

[353] Foster (1981, pp. 161–62) (quoting a source stating that in Smith's view, sex within earthly marriages was not sinful if the marriage was cemented by bonds of love and affection, but sex could be sinful even within marriage if the partners were alienated from each other).

[Foster_1981_145-354] Foster (1981, p. 145).

[355] Bushman (2005, pp. 497–98) (those who were married eternally were then "sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise" through the second anointing); Brooke (1994, pp. 256–57).

[356] Roberts (1909, pp. 502–03); Bushman (2005, pp. 497–98) (the second anointing provided a guarantee that participants would be exalted even if they sinned); Brooke (1994, p. 257).

[357] Roberts (1909, pp. 501) ("I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this Priesthood are conferred.")

[358] Bloom (1992, p. 108) (polygamy and consequent progression towards godhood were "the true essence of becoming a Latter-day Saint, the heart of Mormon religion making.").

[359] Bloom (1992, p. 105).

[360] Brodie (1971, pp. 185–86, 246, 307, 321, 344, 374, 377); Bushman (2005, p. 491) (Smith denied he was advocating polygamy).

[361] Roberts (1909, p. 501, 507) ("A those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same;...and if ye abide not that covenant, then ye are damned." If a polygamist husband "teaches unto [his wife] the law of my Priesthood as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God, for I will destroy her."); Bushman (2005, p. 438) (noting the 1843 revelation about being "damned," and Smith's statements that unless he started to marry plural wives, an angel would slay him); Brodie (1971, p. 342) (The 1843 revelation "threatened destruction to any wife who refused to accept the new law".)

[362] Hullinger (1992, p. 154).

[363] Hullinger (1992, p. 154-54) (describing how the Book of Mormon solved various 19th century Biblical controversies).

[364] Bushman (2005, p. 94); Roberts (1902, p. 315) ("The Book of Mormon is a record of the forefathers of our western tribes of Indians.").

[365] Smith (1830, p. 51) (Jesus "cometh according to the words of the angel, in six hundred years from the time my father left Jerusalem."); Phelps (1833, p. 41) ("Lamanites are a remnant" of the Jews).

[366] Brodie (1971, p. 43); Smith (1830, p. 73) (God "caused the cursing to come upon them... because of their iniquity.... [W]herefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, therefore the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.").

[367] Brooke (1994, p. 213-14) (arguing that the shift occurred after 1832 and may have related to Oliver Cowdery's failed mission to the Missouri "Lamanites"); Shipps (1985, pp. 82–83) (arguing that the identification of the Saints as literal Israelites was in place prior to 1838).

[368] Brodie (1971, pp. 356–57); Bushman (2005, p. 521); Bloom (1992, p. 90) (Smith identified himself as the stone).

[369] Bushman (2005, pp. 522–23).

[370] Bushman (2005, pp. 289, 327–28) (the essay "exhibited the conventional prejudiced of his day in asserting that blacks were cursed with servitude by a 'decree of Jehovah.'"); Hill (1977, p. 381) (noting that Smith did not want to be identified as an abolitionist, even when he disfavored slavery).

[371] Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, p. 380, 383) (citing 1833 revelation stating that "it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another").

[372] Hill (1977, p. 384).

[373] Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, p. 384-85).

[374] Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, p. 379).

[375] Hill (1977, p. 379).

[376] Bushman (2005, p. 289); Hill (1977, pp. 381–82, 85).

[377] Bushman (2005, p. 377).

[378] Bushman (2005, p. 512).

[379] Bushman (2005, p. 522).

[380] Roberts (1902, p. 435).

[381] Roberts (1909, p. 296).

[382] Smith (1835, sec. LXXX, 207-08)

[383] For instance, Smith drank wine "with relish" and noted his drinking in his journal "without apology." Brodie (1971, p. 289). Smith "himself liked a nip every now and then, especially at weddings." His own Mansion House, which operated a hotel, maintained a fully stocked barroom, and Nauvoo also had a brewery that advertised in the church newpaper." According to Smith's fellow prisoner John Taylor, "the prophet requested and drank wine at Carthage Jail the night before his was murdered in 1844." Ostling (1999, pp. 177–78).

