The Last Days in Nauvoo - Part 3

When Joseph Smith entered the Carthage, Illinois jail in June of 1844, he said he had a premonition of doom.  For three days he and his brother Hyrum listened to the angry mob of anti-Mormons outside the jail.  Finally on the afternoon of June 27, the mob with painted black faces stormed the jail brandishing guns, killing Hyrum on the spot.  Smith seeing his brother fall to floor reportedly yelled, "O Lord, my God" as he was shot, falling through the window to the ground below.

Smith's martyrdom, however, could not heal the division in the church.  Soon after his was buried in a secret grave, Nauvoo's 20,000 Mormons blamed him and his advisors for the situation they found themselves in.  They denounced his alleged  practice of polygamy (which was never proved by the way) as the source of all the danger they found themselves in.  They looked at the rising anti-Mormon feeling that surrounded them in fear and trepidation.



No one knew who the next prophet would be to lead the church.  The "Senior Apostle", Brigham Young had competition.  Sidney Rigdon, one of the earliest members of the church and a close counselor of Smith, claimed a divine revelation had chosen him to be the next prophet.  A mass meeting was held on August 6, almost 2 months after Smith's death, and Rigdon was rejected. 



The new prophet would be Brigham Young, a plain spoken Vermont native who decided the church's survival depended  on abandoning Nauvoo.  Young proposed a modern day Exodus to the West but he didn't know where...yet. 






Next time...1400 miles to the West.
________________________________
On This Day in Pioneer History:  "On June 8, 1874, Apache Chief Cochise, one of the great leaders of the Apache Indians in their battles with the white man dies of probably stomach cancer on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona. 

It's My Town!

For years there had been rumors that Joseph Smith espoused polygamy in the church, and by the early 1840s everyone in the Nauvoo community believed that Smith and his inner circle had cast off monogamy on the basis of a "revelation from God".  Within his own community controversy raged over the sanction of polygamy and division was in the air.  Outside the community, tongues wagged with disapproval, and many with questionable morals of their own, expressed outrage at the desecration of the American family.

In 1844, despite (or to spite) the opinions of those around him, Smith announced his candidacy for the office of President of the United States.  (Can you imagine the media circus today?  Sure we can!)  In June a small group of dissenters published the Nauvoo Expositor which challenged the doctrine of polygamy, charged Smith with unethical financial practices and derided him for his aspirations for national leadership.

In response to the newspaper, the Nauvoo City Council ordered the press destroyed as a public nuisance.  Smith (the Mayor) sent the city marshal to do just that.  The newspaper's editors fled to the county seat of Carthage and spread the word of the violation of the freedom of the press. (Sounds familiar) Throughout Illinois, editors and speakers painted Smith as a tyrant, destroying the Constitution.  They cursed his followers as "libertines."  Mobs formed to demand the governor disperse the Mormons and arrest their leader. 

Smith placed Nauvoo under martial law and told his troops, "my sword is unsheathed in a determination that the people shall have rights."  Surrounding communities became fearful of their own safety, the Governor mobilized the states' militia and Smith prepared to flee to the West. 
In the end, however, he ordered his men to disarm and then surrendered, along with his brother Hyrum and five other church leaders, to the authorities in Carthage. 

Next time...The Conclusion of the Suffering of Zion
___________________________
On this Day in Pioneer History: "On June 5, 1922, the discoverer of Klondike gold, George W. Carmack, dies.  Carmack was the first to discover gold along the Klondike River in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1896.  He died at the age of 61 a wealthy man.

The Suffering of Zion - Part 1

In 1830, Joseph Smith and five followers founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints near Palmyra, New York.  Smith had built the church from nothing, dispatched missionaries throughout America and into Europe and gathered thousands to worship God and build Zion in the New World.

In Nauvoo, Illinois on the banks of the Mississippi River, the church turned a swamp land into one of the state's most populous and prosperous cities of the 1830s.  The "Saints" as they called themselves created an ideal society where no one went hungry or barefoot, where no one was illiterate or a prisoner.  That success made them a target for outsiders who were called "Gentiles" by the church.  The church claimed God favored them over the non-Mormons.  They lived in communal type of groups and they were strongly anti-slavery.  All of these roused bitter hatred of the people they lived around them. 

In Missouri, they were tarred and feathered, threatened with castration and generally harassed.  In 1838 the governor of Missouri called out the militia against them asserting that "they must be treated like enemies and exterminated or driven out of the state."  The church went back to Illinois where Smith drafted a charter establishing an independent theocracy in Nauvoo.  On June 24, 1844, Smith conferred for the last time with followers - by nightfall he and six others had turned themselves over to authorities to avoid the local mob's threat of mass slaughter.  Smith's charges were treason.

Next time...Polygamy?

_________________________
Today in Pioneer History:  "On May 22, 1843, a massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the "Great Emigration," the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon.