Joseph Smith and the Politics of Revelation Author(S): Steven C

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"Dictated by Christ": Joseph Smith and the Politics of Revelation Author(s): Steven C. Harper Source: Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 275-304 Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043410 . Accessed: 17/12/2013 11:51

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This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "Dictatedby Christ" Joseph Smith and the Politics of Revelation STEVEN C. HARPER

God does not Himselfneed to speakfor us to find sure signs of His will; it is enoughto observethe customaryprogress of natureand the continuous tendencyof events;I know, withoutspecial revelation, that the starsfollow orbits in spacetraced by His finger.-Alexisde Tocqueville'

The Churchof Jesus Christof Latter-daySaints was foundedupon directrevela- tion, as the truechurch of God has everbeen, accordingto the scriptures.-Joseph Smith2

A few months after Alexis de Tocqueville's birth in Paris in July 1805, Joseph Smith was born in less auspicious circumstances in the Vermont hills and destined to grow up "without book-learning and with the homeliest of all human names." These two sons of young republics never met, but their lives intersected in telling ways. The works with which they are most closely associated, the Book of Mormon (1830) and Democ- racy in America (1835), remain compelling and profound, not least for

Steven C. Harper is an assistant professor of Church History & Doctrine at Brigham Young University and a volume editor of the Joseph Smith Papers. He thanks the scholars on whose work this article depends, as well as Jonathan Sassi, Spencer Fluhman, and anonymous readers for the JER who offered useful advice to improve earlier drafts. 1. Alexis de 'Tocqueville,Democracy in Amerzca,trans. George Lawrence and ed. J. P. Mayer(New York,1969), 12. 2. Quoted in I. Daniel Rupp, He Pasa Ekklesia:An OriginalHistory of the ReligiousDenominations at PresentExisting in the UnitedStates, 1844.

Journal of the EarlyRepublic, 26 (Summer2006) CopyrightC 2006 Societyfor Historiansof the EarlyAmerican Republic. All rightsreserved.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 276 * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2006) the way they work together to highlight the politics of revelation in a culture that locates authority in the people.3 A year before Tocqueville embarked for America, Smith published the Book of Mormon in Palmyra, New York. Said to be a divinely inspired translation of an encrypted Egyptian history of a Jewish clan exiled to the Americas, the book's "real radicalism," Terryl Givens wrote, "is in the way it emphatically models, chronicles, and then enacts a version of divine discourse that contests prevailing theologies of revelation." As Tocqueville journeyed to America, Smith continued to receive revelations. While Tocqueville landed in America, Parley Pratt,John Murdock, "and several other [Mormon] elders, went to Joseph Smith, and asked him to inquire of the Lord" about the fits, trances, and visions they had witnessed among their peers. "After we had joined in prayer," Pratt wrote, Smith "dictated in our presence the ... revelation: each sentence was uttered slowly and very distinctly, and with a pause between each, sufficiently long for it to be recorded by an ordinary writer, in long hand."4 Tocqueville was sure, along with increasing numbers of Americans, that "God does not Himself need to speak for us to find sure signs of His will." Rather, "patient observation" shows the "gradual and measured advance of equality, [and] that discovery alone gives this progress the sacred character of the will of the Sovereign Master. In that case, the effort to halt democracy appears as a fight against God Himself." Al- though Smith valued democratic government, his revelations implicitly rejected popular sovereignty, while for Tocqueville "the true beginning of American democracy is the dogma of the sovereignty of the people, a dogma logically incompatible with the acceptance of any authority, including traditional religion." By their nature as well as their tone, Smith's

3. Tocqueville was born July 29, 1805, Smith on Dec. 23; Andre Jardin, Toc- queville: A Biography, trans. Lydia Davis (New York, 1988), 1; Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past From the Leaves of OldJournals (Boston, MA, 1883), 376-400; Book Magazine (July/Aug. 2003) named the Book of Mormon to its list of twenty books that changed America. 4. Terryl L. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion (Oxford, 2002), 208; Parley P. Pratt, Jr., ed., Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Salt Lake City, UT, 1950), 61-62; Bruce N. Westergren, ed., From Historian to Dissident: The Book of John Whitmer (Salt Lake City, UT, 1995), 57-58.

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Alexis de Tocquevillein 1844, by Theodore Chasseriau,courtesy of the NationalGallery of Art, Washington,DC.

revelations assumed authority. The voice of God repeatedly declares His prerogative to make and execute the law and bring offenders to judg- ment. The revelations therefore created hostility to acceptable modes of discourse and challenged assumed wisdom. Simply put, for Smith and his followers, the undemocratic voice of God they heard so "very distinctly" trumped the voice of the people. During Tocqueville's brief observation of democracy in America from May 1831 to February 1832, Smith dictated more than fifty revelations to guide his multiplying followers.5 That Smith's revelations were persuasive to thousands of Americans in the 1830s and 1840s raises the question of why? Moreover, why did Smith's revelations garner such remarkable degrees of loyalty while he simultaneously attracted hostility that remains down to today's national

5. HarveyC. Mansfieldand DelbaWinthrop, "Editor's Introduction," in Toc- queville, Democracy in America (Chicago, IL, 2000), 83; Ibid., 12-13; Terryl L. Givens, The Viperon the Hearth: Mormons,Myths, and the Constructionof Heresy (New York,1997), 88-89. Manyof Smith'srevelations are publishedin TheDoc- trine and Covenants (Salt Lake City, UT, 1981), hereafter cited as Doctrine and Covenants.

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Joseph Smith by WilliamWhitaker, 1979, courtesy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-daySaints.

bestsellers like Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)? Fi- nally, why, after his lynching in 1844, was Smith mourned by thousands of devout followers while being pilloried by such critics as the one who hastened to write of the "wonderful events which have taken place?"6 Efforts to answer the question of Smith's persuasiveness often draw

6. David W. Kilbourneto ReverendThomas Dent,June 29, 1844, Kilbourne Collection(State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines).

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 279 on sociology. David Brion Davis claimed that Mormons were "usually the descendants of those cast off by the Half-Way Covenant. They were the churchgoers who did not belong, the Bible readers who did not understand"; they were believers in the "gibberish of a crazy boy," a "practically illiterate ragamuffin." Thus, "Mormonism," Davis con- cluded, "can be seen as the extreme result of the evils of literal minded- ness," a biological and cultural remnant of Puritan declension. Whitney Cross identified Mormon converts as "easily swayed" Yankees, drawn from the established villages of upstate New York in response to evangelical revivals. Mario DePillis argued that Mormonism attracted the "socially dislocated" of the American frontier, where "prospective converts almost always lived under unstable local social, economic, or religious conditions, usually in a newly settled, value disoriented society." These "socially disinherited" folks "could no longer look to their former religious leaders and former ways of life for security and orientation" and were thus primed for conversion. Charles Sellers avers that "Mormon- ism's remarkable appeal was more social than theological," but his evidence is theological rather than sociological. Each of these explanations asserts "long established sociological truth," but none of them makes an empirical case. Evidence of disorientation is as conspicuously absent as its definition, having been assumed ever since contemporary critics fashioned early Mormons into intelligible Others. Only easily swayed, disoriented, "desperate converts" could voluntarily follow Smith, this established but circular truth goes, therefore converts were all of those things. Smith is dismissed as theologically vacuous and his converts as lacking intelligence and motivated by "secular frustration," economic anxiety, or some similarly sensible reason.7 Smith has recently been reconsidered more seriously. John Brooke continues to shape understanding of Smith's influence by arguing that Smith tapped a vein of Continental radicalism that informed his cosmology and resonated with similarly inclined folk. Brooke thus reveals how much the early American republic had in common with early modern Europe, but falls far short of tracing a genealogy of Smith's ideas "di-