[384] Smith (1830, p. 332) Engaging a prostitute was "most abominable above all sins, save it be the shedding of innocent blood, or denying the Holy Ghost".

[385] Phelps (1833, p. 135).

[386] Quinn (1994, pp. 88–89, 112).

[387] Smith (1830, pp. 12–13).

[388] Quinn (1994, pp. 88–89).

[389] Bloom (1992, pp. 96–99) (Smith "surpassed all Americans, before or since, in the possession and expression of what could be called the religion-making imagination", and had charisma "to a degree unsurpassed in American history".); Abanes (2003, p. 7) (noting that even Smith's harshest critics acknowledge his inventive genius); Persuitte (2000, p. 1) (calling Smith "one of the most controversial and enigmatic figures ever to appear in American history").

[390] Widmer (2000, p. 97); Shipps (1985, p. 37) (making comparisons with Moses (law-giver), Joshua (commander of the "armies of Israel"), and Solomon (king)); Bushman (2005, p. xx) (describing Smith as "a biblical-style prophet—one who spoke for God with the authority of Moses or Isaiah."); Brodie (1971, p. vii) (noting that "[i]n official Mormon biographies he has been made a prophet of greater stature than Moses").

[391] Brodie (1971, pp. 72–73, 116–17) (noting the "choice seer" prophecies in the Book of Mormon and Smith's revision of the Bible); Smith (1830, pp. 66–67) (claiming that the Biblical Joseph prophesied, "A seer shall the Lord my God raise up, who shall be a choice seer unto the fruit of my loins.… And his name shall be called after me; and it shall be after the name of his father. And he shall be like unto me; for the thing, which the Lord shall bring forth by his hand, by the power of the Lord shall bring my people unto salvation.").

[392] Bushman (2005, p. 558) (quoting a tribute to Smith, probably by Taylor, stating that Smith "has done more, (save Jesus only,) for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it."); Smith, Joseph Fielding (December 1941), "The Historical Background of the Prophet Joseph Smith", Improvement Era: 717 ("No prophet since the days of Adam, save, of course, our Redeemer, has been given a greater mission.").

[393] Weber, Max (1978), Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology, vol. 1, University of California Press, p. 446, ISBN 0520035003 (In his role as the founder of Mormonism, Smith "resembled, even in matters of detail, Muhammad."); Brodie (1971, p. 230) (speech dated October 14, 1838 at the Far West town square, in which Smith called himself "a second Mohammed"); Bushman (2005, p. 352).

[394] Brodie (1971, p. 396–97).

[Widmer_2000_98-395] Widmer (2000, p. 98).

[396] Abanes (2003, pp. 174–75) (noting statements by Heber C. Kimball and Brigham Young stating that Smith was one of the gods and that his permission was required for entry into heaven, and arguing that regard for Smith has not diminished among modern Mormons); Phelps, W.W. (1 August 1844), "Joseph Smith" (PDF), Times and Seasons, 5: 607 (an ode to Smith, now a popular Mormon hymn entitled Praise to the Man, describing him as "mingling with gods").

[397] Swanson, Vern G., The Development of the Concept of a Holy Ghost in Mormon Theology in Bergera (1989, p. 97) (noting the minority view in the aftermath of Smith's death that he was an incarnation of the Holy Spirit

[398] Allen (1966, p. 43–44) ("Next to the resurrection of Christ, nothing holds a more central place in modern Mormon thought than" the First Vision.... The most sacred event in church history, a belief in its literal reality is fundamental to belief in Mormonism itself."); Shipps (1985, p. 9, 32) (First Vision came to be regarded as the "initial episode in Mormon history", and "emerged as a symbol that could keep the slain Mormon leader at center stage"); Widmer (2000, p. 105).

