Scott Woodward: The martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith was among the most tragic and defining moments in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it continues to reverberate deeply in the hearts and minds of Latter-day Saints around the world. Hyrum was 44 years old, and Joseph was 38 and a half when they were murdered in cold blood in Carthage Jail on June 27, 1844. Many have read the brief account of the events of that day, outlined in Section 135 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and wondered what more there was to know about this poignant event in our history. Like, how did they come to be incarcerated in Carthage Jail in the first place? What were the charges against them? Who had motivations to kill Joseph Smith and why? Was Joseph betrayed at all by insiders, or was this entirely an outside job? Who were those in the mob who actually pulled the trigger? And were they ever brought to justice? On today’s episode of Church History Matters, we begin a new series where we seek to begin pinning down answers to these and other related questions about this highly significant event. Specifically, we will take a close look today at what we know about some of the external factors, especially political ones, that led to the martyrdom. I’m Scott Woodward, a managing director at Scripture Central, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, also a managing director at Scripture Central. And today, Casey and I dive into our first episode in this series about the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hi, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: It’s time, once again, to start a new series.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, we’re excited for this one.

Casey Griffiths: And this one has been looming on the horizon. This one has been in the back of our minds, I think, since we started.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. I think since we did a video in Nauvoo and Carthage together about this topic, right?

Casey Griffiths: We did a video, and it’s pretty good. We’re pretty proud of it.

Scott Woodward: It’s pretty good.

Casey Griffiths: Like, it was, like, twenty minutes, right?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Where we tried to quickly cover—and by the way, we filmed that video during the pandemic, and so there was no one in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, it was awesome.

Casey Griffiths: It was one of the best experiences of our lives.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It was such a fun trip.

Scott Woodward: And I haven’t felt satisfied with that video, to tell you the truth, Casey. I’m glad that a lot of people have watched it on YouTube, and I’m glad the story is out there and thankful for the Scripture Central team who did such a good job visually, especially once we’re at the climax of the story, the editing and the cutting there is so beautiful, but twenty minutes just isn’t enough—

Casey Griffiths: Nah.

Scott Woodward: —to tell the story. There’s so many factors that we want to talk about, and so do you want to announce first what the topic is, and then we can talk about why we’re not satisfied with twenty minutes?

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so the topic is the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Scott Woodward: The martyrdom, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I’m happy with the video, recognizing that videos are usually a little bit more breezy.

Scott Woodward: Sure.

Casey Griffiths: But, yeah, you can’t cover this adequately in twenty minutes, though it’s a great introduction.

Scott Woodward: There you go.

Casey Griffiths: And you do get to see Carthage Jail, and if you’ve never been to Carthage Jail, take the time to go. It’s one of the most beautiful and powerful church history sites that’s out there.

Scott Woodward: And one of my favorite parts of the video is that moment where we’re in the room where the martyrdom happens, and our film editor, Zander Sturgill, did such an amazing job splitting back and forth, from footage that the church has done reenacting the martyrdom to us telling the story, and it’s just spliced and edited perfectly and I get the chills when I watch that, but there’s just so much detail is what I mean when I say I’m not fully satisfied. There’s so much detail about the backstory and all the factors that lead into the martyrdom of the prophet that I’m excited we get to just talk about it for as long as we feel like we need to in this series to really help paint the picture for those who are serious about getting into the backstory and, really, the confluence of factors that come together to bring about the martyrdom of the prophet. And it’s a sad story to tell, but it’s an important story to tell. And we want to put in as much detail here now as we can.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. The other thing that’s compelling us is we’re recording this in 2024, and this series will come out in the summer of 2024, which is the 180th anniversary of the martyrdom. And so we felt like the timing and everything had lined up, and we’ve been talking about doing this one from the beginning, but now, we’re doing it.

Scott Woodward: Now we’re doing it. Here we are.

Casey Griffiths: But before we get to it, we ought to mention, too, that some very, very good historians have done some good podcasts on Joseph Smith’s martyrdom as well. Garrett Dirkmaat has a wonderful podcast called Standard of Truth. Garrett’s wonderful. He’s helped us with projects. We’ve helped him. The Joseph Smith Papers did a podcast that came out about a year ago in 2023 called “Road to Carthage.”

Scott Woodward: Spencer McBride.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. They do a good job, too. And I mean, we’re the scrappy underdogs, I guess, compared to them. They have access to some resources that we don’t. For instance, the last two interviews are an interview with M. Russell Ballard, which I’m positive we’re not going to get.

Scott Woodward: Yep. Safe to say.

Casey Griffiths: Elder Ballard has passed on, and Dallin H. Oaks. And the episode with Dallin H. Oaks is amazing. You should go and listen to it when you’re done listening to this.

Scott Woodward: So we’ll have to link to that interview in our show notes, especially when we talk about the trial of the murderers of the prophet. Like—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —President Oaks is so good on that topic.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. But, I mean, I loved both of those podcasts, and there’s others out there that are really good, but I feel like we could fill in the gaps a little bit here and cover some things that maybe they weren’t able to cover.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: We’re going to be filling in the edges, so.

Scott Woodward: There you go.