7. David Brion Davis, "New England Origins of Mormonism," New England Quarterly, 26 (June 1953), 153, 157-58, 168; Whitney R. Cross, The Burned- Over District: The Social and Intellectual Origins of Enthusiastic Religion in West- ern New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca, NY, 1950); Mario S. DePillis, "The Social Sources of Mormonism," Church History, 37 (1968), 76; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution:Jacksonian America 1815-1846 (New York, 1996), 224.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 280 * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2006) rectly back" to anyone, or, as Brooke recognized, explaining "Mormon- ism's public appeal." Nathan Hatch and Kenneth Winn offer variations on another explanation. The Book of Mormon, they suggest, had enor- mous populist appeal. It attracted folks from the socioeconomic periph- ery because it gave them what they wanted to hear: a critique of Jacksonian culture thinly veiled in the authority of the King's English. Whether one locates Mormonism's appeal in folk culture or political culture, the links are indirect. The relationships are vague. One thing, however, is clear in the sources by and about the first Mormons. "One finds in the Book of Mormon," Givens writes, "that prayer frequently and dramatically evokes an answer that is impossible to mistake as anything other than an individualized, dialogic response to a highly particularized question. The conception of revelation as a personalized, dialogic ex- change pervades the Book of Mormon-as well as the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith-like an insistent leitmotif."8 Jan Shipps read Brooke's manuscript and the journals of early Mor- mon convert William McLellin simultaneously. The journals, she wrote, "contain absolutely no direct evidence and almost no indirect evidence to support" Brooke's argument, but they are saturated with references to direct revelation. On October 29, 1831, McLellin penned Smith's dicta- tion of a short revelation containing several specific commands. It came, McLellin tells us later, in answer to his request, informed by a desire to test Smith's claims. McLellin "went before the Lord in secret, and on my knees asked him to reveal the answer to five questions through his prophet, and that too without his having any knowledge of my having made such request." In 1848, ten years after he bitterly parted ways with Smith, McLellin wrote for his own newspaper, "every question which I had thus lodged in the ears of the Lord of Sabbaoth, were answered to

8. Susan Juster, Doomsayers:Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), 260-61;John L. Brooke, The Refiner'sFire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Cambridge, MA, 1994), xvii; Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT, 1989), 113-22; Kenneth Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty:Mormons in America, 1830- 1846 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989), 18-39. In contrast to Richard Bushman's assertion that the Book of Mormon only superficially resembles the early republic, Winn finds it a thoroughly republican document: Bushman, "The Book of Mormon and the American Revolution," in Believing History, ed. Reid L. Neilson and Jed Woodworth (New York, 2004), 47-64; Givens, By the Hand of Mormon, 217.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 281 my full and entire satisfaction. I desired it for a testimony of Joseph's inspiration. And I to this day consider it to me an evidence which I cannot refute." Smith's debt to the radical reformation has less to do with esoteric elements than with Thomas Muntzer's declaration that "all true parsons must have revelations, so that they are certain of their cause."9 The cultural work done by Smith's revelations explains his appeal- and the hostility against him. Democratization meant devaluation of direct, "dialogic" revelation. Smith's followers objected to the process of transferring sovereignty from God to the people. His revelations assert an authoritative, sovereign, biblical God, even as they locate agency in individuals. In many ways Smith functioned within the world of visionaries, prophets, and doomsayers. But his prophetic voice was also unique in both tone and scope. Smith emerged, as Richard Bushman puts it, to give God a voice. Smith's tangible, authoritative deity appealed to people whose common characteristic was more theological than social. His converts were people who conceived of God as one who spoke to Smith "even as Moses." Read as prima facie evidence against the backdrop of rapid democratization (which here means the process of locating sovereign authority in the people), Smith's revelations created the dynamics for both loyalty and hostility. They gave him political power.'0 Martin Harris, among the first of Smith's converts, furnishes an exam- ple. In March 1830, employees of the Palmyra, New York, printer Egbert Grandin put the finishing touches on the first run of the Book ofMormon. Grandin agreed to print the controversial work only after Harris put up

9. Juster, Doomsayers; Stephen A. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 73-78; Catherine A. Brekus, Strangers and Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America 1740-1845 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), esp. 182-85; Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty YearsAmong the Mor- mons (Urbana, IL, 2000), 213; William McLellin, Ensign of Liberty, 4 (Jan. 1848), 61; Thomas Muntzer, "The Prague Protest," in Revelation and Revolution: Basic Writings of Thomas Muntzer, ed. and trans. Michael G. Baylor (Bethlehem, PA, 1993), 54-55; Catherine Albanese comes close to forging this link in her textbook, America: Religion and Religions (2nd ed., Belmont, CA, 1992), 226-28. 10. Bushman, "A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-first Century," in Believing History, ed. Neilson and Woodworth, 273; Doctrine and Covenants, 28: 2; Mario S. DePillis, "The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1 (Spring 1966), 68-88.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 282 * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2006) part of his farm as collateral, thus reports that Palmyrans would not buy the book troubled Harris. He found Smith and demanded a "command- ment"-a revelation. Smith replied that Harris had yet to fulfill revelations already received, but Harris was emphatic. The next day Smith dictated these words:

I commandyou to repent,and keep the commandmentsyou havereceived by the hand of my servantJoseph Smith,Jun., in my name;I commandyou to repent- repentlest I smiteyou by the rod of my mouth,and by my wrath,and by my anger, and your sufferingsbe sore-how soreyou knownot, how exquisiteyou knownot, yea, how hardto bearyou knownot. Forbehold, I, God havesuffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent. .... I am Jesus Christ. ... I commandthee thatthou shalt not covetthy neighbor'swife; nor seekthy neighbor's life. And again,I commandthee thatthou shaltnot covet thineown property,but impartit freelyto the printingof the Bookof Mormon.

Harris did as commanded. He cared nothing for the advice of Joseph Smith the farmer, but he followed at significant personal hardship the dialogic revelation ofJoseph Smith the Prophet." Less than a month later, Harris, Smith, and a few dozen others met to organize the Church of Christ on April 6, 1830. That day Smith dictated a revelation that included a command in the voice of Jesus Christ for the church to receive Smith's word "as if from mine own mouth." The revelations continued to flow thereafter. They established Smith increasingly as the Prophet of Mormonism even while they highlighted his weaknesses.They also helped recruittalented associates, checked charis- maticrivals, established an orderedhierarchy, announced a law of conse- cration with radical economic and social implications, and laid the