[399] Quinn (1994, p. 143); Brodie (1971, p. 398).

[400] Quinn (1994, p. 143) ("He proposed more than one way for a member of the First Presidency to succeed him, left the relative priority of the founding quorums in an ambiguous balance, performed secret ordinations, and suggested more than one method by which a brother or son might succeed him."); Shipps (1985, pp. 83–84) (discussing several of the succession options).

[401] Quinn (1994, p. 143).

[402] Quinn (1994, p. 213) (after Smith was crowned king, Hyrum referred to himself as "President of the Church"), and Brigham Young agreed Hyrum would have been the natural successor.

[403] Quinn (1994, pp. 152–54, 213); Bushman (2005, p. 555).

[404] Quinn (1994, pp. 213–26); Bushman (2005, p. 555) (William Smith "made a bid for the Church presidency, but his unstable character kept him from being a serious contender".).

[405] Quinn (1994, pp. 226–41) (outlining the sons' claims and noting, "Even Brigham Young acknowledged the claims of patrilineal succession and as a result never argued that the Quorum of Twelve had exclusive right of succession."); Ostling & Ostling (1999, p. 42).

[406] Quinn (1994, pp. 192–98) (before his death, Smith had charged the Fifty with the responsibility of establishing the Millennial kingdom in his absence; the Quorum of Twelve would eventually claim this "charge" as their own).

[407] Quinn (1994, pp. 187–91).

[408] Bushman (2005, pp. 556–57).

[409] Desert News "Addressing the New Mission Presidents Seminar on June 24, President Hinckley announced that LDS Church membership had reached 13 million." See also: Watson, F. Michael (2008), Statistical Report, 2007, http://www.lds.org, retrieved 2008-04-14, Total Membership: 13,193,999 {{citation}}: External link in |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[410] Bushman (2005, pp. 557). The largest existing Rigdonitechurch is the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite).

[411] Quinn (1994, p. 211); Bushman (2005, p. 556) (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a seer stone, saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing polygamy). Strang's current followers consist of the tiny Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite).

[412] Quinn (1994, p. 210); Bushman (2005, p. 555).

[413] Quinn (1994, p. 211); Bushman (2005, p. 556) (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a seer stone, saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing polygamy).

[414] Quinn (1994, pp. 198–203).

[415] Quinn (1994, pp. 203–09).

[416] Emma Smith claimed that the very first time she ever became aware of a polygamy revelation being attributed by Mormons to Joseph Smith was when she read about it in Orson Pratt's booklet The Seer in 1853, Saints' Herald 65:1044–1045

[417] Church History, 3: 355–356.

[418] Brodie (1971, pp. 110–11).

[419] The adopted twins were born of Julia Clapp Murdock and John Murdock

[420] Template:Cite article; Template:Cite article; name=Perego>Perego, Ugo A.; Myers, Natalie M.; Woodward, Scott R. (Summer 2005), "Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith, Jr.: Genealogical Applications" (PDF), Journal of Mormon History, 32 (2) Although Bushman suggested that Smith had married twenty-seven other women, there is no DNA evidence that Smith fathered any children by any woman other than Emma. Bushman, 493; Compton, 4–7; Remini, 153-54; Brodie, "The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith," Appendix C in No Man Knows My History, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), 457–88. Remini, 153. Brodie guessed that there might have been as many as 48 plural wives, but succeeding scholars have considered her numbers exaggerated. Remini said that the true number might have been as high as eighty-four, although many of these might have been "simply sacred sealings for eternity." Remini, 153. Smith's biography in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 3: 1337, says that Smith took at least twenty-eight plural wives. On her deathbed, Emma Smith denied that her husband had ever practiced polygamy.Church History, 3: 355–356.