Casey Griffiths: We don’t know everything we’d like to know about Joseph Smith’s martyrdom.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: But there is a ton of material to sift through, and hopefully we’ll be helpful when it comes to that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. We’re not sure, like, how many episodes this is going to be, but we think it’s probably at least—what do we have right now? At least six or seven?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, we’ve started outlining them and we’re going to do the best we can.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And hopefully we open up a few avenues, things that you haven’t thought about when it comes to this, because it’s such an important story, and, man, as tragic as it is, it’s one of the most beautiful stories, too, of the Restoration. It tells you so much about Joseph Smith and his character and how he acted in the last moments of his life, so it’s really worth discussing.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Agreed. So let’s go back many years before the martyrdom, which takes place on June 27, 1844. Okay. So that’s what this is all building up to. Let’s rewind, and I want to ask this question: Did it ever occur to Joseph Smith? That he might not live a long life and die a natural death? And as we look in the sources, the answer seems to be definitely yes. That had occurred to Joseph Smith. In fact, if we look in his revelations, we find that as early as April 1829, the Lord himself had intimated to Joseph Smith that he may die a martyr’s death. Let me read the passage: this is in Doctrine and Covenants 6, verse 29 and 30. And here’s what the Lord says to Joseph and Oliver Cowdery: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, if they,” meaning the generation of Joseph Smith’s time, “if they reject my words and this part of my gospel and ministry,” meaning the Book of Mormon, “Blessed are ye, for they can do no more unto you than unto me.” Then he says, “and even if they do unto you even as they have done unto me, blessed are ye, for you shall dwell with me in glory.” So I would nominate that as maybe the first documentable moment where it was intimated to Joseph Smith that he might die a martyr’s death.

Casey Griffiths: Right.

Scott Woodward: They might do to him what was done to Jesus Christ and for the same reason: for trying to share “my gospel and [my] ministry,” the Lord says here, “this part of my gospel and ministry” would be the Book of Mormon and the work that then grows out of that. If they reject you for that, don’t worry about it. The worst thing they can do to you is what they did to me, and if they do that to you, “Blessed are [you], for you shall dwell with me in glory.” So let’s mark that: 1829. How old’s Joseph Smith in 1829?

Casey Griffiths: 1829, he’d be 23.

Scott Woodward: He’d be 23 years old.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So at 23 years old that prophecy is given. As we move forward, let’s jump ten years later, 1839. This time Joseph Smith is in Liberty Jail. One of the men he’s in Liberty Jail with named Lyman White later recounted this: he said that while they were in jail together Joseph told him that he, Joseph, would not live to see forty years. But then Joseph told Lyman White to not speak of that until Joseph was dead. Joseph dies at 38 and a half years old.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So by Liberty Jail, Joseph has a more clear sense of the timing on this, which in the revelation he received in Liberty Jail, where the Lord says, “Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you for ever and ever.” That seems like an echo of that 1829 revelation. So ten years later, 1839, Joseph is telling his fellow cellmate, Lyman White, I’m not going to live to be forty years old. And the Lord is saying, “Thy days are known,” and they will not be numbered less. It’s interesting also that as Joseph was being hauled off to Liberty Jail, Mother Smith, Lucy Smith, in her own recollections, talks about a revelation she received. She said that she received a promise that, “In five years Joseph should have power over all his enemies.” Five years from 1839, which is 1844, right? And she didn’t know exactly what that meant. She didn’t think that meant his premature death, but when it occurred, she wrote, “The time had elapsed, and the promise was fulfilled.” Joseph also told one of his plural wives, Lucy Walker, that he, “has the promise of life for five years, if I listen to the voice of the Spirit.” He told her that in Nauvoo, so I’m not sure if he meant he thought he had five more years or if he’s telling her about the prompting he had in Liberty Jail, but be it as it may, there are these premonitions of martyrdom, Casey, right? In Joseph’s life.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Starting early on, when he’s 23 years old, again when he’s 33 years old in Liberty Jail, and then in Nauvoo, after five years, he felt like he’s now living on borrowed time.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We also find in the accounts of many people in Nauvoo in the year 1844, talking about how Joseph seemed to have this urgency about him. He felt like something was about to happen in his life, because of which he wasn’t going to be around to teach and instruct them. This is one of the reasons that he urgently starts to give the temple ordinances to his most trusted associates, even before the temple was fully constructed, right? Like he’s—he has this sense of urgency. And then when he died people understood now why he was so urgent. So it’s interesting to think through that little trail of what I, again, call premonitions of the martyrdom.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. It does seem like in the final years and especially the final months, Joseph Smith is coming towards a sense of finality about his life. And there’s counter evidence to that. There’s even signs that when he was in Carthage Jail he was hopeful that things were going to be resolved. I mean, his basic nature seems to have been really optimistic, but I also think that he gives enough hints that something big is going to change. And on—in several sources says, “and it might be that they kill me.”

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But it seems like he does know this is coming. So there’s premonitions for sure.

Scott Woodward: There’s premonitions.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So if we were to ask, and maybe this is the big question of this series, okay, so what exactly led to the martyrdom of the prophet Joseph Smith, right? It’s not an easy answer. It’s not one episode in a podcast—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —to respond to that question, right? What led to the martyrdom of the prophet Joseph Smith? Well, it’s complicated.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So throughout this series, that’s what we want to talk about is the confluence of factors, both external factors and internal factors, that converged to bring about the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So where should we start today, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Well, I mean, we’ve done a lot of back-and-forth, and there’s internal and there’s external factors, but if we’re boiling it down quite simply to the people that are attacking the jail, that actually pull the triggers that killed Joseph and Hyrum, we have to understand kind of the external setting. So there’s external factors, internal factors, but the people that killed Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith are very, very transparent about their motives for doing so, and it appears that their primary motive was political.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So that’s where we’ll start today.

Scott Woodward: We’ll start with external factors and what we know about the people that killed Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: At least a few key players.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So we’ve got to set the scene a little bit here, and—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —to set the scene, this all takes place in Hancock County, Illinois, this county that borders the Mississippi River. On the other side is Iowa. And it’s where the Saints essentially end up as refugees after they’re forcibly evicted from their homes in Missouri.

Scott Woodward: Yes. Important context.

