In Part 38 with historian John Turner we dive into his latest book Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. In this episode, we focus on Chapter 29, “Cool as a Cucumber,” unpacking the turbulent years of 1843-1844 –arguably the beginning of the end for Joseph Smith.
We explore mounting legal pressure, political entanglements, and growing internal dissent with Nauvoo. Along the way, we examine controversial and often difficult topics, including Joseph Smith’s relationship with William Law and his wife, accusations of coercion tied to plural marriage, and an alleged physical altercation involving Watler Bagby.
This episode traces how tensions –both inside and outside the church –escalaated rapidly, setting the stage for the final chapter of Joseph Smith’s life.
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Purchase John Turner’s book here: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/97803…
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Episode Transcript
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Series Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Joseph Smith Podcast, brought to you by Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation. I am John Dehlin. It is April 1, 2026, and today we are going to be covering chapter 29 in our book, in John Turner's book, Joseph the Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. John Turner. I almost feel like this is a partly my book, which is dumb, but like, we've, we've covered this so much in this book, and it's starting to feel personal.
John Turner [00:00:35] I mean, I am happy for you to have a sense of ownership here. John Dehlin. No, we have just about made this. We could have called this a Year of Joseph Smith because we started, I think we recorded episode one in May of 2025, and that's a, you know, we're gonna finish about one calendar year later.
John Dehlin [00:00:57] That's amazing. Yeah. This has been really fun and really meaningful. Yeah. So just to catch people up, this is part 38 in our series. We're gonna be covering chapter 29 today, which is entitled Cool as a Cucumber, 1843-1844. We are gonna be bringing in a couple pages from the previous chapter, which is chapter 28, anointed 1843, because we had so much polygamy and sex and intrigue from the last couple episodes that we saved some of the political stuff for today. But I think that's perfect because the congressional race, the race for the House of Representatives that involved Nauvoo in, you know, 1843 slash 1844 was, I think, really instrumental to the anti Mormonism that springs up and is discussed in the Cool as a Cucumber chapter. So we're going to be covering that today. We're also going to be covering so much. We're going to be talking about an anti Mormon conspiracy between anti Mormons in Missouri and anti Mormons in Illinois to try to get Joseph Smith. What, Extradited to Missouri to face charges of trying to assassinate Governor Lilburn Boggs, I think. And we're also going to be talking about the undoing. I think it's kind of the beginning of the end of Joseph Smith. We've probably said that 20 times in this series, but we're going to be talking about Joseph Smith propositioning First Presidency member William Law and his wife for polygamy, their ultimate rejection of Joseph Smith's polygamy, and how that potentially leads to the beginning of the end of Joseph smith and in 1844. So a lot to cover today. We're also going to Be talking about an example of Joseph Smith's outright physical violence where he assaults someone. And I made the joke before we recorded that. It looks like your face has been assaulted, possibly by some poison ivy. So what's going on, John Turner?
John Turner [00:03:10] I mean, I may have just been afflicted for critiquing the Lord's anointed. That's always a possibility.
John Dehlin [00:03:17] Plague.
John Turner [00:03:19] Yeah, I kind of just look like I came out on the losing end after an encounter with Joseph Smith. But he was. He was pretty tough. He was tougher than I was. So I. I would be way more beat up if I got into a fight with Joseph Smith. But even though my daughter suggested that I should not go out in public for a couple of weeks, that was not Joseph Smith's way. You know, he was tarred and feathered and beat up in March of 1832, and he preached an effective sermon that morning, apparently with a couple of his attackers in the congregation. So I'm not as tough as Joseph Smith, but I have to try to level up a little bit.
John Dehlin [00:04:01] Yeah, I think it's pretty impressive that, like Joseph Smith, the day after violence being inflicted on you, you appear in public nonetheless. And here's the culprit. Is this the culprit of the violence, John Turner? And if so, how so?
John Turner [00:04:19] We think so. I mean, I am highly susceptible to poison ivy, and we do have some in our yard that I studiously avoid. And I'm pretty sure I didn't go put my face in poison ivy. At least I hope I am not that stupid. But apparently your dog can, you know, pick up the oils, and I do, or I did snuggle with the dog over the weekend, and that seems to have been a precipitating factor. Of course, our dog cannot defend himself, so he could be falsely accused. I don't know. But, I mean, I don't want to
John Dehlin [00:04:59] dox your dog, but what's your dog's name?
John Turner [00:05:01] The dog's name is Brock. He joined our family last September, and I don't know that I am after this as attached to him as Joseph Smith was to old Major. However, Brock is. Has been a great addition to the family. He is fantastic.
John Dehlin [00:05:20] And are your. Are your snuggling days with Brock over?
John Turner [00:05:24] Oh, yeah, like no face snuggles. Let's just say that I'm not going to treat him like a pariah, though. I mean, it might not be his fault.
John Dehlin [00:05:35] All right, well, let me just quickly remind everyone that this. This podcast series is best consumed in sequence. Again, this is part 38. So what you really ought to do is pause, go back and watch the first 37 episodes. You could do that on the playlist on the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. You can also do that on Spotify. We have a dedicated Joe Smith Podcast feed on Spotify and I thought we had one on Apple Podcasts if viewers and listeners can check that. Let us know if you like the Apple Podcasts app. If you can find the Joe Smith Podcast there. I tried to make sure it was there. Regardless, this series is best consumed in sequence. I will also say that this series exists due to the generosity of donors to Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories foundation, but also to this series specifically. And John Turner has told us that he may be willing to do a 10 part series on Brigham Young based on his biography of Brigham Young, but we want to pay him for that. So Please donate to donorbox.org Joseph Smith if you want to see John Turner do a 10 part series on Brigham Young and John Turner. I believe that Brigham Young would not mind people donating to a donor box link that bears the name of Joseph Smith for a series on him. Is that correct?
John Turner [00:07:07] I do not think Brigham Young would object to that.
Setting Up Chapter 29 and Context
John Dehlin [00:07:12] All right, well, we've got some, we've got. It's a short chapter, but we've still got a lot of good stuff to cover. But before we actually dive in to chapter 29, cool as a cucumber, I almost wanted to name chapter 29 turning points because it really represents for me two important turning points. One is where the State of Illinois just, I think, ultimately comes to have it out for the Mormons. I think chapter 29 really marks the turning point of where Illinois is going to take out the Mormons. But also it's where William Law and several key members of Joseph Smith's inner group. It seems to be the turning point where that cabal from Joseph Smith's perspective is formed that ultimately leads to the Nauvoo Expositor and Joseph Smith's undoing. But before we get there, I think we have to jump back to chapter 28, anointed, because we skipped a couple really important pages there that matter. And I think I'm specifically referring to page 324. Like 323. 324, where a couple dudes are running for Congress and they come to Nauvoo to try and curry the Mormon vote. But I don't want to tell you where to start. Where should we start? John Turner?
John Turner [00:08:43] Well, I have to go back even just A little bit further. Okay, so just, just for your reference, it's on page 317 in the book, and it relates to trouble from Missouri that ultimately does tie into this Illinois election. And in my opinion, it's, for me, it's an iconic moment in this biography where we get a glimpse of a combative, but also, I would even say, brave and dashing Joseph Smith. So In June of 1843, Joseph traveled with Emma, whom he had recently and not totally successfully introduced to the principle of plural marriage. He traveled with her to visit some of her family in a place called Palestine Grove, which is about 150 miles northeast of Nauvoo in Illinois. And while Joseph and Emma were there, two men came to arrest him. Two lawmen, one from Missouri and one from Illinois. And they had a writ to arrest Joseph and extradite him to Missouri to face the charge of treason stemming from the 1838 Mormon War. Now, to recap, a grand jury had indicted Joseph and other Mormon defendants on this and related charges in 1839. But then Missouri officials had allowed the Mormon defendants to simply leave the state rather than to face what would have been a capital trial that could have included execution. So, in a sense, these cases were open and Missouri officials were more antagonistic toward Joseph, particularly in the wake of the Lilliburn Boggs shooting. And so they made a new attempt to extradite him. And these two lawmen, Joseph Reynolds and Harmon Wilson, they found out where Joseph was staying, Joseph and Emma were staying, and they went to the home. While everybody was eating dinner, Joseph tried to slip out the back and run away, but they. They stopped him and they pointed guns at his breast and told him they would shoot him dead if they made. If he made any resistance. This was more akin, really. I write it was more akin to a kidnapping than a standard arrest. So their plan was to spirit him away across the Mississippi river, get him to Missouri as quickly as possible. But they had to stop somewhere nearby, refresh their horses. And Joseph's supporters were able to obtain a writ of habeas corpus from a local judge, which gave him the privilege of coming before a court that could rule on whether this arrest was legal. Now, as this was transpiring, it wasn't clear if Joseph's supporters were going to be able to extricate him. And so one of Joseph's lawyers went to the hotel where Joseph's captors were holding him, and they sort of bang on the door. Joseph Reynolds shut the door in the lawyer's face, and he turns to Joseph and says, God damn you, I will shoot you. You know, basically, you know, don't resist. And Joseph, he rips open his shirt and just yells at Reynolds and Wilson to shoot away. But eventually Reynolds and Wilson, you know, they backed down and they recognized they weren't just going to be able to get Joseph out of town. So I think John Dehlin, that would be a great Joseph Smith statue to place on Temple Square. What do you think?
John Dehlin [00:13:41] Yeah, like with his like hands ripping open his chest and sticking out his bare chest and saying, shoot me. Yeah, yeah, I love it.
John Turner [00:13:53] You know, Joseph, yeah, he's 37 years old at this point. He's still a physically imposing man and you know, he's vigorous. And I think that's a, that's an image of Joseph that was part of his personality which we see from, you know, see from time to time.
Joseph Smith's Escape from Extradition
John Dehlin [00:14:17] And I just want to make sure I got a couple things right. It seems like I wrote that Governor Ford played an important role in actually helping Joseph Smith escape extradition. Or maybe was he governor at the time or soon to be governor now?
John Turner [00:14:40] He was governor at the time. So the way the procedure worked is the governor of Missouri asks the governor of Illinois to issue a writ for Joseph's arrest. So it's a request from another state and Ford more or less has to comply as a matter of course, as a matter of procedure. He doesn't want the state of Missouri to continue harassing Joseph Smith. You know, this has been going on for a couple of years. And so he sent, he does Joseph a favor by sending word to Nauvoo that these guys are on their way to Palestine Grove to arrest the Prophet. And so Joseph's friends, including William Clayton, rush there and warn him, but they don't realize that the lawmen know where to come. And so Joseph doesn't in this case take sufficient measures to secrete himself and avoid arrest.
