Joseph Smith was hardly the first prophet of America’s Second Great Awakening—the tide of religious fervor that washed across the country at the start of the nineteenth century—to traffic in millenarian predictions, and he wasn’t the last. But he was the most successful. Converts followed him across the vast American continent, in conditions of unimaginable privation. Rich men, inspired by Joseph’s biblical visions, surrendered their wealth to his fledgling church. Thousands of impoverished men and women from the British Isles crammed themselves into steamships to cross the Atlantic and half of the United States to join Joseph’s flock in the American Midwest.
Yet within just a few years of their arrival, their leader was dead. Latter-day Saint historians and their Gentile colleagues have pored over many signal events in Mormon history, such as Joseph’s First Vision of God, his purported discovery of the Book of Mormon, and the Saints’ grueling trek to Utah. But most historians have ignored Joseph’s death, known to the faithful as the “martyrdom.” The church’s sacred record of Doctrine and Covenants (135:1–6) reports Joseph was killed “by an armed mob—painted black—of from 150 to 200 persons,” a phrase that appears in almost every high school history textbook in America. But the “mob” included a prominent newspaper editor, a state senator, a justice of the peace, two regimental military commanders, and men who just a few months before were faithful members of Joseph’s church. They were a “respectable set of men,” as one Carthage resident explained.
The leading citizens of southwestern Illinois could have imprisoned Joseph Smith. They could have chased him back across the Mississippi and delivered him to his old enemies in Missouri. Instead, they killed him.
From American Crucifixion, by Alex Beam. On sale April 22nd.