[421] Saints' Herald 65:1044–1045

[422] Times and Seasons 3 [August 1, 1842]: 869

[423] Times and Seasons 3 [October 1, 1842]: 940. In March 1844, Emma said, "we raise our voices and hands against John C. Bennett's 'spiritual wife system', as a scheme of profligates to seduce women; and they that harp upon it, wish to make it popular for the convenience of their own cupidity; wherefore, while the marriage bed, undefiled is honorable, let polygamy, bigamy, fornication, adultery, and prostitution, be frowned out of the hearts of honest men to drop in the gulf of fallen nature". The document The Voice of Innocence from Nauvoo. signed by Emma Smith as President of the Ladies' Relief Society, was published within the article Virtue Will Triumph, Nauvoo Neighbor, March 20, 1844 (LDS History of the Church 6:236, 241) including on her deathbed where 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". Church History3: 355–356

[424] Van Wagoner (1992, pp. 113–115) As Fawn Brodie has written, this denial was "her revenge and solace for all her heartache and humiliation." (Brodie, 399) "This was her slap at all the sly young girls in the Mansion House who had looked first so worshipfully and then so knowingly at Joseph. She had given them the lie. Whatever formal ceremony he might have gone through, Joseph had never acknowledged one of them before the world." Newell and Avery wrote of "the paradox of Emma's position", quoting her friend and lawyer Judge George Edmunds who stated "that's just the hell of it! I can't account for it or reconcile her statements." (Newell & Avery 1994, p. 308)

[425] Bushman (2005), 554. Brodie says that she "came to fear and despise" Brigham Young. Brodie, 399.

[426] Bushman (2005), 554.

[427] Bushman (2005), 554–55. Emma Smith married Major Lewis Bidamon, an "enterprising man who made good use of Emma's property." Although Bidamon sired an illegitimate child when he was 62 (whom Emma reared), "the couple showed genuine affection for each." Bushman (2205), 555.

[not12-428] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Never a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

[excommunication-429] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m Term ended by excommunication.

[430] Term ended by resignation.

[431] Term ended by removal of apostleship; was later excommunicated.

[432] Term ended by suspension of priesthood.