11. "Joseph Knight, Sr., Reminiscence," in Early Mormon Documents, ed. Dan Vogel (5 vols., Salt Lake City, UT, 2002), 4: 18-19; Doctrine and Covenants, 19; "MartinHarris Mortgage," in Early MormonDocuments, ed. Vogel, 3: 473-77. Other followers ofJoseph Smith exhibit this same tendency. John Whitmer wrote: "I was appointed by the voice of the Elders to keep the Church history. Joseph Smith Jr. said unto me You must also keep the Church history. I would rather not do it but observed that the will of the Lord be done, and if he desires it, I desire that he would manifest it through Joseph the Seer. And thus came the word of the Lord." (see Doctrine and Covenants, 47); Westergren, ed., From Historian to Dissident, 55.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 283 foundations of an ambitious missionary system. It is difficult to understand what motivated Harris to seek out Smith and reject his advice while demanding that he receive a revelation, and then to act on a revelation that more or less restated Smith's advice. The best attempts to discover the persuasive power of Smith's revelations fall short, with the earliest and best informed concluding that reconciling the perceived gull- ibility of Harris "in view of the character of honesty which had always been conceded to him, could never be easily explained."''12 For decades now the scholarly inquiry has focused on Smith's appeal to "thousands of socially rootless, economically insecure, and religiously confused Americans," though we still wait for evidence of this conclu- sion. Harris, nearly twice Smith's age, was "one of the most respected farmers in Wayne County," a prosperous, propertied Palmyran since 1808, neither rootless, economically insecure, nor religiously confused. So, too, were Smith's other early converts, including the extended families of Mary and Peter Whitmer of Fayette, New York, and Polly and Joseph Knight of Colesville. The Knights settled near the Susquehanna River about 1808 and bought the first of several farms soon thereafter. As their children matured so did their prospects. They bought and sold carding machines and grist mills along with acreages. Son Newel wrote that "peace, prosperity, and plenty now seemed to crown our labors," and their best informed biographer wrote that "by 1826, when Joseph Smith came to live with them, the [Knight] family had already achieved a modest prosperity and gained respectability in their New York commu- nities." The Whitmers settled near the Finger Lakes in upstate New York by 1810, coming with other Pennsylvania Germans from the Harrisburg area. They remained until Smith received revelations commanding them to relocate to Ohio and then Missouri. Meanwhile they worshipped at nearby Zion's Church in the German Reformed tradition while father Peter served as overseer of highways and son Christian as a commis- sioned officer in the militia and a township constable. In sum, the argument that Smith's revelations resonated best with socioeconomically

12. Doctrine and Covenants, 21: 5; Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean L. May, Building the City of God: Community and CooperationAmong the Mormons (Salt Lake City, UT, 1976), 15; see Doctrine and Covenants, 23, 28, 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 43; Pomeroy Tucker, Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism (New York, 1867), 41, 50.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 284 * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2006) marginal folks simply cannot be corroborated with existing evidence. We might do better to seek answers in the nature of the revelations.'3 Though thoroughly biblical, dialogic revelation had been rejected by European and thence American culture. Givens cites a variety of reasons, "including fear of irrationalism, the perceived sufficiency of the canon, the concern to preserve the integrity of individual agency, and perhaps most emphatically, theological resistance to anything tending toward an- thropomorphism." All these reasons distill into a concern over the loca- tion of authority. Mormonism, Bushman wrote, "was repugnant because its ruling principle appeared to be undemocratic." While Tocqueville was noting the American exaltation of individualism, Smith's revelations demanded the sublimation of the individual, largely by calling for social unity and economic cooperation in the voice of the creator and redeemer of mankind.14 The socioeconomic circumstances of Smith's converts highlight a fact of his revelations that runs counter to prevailing interpretations of their appeal. The revelations often gave their recipients what they did not want to hear, promising "riches of eternity" and "a land of milk and honey," but requiring immediate financial sacrifices from men and women who were enjoying economic advantages of the early republic. Early Mormon convert John Whitmer noted that Smith's 1831 revelation commanding New York Mormons to migrate to Ohio caused "some divi- sion among the congregation." Some held that Smith simply made up

13. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 38-39; this historiography is discussed in Steven C. Harper, "The Evangelical World of Early Mormonism" (M.A. thesis, Utah State University, 1995); Manuscripts of Charles Butler (Library of Congress, Washington, DC), cited in Richard L. Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mor- mon Witnesses(Salt Lake City, UT, 1981), 101; William G. Hartley, Stand By My Servant Joseph: The Story of the Joseph Knight Family and the Restoration (Salt Lake City, UT, 2002), 20-21; Anderson, Investigating the Book of Mormon Wit- nesses, 124; Gordon S. Wood, "EvangelicalAmerica and Early Mormonism," New YorkHistory, 61 (Oct. 1980), 359-86; Cross, The Burned-OverDistrict; Mario S. DePillis, "The Social Sources of Mormonism," Church History, 38 (1968), 76; though, as Richard Bushman has written, the "revelations present a problem to cultural historians," too; "The 'Little, Narrow Prison' of Language: The Rhetoric of Revelation," in Believing History, ed. Neilson and Woodworth, 260. 14. Givens, By the Hand of Mormon, 213; Bushman, "Mormonism, Catholi- cism, and Democracy in Antebellum America," unpublished manuscript cited by permission.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 285 the idea. But most consented to the authority inherent in the revelation and obeyed the command to move that required the faithful to sell, rent, or simply leave their farms if they could not find buyers. Newel Knight wrote "as might be expected, we were obliged to make great sacrifices of our property." The socially and economically stable families of Joseph Knight and Peter Whitmer left for Ohio shortly after these revelations, settling in and near Kirtland, east of Cleveland in the Western Reserve. This gathering of Smith's followers in northeastern Ohio brought the politics of revelation into a specific political environment. "The township," as Tocqueville observed in Ohio, "is the hearth around which the interests and affections of men come to gather."'5 Smith had hardly arrived in Ohio before he began dictating a series of revelations that had far-reachingeconomic and political implications, and portended controversy, since Ohio's founding fathers had decided in 1802 that "the voice of the people ... is the voice of God in a republican government." With its rapid growth and fast-developing institutions, Ohio embodied the early republic's defining characteristics. Tocqueville thought Ohio showed as well as anywhere how "a complete democratic self-government was actually realized and put into place." In such a set- ting, revelations that could persuade thousands of adherents to move, donate money and property, proselytize, and construct a temple (the most impressive edifice then in the Western Reserve) had political power. Little wonder then that the politically invested received Smith as a demagogue, then as an unabashed dictator.'6 From its autumn 1830 introduction in Ohio, Mormonism engaged the attention of many. The Painesville Telegraph noted on November 16 the conversion of twenty or thirty, and by December claimed that the number neared one hundred. Concerned citizens sent one of their most prominent peers, Edward Partridge, to New York to investigate. He re- turned a Mormon and found that his wife, Lydia, had converted in his

15. Westergren, ed., From Historian to Dissident, 12; Doctrine and Covenants, 37, 38; "Newel Knight Autobiography," in Early Mormon Documents, ed. Vogel, 4: 64; Mansfield and Winthrop, eds., Democracy in America, 76. 16. Quoted in Andrew R. L. Cayton, Ohio: The History of a People (Columbus, OH, 2002), 6; John H. Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodismand the Rise of Popular Christianity in America (New York, 1998); Kenneth Winkle, Politics of Community: Migration and Politics in Antebellum Ohio (New York, 1998); George W. Pierson, Tocquevillein America (Baltimore, MD, 1996), 566-67.