John Dehlin [00:15:56] I couldn't help but, you know, in 2026, I couldn't help but think about Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela and how we swooped in and kidnapped the president of Venezuela and brought him to the United States for justice. Like I'm always drawing parallels between Joseph Smith and modern day events or characters. I couldn't help but write Venezuela in the, in the margins.
John Turner [00:16:20] Well, fortunately these two lawmen wasn't exactly the full fury of the US military. But you know, if you think about this from the perspective of Joseph Smith, this is a, this is a serious threat. If, you know, this time, you know, there have been some Other instances in which people have come to arrest him. And sometimes he hides out. Sometimes he's in Nauvoo, and so he sort of have. Has people protecting him. But here he's away from Nauvoo, and these two guys get him, and if they can get him across the river, he thinks he might be cooked, and that might. That might be the end. He certainly doesn't think he's going to get a fair trial in Missouri. And so his goal then is, I've got to get. I've got to get to Nauvoo. And it. It becomes a bit of. It becomes a bit of theater. So both he and his captors start heading back toward Nauvoo. They're still hoping to find some way of getting him across the river. And. But Joseph, you know, he's not going to. He's not going to get on a boat. First of all, he and his group insist on traveling over land. And these two lawmen can't really prevent the group from diverting to Nauvoo. And when Joseph gets back to Nauvoo, all the people are there to welcome him, including Emma and his children and the Nauvoo Legions band. So he's sort of welcome back as, you know, as a hero. And then. Well, which court's going to judge on the legality of his arrest? Well, his lawyers ask the Nauvoo Municipal Court, at which Joseph customarily presides. He doesn't. I don't think he presides over his own case, but this is a very friendly court, of course, and the Nauvoo charter had not authorized the city court to grant writs of habeas corpus in cases that went beyond city statutes. But the city council had expanded the court's authority. And Joseph's lawyers also include a man named Cyrus Walker, who at the time is a Whig Party candidate in that year's congressional race. Joseph had endorsed his candidacy in part because Walker accepted Nauvoo's habeas corpus authority. Now, I realize this is getting a little bit in the weeds, the legal weeds, but I have to emphasize just how important this principle was to Joseph Smith. I mean, it was. It was something he defended with religious fervor, that Nauvoo had the right, the legal right, to protect its citizens from arrest and being taken elsewhere to stand trial. And Joseph wanted. He said, you know, I'll spill my heart's blood first before I abandon this principle. So it was super important to him. He wanted state politicians, other aspiring politicians, to back Nauvoo on that principle.
John Dehlin [00:20:30] And the habeas corpus thing becomes really critical in the next chapter. And I just think the people of Illinois end up feeling like it's too much power for any one man. I kind of end up writing it's like a Mormon caliphate in Nauvoo or a theocracy. If Joseph is mayor and chief justice and prophet and head of the legion, and then he's got a law on the books that basically says no one can touch him, then he could literally murder people, you know, have sex with a bunch of people's wives, just flaunt the law and he's untouchable.
John Turner [00:21:11] Exactly.
John Dehlin [00:21:12] Yeah.
John Turner [00:21:13] No. And anti Mormons. And not just anti Mormons, but anti Mormons and maybe people who are leery of the Mormons to some degree and just other state politicians, they do get alarmed at the authority, the legal authority that Nauvoo arrogates to itself. Now, from the Mormon perspective, this is a principle that is vital to protect Joseph and others from persecution. And I can certainly understand why, why Joseph felt that way. I think it was crazy for Missouri to dredge up what I think from the start were unjust charges from back in 1838. And essentially, as your analogy, Contemporary analogy suggested sort of grab and snatch Joseph. But when Joseph and Nauvoo claims these legal powers for itself, it does. It does make Joseph untouchable. And when we get to the end of the story in the spring of 1844, you see, state politicians like Governor Thomas Ford insist that Joseph can't shield himself from state laws or. Or county courts on the basis of Nauvoo's own authority. And that is a major point of contention. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:22:55] And I just want to add, and I remember this really sinking into me when I read Fawn Brody's book back in 2001. Like, there's a few core reasons why Joseph Smith ultimately was martyred. And I think one of them touches here, it's sort of betrayal of people that had supported him. And I just want to note, and I'm kind of going back a teeny bit, but Governor Ford helped Joseph avoid being kidnapped.
John Turner [00:23:28] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:23:29] And then later, Joseph Smith just puts Governor Ford on blast over this habeas corpus thing, if I'm understanding it right. So in that sense, he's kind of betraying someone who is trying to help him out. And then again, this Walker guy, you know, was his attorney. It was important in helping Joseph maintain the rights of habeas corpus. And then we're going to hear in just a bit, how Joseph sort of betrays Walker, helps his opponent get elected. And in that sense he's playing both sides in too many issues and ultimately betraying people who really worked to help him and in that sense stoking antipathy against him and his people by constantly betraying people who stuck their necks out for him. Is that fair?
John Turner [00:24:21] Oh, that is fair. And this is one reason I think that Joseph does this is ever since the Mormons started settling in Jackson county, they have had no solution for anti Mormon opposition. So what are the two basic solutions in the face of persecution and opposition? Basically make nice, accommodate, maybe abandon some of, you know, some of your key principles or fight back. Legally, politically, militarily, nothing works. When the, when the Mormons sort of, you know, more or less play nice as their numbers swell, opposition's inevitable. When the Mormons, you know, fight back either politically or otherwise, opposition. Opposition gets even more inflamed. So I think Joseph increasingly is in this vice and he can't, he can't find any solutions that help him get out of it. And many of the solutions he tries over the last year of his life are increasingly combative, reckless, ultimately counterproductive.
John Dehlin [00:25:57] Really quickly on 319 you write Joseph embarrassed Reynolds and Wilson by inviting them to dinner and seating them at the head of his table. I think in the next chapter there's another instance where Joseph invites some of his opponents, who he ends up foiling to breakfast or dinner. Is this a tool that Joseph increasingly employs of sort of extending generosity as a way to humiliate people he's defeated or am I over interpreting that?
John Turner [00:26:33] No, I think that's. I, I think that's right. So I think it's sort of part of the theater and I actually think it's not overly welcome hospitality. So I think you're right to say that in a way it's humiliating for his enemies to have to sit at his table and receive his hospitality, but it's something he does a couple of times and I suppose they, you know, they need somewhere to stay and eat, but I don't think, I don't think his enemies like the treatment. I know in the second instance you're mentioning they complained about it and I, I think might have complained that he, that he sent them a bill for what he had offered, but I'm not positive about that.
Mormon Votes and Illinois Politics
John Dehlin [00:27:23] So does this take us to 322 where we talk about Walker, the Walker and Hodge runs for Congress?
John Turner [00:27:33] Yep. So definitely. So there's a, there's an election. I think the 1st of August of 1843. And the big prize is the House seat in Illinois's 6th congressional district that includes Hancock county and therefore includes a large Mormon population. And essentially the Mormons are numerous enough that they hold the balance of power.
John Dehlin [00:28:08] They're a swing boat as a block.
John Turner [00:28:10] Is that they are the swing vote that is, that is up for grabs.
John Dehlin [00:28:15] You probably don't you. This is a cold question but like total Mormons versus total voters in Hancock county, like what percentage they were in terms of a voting block. I know I'm totally putting you on the spot there. Is it like 2%? Is it like 5%? Is it 10%?
John Turner [00:28:32] No, it's, it's, it's bigger than that. I don't, I don't, I don't recall the raw numbers. You can essentially find them because you can, you can find the vote by county for 1843. But let me illustrate it this way. In the end, the winning candidate lost every county. Well, at least lost most counties in the district. But an overwhelming Hancock county majority won the election. So the Mormons were the decisive voting
John Dehlin [00:29:08] probably double digit percentage of voters in
John Turner [00:29:11] the county, I think, I think definitely.
John Dehlin [00:29:14] But I mean 5 or 10%'s a lot, you know, so. Okay, keep going. So we've got two people running. Tell us about Walker and is it Hogue or Hodge or do you know, I.
John Turner [00:29:24] Well, you know, as it's often the case on our series, I'm so used to writing these things but not pronouncing them. I say HOJ HOJ H O D GE so there's a Whig candidate, Cyrus Walker, whom Joseph endorsed early in the year because they were friendly and he was known to be friendly to the
John Dehlin [00:29:41] Saints and Walker had just helped him with the habeas Corpus stuff.
John Turner [00:29:44] Right, right. And then, and then Joseph Hoage, who's a Democrat, who's a Democrat, who's a Democrat. Now Joseph generally lean Democratic. Actually once I haven't really been able to nail down why that was the case. I've asked Ben park and some other historians going a ways back that that was Joseph's leaning. However, he does go back and forth a bit in the 1840s. He endorsed the Whig candidate for president in 1840 against the Democrat Martin Van Buren, who had not supported Mormon petitions for redress in the wake of the Missouri conflict. One thing that Joseph does, or that the, the church really does, is they make it clear that the Mormons are going to vote with unanimity. So a church newspaper puts that out there. We would suggest the necessity of unanimity. It can answer no good purpose that half the citizens should disenfranchise the other half, thus rendering Nauvoo powerless.
John Dehlin [00:31:04] And I found it interesting that it was third and fourth Mormon prophets John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff, if I read it right, were behind that pronouncement.
John Turner [00:31:13] They were the editors of the Nauvoo neighbor newspaper. So now, whether they had said that or not, the two candidates know we've got to come to Nauvoo and we have to try to win the Mormon vote. Now, to win the Mormon vote, they're both going to do stump speeches publicly. But in reality, there's only one person they really need to persuade, and that's Joseph Smith. So Walker, I think despite Joseph's endorsement, he knows this is sort of up for grabs. Hoag is certainly not giving up. And he comes to Nauvoo. He meets with Joseph. But what really tips, tips the election is Thomas Ford sends a Democrat, right? He's. He's the Democrat, the sitting governor. He sends word to Nauvoo that he intends to shield Joseph from further legal harassment and give some other assurances.
John Dehlin [00:32:25] And is that pandering? Is that. Is that basically Ford wanting to influence the Mormon voting bloc?