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@@ Line 144: / Line 144: @@
 {{See also|Priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|Freemasonry and the Latter Day Saint movement}}
-Smith's teachings were rooted in [[dispensationalism|dispensational]] [[Restorationism (Christian primitivism)|restorationism]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|p=33}}.</ref> He saw his teachings and the [[Church of Christ (Latter Day Saints)|Church of Christ]] as a [[Restoration (Latter Day Saints)|restoration]] of [[early Christianity|early Christian)) ideals that had been lost in a [[Great Apostasy|great apostasy]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Remini|2000|p=84}}.</ref> At first, the power of Smith's church rested mainly on religious experience and [[charismatic authority]], with little sense of hierarchy. Smith however claimed to have recieved the Preisthood of God from heavenly messangers, and under this authority he acted as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator for the church<ref name="Quinn 1994 7">{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=7}}.</ref> Though the early church had many potential prophets,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=7–8}}.</ref> Smith was the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as [[Moses]]".<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=121, 175}}; {{Harvtxt|Phelps|1833|p=67}} ("[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses.").</ref> In the mid-1830s, he began teaching that the church's three [[priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|priesthoods]] ([[Melchizedek priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|Melchizedek]], [[Aaronic priesthood|Aaronic]], and [[Patriarchal priesthood|Patriarchal]])<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=27–34}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=264–65}}.</ref> derived their authority from either angelic visitations or [[lineal succession (Latter Day Saints)|lineage]].<ref name="Quinn 1994 7"/>
+Smith's teachings were rooted in [[dispensationalism|dispensational]] [[Restorationism (Christian primitivism)|restorationism]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|p=33}}.</ref> He saw his teachings and the [[Church of Christ (Latter Day Saints)|Church of Christ]] as a [[Restoration (Latter Day Saints)|restoration]] of [[early Christianity|early Christian]] ideals that had been lost in a [[Great Apostasy|great apostasy]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Remini|2000|p=84}}.</ref> At first, the power of Smith's church rested mainly on religious experience and [[charismatic authority]], with little sense of hierarchy.<ref name="Quinn 1994 7">{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=7}}.</ref> Though the early church had many potential prophets,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=7–8}}.</ref> Smith was the only prophet allowed to issue commandments "as [[Moses]]".<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=121, 175}}; {{Harvtxt|Phelps|1833|p=67}} ("[N]o one shall be appointed to receive commandments and revelations in this church, excepting my servant Joseph, for he receiveth them even as Moses.").</ref> In the mid-1830s, he began teaching that the church's three [[priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|priesthoods]] ([[Melchizedek priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|Melchizedek]], [[Aaronic priesthood|Aaronic]], and [[Patriarchal priesthood|Patriarchal]])<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=27–34}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=264–65}}.</ref> derived their authority from either angelic visitations or [[lineal succession (Latter Day Saints)|lineage]].<ref name="Quinn 1994 7"/>
-Smith believed that for members of the [[priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|priesthood]] to have [[spiritual gift]]s and authority commensurate with the [[Apostle (Christian)|Biblical apostles]], they must be "[[Endowment (Latter Day Saints)|endowed]] with power from on high."<ref>{{harvtxt|Prince|1995|pp=19, 115–116, 119}} (noting influence of [[Sidney Rigdon]] in developing this idea); [[Gospel of Luke]]'' 24:49 ([[Authorized King James Version]]) ("And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endowed with power from on high.").</ref> Thus, in 1831 Smith inducted many church elders into the [[Melchizedek priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|Melchizedek or High Priesthood]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brodie|1971|p=111}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=156–60}}; {{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=31–32}}; {{Harvtxt|Roberts|1902|pp=175–76}} (On 3 June 1831, "the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the Elders.").Smith introduced the [[Endowment (Mormonism)|Nauvoo endowment]], an elaborate ceremony containing symbolism.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Ostling|Ostling|1999|pp=194–95}}; {{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|p=146}}.</ref> The endowment was extended to women in 1843,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|p=140}}.</ref> though Smith never clarified whether women could be ordained to priesthood offices.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|p=201}}.</ref>
+Smith believed that for members of the [[priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|priesthood]] to have [[spiritual gift]]s and authority commensurate with the [[Apostle (Christian)|Biblical apostles]], they must be "[[Endowment (Latter Day Saints)|endowed]] with power from on high."<ref>{{harvtxt|Prince|1995|pp=19, 115–116, 119}} (noting influence of [[Sidney Rigdon]] in developing this idea); [[Gospel of Luke]]'' 24:49 ([[Authorized King James Version]]) ("And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endowed with power from on high.").</ref> Thus, in 1831 Smith inducted many church elders into the [[Melchizedek priesthood (Latter Day Saints)|Melchizedek or High Priesthood]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brodie|1971|p=111}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=156–60}}; {{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=31–32}}; {{Harvtxt|Roberts|1902|pp=175–76}} (On 3 June 1831, "the authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood was manifested and conferred for the first time upon several of the Elders.").</ref> The [[Endowment (Latter Day Saints)|endowment]] doctrine evolved through the 1830s,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|pp=31–32, 121–31}} (outlining evolution of the endowment idea in 1833 and 1836).</ref> and in 1842, Smith introduced the [[Endowment (Mormonism)|Nauvoo endowment]], an elaborate ceremony containing symbolism similar to that of [[Freemasonry]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Ostling|Ostling|1999|pp=194–95}}; {{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|p=146}}.</ref> The endowment was extended to women in 1843,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|p=140}}.</ref> though Smith never clarified whether women could be ordained to priesthood offices.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Prince|1995|p=201}}.</ref>