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On March24, 1832, Joseph Smith was draggedfrom his home in Hiram, Ohio, and tarredand featheredby antagonisticneighbors.

absence. A hatter by trade, Partridge acquired land at Painesville's main intersection in 1817, giving him access to western furs and eastern markets via Lake Erie. By 1830, Partridge "was a successful, prominent, and relatively wealthy businessman. He owned a hat-making factory and a retail store and a substantial house." The first revelation Smith dictated after his February 1831 arrivalin Kirtland, Ohio made Partridge a bishop and commanded him "to leave his merchandise and to spend all his time in the labors of the church." Several others were similarly well situated, including farmer Isaac Morley, Smith's first Ohio convert, and Ann and Newel Whitney, whose general store overlooked Kirtland's major cross-

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 287 roads and functioned,along with their ashery, at the heart of the local economy. These economicallystable familiesformed the nucleus of the new Mormoncommunity centered in KirtlandTownship.'7 Not all of the convertswere as prosperous.Many KirtlandMormons workedon the constructionof the temple,revealed to Smithand promising, upon completion, to provide an endowmentof divine power. As some Mormonmen left Kirtlandto proselytizeand others endured the seasonalconstruction work, overseersof the poor orderedtheir families "Immediatelyto Departout of this Township."The Mormonsgathered anywayand looked to Smith to dictatetheir law. MissionaryJohn Mur- dock convertedabout seventyby early 1832.18 That year Mormonscomposed nearlyten percent of KirtlandTown- ship residents.Two yearslater they were twenty-sevenpercent. In 1835 they were thirty-twopercent and evoking considerableanxiety in the localpress, which understoodthe politicalimplications of revelationper- fectly:"Their objectis to acquirepolitical power as fast as they can," an 1835 Telegrapheditorial asserted. "The people of this townshipwho are not governed by the pretended revelationsof Jo Smith think they can full comprehendthe design of these religiousimposters. ... They now carry nearly a majorityof the township, and ever man votes as he is directed by the prophet and his elders." Only a late rally, this writer continued, "saved the township from being governed by revelationfor the year to come." A year later in 1836 when Mormonswere almost fiftypercent of townshipresidents, the Telegraphcharged Mormons with abuse of the ballot box. Though no evidence of improprietyexists, the Mormonvoting block clearlyswung KirtlandTownship in favorof Van Buren, who lost at both the county and state level. "Thus it is that this clan of fanaticstrample upon the law of the land"-meaning majority will. In 1837, almost fifty-threepercent of KirtlandTownship residents were Mormons, and they entered the political arena without apology,

17. Painesville, Ohio, Telegraph,Nov. 16, 30, 1830; Scott H. Partridge, "Ed- ward Partridge in Painesville, Ohio," BYU Studies, 42 (2003), 51; Doctrine and Covenants,41: 9. 18. Kirtland Township Trustees' Minutes and Poll Book, 1817-1838, Lake County, Ohio Historical Society, Kirtland Hills, OH; Milton V. Backman, Jr., "The Quest for a Restoration:The Birthof Mormonismin Ohio,"BYU Studies, 12 (Summer 1972), 347.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 288 * JOURNALOF THE EARLYREPUBLIC (Summer 2006) almost unanimously supporting the Van Buren administration while elec- ting increasing numbers of their own to township offices.19 Eber D. Howe, Whig editor of the Painesville Telegraph,led the widespread opposition with a concerted propaganda campaign. Ohio Mor- mons in the mid-1830s, he wrote, "began to make their boasts that in a short time they would control all the county offices and elect a member of Congress from their own ranks. All their doings and performances held out as having been dictated and commanded by Jesus Christ, in writing, through the head of their prophet Joseph." Meanwhile, Smith intended as early as 1833 to "publish a political paper shortly in favor of the present [Jackson] administration," hoping to win allies. When the Mormon-Democratic paper, Northern Times, began publication in 1835, the Telegraph excoriated its editor, Oliver Cowdery, for his faith in the Book of Mormon. As opponents painted Mormon political involvement as outrageous, given their belief in literal, biblical revelations, Democratic partisans were reluctant to ally outwardly with Mormons.20 Howe's 1834 expose, Mormonism Unvailed, and frequent lawsuits, along with the failure of the Mormons' own ill-advised banking plan undermined their community in Ohio just as the national economy de- clined in 1837. Kirtland's markets sank quickly following bright millennial hopes and a season of Pentecostal experiences Mormons observed in their temple, creating dissonance between individualism and authoritative revelations. On January 12, 1838, Smith received a revelation telling him, his family, and all their "faithful friends . . . [to] get out of this place." He left immediately for Missouri, fleeing creditors, persecutors, and dissidents. A group of several hundred disciples followed shortly. They found short-lived refuge with Missouri Mormons, building Far

19. Painesville, Ohio, Telegraph,Apr. 17, 1835, Jan. 27, 1837. For results of the Apr. 4, 1836, election, see Kirtland Township Trustees' Minutes and Poll Book, 1817-1838; these percentages were drawn from data in Milton V. Backman, Jr., comp., A Profileof Latter-daySaints in Kirtland,Ohio and Membersof Zion's Camp 1830-1839 (Provo, UT, 1982), Appendix A, 83; Max H. Parkin, "The Nature and Cause of Internal and External Conflict of the Mormons in Ohio Between 1830-1838" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1966), 191. 20. Eber D. Howe, Autobiographyand Recollections(Painesville, OH, 1878), 44; Max H. Parkin, "Mormon Political Involvement in Ohio," BYU Studies, 9 (Summer 1969), 488-92; Painesville, Ohio, Telegraph,Feb. 20, 1835.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 289 West, a new town in CaldwellCounty, which the state legislaturehad recentlydesignated for Mormonsettlement.2' Welcome relief from Ohio led to civil war in Missouri. The same September1830 revelationthat led Mormonmissionaries to convertper- haps a hundred in northeasternOhio took them to Missouri'swestern border to proselytizeamong Native Americans.They had little success but did see their promised land. Answering a June 1831 revelation, Smith and dozens of followerswent from Ohio to Missouri.The Bookof Mormonvaguely identified America as "the place of the New Jerusalem ... and the sanctuaryof the Lord."A July 20, 1831, revelationto Smith became specific. "Thus saith the Lord your God ... the place which is now called Independenceis the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward,upon a lot which is not far from the courthouse." Mormons,therefore, were to obtain all the land they could, establisha store, publish a newspaper,and otherwiseprepare Missouri for the sec-

21. On Nov. 28, 1834, Eber D. Howe issued Mormonism Unvailed from his press in Painesville; the book owed its genesis to D. Philastus Hurlbut, an excom- municated Mormon and strident critic of Joseph Smith (Eber D. Howe affidavit, Apr. 8, 1885, Arthur B. Deming Collection, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, IL). On Dec. 27, 1833, Kirtland, OH, Justice of the Peace J. C. Dowen charged Hurlbut with threatening to kill Joseph Smith. Hurlbut was tried in Chardon, OH, and found guilty on Apr. 9, 1834 (J.C. Dowen affidavit,Jan. 2, 1885, Arthur B. Deming Collection; also see Ohio v. Dr. P. Hurlbut, Apr. 9, 1834, Book M, page 193, Geauga County Courthouse, Chardon, OH); Dale W. Adams, "Chartering the Kirtland Bank," BYU Studies, 23 (Fall 1983), 467-82; Marvin S. Hill, Keith C. Rooker, and Larry T. Wimmer, "The Kirtland Economy Revisited: A Market Critique of Sectarian Economics," BYU Studies, 17 (Summer 1977), 391-475; D. Paul Sampson and Larry T. Wimmer, "The Kirtland Safety Society: The Stock Ledger Book and the Bank Failure," BYU Studies, 12 (Summer 1972), 427-36; Scott H. Partridge, "The Failure of the Kirtland Safety Society," BYU Studies, 12 (Summer 1972), 437-54. Lucius Parsons wrote to his sister from Kirtlandin Apr. 1836 at the summit of the Mormon experience that "they have lately had what they term a solemn assembly. ... They report that the Savior appeared personally with angels and endowed the Elders with powers to work Miracles .... You will probably see or hear from the Elders this summer as 100 or more have, or are about, starting out in all directions to bring to Zion all who will believe their doctrine." (Lucius Pomeroy Parsons to Pamelia Parsons, Apr. 10, 1836, LDS Church Archives, Salt Lake City; Revelation of Jan. 12, 1838, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Archives, Salt Lake City).