Casey Griffiths: This is a whole other episode, but the Saints are forced from Missouri under an extermination order, and they end up as refugees, primarily in Quincy, Illinois, which is still there. Illinois is a frontier state. It’s full of settlers. It’s also kind of a key swing state between the Democrats and the Whigs at the time, and Illinois, to their credit, is very, very generous to the saints at first. Like, first of all, what happened in Missouri was horrendous, and public opinion kind of turned against the Missourians during the time Joseph Smith was in Liberty Jail, and the Illinoisans see this as an opportunity to cultivate a group that will, they see, be supportive and loyal and also just an opportunity to do good, to help some downtrodden people.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so the Saints migrate there, and upriver from Quincy they find a piece of land that they can build on, which is called Commerce when they initially purchase it, but then they renamed Nauvoo, and in setting up Nauvoo, the state of Illinois is also very generous. This leads us to the first big thing you’ve got to know.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: The Nauvoo charter, all right?

Scott Woodward: The Nauvoo charter. So what’s that?

Casey Griffiths: Nauvoo charter. Some of this is going to be explained in future episodes because the person that negotiates the Nauvoo charter is primarily John C. Bennett, who’s a big character in the story.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: But for today let’s focus on what the charter actually said, all right? So—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: The Saints are coming from this terrible situation where they’ve been persecuted, where the militia, the state, and the governor of the state have been opposed to them, and so when they get to Nauvoo, they are very, very protective, I guess you’d say. They’re cautious.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And they’re seeking very closely to set up a law, a charter for their city that will allow them a lot of ways to protect themselves, both legally, militarily—in every way possible.

Scott Woodward: So tell us about charters. This is something that cities just do, right? Back in the day, and . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Do cities still do charters? Like, do you get a charter for your city?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: That gives you some legal maneuverability? Is that still a thing?

Casey Griffiths: You still do. So if we wanted to build Scottsylvania, you know, out there in the fields by Rexburg, we’d get the land.

Scott Woodward: Scottsylvania. I like this. I like where this is going. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Where you’d approach the state government to grant a charter, and just to give you a perspective, Springfield, which is the capital of Illinois, got its charter in 1837. So this is three years—

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: —prior to when Nauvoo gets its charter.

Scott Woodward: Wait, why so late for Springfield?

Casey Griffiths: Not necessarily so late, but this is new territory. Like, I mean.

Scott Woodward: Oh, the state of Illinois itself is pretty new. Is that what you’re saying?

Casey Griffiths: The state is new, and they’re looking to attract settlers. And that’s part of the reason why we get such a good charter.

Scott Woodward: Gotcha.

Casey Griffiths: So first of all, the provisions of the Nauvoo charter were very similar to other provisions given back then. For instance, almost every city in Illinois had a militia, which today seems a little weird to us. Militia were like National Guard, but not exactly. The idea in the early American Republic was that instead of having a big military, which the founding fathers actually discouraged, every town would have a militia unit, and when the country was attacked, the militia would come together, and you’d have a big army all of a sudden. But that also means that every town in Hancock County has their own kind of paramilitary organization, and this includes Nauvoo. Nauvoo has the Nauvoo Legion, which is one of the largest of the militias, not just in Illinois, but in the entire United States.

Scott Woodward: So, okay, two things about that: so first of all, that’s one of the ways we got burned like crazy in Missouri, right? Like, we wanted militia help.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Here’s this group of people being persecuted by mobs, and it turns out that many of the members of the mob also wear another hat called militia.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so people in the militia were the very people that were persecuting the saints, and so when we moved to Illinois, we wanted the right to protect ourselves.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Legally.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Lawfully. Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Like, we sometimes use the term mob as a catch-all, but the group that attacked Haun’s Mill, for instance, were a militia. They were from Livingstone County.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They were part of this organization.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And then the second thing, isn’t it true that in Illinois at this time, militias were typically done by county rather than by city? And so for the Saints to ask for their own militia in the city was slightly unusual, but not unprecedented. Is that right?

Casey Griffiths: Not unprecedented. In fact, Glenn Leonard, who wrote a book on Nauvoo and is one of the experts, actually pointed out that about eighty percent of the Nauvoo charter is very similar to other Illinois cities. Like, it followed this general pattern. But there were a few places where the Nauvoo Charter was unusual, also.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: For instance, James L. Kimball’s, another historian that wrote—said, “The passage of the Charter of Nauvoo gave the budding city a government within a government. With this charter the Saints possessed a city government whose ordinances needed only to be not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States or the state of Illinois. Not mentioned is any need to conform with other state laws or county regulations.” And so that essentially means that the City Council of Nauvoo could pass ordinances that contradicted state law as long as those ordinances did not conflict with state or regional constitution, or as another historian put it, “The charter reflected boilerplate city governments. To Mormons, it granted them political sovereignty that they had long coveted.” So it really sets up Nauvoo as kind of this independent government within Illinois, but it gives the Saints a ton of leeway to kind of do what they feel is necessary to protect the city.

Scott Woodward: So the government within the government.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: As long as it’s not repugnant to state or national constitutions, you can basically be autonomous.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. So the Nauvoo Charter, for instance, gives them the right to have their own independent militia which is going to become the Nauvoo Legion—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —to sponsor a university, to deal with conduct that was deemed a public nuisance. That’s going to come up later on when the Nauvoo Expositor is published. They have a municipal court system with the power to grant writs of habeas corpus, to pass local marriage laws, and even though a lot of these are found in other city charters, the Church essay on the Nauvoo Charter notes, “Nauvoo’s charter was the strongest and most complete of the charters granted by the state of Illinois, and all of these powers, and many others, proved useful to the Saints in making Nauvoo a protected place of independence, religious worship, and self-government. So it gives the Saints what they had been kind of seeking for, especially after what had happened in Missouri.