-Smith thought these endowments were best performed in [[Temple (Latter Day Saints)|temples]]. Also associated with the High Priesthood were the [[sealing (Mormonism)|sealing]] powers of [[Elijah]], which included the power to seal Mormons to their godhood and [[exaltation (Mormonism)|exaltation]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|pp=30, 194–95, 203, 208}} (Smith introduced the sealing power in 1831 as part of the High Priesthood, and then attributed this power to [[Elijah]] after he appeared in an 1836 vision in the [[Kirtland Temple]]).</ref> the key to [[baptism for the dead]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|pp=221, 242–43}}.</ref> and the mechanism whereby [[Celestial marriage|priesthood marriages]] could become eternal.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|pp=236}}.</ref> The most important ritual of the sealing power, which Smith called the "fullness of the priesthood," was the [[second anointing]], which sealed couples to their eternal godhood and virtually guaranteed their salvation, as long as they remained faithful to their covenants and to their God.
+Smith thought these endowments were best performed in [[Temple (Latter Day Saints)|temples]]. Also associated with the High Priesthood were the [[sealing (Mormonism)|sealing]] powers of [[Elijah]], which included the power to seal Mormons to their godhood and [[exaltation (Mormonism)|exaltation]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|pp=30, 194–95, 203, 208}} (Smith introduced the sealing power in 1831 as part of the High Priesthood, and then attributed this power to [[Elijah]] after he appeared in an 1836 vision in the [[Kirtland Temple]]).</ref> the key to [[baptism for the dead]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|pp=221, 242–43}}.</ref> and the mechanism whereby [[Celestial marriage|priesthood marriages]] could become eternal.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Brooke|1994|pp=236}}.</ref> The most important ritual of the sealing power, which Smith called the "fullness of the priesthood," was the [[second anointing]], which sealed couples to their eternal godhood and virtually guaranteed their salvation.
-Smith also extended his authority to church members' economic lives. For instance, he implemented  a higher economic law called the [[United Order]], requiring Saints to [[law of consecration|consecrate]] all their property to the church.This system tried the selflesness of the early saints, and while some flourished spirituall under it, many were not prepared for so high a law. After this system ended in failure due to human weakness, he instituted a [[tithe|tithing]] system to support the church.<ref>Brodie, 106, 112, 121–22. In 1834, "Joseph began to efface the communistic rubric in his young theology.
+Smith also extended his authority to church members' economic lives. For instance, he tried to implement a form of [[religious communism]], called the [[United Order]], requiring Saints to [[law of consecration|consecrate]] all their property to the church. After this system proved a conspicuous failure, he instituted a [[tithe|tithing]] system to support the church.<ref>Brodie, 106, 112, 121–22. In 1834, "Joseph began to efface the communistic rubric in his young theology.  Since most copies of the ''Book of Commandments'' had been burned, it was easy for him to revise drastically the revelation of the United Order when it was republished in the enlarged ''Doctrine and Covenants'' in 1835.  The Lord no longer demanded consecration of a man's total property, but only a donation of his 'surplus' over and above living expenses." (141)</ref>
 ===Theology of family===
@@ Line 194: / Line 194: @@
 Smith's death led to [[schism (religion)|schisms]] in the [[Latter Day Saint movement]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=143}}; {{Harvtxt|Brodie|1971|p=398}}.</ref> Smith had proposed several ways to choose his successor,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=143}} ("He proposed more than one way for a member of the First Presidency to succeed him, left the relative priority of the founding quorums in an ambiguous balance, performed secret ordinations, and suggested more than one method by which a brother or son might succeed him."); {{Harvtxt|Shipps|1985|pp=83–84}} (discussing several of the succession options).</ref> but while a prisoner in [[Carthage, Illinois|Carthage]], it was too late to clarify his preference.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=143}}.</ref> Smith's brother [[Hyrum Smith|Hyrum]], had he survived, would have had the strongest claim,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=213}} (after Smith was crowned king, Hyrum referred to himself as "[[President of the Church]]"), and [[Brigham Young]] agreed Hyrum would have been the natural successor.</ref> followed by Joseph's brother [[Samuel H. Smith (Latter Day Saints)|Samuel]], who died mysteriously a month after his brothers.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=152–54, 213}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=555}}.</ref> Another brother, [[William Smith (Latter Day Saints)|William]], was unable to attract a sufficient following.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=213–26}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=555}} (William Smith "made a bid for the Church presidency, but his unstable character kept him from being a serious contender".).</ref> Smith's sons [[Joseph Smith III|Joseph III]] and [[David Hyrum Smith|David]] also had  claims, but Joseph III was too young and David was yet unborn.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=226–41}} (outlining the sons' claims and noting, "Even [[Brigham Young]] acknowledged the claims of [[lineal succession (Latter Day Saints)|patrilineal succession]] and as a result never argued that the [[Quorum of the Twelve|Quorum of Twelve]] had exclusive right of succession."); {{Harvtxt|Ostling|Ostling|1999|p=42}}.</ref> The [[Council of Fifty]] had a theoretical claim to succession, but it was a secret organization.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=192–98}} (before his death, Smith had charged the Fifty with the responsibility of establishing the [[Millennialism|Millennial]] kingdom in his absence; the [[Quorum of Twelve]] would eventually claim this "charge" as their own).</ref> Some of Smith's ordained successors, such as [[Oliver Cowdery]] and [[David Whitmer]], had left the church.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=187–91}}.</ref>