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KirtlandTemple and cemeteryby George EdwardAnderson, 1907, courtesy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-daySaints Archives. ond coming of Christ. Edward Partridge moved to Missouri to lead the cooperative economic venture and establish the steadily growing number of converts now streaming into Jackson County. He was soon joined by about twelve hundred Mormons who came from Ontario, Pennsylvania, New England, Ohio, and everywhere else the missionaries proselytized them. The Mormons were sure that the slave-holding Missourians were "proverbially idle or lazy, and mostly ignorant," while the Missourians' reciprocal rhetoric characterized Mormon immigrants as "the very dregs of... society ... lazy, idle, and vicious." Most Mormons had come at great personal hardship and all of them because they were persuaded by dialogic revelations that told them to do so. By 1833 they composed one-third ofJackson County residents.22

22. Ether 13: 3 (Book of Mormon), Doctrine and Covenants, 57: 3; William W. Phelps in Ontario Phoenix, Sept. 7, 1831, quoted in Richard L. Anderson, "Jack- son County in Early Mormon Descriptions," Missouri Historical Review, 65 (Apr. 1971), 270-93;Joseph Smith et al., History of the Churchofj esus Christ of Latter- day Saints (7 vols., Salt Lake City, UT, 1980), 1: 375; Bushman, "Mormon Perse- cutions in Missouri, 1833," BYU Studies, 3 (Autumn 1960), 11-20.

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That summer, concerned Jackson citizens drafted a declaration of their resolve to rid their society of Mormons "peaceably if we can, forc- ibly if we must." Kenneth Winn argues that the dispute hinged on alter- nate versions of republican, not religious thought. "Missourians," he contends, "displayed a relative indifference to the actual content of Mor- mon theology," but Winn mistakes pretense for substance. In the wake of Nat Turner's 1831 apocalyptic insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, and ongoing anxiety about nearby Native Americans, the Jack- son citizens labeled Mormons slave-tamperers and Indian allies, associat- ing fellow citizens with Others to "convince outsiders that Mormons deserved eviction." An otherwise unsympathetic eyewitness, Alexander Majors, said of the claim that Mormons "were bad citizens, that they stole whatever they could get their hands on and were not law abiding. This is not true with reference to their citizenship in Jackson County. ... The cause of all this trouble was solely from the claim that they had a new revelation direct from the Almighty." As Bushman demonstrated, "the actual basis of the settlers' fears was . . . the Mormons' growing political influence." Jackson County settlers understood the politics of revelation perfectly.23 According to Newel Knight, "the public mind became so excited that on the 20th of July [1833] a meeting was called and largely attended by not only the rabble of the county, but also the men holding official posi- tions." They forbade further immigration of Mormons and demanded the removal of those already settled in their midst. Meanwhile the Mor- mons would have to close their store and stop printing Smith's revelations and the newspaper that circulated them. "Cool deliberation" afterwards produced a rationale that explicitly connected immigration and "pretended revelations from heaven." From a few missionaries to twelve hundred Mormons in two years, "and each successive autumn and spring pours forth its swarms among us," the citizens worried. "It requires no gift of prophecy to tell that the day is not far distant when the civil government of the county will be in their hands; when the sher- iff, the justices, and the county judges will be Mormons, or persons

23. "Manifesto,"most accessiblein Smith et al., History of the Church,1: 374-76; Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 89. For a more perceptive reading of the conflict,see Givens, Viperon the Hearth,43-47; Bushman,"Mormon Perse- cutions in Missouri," 13; Alexander Majors, Seventy Yearson the Frontier: Alexan- der Majors' Memoirs (Columbus, OH, 1950), 49.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 292 * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2006) wishing to court their favor from motives of interest or ambition." The implications frightened the locals: "What would be the fate of our lives and property, in the hands of jurors and witnesses, who do not blush to declare, and would not hesitate to swear, that they have wrought miracles, and have been the subjects of miraculous and supernatural cures, have converse with God and His angels, and possess and exercise the gifts of divination?"24 On July 23, 1833, gentlemen of property and standing led a mob numbering over three hundred. They tore down the printing office in which William Phelps published the newspaper and Smith's revelations. They escorted Edward Partridge from his home to courthouse square in Independence.25 "1 was stripped of my hat, coat and vest and daubed with tar from head to foot," Partridge wrote, "and then had a quantity of feathers put upon me." By his own account, Partridge maintained a dignified and meek willingness "to suffer for the sake of Christ," but the sworn statements of his attackers contend that they only defended themselves. Partridge assaulted them, several said, "and would then and there have beat, bruised, and ill-treated" the crowd. In self-defense they "did necessarily and unavoidably a little beat, bruise, wound, and ill- treat the said Edward Partridge, and rend, tear, damage and spoil the wearing apparel, and unavoidably did besmear the said Edward Par- tridge with a little pitch, tar and feathers . . . doing no unnecessary damage to the said Edward Partridge."26 With their bishop beaten, bruised, and humiliated, their store closed, their press destroyed, and the printed revelations burned, Mormon leaders reluctantly agreed to leave Jackson County by the end of 1833. But as the year wore on violence escalated. Mormon settlements were raided, homes burned, livestock stolen, men horsewhipped. By 1834 most Jack- son County Mormons found refuge on the northern side of the Missouri

24. Newel Knight,Journal, in Scraps of Biography (Salt Lake City, UT, 1883), 76; "Mormonism," in Smith et al., History of the Church, 1: 397-98. 25. Leonard Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing: Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York, 1970); Smith et al., History of the Church, 1: 391-92, lists Lieutenant Governor Lilburn Boggs, George Simpson, and Reverends McCoy, Kavanaugh, Hunter, Fitzhugh, Pixley, Likens, Lovelady, and Ewingas participants. 26. PartridgeCourt Record,Jonathan Shepherd's 1st Special Plea, Jackson CountyCourthouse, Independence, MO.