John Turner [00:32:31] Oh, absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:32:32] During election time.
John Turner [00:32:34] This is right before the election. And Joseph is not going to change his mind without that level of assurance. Now, in reality, I think this actually was also Ford's position. He had doubts about the Nauvoo charter, but he also thought that Missouri was unfairly targeting Joseph Smith. But he doesn't put it in his own writing. He sends a letter, you know, sort of from some, from one of his political allies, but it gets the point across. Now, this overture from the Democrats, it puts Joseph in a bit of a bind. He's given his word to the Whig candidate, Cyrus Walker. So he kind of comes up with a creative solution. He. He essentially makes it known that he's going to fulfill his purpose, personal promise to vote for Walker. But Hym Smith tells a public meeting of several thousand church members that he, Hym, had received a revelation. It was wisdom to vote for Hoge or Hodge. Maybe it's Hodge. I'm going to start calling him. Hodge sounds better. And Joseph then comes out and says, I never knew Hyrum say he ever had a revelation. And it failed. So that is, that is a blessing for the Saints to vote the Democratic ticket.
John Dehlin [00:34:11] And as someone, and Again, I remember 20, 30 years ago being put off by this because as someone who's Trying to call balls and strikes in terms of what are credible allegations against Joseph Smith's character. Like to promise Walker that Walker would enjoy Joseph's support, especially after Walker had stuck his neck out for Joseph and the Saints. But then to kind of duplicitously encourage the saints to vote for Hodge. That's duplicitous. That's. It seems deceitful and it seems to lack integrity and it's not necessarily smart because it represents a betrayal of people who really stuck their necks out for you. What do you say about that?
John Turner [00:35:06] Well, I think that's probably true. Now. I think if Joseph Smith were a politician rather than a prophet and religious leader, we would probably, we might just shrug our shoulders and say that's politics, that's politics.
John Dehlin [00:35:24] Yeah.
John Turner [00:35:25] And I will say Joseph also was a politician. And I think he does this not necessarily because he's just duplicitous or not true to his word, though in this case that was true. He does have, you know, he does have something of a need to be on good terms with the governor. The governor has power to sign more writs of arrest and extradition. And so that might have been Joseph's calculus. Now of course this totally antagonizes the other side, the Whigs, the wigs. Now I don't, I actually could not find a specific reaction from Cyrus Walker. I'm sure he wasn't pleased about this. But you know, Joseph's opponents in Hancock county mostly have been political Whigs. And a leading Whig newspaper, the Warsaw Message, complained in print. A revelation from heaven turned a majority against us. I mean this was all publicly known. Hyrum Smith's revelation settled this congressional race. And in the wake of the election, you know, days and weeks afterwards, the church's opponents in, in Hancock county, they start to organize far more seriously and aggressively than had been the case to this point. There are meetings in Carthage and elsewhere in which committees are formed and they pass resolutions complaining about Joseph's exercise of political power. They also pledge to assist in Joseph's arrest and extradition. And so this, this turns up the heat considerably. And there are some mobs that try to prevent some church members taking county level offices. So this creates significant political and legal peril for Joseph moving forward.
John Dehlin [00:38:13] I'm reminded that there's actually revelation about this if I am accessing it right. The Doctrine and Covenants, section 134, at least verse 9, suggests that societies should not try to, let's see, religious society should not try to influence society through political force. Or be merged with civil government. So as far as the Doctrine and Covenants goes, in Joseph Smith Revelations go, there's at least decent evidence that the Doctrine and Covenants urged the Church to stay politically neutral. And subsequently, for a long, long time, the Mormon Church's policy was we don't take sides on politics. We're politically neutral. And maybe that eventual stance by the Mormon Church of neutrality politically, or at least appearance on the surface of political neutrality, has its roots in this backfiring for Joseph Smith in the Nauvoo time period.
John Turner [00:39:16] Well, it actually took the Church a little bit longer to learn that lesson. So the church really moved in that direction when it was making a serious push for Utah statehood in the 1890s. That it. That there was a recognition that it was better to have church members supporting both political parties because then both parties had an incentive to, you know, be on good terms with. With church leaders.
John Dehlin [00:39:54] Interesting. Okay. Well, in this case, it feels like Joseph betrays Walker, but, you know, in just a calculus, to do what he feels like is best for himself. In the Saints, he sides with Hodge and the Democrats and Ford and. And what happens? You call it skullduggery in your. In your book.
Anti-Mormon Opposition Grows in Illinois
John Turner [00:40:20] Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, it settles the election. It foments much more serious anti Mormon opposition in Hancock county and to some extent in western Illinois more broadly. Is this not. The Mormons are not. They are to some extent, a statewide issue. The status of Nauvoo was significant in the previous governor's race, but for the most part, this is a local regional conflict that state political leaders like the governor would prefer to defuse, which ultimately proves impossible. In June of 1844,
John Dehlin [00:41:14] you note that William Law objected to, I don't know, Hyrum Smith suggesting to the Saints that they go with the Democrats and with Hodge and I, I noted that because we're about to, you know, talk about the undoing of. Of William and Wilson Law and Jane Law. Why was William Law so upset that he noticed the Saints changing their allegiance from Walker and the Whigs to Hodge and the Democrats? Why would William Law particularly be on a different side than Joseph and Hyrum?
John Turner [00:41:58] So it's a great question. I'm afraid I don't have a great answer. I don't know. I think one thing it suggests is either already some alienation between William Law and Joseph or Joseph simply not having Law in his inner circle as of July of 1843, because he seems as if he's just caught off guard. So Hyrum Smith stands up at this meeting and says, I've got a revelation to vote for Hodge. And William Law, who's a counselor in the church's presidency, you know, he stands up and says, no, God has not communicated that revelation. I'm certain Joseph supports Walker. And then Joseph has to come out the next day and clarify things. And I think if, I do think at this point, if Joseph had taken Law aside and said, you know, I initially supported Walker, but this is why I'm, I'm switching. And I think this is, this is what God wants us to do. I don't think Law would have offered any public opposition.
John Dehlin [00:43:13] Okay, well, it seems like increasingly William Law is left out of the. The conversations or the rooms where it happens, to quote Hamilton. So anyway, that's interesting. And again, viewers and listeners, this is really important because the anti Mormon opposition in Illinois is about to get really hot. And I think you suggest in the next chapter that the Whigs, many of the Whigs who felt burned by Joseph, become important parts of the anti Mormon movement in Illinois.
John Turner [00:43:45] Yeah, well, Joseph and his people, they are a huge political problem for the Whig party in Western. In Illinois. And as Nauvoo is continuing to grow. And so this is, this is almost a foreseeably insurmountable problem for local Whigs.
John Dehlin [00:44:10] All right, well, let's talk about Joseph Smith choking and assaulting Walter Bagby.
Joseph Smith's Assault on a Tax Collector
John Turner [00:44:16] All right. I mean, I don't know. It's one crazy story after another.
John Dehlin [00:44:21] Can I just tell you, a decade or two ago, the church came out with this film in the Salt Lake City Visitor Center. I think it was called Legacy, where it basically portrays Joseph Smith as like, you know, an anti racist, as a feminist. He loved Emma, he's a monogamist, he loved children, he was a philanthropist, he helped poor people. Is hagiography the right word? Like, it was the most hagiographic, almost propaganda, ish, whitewashing of Joseph Smith ever. And I just want to note that the Legacy film in the Salt Lake City Visitor center never noted that Joseph Smith choked and beat up somebody. They did. They unfortunately neglected to inform the members and the world that Joseph had that in him.
John Turner [00:45:13] Well, no, that is a fair point. So I will say that in general, Joseph was not a violent personality. This isn't the first time that we've talked about an incident of violence. There was the fight with his own brother William.
John Dehlin [00:45:31] Right, William.
John Turner [00:45:32] William Smith, back in December of 1835. But this is not, this is not a every chapter sort of thing.
John Dehlin [00:45:39] But remember, we did just talk about the harsh measures incident with Emma last episode.
John Turner [00:45:45] Right, we did.
John Dehlin [00:45:46] Which where there's good evidence to suggest Joseph had to physically harm Emma to get her in line over the polygamy stuff, or at least try to. I know you say we don't know for sure. I just don't think they'd say harsh measures if there wasn't some physical violence involved. That's my opinion.
John Turner [00:46:05] I, I, I think one thing we can say for sure is the heat is turned up on Joseph Smith for the last year of his life. And he does become more combative, I think a little bit more desperate and unpredictable. And in this case, it's, it's sort of strange that it becomes a fight because compared to everything else Joseph is dealing with, it's a relatively minor dispute. And I think he just really despised. Nobody likes tax collectors.
John Dehlin [00:46:45] It's a property tax issue. Right.
John Turner [00:46:48] Read the New Testament. Right. So the fight is with a man named Walter Bagby, who is the Hancock county tax collector. And it was dispute over property taxes. Bagby asserted that Joseph or the church had failed to pay property tax on a parcel of land. And so Bagby took the initiative to seize that property and sell it. And, and that angered Joseph, who claimed that the tax had been paid. I don't know who is correct on that somewhat technical point, but on August 1, which is about a week before the election, Bagby strolled up to Joseph's carriage as the prophet was arriving at the temple. And Joseph shouted at him that he had abused the citizens of Nauvoo. Bagby in turn, called Joseph a liar. And at that point, the fight's on. Joseph climbs down out of his buggy and Bagby thinks he's going to get attacked. So he kind of stoops down to pick up a stone to maybe like he's going to threaten, he's going to throw this at Joseph. But I guess he wasn't fast enough because Joseph seized Bagby by the throat to choke him off. William Clayton recorded in his diary that Joseph struck Bagby several times. And then a justice of the peace, Daniel Wells, who was friendly with Joseph, but at the time not a church member, he separated the two men. And, you know, Joseph was not apologetic for his behavior. He just told Daniel Wells, go ahead and find me for this one. You know, you can just convict me of assault. I'll pay the fine, sort of. It was worth it. Wells didn't want to do that. He didn't want to take any action against Joseph. So Joseph went and found Bishop Newell K. Whitney, who is also a justice of the peace. He got someone who had witnessed the fight to swear a complaint. Whitney, find him. And I don't know, my sense is Joseph thought it was worth every penny. I'm also just going to give a little bit of a compliment to the editors at the Joseph Smith Papers Project. A lot of these legal cases are really hard to unravel because there are documents here, there, and everywhere. And I am blanking on the name of the individual, for which I apologize. But the Joseph Smith Papers has a great legal series in which they provide really helpful introductions to Joseph's many court cases.