-The two strongest succession candidates were [[Sidney Rigdon]], the senior member of the [[First Presidency]], and [[Brigham Young]], senior member of the [[Quorum of the Twelve]]. Most of the Saints voted for Young,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=556–57}}.</ref> who led his faction to the [[Utah Territory]] and incorporated [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]], whose membership surpassed 13 million members in 2007.<ref>[http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695242682,00.html?pg=4 Desert News] "Addressing the New Mission Presidents Seminar on June 24, President Hinckley announced that LDS Church membership had reached 13 million." See also: {{Citation |url=http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-851-9,00.html |title=Statistical Report, 2007 |accessdate=2008-04-14 |last=Watson |first=F. Michael |year=2008 |month=April  |publisher=http://www.lds.org |archivedate= |quote=Total Membership: 13,193,999 }}</ref> Rigdon's followers are known as [[Rigdonite]]s.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=557}}. The largest existing [[Rigdonite]]church is the [[Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite)]].</ref> Most of Smith's family and several [[Book of Mormon witnesses]] temporarily followed [[James J. Strang]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=211}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=556}} (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a [[seer stone (Latter Day Saints)|seer stone]], saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing [[Mormonism and polygamy|polygamy]]). Strang's current followers consist of the tiny [[Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)]].</ref> who based his claim on a forged [[letter of appointment]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=210}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=555}}.</ref> but Strang's following largely dissipated after his assassination in 1856.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=211}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=556}} (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a [[seer stone (Latter Day Saints)|seer stone]], saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing [[Mormonism and polygamy|polygamy]]).</ref> Other Saints followed [[Lyman Wight]]<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=198–203}}.</ref> and [[Alpheus Cutler]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=203–09}}.</ref> Many members of these smaller groups, including most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced in 1860 under the leadership of [[Joseph Smith III]] and formed what is now known as the [[Community of Christ]], which now has about 250,000 members. {{As of|2010}}, adherents of the [[religious denomination|denominations]] originating from Joseph Smith's teachings number approximately 15 million. The largest denomination of Smith followers by far, is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or mormons, who'se membership now numbers approximately 14 million eight hundred thousand.
+The two strongest succession candidates were [[Sidney Rigdon]], the senior member of the [[First Presidency]], and [[Brigham Young]], senior member of the [[Quorum of the Twelve]]. Most of the Saints voted for Young,<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=556–57}}.</ref> who led his faction to the [[Utah Territory]] and incorporated [[The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints]], whose membership surpassed 13 million members in 2007.<ref>[http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695242682,00.html?pg=4 Desert News] "Addressing the New Mission Presidents Seminar on June 24, President Hinckley announced that LDS Church membership had reached 13 million." See also: {{Citation |url=http://lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-851-9,00.html |title=Statistical Report, 2007 |accessdate=2008-04-14 |last=Watson |first=F. Michael |year=2008 |month=April  |publisher=http://www.lds.org |archivedate= |quote=Total Membership: 13,193,999 }}</ref> Rigdon's followers are known as [[Rigdonite]]s.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|pp=557}}. The largest existing [[Rigdonite]]church is the [[Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite)]].</ref> Most of Smith's family and several [[Book of Mormon witnesses]] temporarily followed [[James J. Strang]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=211}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=556}} (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a [[seer stone (Latter Day Saints)|seer stone]], saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing [[Mormonism and polygamy|polygamy]]). Strang's current followers consist of the tiny [[Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)]].</ref> who based his claim on a forged [[letter of appointment]],<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=210}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=555}}.</ref> but Strang's following largely dissipated after his assassination in 1856.<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|p=211}}; {{Harvtxt|Bushman|2005|p=556}} (Strang followed Smith's example of producing revelations with a [[seer stone (Latter Day Saints)|seer stone]], saying an angel had ordained him, translating scripture from buried plates, having himself crowned as theocratic king, and practicing [[Mormonism and polygamy|polygamy]]).</ref> Other Saints followed [[Lyman Wight]]<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=198–203}}.</ref> and [[Alpheus Cutler]].<ref>{{Harvtxt|Quinn|1994|pp=203–09}}.</ref> Many members of these smaller groups, including most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced in 1860 under the leadership of [[Joseph Smith III]] and formed what is now known as the [[Community of Christ]], which now has about 250,000 members. {{As of|2010}}, adherents of the [[religious denomination|denominations]] originating from Joseph Smith's teachings number approximately 14 million.
 ===Family and descendants===