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River in Clay County, and by 1836 the Missouri legislature set aside sparsely populated Caldwell County for Mormon occupation. Soon Far West, the new county seat, became home to Smith and several thousand of his followers. Hundreds more settled nearby, and the unceasing missionary work recruited continually. Even in England, missionaries were finding the first of thousands who were looking for a prophet who received dialogic revelations. Smith, meanwhile, received word from Jesus Christ of his "will that the city of Far West should be built up speedily by the gathering of my saints; And also that other places should be appointed ... in the regions round about."27 In the summer of 1838, Smith's outspoken counselor, Sidney Rigdon, took advantage of a July 4 oration to declare independence from moboc- racy and promised a fight should Missourians attempt to displace the Mormons again. "That mob that comes upon us to disturb us; it shall be between them and us a war of extermination, for we will follow them, till the last drop of their blood was spilled, or else they will have to exterminate us." Rigdon's hyperbole struck a chord with many Mor- mons. The Sons of Dan, a Mormon paramilitary organization perhaps three hundred strong, took encouragement. They worked to consolidate Mormon economic and political cooperation and saw Mormon John Corrill elected as Caldwell County's delegate to the Missouri legislature. At the August 6, 1838, election at Gallatin in Daviess County, Danites mustered the Mormon electorate, which was opposed by the Whig candidate, William Peniston. A veteran opponent of the Mormons, Penis- ton's stump speech attacked "the Mormon Leaders [as] a set of horse thieves, liars, counterfeiters" and hinted at the politics of revelation. "You know they profess to heal the sick, and cast out devils, and you all know that is a lie." A fight erupted between Peniston supporters and Danites, which escalated into widespread violence. Mormons looted and burned a store in Gallatin. Missouri militia took Mormon prisoners, and an attempt to rescue them led to the pitched Battle of Crooked River on October 25, which left casualties on both sides. On October 27, Gover- nor Lilburn Boggs answered Rigdon's call for a war of extermination. He issued orders to militia General John B. Clark, "The Mormons [are] in the attitude of open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made open war upon the people of this state. .. . [They] must be treated

27. Doctrine and Covenants, 115: 17-18.

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V4~~ u.sM1A, 6{AND AS,' X,NT Woodcut of the August 6, 1838, election day fight between residentsof Daviess County, Missouri,and Mormonimmigrants.

as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the state." The Missouri militia laid siege to Far West, and Mormons gathered at nearby Haun's Mill were massacred.28 Smith and his closest associates were captured and sentenced to exe- cution at a hasty court martial by an old foe from Jackson County named Samuel D. Lucas. Rescued by their former lawyer Alexander Doniphan, the militia commander from Clay County, the Mormon leaders were escorted to Independence and thence to Richmond for a court of inquiry. Austin A. King, judge of Missouri's fifth judicial circuit, heard evidence to determine whether crimes had been committed, and if so whether probable cause could be established against the Mormon leaders. King's partisan court denied due process to Smith and others, but it accomplished the Missouri government's objective of ridding the state of Mormons. King found probable cause for treason and bound Smith for trial on the first Thursday in March 1839. The Mormon prisoners were

28. Sidney Rigdon to Friendsand Fellow Citizens,July 4, 1838, Far West, MO, in Smithet al., Historyof the Church,3: 57; AlexanderBaugh, "A Call to Arms:The 1838 MormonDefense of NorthernMissouri" (Ph.D. diss., Brigham YoungUniversity, 1996), 68-101.

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C. C. A. Christensen,"Arrest of MormonLeaders." In October 1838 Joseph Smith and other Mormonleaders were arrestedby Missourimilitiamen on the outskirtsof the FarWest. Courtesyof BrighamYoung UniversityMuseum of Art, all rights reserved.

told by the blacksmith charged with chaining them together that "the Judge had made out a mitimus and sentenced us to jail for treason ... that we might not get bail ... [and] that the Judge declared his intention to keep us in jail until all the 'Mormons' were driven out of the state."29 While Smith spent the winter of 1838-1839 in jail in Liberty, Missouri, his followers migrated eastward to Illinois. He joined them there in March, having escaped with the aid of the guards charged with executing his change of venue order to Columbia.30

29. HyrumSmith in Times& Seasons(published from 1839 to 1846, vol. 4 publishedin 1843, Nauvoo,IL), 4: 254, rep. in Smithet al., Historyof the Church, 3: 420. 30. AlexanderL. Baugh, "We Took our Changeof Venue for the State of Illinois:The GallatinHearing and the Escapeof Joseph Smithand the Mormon Prisonersfrom Missouri, 1839," MormonHistorical Studies, 2 (Spring 2001), 59-82; Gordon A. Madsen,"Joseph Smith and the MissouriCourt of Inquiry: Austin A. King's Quest for Hostages,"BYU Studies,43 (2004), 92-136. The primarydocuments of the court of inquiryare housed in differentversions in repositoriesin Columbiaand Jefferson City, MO.

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King focused on the politics of revelation in establishing the charge of treason against Smith. Mormon Parley Pratt, together with several other witnesses, recalled how King emphasized the Mormon "belief of the sev- enth chapter of Daniel concerning the kingdom of God, which should subdue all other kingdoms and stand forever. And when told that we believe that prophecy, the court turned to the clerk and said: 'Write that down; it is a strong point for treason.' " The defense's objection that the Bible itself must be treason exposed the fundamental problem. Many antebellum Americans believed abstractly in Daniel's prophecy, Isaiah's theophany, and Moses' receipt of the commandments, but their nascent democracy could not tolerate a modern prophet who claimed to come by his revelations in biblical fashion. To do so necessarily transferred power from the people to the prophet. The willingness of Mormon converts to migrate to Missouri and act out Smith's apocalyptic revelations suggests their persuasive power. The fierce opposition Smith and his followers faced testifies to the power of the politics of revelation in shap- ing the culture war. The most basic issue was at stake. Was ultimate authority in the people or in Smith's God? Writing to Smith in 1835, Governor Daniel Dunklin answered for the state of Missouri: "in this Republic the vox populi is the vox dei."3' Smith arrived in Illinois with a clear sense of both his vulnerability and his political power. Stripped of due process, denied redress for grievances, and imprisoned for the preceding winter, Smith determined to use all his power to protect Mormonism against further aggression, but he refused to stop receiving revelations that tended inevitably toward the establishment of a literal kingdom. He tried to do both by formulat- ing a "strategy for neutralizing any future opposition to Mormon settlements in Illinois.""2 Mormons invested in land along the Mississippi in Hancock County where, in October 1839, Smith summoned Mormons to build the city of Nauvoo. The state legislature chartered the largest cities in Illinois, giving them constitutional controls independent of the state. Smith and his lobbyists managed to obtain a liberal charter for Nauvoo that created an