Scott Woodward: So they were doubly motivated to have a really good, really tight, really protective charter for the city of Nauvoo in light of the events of Missouri.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And so let’s talk about one aspect of it, which was the militia.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: We talked about the Nauvoo Legion, which the Nauvoo Legion is going to exist even in Utah. The Nauvoo Legion fights a war against the U. S. Army in 1856 during the so-called Mormon War, but having a militia like the Nauvoo Legion wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that Nauvoo was so large. So a lot of Latter-day Saints are migrating to Nauvoo. At the time Nauvoo rivaled Chicago as the largest city in Illinois. Probably wasn’t bigger than Chicago, we’ve settled on, but the size of Nauvoo meant that their militia was bigger than other cities, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Which, for context, that’s, like, what, like, 10,000 or so?

Casey Griffiths: Nauvoo at its height estimates are between, like, 20 to 25,000.

Scott Woodward: In the city proper?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Oh.

Casey Griffiths: Which is pretty big.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: For frontier in Illinois. The Nauvoo Legion was probably about 2,500 people, which was significantly bigger than the other city’s militias, but it is kind of a recipe for conflict, because, you know, in the end it’s these other militias. It’s the Warsaw Militia, which Warsaw is a town downstream from Nauvoo, that attacks the Carthage Jail. The Nauvoo Legion could have prevented that, but Joseph Smith had ordered them not to come to Carthage or participate. And so a lot of these things—like, they have a large militia. The charter of Nauvoo said, “The saints could raise a military body that was free from state jurisdiction, which assured the saints they would have a right to defend themselves.” So the saints are feeling good about this because, okay, we can have our own militia, and if the state turns on us like they did in Missouri, we’ll have legal sanction to say we can use the militia to defend ourselves.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Makes total sense in context.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. And then, other things, like the charter granted the municipal court, “Power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases arising under the ordinances of the city council.”

Scott Woodward: What’s a writ of habeas corpus?

Casey Griffiths: Writ of habeas corpus basically meant that you could go somewhere else if you felt like the crowd was biased against you. So a large part of Joseph Smith’s death was that they wanted to get him to Carthage because they felt like he was protected in Nauvoo. A writ of habeas corpus could say, we feel like we won’t get a fair trial in Carthage, and so let’s get a writ where we think we can get a fair trial. And Joseph Smith used this legal maneuver a lot of times to keep him in Nauvoo, because he felt like if he left Nauvoo it would be an unsafe situation.

Scott Woodward: So this is a way to ensure that you can be tried in a non-toxic environment? You can invoke a writ of habeas corpus? Is that how it works?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah, essentially.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So, I mean, to make a long story short, the Nauvoo Charter gives the Saints a lot of independence, a lot of freedom. It’s granted at the time when Illinois is really anxious to have the Saints settle there.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And it gives them a lot of power to kind of protect themselves so that they feel safe and secure. But this power causes some people to be suspicious of the political influence of the Saints.

Scott Woodward: So amassing that kind of political power stirred up trouble—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —with their neighbors.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. That’s the political situation. Illinois is really generous to the Saints, grants them a lot of power. They can do what they need to do to protect themselves, but this causes the other cities in Hancock County, who have their own militias, to be suspicious of the power of the Saints, and not just their political power, but Nauvoo is becoming the economic hub. It’s becoming the social hub. It seems like if you want to get elected to political office in Hancock County, it’s going to be difficult unless you’re a Latter-day Saint because so much of the population resides in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: And so there’s these other cities around, like Carthage, which was, I think, the county seat, wasn’t it?

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward: And Warsaw and other places, which, unless they’re friendly with the Latter-day Saints, they’re not going to have very many political opportunities, political options. They can get outvoted pretty quickly by the Latter-day Saints if they’re on our bad side, essentially.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And it’s not surprising that with the Saints’ influence on the rise, what happens in Illinois mirrors what happens in other places where people start to worry about these—they see them as religious zealots—building a city that’s increasing rapidly in population and influence and that may take away their rights. Like, in antebellum America, America before the Civil War, this wasn’t entirely uncommon that you would have kind of a city-versus-city sort of conflict, and that leads us to probably the biggest opponent of the Saints outside of Nauvoo, which is Mr. Tom Sharp. Thomas C. Sharp.

Scott Woodward: Thomas C. Sharp. What do we know about Thomas C. Sharp?

Casey Griffiths: Well, like I said earlier, we sometimes use the word mob to describe a mob attack to Carthage Jail, but there’s not a huge mystery. It’s not like it was some faceless mob of people that were so passionate that they just couldn’t hold their feelings back, and they showed up with their pitchforks and their torches. I mean, this was a planned assassination that takes place and is led primarily by the Warsaw militia. So Warsaw is a town downriver from Nauvoo that also wants to become a political and commercial center. And Thomas Sharp is the editor of the Warsaw Signal, the main newspaper published in Warsaw. And it’s pretty clear, in fact, by his own writings, that Sharp’s motives for hating the Saints were mostly political.

Scott Woodward: So he’s kind of the ringleader of what eventually becomes the mob that kills Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, I mean, in his newspaper, we’ll show you this, but he openly calls for the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Like, he flat out says, “The statement has to be made with powder and ball!!!”

Scott Woodward: Yeah. We don’t have time for conversations.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. With three exclamation points, by the way, after the end of that.

Scott Woodward: But it didn’t start like that, right? We started on pretty friendly terms with Thomas Sharp, right, like . . . ?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Actually, when the Saints first arrive in the area, Sharp is kind of like everybody else, where he writes fairly positively. For instance, this is an excerpt from the Warsaw Signal. He wrote, “Whatever may be thought of the tenants of this sect, it is certainly an imposing spectacle to witness the moral power which in so short a period they have exerted. Already in obedience to this call, thousands have left their homes in Europe, and thousands are now preparing to leave and take up residence in a far distant land.” And then he actually called the saints a persecuted people and mentioned that he had been accused of being too partial towards them. So he’s like, hey, I’m being accused of being their friend, and he writes this fairly nice editorial. Right when the saints first arrive.

Scott Woodward: So he’s sympathetic. He’s kind to us, until he’s not.

Casey Griffiths: Until he’s not, yeah.