v t e Members of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Presidents of the Church	J. Smith Jr. (1830–44) B. Young Sr. (1847–77) Taylor (1880–87) Woodruff (1889–98) Snow (1898–1901) J.F. Smith Sr. (1901–18) Grant (1918–45) G.A. Smith (1945–51) McKay (1951–70) J.F. Smith Jr. (1970–72) Lee (1972–73) Kimball (1973–85) Benson (1985–94) Hunter (1994–95) Hinckley (1995–2008) Monson (2008–18) Nelson (2018–)
First Counselors	Gause (1832) Rigdon (1832–44) Kimball (1847–68) G.A. Smith (1868–75) J.W. Young (1876–77) Cannon (1880–1901) J.F. Smith Sr. (1901) Winder (1901–10) Lund (1910–21) Penrose (1921–25) Ivins (1925–34) Clark (1934–51; 1959–61) S.L. Richards (1951–59) Moyle (1961–63) Brown (1963–70) Lee (1970–72) Tanner (1972–82) Romney (1982–85) Hinckley (1985–95) Monson (1995–2008) Eyring (2008–18) Oaks (2018–)
Second Counselors	Rigdon (1832) Williams (1833–37) H. Smith (1837–41) Law (1841–44) W. Richards (1847–54) Grant (1854–56) Wells (1857–77) J.F. Smith Sr. (1880–1901) Clawson (1901) Lund (1901–10) J.H. Smith (1910–11) Penrose (1911–21) Ivins (1921–25) Nibley (1925–31) Clark (1933–34) McKay (1934–51) Clark (1951–59) Moyle (1959–61) Brown (1961–63) Tanner (1963–72) Romney (1972–82) Hinckley (1982–85) Monson (1985–95) Faust (1995–2007) Eyring (2007–08) Uchtdorf (2008–18) Eyring (2018–)