John Dehlin [00:50:13] I know my old friend Morris Thurston was involved in the Joe Smith Papers Project and legal stuff, but that was 10 or 20 years ago.
John Turner [00:50:23] Yeah. And in this case, you know, putting together. Putting this together, this story, you know, no, most we historians, we. We make no claim to figure everything out on our own. History is, in a way, a huge group project. And so I found the Joseph Smith paper's work on this case enormously helpful.
John Dehlin [00:50:48] Well, this Joseph Smith assault of Walter Bagby, it was in public. He assaults him in front of a bunch of people, right?
John Turner [00:50:58] I don't know how many people, but yeah, it's public.
John Dehlin [00:51:01] If you ever watch gangster depictions of the 1920s and occasionally an Al Capone figure will just go into a restaurant with everybody watching and just shoot somebody and then like walk out and you just think, no, whatever. A leader like that would never just in public engage in an act of violence, not even try and hide it, not even ask someone to do it, but just go do it themselves and look at everybody and walk away. That's just. No one, no one would ever do that. But this is an instance. Joseph didn't kill, you know, didn't kill the guy, but he definitely, as the prophet, as the mayor, as the head of the Naboo Legion, he. He goes and assaults somebody in public and like you say, is unashamed for it. That's almost mobster, like in. In terms of the associations I make in my brain, anyway.
John Turner [00:52:02] Well. And so Bagby is he. He's an official, you know, he's a county official, right?
John Dehlin [00:52:09] Yeah.
John Turner [00:52:10] He's not just a private individual and he is among the prime movers. This is not a shocker. He's one of the prime movers at this anti Mormon convention in Carthage a couple of weeks later. And of course, he's steaming mad. And one of the complaints or one of the resolutions passed at this convention is that Joseph has committed violence upon bag meat. Now, you could say Joseph actually sort of got himself convicted and fined for it, but still, it's very brazen behavior. And what I'd also say is what you see in the last year of Joseph's life is there are often situations in which he probably could have tamped down a simmering conflict and instead he inflames and deepens that conflict. I mean, certainly doesn't have to get into a fight with Bagby. He could, he could complain, he could say this was a misunderstanding. Could we try to find some way to buy the property back? Maybe he'd already tried such things, I don't know. But regardless, it is a brazen act and of course, it's duly noted by the Church's antagonists.
Reassessing Joseph Smith's Legacy
John Dehlin [00:53:37] Well, one of the biggest feelings of betrayal I experienced as someone raised Mormon and as a multi generational Mormon was having been taught all my life by the church that Joseph died like a lamb to the slaughter. Literally. You know, Joseph to the Mormon Church, has been portrayed as an innocent lamb whose blood was shed in innocence. And while John Turner, I think you and I will always say lynchings are wrong, you know, murders are wrong. Nothing excuses the assassination of Joseph Smith. To say that he was innocent or like a lamb to the slaughter ignores the reality that he possibly was involved in, in commanding the murder of Governor Boggs. I think the evidence leans towards he probably did order, you know, Porter Rockwell to do it. You don't think there's enough evidence of that, which I think is valid. But also I don't think you would say it didn't happen either. So there's that. There's all the polygamy and polyandry and all the smearing of people involved in polygamy. There's these political machinations that Joseph's involved with, betraying former political allies. And then there's things like there's the Masonry, the corruption of the Masonic Temple ceremony, and now there's these physical assaults going on. Like, I think over the next couple episodes, we're going to be enumerating all the ways that Joseph didn't deserve to be assassinated, but reaped the whirlwind bear.
John Turner [00:55:25] Well, I do. No, as I said, both with the Church's external opponents and also with Joseph's internal critics. And you especially see this when we get into early 1844. Joseph, he is no longer really trying to settle conflicts. He is, he's stoking conflict. Now, I think in part that's because Joseph increasingly feels under duress. You know, he has people from Missouri. You basically try to kidnap him. He is very much on edge about that. And what he increasingly worries about is that his critics within the church are going to betray him to his enemies. So I certainly would never depict Joseph as a spotless lamb. And we can talk more about that. That quote, that lamb to the slaughter quote. I don't think Joseph ever resigns himself to martyrdom. He. He has no intention of going to Carthage to get killed. So, yeah, it's a, it's. It's a series of escalations in this conflict that creates increasingly dire circumstances for Joseph and the church. I don't think he sees any way out of it other than to have his people once again flee Nauvoo and start over somewhere else. That's sort of the, that's the best possibility he considers over you know, the last period of his life. But short of that, he doesn't see a way of getting out of this vice, as I would call it.
John Dehlin [00:57:39] And what I think you write in this chapter, and again, we haven't even gotten. We're now going to turn to chapter 29. But what you end up writing at the end with this betrayal of Walker and of Ford and. And of this assault of Bagby, we have the formation of an actual formal anti Mormon party or mob that, that assembles in Illinois. Is that right? Was it literally named the Anti Mormon Party?
John Turner [00:58:17] Yes. So the, this group dubbed itself the Anti Mormon Party. Now, that makes it sound more. It's not like the Whig Party or the Democratic Party. It's not a political party. It's not on that level. But what was. What was typical in Missouri and then also occurs in Illinois is, you know, often there'll be a convention or a meeting or a committee in a number of communities who want to work together to get the church to change its policies. Or as in this case, they vowed to resist further outrages. And this is common sort of vigilante language, peaceably, if we can, but forcibly, if we must. And usually when Americans sort of on the frontier are saying that, they're starting to say, yeah, we feel like we're going to have to use violence against you. And so this is serious. And the, you know, Joseph and his people, they've seen this play before. They know how it ends, and it's never ended well for them in the past.
John Dehlin [00:59:28] Well, as usual, John Turner, your. Your work is so fascinating and Joseph Smith's life is so fascinating that we're an hour into this episode and we haven't even started chapter 29. Should we turn.
John Turner [00:59:39] Let's do it.
John Dehlin [00:59:40] Should we turn to chapter 29? Cool as a cucumber. 1843-1844. I have as a alternative title to this chapter, as I mentioned in the intro, turning points, because I think this is where Illinois really starts to turn against the Mormons, and so do William and Jane Law. But let's start with the state of Illinois, shall we?
Chapter 29 Begins: Winter 1843 Arrests and Threats
John Turner [01:00:01] Sure. So we are fast forwarding a few months to December of 1843. And in this instance, I sort of talked about Joseph's arrest is almost from the prior summer as attempted kidnapping. In this case, there's an actual. There are actual kidnappings. Two church members are kidnapped, taken across the river to Missouri, and they're accused of stealing horses, which seems not to have been true. It seems like someone kind of pinned a false accusation on these two men. It was a father and a son, Daniel Avery and Philander.
John Dehlin [01:00:57] And was this a conspiracy to lay some groundwork for eventually extraditing or kidnapping Joseph Smith?
John Turner [01:01:07] Well, that's certainly the way that Joseph interprets it.
John Dehlin [01:01:10] Okay.
John Turner [01:01:11] You know, because if people can come and kidnap these two guys, he knows, you know, these two guys, they're kind of small potatoes and he'd be the big prize. And anti Mormons, you know, they, they allege that Nauvoo courts protect Mormons, Mormon criminals from prosecution. And so we've got to take the law into our own hands.
John Dehlin [01:01:39] So they're targeting the habeas corpus thing, correct? With the conspiracy to kidnap a couple Mormons?
John Turner [01:01:46] At first, yeah. It's not even just the habeas corpus thing, but that in general church leadership is. They allege that church leaders are at least tacitly sanctioning turning a blind eye to criminality. I think it's worth noting one of the county's leading anti Mormons is a man named Levi Williams, who's a colonel in the county militia. He actually led a posse that abducted the elder Avery in the case. Now, this was controversial. I mean, the, the church had opponents, but this is pretty brazen on the part of the anti Mormons. And even one Whig newspaper, Thomas Sharp's the Warsaw Signal, it thought this was sort of just rank vigilantism to take these guys across the river. But this totally alarms Joseph and other church leaders and they respond with a number of different measures. Some of them sort of city council ordinances, but also some efforts to sort of fight back.
John Dehlin [01:03:19] And the father son were taken to Missouri, right?
John Turner [01:03:22] Taken to Missouri, Yes.
John Dehlin [01:03:24] Yeah, from Illinois by this vigilante group.
John Turner [01:03:27] Exactly. Okay, so some of the laws that the Nauvoo City Council passes in response to this are. They are just, well, flat out ridiculous. They passed a statute that anyone who came to Nauvoo in an attempt to arrest Joseph Smith, they threaten him with life imprisonment unless pardoned by the governor with the consent of the mayor. I mean, that's outrageous. Right? Not even, you know, Thomas Ford couldn't just pardon somebody on his own. He would need Joseph's say so.
John Dehlin [01:04:09] So, basically, yeah, they're allowing Joseph Smith's veto to override the governors of the state's pardon pardoning power.
John Turner [01:04:18] Right. And they also pass an ordinance that no one. That any warrants issued beyond the city would need Joseph's approval. I mean, they don't use that language. So the approval of the city's mayor before being executed. So in other words, let's say somebody, a Nauvoo resident, committed a crime, maybe in Carthage or Warsaw or somewhere else, and no constable or posse could come and arrest that individual without Joseph's permission. Which, again, is. I think that's an outrageous claim. I'm not a legal historian. He. You know, the. The church also petitions Congress to have the city's mayor, again, Joseph, be able to deploy the Nauvoo Legion to repel invaders and quell mobs without consulting with the state governor. So, you know, these are all brazen and, you know, local newspapers and even across the country, this gets a lot of. A lot of attention of Joseph trying to turn Nauvoo into a city state with himself essentially, as the king. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:05:59] And this is where I write Mormon caliphate or theocracy that I have to draw modern parallels. This reminds me of the documentary Wild Wild country that I saw on Netflix talking about the Indian guru Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, who sets up a colony in Oregon and ends up people getting poisoned. And they're being orgies and lawlessness. And the state of Oregon is like, what do we do? Because once a small religious cult gets too much power, they start to influence local law enforcement and, you know, the judicial system, and they become impossible to control. I'm also reminded of the Scientologists in Florida and California. Once they start to buy off police officers and judges in both those respective states, people can get kidnapped, and the. And the police and the. And the judges won't do anything because they're. They're in the pocket of the Scientology leaders. And whether or not people acknowledge any parallels, the general concern that you're raising here and that. That it seems like the Illinois people really Concerned about is this small religious group is just getting way too much power. And if it grows too much, we won't be able to touch it because they keep growing, getting more wealthy, more powerful. Their militia keeps growing, and now they're passing laws that immunize them from even other counties or the state or possibly even the federal government from intervening.