Scott Woodward: What was the turning point on that?

Casey Griffiths: Well, he hadn’t met Joseph Smith in person at this point, but Joseph Smith reads the editorial and sort of sees Sharp as a friend that they can make. They’re looking for friends after they’ve settled in this new area. He invites Sharp to come to Nauvoo, witness a review of the Nauvoo Legion, even invites Sharp to have a big turkey dinner in his house, and he’s thinking a lot of this will win Sharp over, but instead this is the beginning of Thomas Sharp developing a deep hatred for the saints. And it’s clear from Sharp’s own writings that what he’s upset over is politics. He’ll use things like plural marriage, or the oddness of the saints, or say that they’re un-American, but he openly fears the political power of the saints, and it feels like this only gets worse in 1842 . . .

Scott Woodward: When he tasted it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Personally, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So Sharp runs for office, and he loses to William Smith, the Prophet’s younger brother.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Man, there’s a lot to process with William Smith, but . . .

Scott Woodward: But doesn’t William win by, like, a landslide?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Because of all the Latter-day Saints who vote for him?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, he overwhelmingly won, and it’s clear he won because Latter-day Saints voted for him.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Which kind of sends the signal to Sharp that if you want to have political ambitions in Hancock County and you’re not a Latter-day Saint, it’s not going to happen.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And at that point, Sharp starts to really, really take the Saints to task. He uses his newspaper to criticize, to satirize everything that he can. In fact, Thomas Gregg, who’s another newspaper editor in the area, says this is what Sharp does. “The editorials of the Signal,” that’s Sharp’s newspaper, the Warsaw Signal, “were extensively copied into other papers throughout the country, and from their pugnacious and violent character, people at a distance were led to believe that old Tom Sharp was a perfect walking arsenal, his person bristling with bowie knives and pistols, who would rather fight than eat.”

Scott Woodward: Yeah, so he comes across as a pretty cantankerous fellow.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: In fact, can I quote one of his—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —criticisms early on?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He says that the Mormons had, “stepped beyond the proper sphere of religious denomination and become a political body.” He then insisted that he honored the saints’ religious beliefs, but was “bound to oppose the concentration of political power in a religious body or in the hands of a few individuals.” So like you said, like, this is highly politically motivated. His hatred towards the saints continues to grow because of this political issue—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —that they vote in a bloc, as people would say back then, right? All the Latter-day Saints vote together, and they vote for their own, and this just ticks Thomas Sharp off.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and Thomas Sharp’s words don’t exactly endear him to Joseph Smith. In fact—

Scott Woodward: No, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —over the next few months there’s kind of a flame war that grows between the two of them. Sorry to use the modern online term. But you’ve seen that thing where in, in the comments, somebody starts going back and forth, and they’re having their own argument.

Scott Woodward: Is that called a flame war today?

Casey Griffiths: I think it’s called a flame war.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Let’s say, yeah, flame war with Joseph Smith. For instance, Joseph Smith writes a note to Sharp, editor of the Warsaw Signal, Nauvoo, Illinois, May 26, 1841. This is what Joseph wrote: “Sir. You will discontinue my paper.”

Scott Woodward: Like, his subscription, right?

Casey Griffiths: He has a subscription. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: “You will discontinue my paper. Its contents are calculated to pollute me, and to patronize the filthy sheet, that tissue of lies, that sink of iniquity, is disgraceful to any moral man. Yours, with utter contempt, Joseph Smith. P. S. Please publish the above in your contemptible paper.”

Scott Woodward: Whoa! Okay. Brother Joseph, what’s going on with you?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay, hold on. This is May 1841, and it wasn’t until the next year, 1842, when his brother William Smith beat Sharp in the election. So do you know anything about the gap there? What’s happening in ’41 that Sharp is doing that’s getting Joseph so worked up like this?

Casey Griffiths: Well, from Sharp’s response—so Joseph Smith invites Sharp to Nauvoo on the 6th of April, the anniversary of the church, right?

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: Sharp’s editorial is published a few weeks later, and then Joseph Smith’s response is late May. So this all takes place within a couple of weeks.

Scott Woodward: I see, I see. So his initial accusation of the saints being a political body that’s kind of dangerous here.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. He sees them as un-American, I guess you’d say.

Scott Woodward: Gotcha. Gotcha.

Casey Griffiths: Because they’re so united, I guess.

Scott Woodward: So Joseph’s response is a little feisty himself.

Casey Griffiths: It’s a little feisty.

Scott Woodward: Like, it’s maybe not great PR.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Like, we’ve all seen that scene from Hamilton where they signed their letters, like, “I remain your humble and obedient servant.” Joseph Smith signs this, “Yours with utter contempt, so . . . And so he’s being pretty direct, and Sharp, by the way, actually publishes it in his newspaper, but . . .

Scott Woodward: His response is pretty cheeky.

Casey Griffiths: All caps, “HIGHLY IMPORTANT!” Exclamation point, “A new revelation from Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet.” And then he writes the following: he says, “Just think, reader, after having been invited to Nauvoo on the 6th of April by the mayor of the city, after having ridden to the temple on that great day, in the presence of assembled thousands, by the side of the holy prophet, after supping with the prophet and eating heartily of his stall-fed turkey,” he introduces one thing that bugs him, which is he saw the Nauvoo Legion, and he thought the saints were militaristic. He goes on to write, “How military these people are becoming. Everything they say or do seems to breathe a spirit of military tactics. Their prophet appears on all great occasions in his splendid regimental dress, signs his name ‘Lieutenant General,’ and more titles are to be found in the Nauvoo Legion than any one book on military tactics can produce.” Then he wrote, “Truly, fighting must be part of the creed of these saints.” And, I mean, he’s not incorrect. The Nauvoo Legion was huge. They often displayed the Nauvoo Legion as a way of kind of saying, hey, we have the means to protect ourselves. Don’t mess with us. But he also isn’t contextualizing any of this in that these are people that were just forcibly evicted under an extermination order from their former home. So it makes sense that the saints would be interested in doing a show of strength so that what happens in Missouri doesn’t happen again. Like Sharp just isn’t doing the work to kind of understand where they’re coming from when he gets offended about this.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And he continues to lambast the prophet on political points.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Here’s another one, for instance, that he wrote. He said, “If Joe Smith is to control the majority of votes in our county, are we not, in effect, the subject of a despot? Might we not as well be serfs to the autocrat of Russia? We ask the independent citizens of this county and this state to wake up from their slumber, to put down this foul and unholy attempt to enslave them.” Then he calls Mormonism, “A power in league with the prince of darkness, not inferior to the Spanish Inquisition in its capacity for secrecy and intrigue.” I mean, geez.

