The revelation on celestial marriage confused and divided the church as had no other single event. Growing public awareness of the revelation in the summer of 1843 further polarized a church already divided into two camps—the handful of people secretly introduced to Joseph Smith’s private polygamous teachings and the much larger faction that accepted at face value the public denunciations of the practice. The tension over the issue was summed up in an 8 September 1843 letter by Charlotte Haven. This Mormon Nauvoo resident wrote of rumors that “plurality of wives is taught in the Bible, that Abraham, Jacob, Solomon, David, and indeed all the old prophets and good men, had several wives, and if right for them, it is right for the Latter Day Saints.” But Haven, like most Saints, rejected this logic: “I cannot believe that Joseph will ever sanction such a doctrine” (Mulder and Mortensen 1967, 126).
Those uninitiated into the inner circles of the church had good reason to feel as Charlotte Haven did about polygamy. On 5 October 1843 Smith made his most pointed denunciation of plural marriage. Willard Richards, keeper of Smith’s personal journal, recorded on this date: “instruction to try those who were preaching teaching or [crossed out in the original: “practicing”] the doctrine of plurality of wives on this Law. Joseph forbids it, and the practice thereof.—No man shall have but one wife.”1 Four months later, in the 1 February 1844 Times and Seasons, Joseph and Hyrum Smith co-authored a letter which “cut off from the Church for his iniquity” Hyrum Brown, a Mormon in Michigan who was “preaching polygamy and other false and corrupt doctrines.” And the 15 March Times and Seasons printed a letter from Hyrum responding to charges that a man having a “certain priesthood” may have as many wives as he pleases. “There is no such doctrine taught,” Hyrum argued, “neither is there any such thing practiced here. And any man that is found teaching privately or publicly any such doctrine is culpable, and will stand a chance to be brought before the High Council, and lose his license and membership also.”
It was not only lay members who were caught in this web of apparent deception; some church leaders were equally befuddled. During a 12 August 1843 meeting of the Nauvoo High Council, Dunbar Wilson “made inquiry in relation to the subject of a plurality of wives, as there were rumors about respecting it, and he was satisfied there was something in those remarks, and he wanted to know what it was” (Shook 1914, 97). Joseph Smith, who was ill, was not at the meeting. His brother Hyrum requested a short adjournment and crossed the street to his home, where he picked up his copy of the 12 July revelation. Thomas Grover, another member of the council, later testified that Hyrum read the document to the group and said: “Now, you that believe this revelation and go forth and obey the same shall be saved, and you that reject it shall be damned” (ibid., 98). But several prominent church leaders, including the prophet’s second counselor William Law, Nauvoo stake president William Marks, and High Council members Leonard Soby and Austin A. Cowles could not see the hand of God in the revelation.
Law, a prominent Nauvoo businessman, was solidly devoted to Smith until mid-1843. During the Bennett scandal, he quickly came to Smith’s defense, reassuring the Saints that church leaders did not condone “spiritual wifery” or any such behavior. Smith held his counselor in such high esteem that he included him in the first small group of male initiates to the endowment ceremony in May 1842. And Law rendered much moral and financial support to a discouraged Smith when Missouri officials were attempting to extradite him on the Boggs case.