John Turner [01:07:36] Right.
John Dehlin [01:07:36] Is that right?
John Turner [01:07:37] Yo. No. 100%. That's exactly the way that anti Mormons and I think just a lot of other. Other observers interpret this.
John Dehlin [01:07:48] Now, it was a nationwide, you know, news story. Right.
John Turner [01:07:54] It's a nation. You know, it reaches. It's, you know, this is covered by New York newspapers. Yeah. I mean, newspapers often pick up stories from one another. Now, in Joseph's mind, I, you know, the way I would interpret this is, wow, my opponents are. They're getting dangerous. They've just grabbed two of our people. They're going to come and get me next. I've got to do everything I can to protect myself and my people. The problem is, and, and surely on some level, that's far more attractive than doing nothing to protect your people. But these are provocative moves. Now, Joseph, what the Saints also do is they have one of their justices of the peace issue a warrant for one of the ringleaders in the Avery kidnappings, and they send a posse and arrest that individual, bring him to Nauvoo.
John Dehlin [01:08:59] So the Mormons get to abduct and kidnap and arrest people. But they don't, but, but they don't subject themselves to the same sort of action.
John Turner [01:09:12] I mean, to be, to be slightly sympathetic. I think at the. At least they're not dragging people across the river to maybe face mob justice. You know, the, the idea is to. They bring him to Nauvoo, presumably to stand trial, but I would say even to turn the temperature up a notch, they send a posse to arrest Levi Williams, who is this county militia officer, and that's it.
John Dehlin [01:09:45] That's sending a mob to enforce, you know, your form of justice. Right.
John Turner [01:09:49] And will. And Levi Williams knows this mob is coming, so he's got people there to defend him.
John Dehlin [01:09:55] And he's a colonel in.
John Turner [01:09:56] Right, he's a colonel. And so they're not getting him without a fight. And this, this is dangerous because Joseph orders Wilson Law, William Law's brother, who's Major General of the Nauvoo Legion, to send a hundred additional men to arrest Levi Williams and to get ready to defend the city. Now this, this would have. It would have required a pitched battle to arrest Levi Williams. So Joseph backs Down. In this case, the Mormon posse dissolves and comes back to Nauvoo.
John Dehlin [01:10:43] I wrote Jocko. Joseph always chickens out instead of Taco Jocko.
John Turner [01:10:49] Yeah. I mean maybe not always, but no. And that was wise. And I think, I think for the most part, one of the things that you could say often was wise about Joseph Smith is until this point in the life, in his life, there have been a number of situations in which he's turned up the temperature. The Zion's camp march would be one instance. The offensive operations in October of 1838 in Missouri. But Joseph has also, he has backed down when being in a situation that might really produce more widespread violence and when his people would probably lose. And had the Nauvoo posse initiated a violent seizure of Levi Williams, it would not have redounded. Well, for the Mormon people, I mean,
John Dehlin [01:11:56] but, but doesn't that end up amounting to brinksmanship where he's, he's, he's turning up the heat right to the point of potential war and or slaughter of either his own people or of other people or both, and then he'll back off last minute? It seems to me like it's brinksmanship.
John Turner [01:12:17] Well, it is brinksmanship by both sides. Right, right. Because you know, we had these anti Mormon kidnappings that, you know, that turned up the temperature, but then Joseph's gonna turn it up way more. I think one part of this story, which, I mean this isn't, this isn't exciting, but part of the backdrop here is the state machinery in west, in Illinois in the early 1840s. It is simply not advanced to the point where it can help defuse any of these conflicts. So in theory, Nauvoo has been increasingly claiming these legal powers. Well, the best solution would have been for that to be tested in a state court. And for a state court to say, no, Nauvoo can't issue a writ of habeas corpus in this case. Or maybe, maybe it could, but there's no effective legal or political machinery to manage this sort of blue brewing conflict.
John Dehlin [01:13:27] And it's got a vex. I mean, I was going to mention we kind of passed over this a little bit quickly. How would Thomas Ford feel to know that Nauvoo, the city that he supported a charter that or a habeas corpus clause that he in some way supported or another, how they're now going over his head to the federal government and basically saying, hey, federal government, we want to be a city state unto ourselves where we're not subjected to the laws or the authority of the state of Illinois. We're petitioning you, United States government, to sort of accept us as a, as a city, state, not governed, not governable by the, by the state of Illinois. That can't be fun for Thomas Ford to hear, especially given that he had just in last chapter, saved Joseph Smith from extradition to Missouri.
Governor Ford and Joseph Smith's Correspondence
John Turner [01:14:22] Well, so you know what Ford? Yeah, so Joseph does. There are some letters going back and forth between Ford and Joseph and other church leaders during these months. And, you know, Ford will sort of, as his Missouri counterparts had often done in the 1830s, he basically will encourage both sides to, you know, put their faith in the courts and other forms of relief. And so he encourages, he certainly encourages Joseph to sort of simmer down. But part of the, part of the problem is both sides are happy to turn the temperature up. And Ford, honest, you know, he just doesn't really have the necessary engagement, skill or mechanism for resolving the Mormon conflict. And I think you can see that certainly the next year.
John Dehlin [01:15:37] And you have to also add hubris or just like becoming desperate or erratic or reckless just because I think the more pressure that Joseph experiences, the more reckless he acts. So it might be a matter of skill. It also might be a matter of just coming unglued.
John Turner [01:15:58] Yeah, there is some of that. Now, in this case, Joseph does simmer down, so his spirits are buoyed on Christmas Day of 1843. There's a Christmas party that Joseph hosts that afternoon.
John Dehlin [01:16:23] And
John Turner [01:16:25] Philander Avery had already escaped from Missouri and returned to Nauvoo. And then in the midst of this Christmas party, this unkempt, long haired man who appears to be drunk stumbled in. He kind of looks like a Missourian. That's what the, that's what church members think because he looks so ratty. And Joseph at first tells a police captain, you know, toss this guy out. But then sort of as Joseph wasn't introduced when he first turned, turned up in Illinois after his time in jail, Joseph looks at the guy and realizes it's Porter Rockwell, who's back from nine months in squalid Missouri jails. So he is off. He has not been indicted in the attempted Boggs murder, but. But that's a major cause for celebration in Nauvoo. You know, there's this legend that when Joseph reunites with Rockwell, he promises him that if he imitates Samson and never cuts his hair, no bullet or blade will harm him. And Rockwell did keep his hair long for several decades. I'm pretty sure he cut it, you know, before his Death.
John Dehlin [01:17:59] You write that he killed people in both Illinois and Utah.
John Turner [01:18:03] Correct.
John Dehlin [01:18:04] So he wasn't above killing people.
John Turner [01:18:05] Was not above killing people. He killed. The killing of a man in Illinois. It was in the wake of, I think, the failed prosecution of some of Joseph's assailants at Carthage Jail. I forget the circumstances in, in Utah.
John Dehlin [01:18:35] Yeah. I've heard him referred to as an avenging angel. Really quickly. Yeah. I wrote that this is Joseph's last Christmas. In my mind, it kind of sunk in, in an ominous way that Joseph feels like he solved, you know, these problems with, with Illinois and with the anti Mormons and specifically with Elliot and others. And so he's feeling festive and jovial. He decides he's going to have a dinner with what, 20 couples and then dancing. And it's kind of. I was starting to feel some ominous grieving or sadness because he's feeling jovial. But this indeed is the last Christmas he'll ever enjoy.
John Turner [01:19:23] Yep, that's right. And he is. He's feeling good. I think there's been some communication with Governor Ford. The Nauvoo City Council eventually repeals some of those outrageous statutes. And um, Joseph. And this is the title of the chapter. You know, he tells his, his people like we've got enemies, but we don't need to panic. Let us keep cool as a cucumber in a frosty morning.
John Dehlin [01:19:53] Thus the title of the chapter. Yeah.
John Turner [01:19:56] Which is kind of ironic because I don't think Joseph was actually cool as a cucumber during these months.
John Dehlin [01:20:04] Really quickly, just going back to Elliot, this was the instance that I referred to 15 or 20 minutes ago after, after, you know, what, what charging Elliot. It wasn't just Williams who was threatened with arrest. It was also Elliot. Right. And now that. That all got kind of resolved, the, the potential prosecutions of Williams and Elliot. This is when you write that Joseph invites Elliott for supper, lodging and breakfast.
John Turner [01:20:38] Correct.
John Dehlin [01:20:39] And that he was. Joseph was later ridiculed for making Elliot pay for the dinner and, or lodging and. Or breakfast that he was invited to come for. But, but I get the impression from your book that this was an act of humiliation on Joseph's part towards Elliot. But is that what you were implying or not?
John Turner [01:21:00] Yeah. No, I would say an act. I do think it was humiliating in a way, but it was also theatrical, done for sort of theater in Nauvoo. And so that sort of public confrontation and then hospitality. And then he tells the court then that he will forgive John Elliot for threats against him because he's also, he had also sworn a complaint against Elliot for a breach of the peace and for having used threatening language against him. So what he wants to do is display magnanimity and hospitality and quite possible that folks in Nauvoo eat this up. It's also a way for Joseph, I think, to sort of command the scene.
John Dehlin [01:22:00] And I guess fans of Joseph could claim this was graciousness or magnanimity, that he's peacemaking. So I don't know what to make of it. Was his invitations to Elliot peacemaking and magnanimity, or was it humiliation and passive aggressive, you know, whatever behavior?
John Turner [01:22:20] Well, I mean, or all of it. I would say, John de Lynn, if you wanted to just invite me to Utah to have supper, dinner, supper overnight and breakfast with you. I like both dinner and breakfast very much, so I'd be happy to do so. If, however, you sent a posse to Northern Virginia that like kind of put me in a. A nasty looking van and drove me to Utah, I probably wouldn't be as thrilled to share table with you.