Casey Griffiths: Man, them’s fighting words, right?

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: Holy cow.

Scott Woodward: He’s feisty. Flame war is right. Flame war back and forth between these two.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, I mean, part of it is Sharp is aware that this is probably good for his newspaper circulation too.

Scott Woodward: Oh, yeah. Because what’s the phrase? Controversy sells.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. “If it bleeds, it leads.” That’s the old newspaper saying.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, the Warsaw Signal only lasts two years after Joseph Smith’s death, and when it ceases publications, Sharp actually says, “Our cause against the Mormons has kept us in business.”

Scott Woodward: Oh, you dirty dog.

Casey Griffiths: So he’s got ulterior motives, too. He wants to sell papers.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And criticizing the saints was good business. Like, you take a religious population that’s different from everybody else, and you demonize them, and that causes, you know, papers to fly off the shelves.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Now, unfortunately, the saints don’t . . .

Scott Woodward: Turn the other cheek?

Casey Griffiths: Turn the other cheek, per se, especially young William Smith, who, in April 1842, starts a newspaper called the Nauvoo Wasp.

Scott Woodward: Wasp. Why wasp? Is that White, Anglo Saxon, Protestant WASP?

Casey Griffiths: No. No, I think wasp as in, it’s a little thing that will sting and irritate you. Because the wasp, ultimately, it says, it was designed to combat “the shafts of slander, foul calumnies, and base misrepresentations appearing in papers like the Warsaw Signal.” And then the Wasp also announces it’s going to “convey correct information to the world and thereby disabuse the public mind as to the many slanders that are constantly perpetrated against us.” So the Wasp initially is intended to defend the saints, but it does kind of continue this war of words between Tom Sharp and now William Smith, who’s running the Wasp.

Scott Woodward: It doesn’t just stay on the defensive, correcting the narrative.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Sometimes William takes the offensive and slings a little mud himself.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Can I read?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s read this.

Scott Woodward: We’ve got to read this. So here’s what William publishes about Thomas Sharp. The headline is “Nose-ology about one ‘Tom-ASS C. Sharp.’” That’s Tom, dash, A S S in all caps, C. Sharp. Okay? So this is the headline: “Nose-ology about Tom-ASS C. Sharp.” “The length of his snout is said to be an exact proportion of seven to one compared with his intellectual faculties, having upon its convex surface well-developed bumps.” And then William says that Thomas Sharp’s nose “deformations betrayed many dark traits, including anti-mormonativeness.

Casey Griffiths: Mormonativedness, yes.

Scott Woodward: Anti-mormonativeness. “His bumpy nose, portrays many dark traits, like anti-mormonativeness.”

Casey Griffiths: That is good stuff.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’s slinging mud. He’s fighting. He’s not just defending the church. He’s pushing Thomas Sharp’s buttons.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Oh, William.

Casey Griffiths: The problem is he’s trying to get down in the mud, and there’s nobody muddier or dirtier than old Tom Sharp. So Tom Sharp writes back and says, “We have received the first number of a new six-by-nine,” a new newspaper, “recently started at Nauvoo, The Wasp.” And then Sharp said, “Of the varmint itself, we have nothing to say further than that the title is a perfect misnomer. If it had been called Polecat, its name would’ve then corresponded perfectly with the character of its contents.

Scott Woodward: I don’t know what a polecat is. What’s a polecat?

Casey Griffiths: A pole cat is,, like a feral cat or something. Like, one of those cats that, you know, wanders around the neighborhood and nobody owns it.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: That I used to see in Miami, when I was a missionary anyway.

Scott Woodward: Got it. Okay. Hi. Sorry to interrupt, but I did a little fact checking on this point and found out that polecat actually means a weasel or a skunk. So by saying William Smith’s newspaper ought to be called the Polecat? Well, that tells me that Tom Sharp didn’t have a very high opinion of it. Anyway, back to the conversation.

Casey Griffiths: He says, “If it had been called Polecat, its name would’ve then corresponded perfectly with the character of its contents. It is needless to inform our readers that we don’t fight with such animals, nature having given them a decided advantage.” So now Tom Sharp is, like, taking the high ground, saying, oh my gosh, they’re attacking me, when he’s sort of the person that starts it. Now, Joseph Smith and other church leaders eventually realize that William is not helping the situation.

Scott Woodward: Need to rein that kid in.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So they end the Wasp. They decide to start a new newspaper, which they were going to call the Dove of the West. Instead, they rename it the Nauvoo Neighbor, and Joseph appoints John Taylor, this staid, well spoken Englishman, as the editor. But Tom Sharp thinks that the Saints are too powerful politically, he thinks that they’re un-American, and he thinks that they’re militant. And Tom Sharp, it’s not exaggerating to say, is a murderer, okay? Tom Sharp is in Carthage Jail, brags that he’s in Carthage Jail, and is one of the people indicted for the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. He’s not convicted, but he also had no problem saying, I did what had to be done that day. I looked up his bio on the Joseph Smith Papers, by the way, and after—you know, after all this ended, he moved to Carthage and served in a number of things there, including principal of the high school. So, like, imagine your high school principal.