By early 1843, however, Law began to waver in his commitment to Smith. Initial difficulties between the two centered on business matters. William and his brother Wilson owned considerable real estate in upper Nauvoo. Smith, as trustee-in-trust for the church, owned nearly all of the mosquito-infested Mississippi bottom lands. The influx of Mormon converts to Nauvoo created stiff business competition between Smith and the Law brothers. Smith did not hesitate to use his ecclesiastical leverage to tilt real estate sales in his direction. His 13 February 1843 journal entry, for example, notes his counsel that “those who come here having money and purchased without the church & without council Must be cut of [f].” A month later he admonished a group of newly arrived English Saints to purchase property only from him. “We can beat all our competitors in lands, price and everything.… The lower part of the town is most healthful. In the upper part of the town are the merchants, who will say that I am partial, &c; but the lower part of the town is much the most healthful; and I tell you in the name of the Lord” (HC 5:356-57). The 20 December 1843 Nauvoo Neighbor requested that “all the brethren … when they move into Nauvoo[,] consult President Joseph Smith, the trustee in trust, and purchase their lands of him.” Such statements by Smith greatly influenced the real estate market, making it difficult for the Laws to sell their property.2
But a deeper source of the Laws’ disaffection was their detestation of polygamy. In an 1887 interview William explained that Hyrum Smith had shown him the revelation on “celestial marriage” in the fall of 1843. “Hyrum gave it to me in his office,” Law said, and “told me to take it home and read it, and then be careful with it, and bring it back again.” He and Jane “were just turned upside down by it” (“Mormonism in Nauvoo”). William took the document directly to the prophet and commented that it was in contradiction to the Doctrine and Covenants. Smith noted that the section on marriage in the Doctrine and Covenants was “given when the Church was in its infancy, when they were babes, and had to be fed on milk, but now they were strong and must have meat. He seemed much disappointed in my not receiving the revelation,” William wrote. “He was very anxious that I would accept the doctrine and sustain him in it. He used many arguments at various times afterward in its favor” (Shook 1914, 126).
Law’s refusal to accept polygamy was compounded in the prophet’s eyes by Law’s lending a sympathetic ear to Emma Smith in her opposition to the principle. In an 1885 affidavit Law testified that Smith had told him in 1843 that “he had several wives sealed to him, and that they afforded him a great deal of pleasure … [but] Emma had annoyed him very much about it.” According to Law, Emma had also complained to him about “Joseph keeping his young wives in her house and elsewhere, and his neglect of her” (ibid.). This closeness between Law and the prophet’s wife gave rise to rumors and caused bouts of jealousy for the prophet. When, two days after Law’s excommunication, Emma left Nauvoo and traveled downriver, the 23 April 1844 St. Louis Republican reported, “Joe Smith … has turned his wife out of doors for being in conversation with a gentleman of the Sect which she hesitated or refused to disclose.” Though Emma had only gone to Saint Louis on a short shopping trip, the rumors about her and William Law obviously upset Joseph. One day after her departure, according to Smith’s own account, he gave a group of men a “history of the Laws’ proceedings, in part, in trying to make a difficulty in my family” (HC 6:343).3
Though no evidence exists to show that the relationship between Emma Smith and William Law was anything more than platonic, it posed enough difficulties that the prophet was cited in the 17 June 1844 Nauvoo Neighbor Extra as blaming “all the sorrow he ever had in his family” upon “the influence of Wm Law.” The friendship between Law and Emma Smith may have been the reason that the prophet refused to seal Law to his wife, Jane. Hyrum Smith suggests such a possibility as recorded in the 12 June 1844 journal of William Clayton: “Law wanted to be sealed [to his wife] & J[oseph] told him he was forbid—which begun the hard feeling.” Alexander Neibaur, a close friend of the prophet, related in his 24 May journal that Smith told him “Mr. Wm Law—wisht to be Married to his Wife for Eternity Mr Smith said would Inquire of the Lord, Ansered no because Law was [an] Adulterous person.” Hyrum Smith, according to the 17 June 1844 Nauvoo Neighbor Extra, also accused Law of adulterous behavior.
The accusations of adultery against Law may have been for the purpose of discrediting him in the eyes of the Saints. No adultery charges were mentioned during his excommunication proceedings in April 1844. One day previous to the Neibaur journal entry, however, Law had filed a suit against Smith in Hancock County Circuit Court, charging the prophet with living with Maria Lawrence “in an open state of adultery” from 12 October 1843 to 23 May 1844. Smith commented on the charges the next day in Sunday services, noting that such accusations were not new to him. “Another indictment has been got up against me,” he said. “I had not been married scarcely five minutes, and made one proclamation of the gospel, before it was reported that I had seven wives.… What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one” (ibid., 408-11). Smith, who had been sealed to Maria and Sarah Lawrence in the summer or early fall of 1843, had himself appointed legal guardian of the two orphan girls on 4 June 1844, two weeks after Law’s charges were filed. He also decided on the fourth of June, after discussing the matter with several church leaders, to prosecute “Laws and Fosters for perjury, slander, &c.… in behalf of Maria Lawrence” (ibid., 427).