31. Parley P. Pratt, Jr., ed., Autobiographyof Parley Parker Pratt (Salt Lake City, UT, 1950), 211-15; B. H. Roberts, A ComprehensiveHistory of the Church of Jesus Christof Latter-daySaints (6 vols., Provo,UT, 1965), 1: 363. 32. Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace and People of Promise (Salt Lake City, UT, 2002), 99.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 297 independent militia, city courts, and city officers empowered to "pass ordinances that contradicted state law, as long as those ordinances did not conflict with the state or national constitution." Illinois legislators overwhelmingly approved the charter in December 1840, and it became effective with the election held the first Monday in February 1841. Mor- mons, including Smith, along with a few friendly non-Mormons, were elected to the civil and martial offices. To the faithful, Nauvoo's charter was "our Magna Charta," guaranteeing at last constitutional protections against mobs and intolerance. The young, politically aspiring editor of the Warsaw Signal, Thomas Sharp, bitterly denounced Nauvoo's legisla- tive and martial power and fumed at the way the legislature had insulated itself and Nauvoo from the popular will. He understood Smith's inten- tions to ensure, as one Mormon noted, "that the scenes acted out in Missouri shall not be acted over again."33 Nauvoo rose like a fortress on a hill, above the swampy Mississippi River lowland. It became a fulcrum of Illinois politics and the stage for Smith's foray into the national presidential race. A revelation to Smith in January 1841, days before the first city election, told him to write a proclamation "to all the kings of the world . . to the honorable president-elect [William Harrison], and the high-minded governors of the nation in which you live." He was to write "in the spirit of meekness and by the power of the Holy Ghost" but to declare the will of Christ to the world's political authorities. Inherent, then, in this revelation as in the earlier ones is the assumption of sovereign authority. The conspicuous first-person voice of the Lord says nothing of the will of the people but declares his will to "my people." Elsewhere in Ohio, Missouri, and Illi- nois, the voice of the people was the voice of God, but in Nauvoo, God spoke directly through Smith. The revelation called for cooperative efforts to raise money, establish a joint-stock company, and build a boarding house and a temple. It sent missionaries to gather more converts and made Brigham Young president of the increasingly powerful quorum of twelve apostles. Believers streamed into Illinois from Upper Canada, the British Isles, and the Atlantic seaboard, and the population of Nauvoo grew quickly to twelve thousand. An alarmed William Harris wrote from nearby Warsaw, "is not Mormonism inimical to the institu-

33. Ibid., 103. "Proclamation," Nauvoo, IL, Times & Seasons, Jan. 15, 1841; John S. Fullmer to James Rucker, Mar. 7, 1841, LDS Church Archives.

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C. A. A. Christensen,"Joseph Mustering the Nauvoo Legion." The stylized legionnairesform a wall aroundNauvoo underJoseph Smith's direction.Note Christensen'scontrast of Smith'spowerlessness in the face of the Missouri militiacompared to his power as LieutenantGeneral of the Nauvoo Legion. Courtesyof BrighamYoung UniversityMuseum of Art, all rights reserved.

tion of our country? Cannot Smith, at any time, set himself up as supe- rior to civil law?"34 Spurned by Martin Van Buren during a December 1839 visit to the White House to seek redress for lost rights and property in Missouri, Smith led Nauvoo voters for Harrison in 1840 while Illinois generally went for Van Buren in the hotly contested popular election. As Nauvoo grew the battle lines hardened. Thomas Sharp's Warsaw Signal editorials fed anti-Mormon animosity. "Whenever they, as a people," Sharp wrote in May 1841, "step beyond the proper sphere of a religious denomina-

34. Doctrine and Covenants, 124: 45; Smith et al., History of the Church, 5: 232; Susan Easton Black, "How Large Was the Population of Nauvoo," BYU Studies, 35 (1995), 91-94; Leonard, Nauvoo, 62-90; StephenJ. Fleming, "Sweep- ing Everything Before It: Early Mormonism in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey," BYU Studies, 40 (2001), 72-104; Fleming has also shared unpublished data on the relative wealth of Philadelphia area converts in the 1840s; William Harris, MormonismPortrayed Its Errors and Absurdities (Warsaw, IL, 1841).

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Harper,JOSEPH SMITH AND THE POLITICSOF REVELATION* 299 tion, and become a political body, as many of our citizens are beginning to apprehend will be the case, then this press stands pledged to take a stand against them." Emboldened by Nauvoo's charter, Smith determined that if elected executives refused to enforce constitutional government, he would. "When we have petitioned those in power for assistance," Smith told the Nauvoo militia in May 1843, "they have always told us they had no power to help us, damn such power-when they give me power to protect the innocent I will never say I can do nothing. I will exercise that power for their good. So help me God." He unapologetically exercised his political might by offering Mormon support to champions of toleration and redress. The Quincy Whig quoted him in anticipation of the 1842 election saying that Mormons "care not a fig for a Whig or a Democrat: They are both alike to us; but we shall go for our friends, our tried friends in the cause of human liberty, which is the cause of God." Both Whigs and Democrats answered by nominat- ing Mormon candidates for county and state offices. Nauvoo's one-sided vote helped elect Thomas Ford governor and persuaded the aspiring Stephen Douglas to take up the Mormon cause.35 In 1843 Smith promised to vote for Whig candidate Cyrus Walker for the state legislature in return for Walker's successful legal defense against Missouri's attempt to extradite Smith. On Sunday, August 6, Smith's sermon addressed the coming election. He lauded Walker's integrity and legal skill and affirmed his intention to vote for Walker, but continued, "I am not come to tell you to vote this way, that way or the other. ... The Lord has not given me a revelation concerning politics. I have not asked Him for one. I am a third party, and stand independent and alone." Smith then informed the congregation that his brother and close counselor "Hyrum tells me this morning that he has had a testimony to the effect that it would be better for the people to vote for Hoge; and I never knew Hyrum to say he ever had a revelation and it failed. Let God speak and all men hold their peace." The Democratic ticket overwhelmingly carried the next day's election. "From this time forth," Governor Thomas Ford wrote in his history of Illinois, "the Whigs generally, and

35. Warsaw, Illinois, Signal, May 19, 1841; Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, comps., The Wordsof JosephSmith (Provo,UT, 1980), 199; Quincy,Illi- nois, Whig,Jan. 22, 1842; KennethW. Godfrey,"Causes of Mormonand Non- MormonConflict in HancockCounty, Illinois, 1839-1846" (Ph.D. diss., Brigham YoungUniversity, 1967), 43-72.

This content downloaded from 129.170.195.144 on Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:51:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 300 * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Summer 2006) a part of the Democrats, determined upon driving the Mormons out of the state; and everything connected with the Mormons became political." James Palmer, a Nauvoo Mormon, captured the politics of revelation by moving seamlessly from a worshipful description of Smith, "sent from the heavenly worlds on a divine mission," to a report of "great threats of mob violence by the anti-Mormons who lived in adjoining counties. They wished to drive us from the state," Palmer wrote, "because we outnumbered them at the ballot box. On election days, we could elect our own county officers. They despised us also because of our religion."36 In this charged environment, Smith dictated his most countercultural revelations and announced his candidacy for the United States presi- dency. With the assumption of authority inherent in his first revelations now fully developed, Smith began teaching that God is an exalted man, and that restored priesthood could exalt men and women to the same stature. In April 1842 Smith received a revelation authorizing the establishment of the Kingdom of God and His Laws, and on April 18, 1844, he acted. He lamented that the United States "is rent, from center to circumference, with party strife, political intrigues, and sectional interest," and henceforth, in accord with his earliest revelations, Mormons would work toward a literal fulfillment of Isaiah's prophetic ideal: "The Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king; he will save us."37 The argument that most Americans shared Smith's sense of Providence ignores the radical politics of revelation. Abstract civil religion created to both sustain and accommodate sovereignty in the people ran counter to the trajectory of Smith's dialogic revelations.38 Smith's platform circulated far and wide in the early months of 1844.