Scott Woodward: Boy.

Casey Griffiths: Mine was a nice guy, but could be intimidating. Imagine if your high school was someone that had straight up murdered two people, how intimidating that would be. That’s Tom Sharp.

Scott Woodward: Okay. So Tom Sharp is definitely unequivocally complicit in the murder of Joseph Smith, and what we’ve just talked about is kind of the backstory as to why he grew that hatred against the saints.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: So all of this is based around politics, and the saints do have a lot of influence, but they see it as necessary to protect themselves. Why does this come to a head in the spring of 1844, when Joseph Smith is killed?

Scott Woodward: It’s a presidential election year.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And Joseph Smith declares his candidacy for President of the United States in January of 1844.

Scott Woodward: Mm. Whoa. Okay, that’s big, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I mean, if you’re old Tom Sharp, this is your worst fears coming true, that Joseph Smith is not only seeking to dominate the county, but from his perspective seeking to dominate the country, and this is just more ammunition for him, basically, to say that, you know, what’s up with these people? They should just mind their P’s and Q’s, but instead they’re seeking power, and that irks him and that leads towards him wanting Joseph Smith done.

Scott Woodward: Maybe we need to back up, then, and talk about why did Joseph Smith. put forth his name as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. I think that’s an important piece of context to make sure we establish here, right? Because from the outside, people are believing the narrative of Thomas Sharp. In fact, I’ve heard people in our day that echo Thomas Sharp, saying Joseph was power hungry, and he’s illegally trying to combine church and state, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so you can see that from the outside optics, you see where those accusations come from.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But, like, what’s going on internally here? Why is Joseph running for president of the United States, from an insider perspective?

Casey Griffiths: Well, this needs to be contextualized, too.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: After what happened in Missouri, Joseph Smith goes to Washington, D. C., and he does so because the persecutors in Missouri were the state of Missouri. Like, it wasn’t a bunch of ruffians. It wasn’t a mob. The governor of the state issued an extermination order against the Saints.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And pre-Civil War America, the big conflict was, are the states the superior government? Or is the federal government superior?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so, I mean, if we had a conflict like what happened in Missouri, the federal government would intervene.

Scott Woodward: Today. Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They’d send in federal troops. Yeah, they’d say, Hey, this is a conflict between different groups within a state. Let’s send in neutral troops from outside and intervene. But pre-Civil War, that was a real tinderbox that most politicians didn’t want to mess with. So Joseph goes, he spends several months in Washington, D. C., trying to meet with Martin Van Buren, who’s President of the United States. Martin Van Buren, who by the way was known as the Little Magician, because he was so good at manipulating everybody on each side, finally meets with Joseph Smith, and when Joseph Smith presents him with all this evidence, I mean, he literally brings a huge stack of written accounts of what happened to the Saints in Missouri, Martin Van Buren’s answer is, “Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you. If I were, I would lose the support of the state of Missouri.”

Scott Woodward: He doesn’t want to lose their vote.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Oh, you dirty, little politician.

Casey Griffiths: He doesn’t want to mess with the system in order to support this religious minority that he sees as not significant enough for him to risk his political stature. And so Joseph Smith and the other leaders of the church are very disillusioned with the federal government and see the federal government as not being willing to enforce the Bill of Rights, religious freedom, and all those things that are promised but that it seems like weren’t working. So that causes Joseph Smith to be concerned of, will the federal government intervene if a situation like Missouri comes up again?

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And then in 1843, in fact, November 4th, we have a record of this, that Joseph Smith writes letters to the presidential candidates of that upcoming election of 1844. We know who they are: they’re John C. Calhoun, Lewis Cass, Richard Johnson, Henry Clay, and Martin Van Buren, and in each letter he described the persecutions that the Mormons had suffered at the hands of the state of Missouri, and then he asked a very pointed question: “What will be your rule of action relative to us as a people?” Like, that’s the question.

Casey Griffiths: Yep.

Scott Woodward: And only Calhoun, Cass, and Clay actually respond to Joseph’s letters, and they expressed little sympathy for the cause of the saints, and so it looks like with the runners for the presidency of the United States, they’re not going to get any support from any one of them, and so that’s a contextual piece to this puzzle.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So with no strong response from any of them promising to help him, the Quorum of the Twelve nominates Joseph Smith to serve as candidate. Joseph Smith writes, “I would not have suffered my name to have been used by my friends on any wise, as President of the United States or candidate for office, if I and my friends could have the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil rights as American citizens.” So in some ways he’s a protest candidate. He’s saying, the government doesn’t actually protect the rights that it promises to, and so I’m running as a way of raise awareness, as a way to get people to know, and, if I win, to help the government actually live up to the promises that it makes.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. In fact, in that quote, he goes on. He says, “If I and my friends could have had the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil rights as American citizens, even those rights which the Constitution guarantees unto all her citizens alike,” then he wouldn’t have run, but then he says, “But this as a people we have been denied from the beginning.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So, yeah, he’s running on the platform of religious liberty, and that context is pretty helpful to understand the motive of what he’s running for. I like your phrase: he’s a protest candidate. In some ways maybe not hoping to win but hoping to raise awareness of maybe the deficiencies of the government at that time to live out the promises of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, we should mention too, and we’ve mentioned before, that Joseph Smith’s platform, which is explained in a pamphlet published called, Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States by General Joseph Smith of Nauvoo, Illinois, General because he was a Lieutenant General in the Nauvoo Legion—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —is radical. So he calls for prison reform. He wants to decrease the size of the House of Representatives. He wants to charter a national bank, like this goes back to what happened to them in Kirtland. He wants to expand, but do so with the consent of the Native Americans.

Scott Woodward: You’re talking about the expanding from sea to shining sea?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: The manifest destiny. He’s all for that, if the Native Americans give their consent—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —to not forcibly remove them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I like that.