Law’s charge of adultery against the prophet was apparently his final attempt to get Smith to abandon polygamy. On 8 January 1844, nearly five months before filing the suit, Law noted in his journal that he had told the prophet in an emotional street encounter that “polygamy was of the Devil and that [Smith] should put it down.”4 Law’s son Richard later added that his father, “with his arms around the neck of the Prophet, was pleading with him to withdraw the doctrine of plural marriage[,] … with tears streaming from his eyes. The Prophet was also in tears, but he informed [Law] that he could not withdraw the doctrine, for God had commanded him to teach it, and condemnation would come upon him if he was not obedient to the commandment” (pp. 507-10).
Smith told Law during this encounter that he was excluded in the future from the Endowment Council and that he was dropping him from the First Presidency as well. Law did not take the dismissal lightly. “I confess I feel ennoyed very much by such unprecedented treatment,” he wrote in his 8 January journal, “for it is illegal, inasmuch as I was appointed by revelation (so called) first [and was sustained] twice after by unanimous voice of [crossed out in the original: “the”] general Conference.” But Law felt “relieved from a most embarrassing situation. I cannot fellowship the abominations which I verily know are practiced by this man, consequently, I am glad to be free of him.”
Church leaders attempted a reconciliation with Law, but he insisted that polygamy first be purged from the church. On 18 April 1844 Law and his wife Jane and brother Wilson were excommunicated for “unchristianlike conduct.” Ten days later they and other dissidents founded a separatist church, declaring Smith a fallen prophet. The group issued a prospectus for an opposition newspaper, The Nauvoo Expositor, 10 May 1844. Nauvoo citizens were forewarned that the paper would advocate repeal of the Nauvoo Charter,5 foster religious tolerance and freedom of speech, censure gross moral imperfections, and oppose union of church and state in Nauvoo civil government. The publishers promised “to give a full, candid, and succinct statement of FACTS, AS THEY REALLY EXIST IN THE CITY OF NAUVOO—fearless of whose particular case the facts may apply.”
Smith was concerned enough over the promised disclosures that he sent Sidney Rigdon to try to persuade Law to discontinue the publication of the paper. But Law remained firm, noting in his 13 May journal that he had told Rigdon “if they wanted peace they could have it on the following conditions. That Joseph Smith would acknowledge publicly that he had taught and practised the doctrine of plurality of wives, that he brought a revelation supporting the doctrine, and that he should own the whole system (revelation and all) to be from Hell.” Law further wrote in his journal that “[Joseph] ha[s] lately endeavored to seduce my wife and ha[s] found her a virtuous woman.”6
Less than three weeks later, on 7 June, Law wrote in his journal: “This day the Nauvoo Expositor goes forth to the world, rich with facts, such expositions as make the guilty tremble and rage.… 1000 sheets were struck and five hundred mailed forthwith.” Though the paper contained a short story, some poetry, and a few news items copied from eastern newspapers, its pervasive theme was opposition to polygamy. Claiming in its “Preamble, Resolutions and Affidavits, of the Seceders from the Church at Nauvoo” that the gospel as originally taught by Joseph Smith was true, the Expositor charged that Smith was a fallen prophet who had introduced doctrines that were “heretical and damnable in their influence.” The preamble resolved that because Joseph and Hyrum Smith and other unnamed church leaders had “introduced false and damnable doctrines into the Church, such as plurality of Gods above the God of this universe, and his liability to fall with all his creations; the plurality of wives, for time and eternity,” they should be denounced as apostates.
Another reference in the preamble to doctrines “taught secretly, and denied openly,” referred more specifically to polygamy. Sylvester Emmons, non-Mormon member of the Nauvoo City Council and editor of the Expositor, acknowledged in a brief introductory statement the presence in Nauvoo of “a system which, if exposed in its naked deformity, would make the virtuous mind revolt with horror; a system in the exercise of which lays prostrate all the dearest ties in our social relations—the glorious fabric upon which human happiness is based—ministers to the worst passions of our nature and throws us back into the benighted regions of the dark ages.” Along with the excessive editorializing, the paper provided evidence from William Law, Jane Law, and Austin Cowles that Hyrum Smith had read to them the revelation sanctioning polygamy. The Expositor warned: “We intend to tell the whole tale.”