John Dehlin [01:22:55] Well said. Well said. Okay, so now I think it's time to turn to William and Jane Law. That's how this chapter ends. And so what background do you want to give us about William and Jane Law? And I feel like you kind of go back in time when you talk about Joseph propositioning William and Jane Law for polygamy. It almost feels like we're back in the months of the previous chapter a little bit. But let's set the table for William and Jane Law, however you want to.
William and Jane Law and Plural Marriage
John Turner [01:23:29] Yeah. So William and Jane Law were. I'll just back up all the way, sort of. They were Canadian converts to the church, who they either first moved to Kirtland or Missouri, I think around 1836, 37, 38, something like that. And Law is very impressed with Joseph. I think he writes a letter in which basically Joseph's everything that you would want a prophet to be. And the admiration's mutual. I think William and Wilson Law, they know they're also sort of decent businessmen and successful, and so they get tapped for positions of leadership. I think sometime in the early 40s, William Law becomes a counselor in the church's presidency. So the details.
John Dehlin [01:24:32] Which makes him one of the top three most powerful Mormons in the church.
John Turner [01:24:35] Correct. Although, you know, sometimes, you know, positions, leadership and actual influence are not exactly the same thing. But yeah, he's on paper. Yeah, well, and I think he was respected. And the two Law brothers together, you know, they, they are formidable. At some point in the summer of 1840, 3 Joseph tried, you know, taught at least William Law, maybe also Jane Law, about plural marriage. And here we don't know a whole lot. I think they never accepted the principle. But Jane Law received her endowment that fall. William Law had already been endowed, he's
John Dehlin [01:25:31] one of the original to receive that special endowment.
John Turner [01:25:34] I think he's one of the original. And the two of them regularly attend meetings of what was called the anointed quorum. So the group of people who have been endowed in the fall of 1843, so they're clearly still on good terms with Joseph. I interpret that to mean that while they had not accepted polygamy, they were not, you know, maybe they didn't totally reject it. Maybe they some, you know, kept somewhat of an open mind. We don't know exactly how Joseph taught them the principle. It also seems that then in mid October of 1843, Joseph invited William Law to the home and farm of a church member named John Benbow, a little bit east of Nauvoo. And one of Joseph's plural wives was present, Maria Lawrence, the Prophet's 19 year old ward. Joseph was her legal guardian and she and her sister lived in the Smith household. Both Joseph and William Law stayed at the Benbow farm overnight. And it seems that Law surmised or knew that Joseph had slept with Maria Lawrence and was disgusted by this.
John Dehlin [01:27:14] So I really wanted to know more about this night where it was both William and Jane Law that spent the night in the same house as Joseph or just William Law.
John Turner [01:27:29] So it's unclear. So one of Joseph's scribes kept a diary for him and, and those entries are often pretty sparse. And I think it's clear that William Law, possibly also his wife, was along, may have just been William. I think we don't know because, I
John Dehlin [01:27:49] mean, I don't have any necessarily basis for what I'm about to say, but it feels like a grooming kind of an evening of grooming where Joseph is trying to persuade William and possibly Jane to go along with polygamy. And the fact that Joseph would be inviting one of his probably teenage plural brides to come be involved. And then while William is sleeping under the same roof as a First Presidency member, he knows that in another room Joseph is having sex with a young woman who's likely a teenage plural wife. I would rely on you to tell me what her age was.
John Turner [01:28:31] Approximately 19. Okay.
John Dehlin [01:28:33] Like all of a sudden William Law is thinking, wow, there's a universe where I could have sex with teenagers and God's okay with it. And Joseph's doing it in the other room. And maybe I can even hear it like that. I know I'm adding a lot there, but I don't think this feels like a stretch. It feels like Joseph is kind of trying to groom and persuade William Law to get aboard the polygamy train.
John Turner [01:29:00] Well, I don't think those are necessarily implausible at all. There's a little bit longer of an account of this in Ben Park's Kingdom of Nauvoo, which is an excellent book that I recommend to our listeners. This is also significant legally. Boy, you're ready. John de Lynn, thanks for holding it up.
John Dehlin [01:29:27] It's all your fault. It's all your fault.
John Turner [01:29:29] And. But this is also significant because Joseph's opponents the next may swear a complaint against him with a charge of fornication, specifically for having slept with Maria Lawrence. But I think, to go back to your point, it's reasonable to presume that since Joseph had probably already broached the subject of plural marriage to William Law, that it would be something that Joseph would have discussed on this occasion.
John Dehlin [01:30:05] Yeah, and you'll have to forgive me, because this may complicate this episode, but I was reminded of an interview I did with the late Grant Palmer, who ended up publishing a book right before he died called Restoring Christ. And in that book, he had a chapter, I believe, on allegations against Joseph Smith for sexual misconduct. And then in that chapter, he had the whole section on William and Jane Law. And he does quote various sources about why he believes William and Jane Law turned on Joseph. The first was that, you know, it's basically why William and Jane Law left the church in 1844. The first reason, he says, is because the Laws believe that Joseph ordered the death of his enemies. We could talk about that separately. But the second point, Grant Palmer writes, is that the Laws left because of Joseph Smith's immoral proposals. And he goes on to suggest not only that Joseph propos. He. He suggests that Joseph wanted. Joseph wanted Jane Law as a polygamous wife, and Joseph wanted to convince William and Jane Law to get on the polygamy bandwagon. And so if that's true, then. Then Joseph, the way he seemed, often do that, is to say, give me your wife and I'll give you teenage girls. And that would align with this fateful night where Joseph is having sex with Maria Lawrence in front of William. But Greg goes on to allege that not only did Joseph Smith proposition Jane Law at some point, and maybe that William Law walked in on Joseph propositioning Jane Law, but Also that Emma Smith had designs on William Law as her own plural husband or polyandry, and that some of what was written in Doctrine and Covenants 132 about God allegedly rebuking Emma and telling her she can't take another, according to Greg Palmer, was a veiled reference that Joseph knew that Emma was trying to add William Law as her own plural husband. And then Joseph had God telling Emma she can't have William Law. And this starts to feel like swinging kind of swinging activities in 1843, 1844, Nauvoo. Now, did I just introduce a bunch of, like, completely unfounded, scurrilous false accusations or it. I mean, because I. I tend to respect Grant Palmer, sure. But. But none of this. I'm guessing little of this appeared in Ben Park's book Nauvoo, Kingdom of Nauvoo, which I haven't read, but I don't know that your book ends up going this far either. So I'm trying to make sense of it all. Help us out, John Turner.
John Turner [01:33:11] So. Well, I could take a couple hours to try to help you out on this, because it is pretty hard to untangle.
John Dehlin [01:33:19] So I just don't want to rush past it. Right.
John Turner [01:33:21] Yeah. So let me start with what I feel like maybe we can know everything. First of all, everything pertaining to William Law is complicated by the fact that in the 1970s, a researcher, a historian named Lyndon Cook, gained access through a descendant to William Law's Nauvoo journal, which begins with a statement, I think, either right at the end of 1843 or beginning of 1844, that God's Spirit prevailed before the fearful step was taken of accepting polygamy. So I think if we trust that by December 1843, polygamy serves as the catalyst for William Law's, you know, real alienation from Joseph.
John Dehlin [01:34:25] But it almost implies that William Law was tempted. But when he says the spirit intervened, it's almost like he was thinking about it.
John Turner [01:34:33] Right.
John Dehlin [01:34:34] But then he was overcome with the sense of faithfulness and morality. And the says, nope, I'm not going to do it, Joseph. I'm not going to be tempted. Is that a fair interpretation of that?
John Turner [01:34:45] I think that's fair. And I think when we say tempted, that doesn't necessarily mean William Law was tempted to find some teenagers for himself. It could be that. Well, we don't know how Joseph initially described this. It could have sounded a lot more chaste. It could have been. This is an opportunity to be sealed to other women, spiritually, ceremonially, in a way that will augment their eternal glory, your eternal glory, that of your family. So we just don't know. We don't know how Joseph taught it. But it is possible, quite possible that William Law is sizing up the situation, thinking about Joseph and Maria Lawrence. And he says, he concludes that the spiritual wife system was of the devil now.
John Dehlin [01:35:42] And by the way, we just finished last episode that Joseph convinced Emma, convinces Emma to back off her opposition by promising her eternal life with. With Joseph in the second endowment. Right. So oftentimes the spiritual promises about the afterlife were the COVID for Joseph's behavior. Right. And it just sounds like this fits Joseph's pattern of starting with promises of eternal glory and together forever with your family and endowments from on high. That's how he would have started with Joseph and Jane Law as a cover to then say, oh, and by the way, it involves sex with teenagers.
John Turner [01:36:25] The other thing we know for sure is that by the beginning of 1844, it's not just that William Law has rejected this teaching Joseph. It's gotten to the point where Joseph identifies William Law as sort of a clear and present traitor and danger to himself in the church. And that has a lot of ramifications. But you asked about sort of a. I'm not going to say you. To put it. Put it exactly this way, but sort of a love. Quadrangle. Love. Would that be the right. The Laws and the Smiths. So a quadruple. Quadruple, I don't know what. What we need to call it.
John Dehlin [01:37:09] You were talking about Lyndon Cook's right. Reading of William Law's journal.
John Turner [01:37:15] So that's another, that's another point of controversy because no one has access to the original. No one can examine the. Apparently nobody other than Lyndon Cook examined the original manuscript.
John Dehlin [01:37:30] Where is it?
John Turner [01:37:32] Well, I think the descendant was in Hawaii and it's murky. So there are some. Ben Park's written a piece about, you know, whether or not we should accept this as an authentic and trustworthy source. I think it's reasonable to say we. We just can't know for certain because we can't examine it. Now there is some corroborating evidence about the provenance of this document. There's some. There's some discussion about it in the journal of Leonard Arrington at the time. There are certainly things in the law, the published law journal and the transcript by Lyndon Cook, they line up with other things we know about these months. But it's one of those instances in which historians are really in a bind because there's this great source about which we can't be 100% confident now, the Joseph Smith Papers Project. Ben park and I, we do make use of this document, but you know, I think we have to give listeners fair warning. Now that's not the, certainly not the only source of information about these things. So In May of 1844, church member Alexander Nybar recorded Joseph's comments about the Laws in his journal. And this was what he told that William Law, after Joseph introduced this teaching about marriage to him, he was very keen to have his wife Jane sealed to him. Joseph said, no, I'm not going to seal Jane to you. He accused Law of having committed adultery. And then Joseph says, I had this encounter with Jane Law in which she was standing in her doorway beckoning to me. And he went over to her house and threw her arms around him and said, you know, whatever you want, seal me to my husband, Seal me to you. And Joseph says he, he, he pushed her, pushed her away. And then William Law, and then she then tells her husband Joseph wanted to be married to her. And so that's the source of this story. Now Law for his part, claims about that time Joseph has lately endeavored to seduce my wife and has found her a virtuous woman.