Casey Griffiths: And most radically, he’s the first candidate for President of the United States, major candidate, that says we need to end slavery.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, through the sale of public lands and reducing the salary of members of Congress from $8 to $2 a day, and by the money saved in that way, and by selling public lands, use that money to purchase slaves from their masters.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I know we’ve read this before, but this part of his platform bears repeating: “Petition also, ye goodly inhabitants of the slave states, your legislators, to abolish slavery by the year 1850, or now, and save the abolitionists from reproach and ruin, infamy and shame. Pray Congress to pay every man a reasonable price for his slaves out of the surplus revenue arising from the sale of public lands and the deduction of pay for members of Congress.” That’s not going to win him any friends in the political class.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And you can also see marks of Missouri in his platform, too. One of the things he proposes is that the U. S. president should have, “Full power to send an army to suppress mobs without requiring the governor of a state to make that demand.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I mean, that’s perfectly describing the Missouri dilemma, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He wants the president to be able to do what he hoped Martin Van Buren would have done for them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. It looks like a lot of his platform is basically suggesting that the federal government needs to step up and do its job.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Which is settle these intra-community conflicts within states, settle the question of slavery, take a more compassionate view to national expansion, all this stuff.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And, again, it’s a really, really progressive platform that that close to a slave state, which is Missouri, is going to set off a lot of alarm bells to people. It’s going to cause a lot of concern.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It also causes a couple other factors. Again, we don’t know if Joseph Smith could have won. We don’t know what his chances were of winning. I think the saints felt like, hey, if it’s God’s will, he could win, but the church does put a lot of effort into this. They call 300 church members to go on electionary missions. Derek Sainsbury, a good friend of mine, has written a great book where he talks about the election missionaries. They start a newspaper in New York City called The Prophet, which covers Joseph Smith’s candidacy and policy positions, and the situation in 1844 was pretty topsy turvy when it comes to politics. John Tyler, who was the president after Van Buren, didn’t get his party’s nomination, so a lot of people felt like the presidential race was wide open. It was sort of unlikely that a candidate that was running outside of the two major political parties could win, but Joseph Smith also controls a key voting bloc in a swing state in a really, really tight presidential election, and all this stuff is kind of coming together to say that, hey, maybe Joseph Smith doesn’t have a huge chance of winning the presidency, but he could kind of spoil things or have a major impact on who does win the presidency and what happens, and so this does raise a lot of alarm bells for people that are already saying the saints have too much political influence to say now they could have influence on a national scale. That’s going to really alarm people like old Tom Sharp.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And one source from that time says that Joseph’s view on government was widely circulated and took like wildfire. It says that some were worried that if Joseph Smith did not get into the presidential chair this election, he would be sure to the next. And so that’s interesting. As part of one of the conspiracies that begins to formulate around Joseph’s assassination, there were some who were saying that if Illinois and Missouri would join together to kill Joseph, they would not be brought to justice for it, and this is part of the beginning of the conspiracy to take down the prophet. There was actually a fear that if he didn’t get in to the presidential chair this time, he might next time.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I also want to say that from some documents, from some of Joseph’s own words, we see that he had a sense that this could be very dangerous for him. Like, this could actually lead to the end of his life. He says that explicitly. Let me share, for instance, one quote from him: he said, “Persecution has rolled upon our heads from time to time from portions of the United States like peals of thunder because of our religion, and no portion of the government as yet has stepped forward for our relief, and in view of these things I feel it my right and privilege to obtain what influence and power I can lawfully in the United States for the protection of injured innocents.” Then he says this: “And if I lose my life in a good cause, I am willing to be sacrificed on the altar of virtue, righteousness, and truth, in maintaining the laws and constitution of the United States, if need be, for the general good of mankind.” Why did Joseph Smith think this might cause him to lose his life in running for President of the United States to protect injured innocents? Well, whatever the reason, he was right.

Casey Griffiths: He was right. Yeah. And again, there’s a lot to explore when it comes to answering the question of why was Joseph Smith martyred, but if we’re looking at the perspective of the people that attack the jail and kill Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith, it’s primarily political. That’s what motivates Tom Sharp. Tom Sharp is the leader of the militia that attacks the jail. They’re the ones pulling the trigger.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And I think a perfect summary of what we’ve talked about today, Casey, is in this quote from Dallin H. Oaks. This is in a book he wrote back in 1975 with a friend named Marvin S. Hill called Carthage Conspiracy. He said this: “The murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage, Illinois was not a spontaneous, impulsive act by a few personal enemies of the Mormon leaders, but a deliberate political assassination, committed or condoned by some of the leading citizens in Hancock County.” This was a political assassination.

Casey Griffiths: Dang. Wow. I’ve been saying that for years, and I wonder if I just picked it up and forgot that I read it in President Oaks, but I thought I was, like, really being edgy, but now I know President Oaks has been making that argument since the 1970s.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: That it’s not a mob action. It’s a political assassination. Let’s call it what it is.

Scott Woodward: Let’s call it what it is. A political assassination led by the leading citizens of Hancock County, and we’ve highlighted the major mover and shaker on the outside: Thomas Sharp.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Now there is a lot to say about how Joseph got to Carthage.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And how he left this kind of protected environment that existed legally and militarily within Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: We’ve set the stakes here. We know why the people that pulled the trigger wanted him dead, but there’s also people that are colluding within the church to get him out of Nauvoo and into Carthage where he can be killed, and that’s going to be what we explore in our next episode.

Scott Woodward: Internal factors that lead to the death of Joseph Smith.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay. We’ll see you next time. Thanks, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: All right. See you guys next time.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week we take a close look at some of the key internal factors that led to the martyrdom, particularly those former members of the church who conspired to bring about the death of the prophet. Who were they, and what were their motivations? If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.