Nauvoo citizens were furious when the paper hit the streets. Smith’s retrospective defense to Governor Thomas Ford was that “people were indignant, and loudly called upon our city authorities for redress of their grievances, which, if not attended to[,] they themselves would have taken the matter into their own hands, and have summarily punished the audacious wretches, as they deserved” (HC 6:581).7 Church leaders responded immediately. On Saturday, 8 June 1844, the day following the issuance of the Expositor, the city council met for over six hours in two sessions. They met again Monday, 10 June, for more than seven hours.
Saturday’s meetings were devoted to a discussion of the character and conduct of the publishers. William Law and Robert Foster in particular were condemned for “oppressing the poor, counterfeiting, theft, conspiracy to murder, seduction, and adultery.” The 19 June Nauvoo Neighbor’s account of the meeting explained that Hyrum Smith “referred to the revelation, read to the High Council of the Church, which has caused so much talk about a multiplicity of wives; that said revelation was in answer to a question concerning things which transpired in former days, and had no reference to the present time.” And the prophet was quoted as having said, “They make it a criminality for a man to have a wife on the earth while he has one in heaven.” He added that “the order [was] in ancient days, having nothing to do with [t]he present times.”
The question of what to do about the newspaper was addressed on Monday. Joseph Smith, Nauvoo mayor, read aloud the editor’s “Introductory” and argued that the paper was a “nuisance—a greater nuisance than a dead carcass.” He urged the council to pass legislation for stopping the opposition press. The group responded by passing an ordinance “concerning Libels,” resolving that any persons who “shall write or publish, in said city, any false statement, or libel any of the Citizens, for the purpose of exciting the public mind against the chartered privileges, peace, and good order of said city” shall be “deemed disturbers of the peace” (Nauvoo City Council, 10 June 1844).
With the law to back them, the city council, without identifying specific statements which were considered libelous, next discussed ways to silence the press. Councilor John Taylor, editor of the church’s newspaper, the Times and Seasons, spoke the feeling of the group: “We are willing they should publish the truth; but it is unlawful to publish libels. The Expositor is a nuisance, and stinks in the nose of every honest man” (HC 6:445). Hyrum Smith added that he thought the best way to suppress the publication was to smash the press and scatter the type. After an emotion-filled afternoon, the city council resolved that the Nauvoo Expositor and its printing office were a “public nuisance … and the Mayor is instructed to cause said printing establishment and papers to be removed without delay, in such manner as he shall direct” (ibid., 448). Smith ordered the city marshal to “destroy the printing press from whence issues the Nauvoo Expositor and pi the type of said printing establishment in the street, and burn all the Expositors and libelous handbills found in said establishment” (ibid.).
The destruction of the press caused an uproar in surrounding non-Mormon communities. Six days after the press had been destroyed, Smith issued a public proclamation from the mayor’s office, explaining that the paper had aimed to destroy “the institutions of the city, both civil and religious. Its proprietors are a set of unprincipled scoundrels, who attempted in every possible way to defame the character of the most virtuous of our community.” He insisted on “the correctness of our conduct in this affair.” “We appeal,” wrote the prophet, “to every high court in the state, and to its ordeal we are willing to appear at any time that his Excellency, Governor Ford, shall please call us before it” (ibid., 484-85).
The next day, Smith and others were arrested for inciting a riot—”destroying the Nauvoo Expositor press.” They were released later that afternoon after a hearing before judge Daniel H. Wells, who would become a Mormon in two years. Fearful of reprisals from the non-Mormon element in the area, Smith declared martial law in the city. On 21 June, Governor Ford sent a letter to the mayor and city council asking for statements from “well-informed and discreet persons, who will be capable of laying before me your version of the matter,” and requesting that the council receive from him “such explanations and resolutions as may be determined on.”
Ford, however, was dissatisfied with Smith’s description of the situation. “Your conduct,” he declared, “was a very gross outrage upon the laws and the liberties of the people. [The paper] may have been full of libels, but this did not authorize you to destroy it.” After taking Smith to task over what he viewed as constitutional violations, Ford announced that he would “have to require you and all persons in Nauvoo accused or sued to submit in all cases implicitly to the process of the courts and to interpose no obstacles to an arrest either by writ of habeas corpus or otherwise” (Ford 1854).