John Dehlin [01:40:41] What's the source of that? Is that Clayton's journal?
John Turner [01:40:44] That's Law. That's Laws.
John Dehlin [01:40:46] Is this his diary in Hawaii? That we don't know exactly. Okay.
John Turner [01:40:51] But I mean I think that's, that's sort of, that sort of lines up. It's right at the same time basically as this comment from Joseph in the Nibar Journal. So you also asked about the idea of wife swapping. So there's sort of a cryptic comment in the William Clayton Journal from, I think this is early July of 1840. 43. So just before Joseph gives his revelation on marriage to Emma and it simply says conversed about W Law, Emma, etc. So you know, and then, and then we've got, you know, we, we also have in the Clayton Journal that Emma is threatening to indulge herself to sort of get even with Joseph. Then if you really want something colorful to read, there's a pamphlet and then a book by a sort of short, short term Nauvoo resident named Joseph Jackson. And he just, he's got all sorts of crazy stories, some of which might be true, others which seem far fetched. And he, he's not very impressed with Emma's morals any more than he is with, with Joseph. So I think he blames Joseph for having corrupted Emma. But you know, he basically says that she wanted William Law, whom she saw as a sweet little man. You know, it'd be fair that she would at least get one extra husband. And if you also want, you know, there were people who believed going forward that Joseph had been sealed to Jane Law. So decades later, Bathsheba Smith, who was the wife of Joseph's cousin, George A. Smith, she suggested that Joseph. Joseph had indeed been sealed to Jane Law. So that's all. That's a long way of saying this is really murky. I think it's definitely possible that as William Law's opposition is growing, that Joseph might have smeared Jane Law by accusing her of trying to seduce him. It's possible he did proposed marriage to her. And, you know, then, you know, then spreads. Spreads rumors. You know, it's there. There's a. There's a lot of. There's not a lot of great, strictly contemporaneous evidence.
William Law's Falling Out with Joseph Smith
John Dehlin [01:43:58] Let me try and demerkify this a little bit only because I. I think it's fair to say that in 1843, 1844, if Joseph smears you publicly and accuses you of, I don't know, having a venereal disease or propositioning someone for sex, there's a pretty good chance you publicly accused Joseph of legitimately having inappropriate sexual relations. And so his smearing you publicly of sexual inappropriate behavior is likely an endorsement that you had the goods on Joseph, and that's how he covered it. So it's almost like Joseph smearing Jane Law provides evidence that Jane Law and William Law had the goods on Joseph for doing something inappropriate sexually with them. Does that follow a little bit?
John Turner [01:44:55] That does follow. I mean, we've seen plenty of smearing over the previous two years. So I think. Let's look at one other angle of this. So William Law and his brother Wilson, who's a Nauvoo Legion leader, they're in position to, you know, they're not Hiram Smith or Emma or Sidney Rigdon, but they're in a position where they could undermine Joseph's leadership.
John Dehlin [01:45:25] Well, Sidney's not even in Illinois.
John Turner [01:45:27] He's not even in Illinois. But, you know, in terms of stature within the troop. So how does Joseph respond to this break in? My reading of this is, even after this alienation over plural marriage, William Law was not interested in confronting Joseph or trying to publicly take him down. I think he's very torn. I mean, Joseph. Joseph is still. He is his prophet, and he would certainly, I think, have preferred to reconcile with Joseph. But Joseph, you know, especially in the wake of everything that's been going on with the anti Mormons and the Missourians, he's really alarmed. And so he forms a police force in Illinois. He tells them. Joseph does, Joseph does. He says, I think my life more in danger from some little doe head of a fool in the city than from enemies abroad. He's worried about a Brutus or a Judas. And it's pretty clear that's William Law. And Law starts hearing rumors that his life is in jeopardy. And Joseph's clearly trying to intimidate Law and some other polygamy opponents, like William Marx, who's president of the Nauvoo Stake. And so, you know, Law's getting messages that, you know, you really need to like, watch out for some of these police interviews, enforcers. And he goes and talks. This is according to this diary of William Law. He goes and talks to Joseph. Joseph tells the Laws that they're fools, but says he had a good mind to put them, the police on us anyway. And, you know, then Joseph, he accosts William Law on the street. A few days later, he accuses Law, William Law, Jane Law, Wilson Law, of telling evil about him. They have unpleasant words. You know, I think William Law, he would definitely have preferred to just let things ride, at least for a while, and figure out what to do about, about Joseph Smith. But Joseph is really sort of putting the screws on these dissenters.
John Dehlin [01:48:13] Yeah. And. And that's how Grant Palmer starts this chapter, this section saying that, that Joseph, that William and Jane Law, that Wilson Law, that Higby Francis Higbee and others feared for their life. It's kind of reminding me of the Boardwalk Empire series that I'm watching about, like Prohibition, 1920s New Jersey, where the kind of governor of, let's just say, you know, Atlantic City or the mayor of Atlantic City, is using his brother who runs the police force, as kind of his own mob to enforce justice. It. It sounds like the Laws and others feared for their safety and that they feared that there might be a hit out on them by Joseph's own personal police force.
John Turner [01:49:03] Right? No, absolutely. And I think what Joseph, in an ideal world, I don't think he articulates this in a document that I know of. But my supposition is in an ideal world, he knows there's this now sort of cadre of polygamy opponents. The ideal thing would be for them to clear out, you know, that that's what Joseph did to the dissenters in Missouri back in 1838. He warned them to get out in this case. He seems to just sort of be intimidating them, warning them that they might be in danger. That. That seems to be the desired result. But these know, these men, they have homes and families and businesses. They're. They're not that easily. They're scared, but they're not that easily intimidated. And I think, you know, sometimes Joseph really lowers himself in these encounters. There's this city council meeting. Marx is there. Francis Higbee is there. Higbee's brother had been excommunicated back in 1842. I think he. He may have had been mixed up to some extent with John C. Bennett and Higbee and the others. They complain that they're encountering men on the street who tell them they're in danger. Joseph says that these tales are ridiculous, but he warns Higbee to stay home and hold his tongue lest rumor turn upon him. So it's. It's sort of like, this is ridiculous, but actually, you better watch out. So it's sort of talking out of both sides of his mouth. This is from. Not from any disputed source. This is from the Nauvoo City Council minutes. And then, you know, Joseph adds he would not allow Higbee to come to his home or to associate with his females. And he adds that Higbee stank from a venereal disease. Joseph later expounds, expounds on Higby's alleged sexual escapades.
John Dehlin [01:51:45] Yeah, and I'll just restate what I said before. If Joseph accuses you of evil or falsely accusing him of evil, or if Joseph accuses you publicly of sexual, you know, misdeeds, what it most likely means is you denied Joseph's polygamous advances, or you refused to cooperate with his valid, truthful, polygamous doctrines or theologies. And you spoke about it. And so that was what Joseph did. If not threatened to kill you with the secret police force, he would for sure smear you and in Higbee's case, publicly accuse you of having a venereal disease, of stinking with a stinking venereal disease, simply because you told the truth about Joseph's practice of polygamy. Right?
John Turner [01:52:38] That is true. Now, I don't know whether or not Francis Higbee had a venereal disease. I know he sued Joseph for slander. I mean, I'm not going to presume anybody else is necessarily an innocent lamb in this story. Often times I don't know as much about them. But what I would again say is, Joseph, he does not extinguish fires very well. In the last year, of his life. Now I just talked about how he did find a way to sort of turn down the political temperature after the kidnappings. The city council did back down and repeal some laws. The internal politics of Nauvoo, though, in the last six months. My own opinion is that a lot of Joseph's critics, they actually did not want to publicly break with him and oppose him. But Joseph, I think partly because of his alarm about anti Mormonism and his legal peril, he is very, very frightened by internal dissent and he responds to it very aggressively. And so a lot of people who were alienated from him gradually become implacable, public and dangerous opponents.
John Dehlin [01:54:13] Yeah, yeah. And again, I always feel a little bit self conscious about comparing Joseph at times to modern characters like Jeffrey Epstein or Warren Jeffs or whatever. But the mob reference Joseph is has a private police force that he's threatening to use to murder his opponents who are telling the truth. I think that's what I'm reading here. And that's mob like behavior, or at least proto mob like behavior.
John Turner [01:54:43] No, I think that's fair. So technically it's not a private police force, it's the city police force, right?
John Dehlin [01:54:48] Yeah, yeah.
John Turner [01:54:49] Joseph's the mayor. Yeah. So, yeah, I think Joseph and I think this is actually, this is a huge mis. You know, put the ethics or morality aside. This is also a huge miscalculation on Joseph's part because his aggressive responses to people like William Law, Francis Higbee, and we'll talk about some other cases in the next episode, they completely backfire and they end up endangering Joseph and the Mormon people.
John Dehlin [01:55:32] Really quickly. I don't want to pass over this. I'm going to read you a verse from DNC132. I think I've mentioned this before. I think this is a linchpin for Grant Palmer. I'm. I'm going to acknowledge that the, the verbiage is a little bit vague, but I think it's the most plausible interpretation. I just want to hear your interpretation. So this is DNC132, verse 51, and I'll read it. This is Jesus talking, allegedly. Verily, I say unto you a commandment I give unto mine handmaid Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself or stop and partake not, so don't go after of that which I commanded you to offer unto her. So it's alleging that Jesus is saying, hey, Joseph, I know you offered something to Emma, but now I'm changing and I'm commanding Emma not to partake of whatever you, Joseph, offered her. And then Jesus goes on to allegedly say, for I did it, saith the Lord, to prove you all as I did Abraham, and that I might require an offering at your hands by covenant and sacrifice. So basically Jesus is saying, saying, hey, Emma, when Joseph offered you that thing, he was really doing it on my behalf as a test, as an Abrahamic test of your faithfulness. But in reality, you don't get it. And then he goes on, in 32, Jesus says, and let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph. Jesus is vague. All those we know. It means wives. So to me, that implies that the previous verse is talking about husbands, because all Jesus says is, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph. So in the previous verse, he's talking about Joseph giving something to Emma. Giving what? Well, he answers it in the next verse, spouses, because he says, giving those meaning wives to my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me. We know that Jesus likes Joseph to have virgins, so they've got to be virtuous and pure. And those who are not pure, Jesus is okay with the impure wives too, and have said they were pure shall be destroyed, saith the Lord God. So is that wrong for Grant Palmer? And is that wrong for me to read, to interpret this credibly as Jesus saying, I know Joseph offered you William Law or someone else as your own polyandry spouse as a barter to get your willingness to let Joseph have all these wives. But, psych, that was an Abrahamic test. You don't get the husbands that we promised you, and you gotta let Joseph have all the wives. Come on, John Turner, tell me that's not a stretch.