36. Smith et al., History of the Church, 5: 526-27; Thomas Ford, History of Illinois (Chicago, IL, 1854), 319; Hyrum L. Andrus, comp., They Knew the Prophet (Salt Lake City, UT, 1999), 174. 37. Isaiah 33:22, Doctrine and Covenants, 38, 41. 38. On this point see Nathan O. Hatch, "Mormon and Methodist: Popular Religion in the Crucible of the Free Market," Journal of Mormon History, 20 (Spring 1994), 43-44; Doctrine and Covenants, 132; Ehat and Cook, comps., Wordsof Joseph Smith, 340-62; Klaus J. Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago, IL, 1981), 132. One of the most terse yet potent of those communiques came to Smith in Apr. 1844 and said simply, "Ye are my constitution and I am your God and ye are my spokesmen, therefore from henceforth keep my commandments." Quoted in Andrew F. Ehat, "It Seems Like Heaven Began

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Hundreds of campaigning missionaries stumped across the country. "There is not a nation or dynasty, now occupying the earth, which ac- knowledges Almighty God as their lawgiver," Smith declared, "I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely for a THEO-DEMOCRACY, where God and the people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness." In Nauvoo, meanwhile, growing resentment of the recent revelations among a faction of Smith's followers led to the publication of a dissenting paper, the Expositor, on June 7. As mayor, Smith led the Nauvoo city council to a decision to destroy the press as a public nuisance. This act seemed despotic to antagonists inside and outside of Nauvoo and gave Smith's political enemies an opportunity to denounce and prosecute him. In response, Governor Ford summoned Smith to Carthage, the Hancock County seat, to answer charges of inciting a riot. Having "entered into recognizance for their appearance at the next term of the Hancock Circuit Court," Smith and his brother Hyrum "were immediately arrested again on a charge of Treason against the state of Illinois & committed to Jail to await their examination." There on June 27 a mob gunned them down-a violent rejection of the authority of the anthropomorphic God that spoke directly to Smith. It was "a deliberate political assassination, committed or condoned by some of the leading citizens of Hancock County." Acquittal for the accused assassins subse- quently showed the extent to which they represented the people. They were God in the republic.39 David Kilbourne, a neighbor of Nauvoo, thought the Mormons might learn their lesson and "hereafterbe afraid to interfere at all with the rights of the people." But he soon observed to his dismay that Brigham Young "exercises as absolute power over them as ever Joe did.... He pretends to have revelations." The most influential group of Smith's followers too seemed undeterred as they traveled west with Young, whose revelations organized the exiles as a modern "Camp of Israel," situated the Mor- mons contra-America with a reference to "the nation that has driven you on Earth:Joseph Smith and the Constitutionof the Kingdomof God," BYU Studies,20 (Spring1980), 259. 39. Joseph Smith to the Daily Globe,Apr. 14, 1844, as quoted in Millennial Star, June 22, 1861; David W. Kilbourneto ReverendThomas Dent, June 29, 1844, KilbourneCollection; Dallin H. Oaks and MarvinS. Hill, CarthageCon- spiracy: The Trial of the AccusedAssassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, IL, 1975), 6, 214.

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Joseph Smith was shot and killed by a mob while incarceratedfor treasonin Carthage,Illinois, on June 27, 1844.

out," and promised a future fulfillment of the kingdom envisioned by Smith. Kenneth Winn's observation that "ultimate authority lay with the man who could reveal God's will" went for Young as well as Smith. Tens of thousands followed both of them "with childlike faith in the revelations." The revelations offered Americans an alternative to the

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pragmatic but problematic idea of the sovereignty of the people. Revela- tions to Smith and Young located power in individuals but left authority with God, activated agency but promised inevitable accountability. They were pessimistic about the perfectibility of society and manifest destiny, yet envisioned the way to a New Jerusalem based on economic equality.40 Many early republic prophets received revelations. Ann Kirschner's fine study of early American visionaries describes their statements as "moderate," ambiguous, not wanting to "impose." And even that, she says, began to decline the year Smith and Tocqueville were born. By contrast, Nathan Hatch wrote that "Mormons distinguished themselves from other churches by claiming that mundane life was alive with" revelations, through which Smith furnished "immediate access to the god- head." As Bushman put it, Smith "forced the question of revelation on a culture struggling with its own faith." He gave "God a voice in a world that had stopped listening." As a result, everywhere Smith went he gathered followers and antagonized investors in the political status quo. His revelations compelled loyalty even as they transcended the established dimensions of political power. Smith was lynched because of mainstream fears of the fact that so many found his revelations compelling. The common attribute of Smith's converts was dissonance with a democratizing culture that distanced itself from dialogue with deity. They were, therefore, those least inclined to quarrel with the reasons Givens cited for the rejection of dialogic revelation. They regarded the Bible as living word-as evidence that God speaks-not a closed canon. Revelation did not circumscribe their liberties; it empowered them with certain knowledge of the divine will and gave them agency to act it out. They were willing to imagine a personal God whose voice spoke directly to their living prophets, all of which meant, as Marvin Hill wrote, that they "set themselves against those institutions which Alexis De Tocque- ville said were indispensable to a democratic society where individualism had become extreme."41

40. David W. Kilbourne to Reverend Thomas Dent, June 29, 1844, and Dec. 16, 1845, Kilbourne Collection; Doctrine and Covenants, 136; Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 56; Edward A. Warner, "Mormon Theodemocracy: Theocratic and Democratic Elements in Early Latter-daySaint Theology, 1827-1846" (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1973), 128-29. 41. Ann Kirschner, "'Tending to Edify, Astonish, and Instruct': Published Narratives of Spiritual Dreams and Visions in the Early Republic," Early Ameri- can Studies, 1 (Spring 2003), 216, 229; Hatch, "Mormon and Methodist." 40;

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This begins to explain why Smith enjoyed extremes of admiration and hatred. Both attest to the authority inherent in his revelations. Arguments that situate Smith's appeal primarily in socioeconomic terms do not withstand careful scrutiny, since they avoid confrontation with the fundamental issue. Indeed, Mormonism's steady growth since its inception may soon make the politics of revelation a national issue. Bushman wrote that the Jackson County, Missouri, mob's "declarations spoke of 'their society' and 'our society.' The Mormons were not simply deviants within the social group. They were outsiders whose actions did not follow the expected patterns of human behavior and who consequently could not be trusted." "Mormon community building," wrote Nathan Hatch, "came to terrify non-Mormon neighbors, particularly when it became clear that Mormons did not want to retreat from the world of politics." Harold Bloom predicted in 1991 that Mormon political power portended perpetual Republican occupation of the White House. "I cheer- fully do prophesy," he also wrote, "that some day, not too far on in the twenty-first century, the Mormons will have enough political and financial power" to disregard the American mainstream. Even allowing Bloom provocative eccentricity, he probes a controversial issue and sounds like a Painesville Telegraph editorial, or the Missouri documents Bushman cited, or the Mormons' terrified neighbors to whom Hatch refers. "What would the Mormons wish to do," Bloom asks, "if the United States ever had so large a Mormon population, and so wealthy a consolidation of Mormon economic power, that governing our democracy became impossible without Mormon cooperation? What seems like science fiction now will not seem so in 2020, if the Mormons are then one out of eight." Bloom's use of "our democracy" and "Mormon cooperation" posits a tenuous relationship between American democracy and Mormonism. Like Catholics and African Americans, Mormons have in the past been judged too threatening for inclusion. The dynamics that repeatedly led to exclusion and violence in the American past could well be reproduced in the future on a larger scale than we have ever seen before.

Richard L. Bushman, "A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-first Century," in Believing History, ed. Neilson and Woodworth, 273; Givens, By the Hand ofMormon, 213; Marvin S. Hill, "Counter-Revolution: The Mormon Reaction to the Coming of American Democracy," Sunstone, 13 (1989), 26.

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