But the Smiths were fearful of placing themselves in Ford’s hands. “We dare not come,” Joseph wrote to the governor on 22 June. “Writs, we are assured, are issued against us in various parts of the country. For what? To drag us from place to place, from court to court, across the creeks and prairies, till some bloodthirsty villain could find his opportunity to shoot us” (HC 6:539-40). Notifying Ford that he intended to travel to Washington, D.C., to present his case before President Tyler, Smith crossed the Mississippi into Iowa on the evening of June 23. The next day, however, he changed his mind and returned to Nauvoo. He sent a letter to Ford offering to “come to you at Carthage on the morrow, as early as shall be convenient for your posse to escort us into headquarters, provided we can have a fair trial, not be abused nor have my witnesses abused, and have all things done in due form of law” (ibid., 550).
But the Smiths were never brought to trial. In the early afternoon of 27 June, a large mob of men with blackened faces overpowered the small force assigned by Governor Ford to guard the prisoners in the Carthage Jail. Joseph and Hyrum Smith were shot to death in the second story bedroom.
1. When incorporating Joseph Smith’s journal into the History of the Church, Apostle George A. Smith, a cousin, altered this passage to reflect later Mormon thinking: “Gave instructions to try those persons who were preaching, teaching, or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives; for, according to the law, I hold the keys of this power in the last days; for there is never but one on earth at a time on whom the power and its keys are conferred; and I have constantly said no man shall have but one wife at a time, unless the Lord directs otherwise” (HC 6:46).
2. Smith initially described Commerce as “so unhealthful, very few could live there” (HC 3:375). Despite Smith’s enthusiasm and efforts to drain the swampy lowlands, widespread sickness prevailed throughout the entire Nauvoo period (Arrington 1976, 141-42).
3. Wilson Law also caused trouble for Smith by printing “Buckeye’s Lamentation For Want of More Wives” poems in the Warsaw Message, an anti-Mormon newspaper. The 7 February 1844 issue published the first “piece of doggerel,” as Joseph Smith described it:
And ‘tis so here, in this sad life—
Such ills you must endure—
Some priest or king, may claim your wife
Because that you are poor.
A revelation he may get—
Refuse it if you dare!
And you’ll be damned perpetually,
By our good Lord the Mayor.
But if that you yield willingly,
Your daughters and your wives,
In spiritual marriage to our POPE,
He’ll bless you all your lives.…
This is the secret doctrine taught
By Joe and the red rams—
Although in public they deny—
But then ‘tis all a sham.…
He sets his snares around for ALL,—
And VERY SELDOM FAILS
To catch some thoughtless PARTRIDGES,
SNOW-birds or KNIGHT-ingales!
4. William Law’s diary is in private hands. The portions cited here are from Cook 1982.
5. The group felt Smith thumbed his nose at the law by abusing the habeas corpus rights of the charter to escape answering the Boggs charges in Missouri.
6. Joseph H. Jackson added that shortly after 15 January 1844 the prophet “informed me, in conversation, that he had been endeavoring for some two months, to get Mrs. William Law for a spiritual wife. He said that he had used every argument in his power, to convince her of the correctness of his doctrine, but could not succeed” (Jackson 1844, 19). Alexander Neibaur’s diary of 24 May 1844 offers Smith’s account of the situation: “Mr Wm Law—wisht to be Married to his Wife for eternity Mr. Smith said would Inquire of the Lord, Answered no because Law was a Adulterous person. Mrs Law wanted to know why she could not be Married to Mr Law Mr S[mith] said would not wound her feeling by telling her, some days after Mr Smith going toward his Office Mrs. Law stood in the door beckoned to him more the once did not Know whether she bekoned to him went across to Inquire yes please to walk in no one but herself in the house. [S]he drawing her Arms around him if you wont seal me to my husband Seal myself unto you. [H]e Said stand away & pushing her Gently aside giving her a denial & going out.”
7. For an excellent discussion of the events surrounding the destruction of the Expositor, see Oaks 1965.