Polygamy Theology and Doctrine and Covenants 132
John Turner [01:58:48] So. Well, what I wanted to say first is, you know, Jesus doesn't only tell Joseph to marry virgins, apparently, but a wide variety of women. I mean, I think it's a possibility. I. You know. No.
John Dehlin [01:59:06] Is it the most plausible explanation? If not, what is?
John Turner [01:59:10] The thing is, I think it would have been very hard for anyone to find evidence for this without Joseph Jackson's book, which narrates this back and forth with Emma, William Law, Joseph Jane Law in great detail. So what we have in DNC132 doesn't give us a lot to go on. There is that one cryptic reference in the Clayton Journal. The Clayton journal also suggests that, well, it might be Clayton that Emma might want to indulge herself with. So I think we don't know, and
John Dehlin [01:59:54] we know, Joseph was. Was worried that. That Clayton and Emma had a thing going on in a previous chapter. Right.
John Turner [02:00:01] Because at some level, and I don't mean sexually, but on some level, they're intimate. You know, they talk about. They talk about some of this stuff. So I, you know, I hate to frustrate. Frustrate people by, you know, punching on the question, but if you pressed me, I would say, yeah, Joseph may have offered that. It's possible Joseph offered that to Emma. I do not think that Emma Smith was interested in a wife swap. I also don't think. I also don't think she necessarily would have thought it was a good deal if she could indulge herself with one person and Joseph could have, you know, 10 virgins or 30 wives.
John Dehlin [02:00:41] But isn't it very common for a wife who's being cheated on to at some point say, well, what's good for the goose is good for the gander? That's freaking why that. That term exists.
John Turner [02:00:52] Right. So what I. What I do think is, well, Clayton's journal suggests that Emma threatened to indulge herself. There's also a suggestion that she threatened to divorce Joseph. It's pretty clear to me looking at everything, Emma didn't want either of those things. I don't think she wanted William Law. She might have said, hey, this guy's more upstanding than you right now, Joseph. But no, she wanted Joseph and she wanted Joseph for herself. And she's. At the very least, she wanted to be Joseph's queen in heaven.
John Dehlin [02:01:26] So we have Clayton's journals. We have Joseph Jackson's journals. We have, again, we have the Nauvoo Expositor. We have William Law's own recollections, like, you know, Grant Palmer. We have Grant Palmer's theory. Like, what else?
John Turner [02:01:48] Now, so see, here's the problem with, first of all, Joseph Jackson's book. There are, I don't just discount sources that are antagonistic or hostile. You know, he. He was privy to some information about Joseph in the last year of Joseph's life. He has some narration about that trip to Palestine Grove with which we opened this episode. So he clearly knows some things. He also suggests that Joseph propositioned his brother William Smith's wife, that Joseph propositioned one of his own sisters, and that Joseph propositioned one of his own nieces. He also says that Joseph admitted to seducing more than 400 women in Nauvoo. Yeah, you know, that's probably overstating it. So I just think there. I just think there's a lot of fancy in that Joseph Smith book. It's really fun reading, especially if you don't mind some tough accusations against the prophet Joseph Smith. But I, I don't put that much stock in it without corroboration and I feel like, like this, the wife swap idea, there's, there's not much corroboration. I'd just say it's a, it's a possibility. But I, I think it's more, I, I, I certainly don't think Emma was in it was as interested in this as Joseph Jackson suggested.
John Dehlin [02:03:27] All right, well, I'll just say we've got as possible sources, Joseph Jackson, Niebuhr, William Law, his own recollections, William Clayton and the Nauvoo Expositor. That's a lot. And this DNC reference that I don't think you've offered a better alternative explanation for and I don't mean that in an accusatory way. Do you have any other plausible explanation for what Jesus means with Emma? Isn't the context, doesn't the context of D&C 132 suggest that Emma was offered a husband?
John Turner [02:04:04] No, I think it, so I do think that's the plainest reading of that text. Now I've seen people make other arguments.
John Dehlin [02:04:12] Yeah, like Brian Hales.
John Turner [02:04:14] Right. Like Joseph is offering her a divorce. But no, I agree that that's the plainest reading of it. I don't think that really is any sort of a clincher for a wife swap. The Nibar journal is not about a wife swap. It's simply about Joseph refusing to seal Jane to William and then propositioning, well, being accused of, and then Jane trying to seduce him.
John Dehlin [02:04:50] So they're all parts of the puzzle is all I'm saying.
John Turner [02:04:52] Yeah, but they are not like fully congruent parts of the puzzle, which makes it hard to reach a definitive conclusion. No, I think the one definitive conclusion is it is a Mess as of January 1844 and Joseph is not going to clean up that mess. He is going to make it a lot messier over the next couple of months.
John Dehlin [02:05:21] Yeah, and I love, I love what good historians do, which is they, they scrutinize the evidence very meticulously. They arrive at the conclusions that they think are, are, are reasonable and they refuse to jump to conclusions that aren't supported by the evidence. I think that's crucial and I love it. And that's why I wanted to do this series with you and I respect you and Ben park and others for doing that. And I also think what the rest of us where the stakes are really high. Do we give 10% to the church? Do we give our lives to the church? Is the church's narrative that we've based our lives on credible or not? All we can do is look at the evidence and then say what likely happened. Right, sure. And I think there's a place for that of people just saying, all right, what is the evidence? What's the most likely, the most plausible story? And I think Grant Palmer is a lot closer to the more likely plausible story than, let's say, Brian Hales. You know what I mean? And what Grant Palmer gets as a result of that is excommunication and marginalization from the mainstream Mormon studies crowd because there is social and political influences and dynamics that influence whether a Sandra Tanner is or isn't embraced in the Mormon studies crowd or whether Grant Palmer or Dan Vogel are or aren't embraced by the Mormon studies crowd. Those who arrive at critical conclusions that are plausible and reasonable often face harsh penalties by the broader Mormon studies crowd as a result.
John Turner [02:07:03] Sure. Well, and I like the. I like the Mormon studies crowd to be as broad as possible. And me too. I also think really, the way history works is history as a discipline is making arguments about the past based on the evidence that we have. And different historians make different arguments. Hopefully that helps all of us arrive at a more accurate understanding of the past. Which doesn't mean that every impasse will be resolved because we don't always have all the information that we want. But we definitely learn more from people advancing arguments and then people from all sorts of different perspectives taking a look at the evidence and saying, raising questions about it, agreeing with it, critiquing it.
John Dehlin [02:07:55] Yeah. All right. Well, I think this concludes this wonderful short chapter. Cool as a cucumber. Chapter 29, 1843, 1844. Next chapter is chapter 30. There's only 31 chapters in your book, so it would seem as though we're reaching the end. Chapter 30 is entitled the Kingdom, 1844. Anything you want to say in closing, John Turner?
Chapter 30: Joseph Smith's 1844 Presidential Campaign
John Turner [02:08:24] Well, last year at the Mormon History association did a panel on the book, and somebody asked me, would I have voted for Joseph Smith in the 1844 presidential election? So that's one of the things we get to talk about. Next time I will not tip my hand in advance.
John Dehlin [02:08:44] So we're going to talk about probably not just Joseph running for president, but also are we going to talk about the Council of 50 and Joseph being ordained king of the world and all that?
John Turner [02:08:53] We're going to talk about all of that. And then we're going to talk about escalating conflict with these critics in Nauvoo.
John Dehlin [02:08:59] And by this point, by early 1844, has Joseph stopped his polygamous escapades, or does he continue through the end in terms of bringing on more wives and having sex with them?
John Turner [02:09:12] So the simplest answer to that is he doesn't take any plural wives, I think after October or November of 1843. And there are a few of those wives who are still part of the household, as far as we can document. Joseph at least does not have much to do with his plural wives in the last half year of his life. And he seems to be on good terms with Emma.
John Dehlin [02:09:38] Interesting. Okay, so we're kind of done with Joseph's polygamous exploits at this point.
John Turner [02:09:47] We are done with the exploits, but not with the fallout.
John Dehlin [02:09:51] Okay, that's interesting. So I don't think that was clear in my mind that by January 1844, Joseph, Emma had kind of prevailed. And between Emma and William Law's defections, Joseph kind of realized he had to put a halt to the polygamy stuff by January of 1844. That's new understanding for me, honestly.
John Turner [02:10:15] And we can get into that a bit more on upcoming episodes.
John Dehlin [02:10:21] Beautiful. Well, thank you, John Turner, again, buy this book, Joseph the Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. Please subscribe and like this series on all the platforms. Please donate to it@donorbox.org Joseph Smith. And please join us again next time for part 39 in our series on the Joseph Smith Podcast, brought to you by Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation. Email us@mormonstoriesmail.com, comment on YouTube. Give us your feedback. Thanks again, John Turner. You're amazing.
John Turner [02:10:58] Thanks, John. That was fun.
John Dehlin [02:11:02] Stop hugging your dog, Will.
John Turner [02:11:04] I will Keep clear and look forward to the last several episodes. Thanks, everybody.
John Dehlin [02:11:10] All right, thanks, everybody. Thanks to Julian Brooklyn for all the help. Take care. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of the Joseph Smith Podcast and Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care, everybody.
Thumbnail Credits: William Law – Unknown Author (public domain); Joseph Smith – Unknown painter, from Community of Christ Archives (public domain); Nauvoo House – by Beneathtimp
One Response
According to Historian Qinn, Abraham C. Hodge (a bodyguard) stopped Joseph on the way to warn him that the Mob was out for blood.
Apparently, Joseph did not take the warning seriously. Incidentally Abraham C. Hodge is my great great grandfather. Abraham was also in attendance when Joseph asked the keeper of the minutes of the counsel of the 50 to destroy the records.