Scott Woodward: In the wake of Joseph Smith and the Nauvoo City Council’s fateful decision to destroy the Nauvoo Expositor press, several things unfolded in rapid succession: Charges were pressed against them for riot, brazen calls to violence against them were published in Tom Sharp’s Warsaw Signal, and Missourians began eagerly gathering to Illinois with a vow to help exterminate the Mormons. Meanwhile, Joseph wrote urgent letters to Illinois Governor Thomas Ford and U. S. President John Tyler, outlining what was then unfolding and asking for their aid. Joseph had very good reason to fear for his safety and that of the saints. In an effort to defuse the danger of the situation for all involved, he and Hyrum and a few others secretly slipped away across the river, intending to go either to Washington, D. C., the West among the Native Americans, or both. However, he and they ultimately decided to return to Nauvoo and to voluntarily go to Carthage, the hotbed of their enemies, to be tried for the charge of riot. In today’s episode of Church History Matters, we dive headlong into all of this drama that unfolded between June 10 and June 24, 1844. In particular, we try to answer the question, why did Joseph and Hyrum choose to go to Carthage when it seemed that certain danger awaited them there? I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our fourth 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: We’re back.

Scott Woodward: We’re back.

Casey Griffiths: The story’s getting twistier and twistier as we go.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, one of the things we’ve got to acknowledge is this is a hot potato. This is an emotional story for everybody that cares about Joseph Smith, whether you love him or you hate him. This is hotly contested ground, and there’s a lot of sources to go through. I think you and I were just barely saying, how do we—there’s so much to talk about.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And all we’re doing today is the time between the destruction of the Expositor and when Joseph leaves for Carthage Jail. But, boy, is there a lot of information to sift through.

Scott Woodward: There is. And credit to the Joseph Smith Papers people for doing such an incredible job culling all the sources together. There’s just so many resources there, original documents, and we’ll be quoting from several of those today—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —as we go throughout this. Sometimes we have multiple witnesses of the same thing, and on some occasions, you and I were just talking about this before we pushed record, there are some times where we only have one account from one person who’s an otherwise really credible person, and so how much weight should we give to what they had to say? And so we’re going to wrestle with that in this episode and probably our next episode as well as we try to just tell the story and use the sources that are available—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —and try to weigh those sources in a way that’s responsible.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And before we started this series, I would have said that the final moments of Joseph’s life were the most contested part, but I’m revising that to say it’s the lead up. It’s the reasons why he went to Carthage that appear to be the most contested, and some of the factors we’re dealing with here is that a lot of these materials were written down after the saints had arrived in Utah, some of them were recorded when there was antagonistic feelings towards Emma Smith and people that didn’t come to Utah—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —and we’re trying to negotiate those lenses. Like, some people want to assign a lot of blame on Emma Smith for why Joseph Smith went to Carthage.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So take what they have to say, and weigh it carefully. Others, you know, have their own agendas as well, when it comes down to it.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: The JSP is a good place to start, because that’s just contemporary documents from the time, but there are many people, some better than others, that sat down and wrote their stories after the martyrdom. Like Tom Ford, we’ve already talked about how he’s not the greatest source.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But then there’s John Taylor. John Taylor writes a detailed account of the martyrdom that’s book length—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —but he writes it several years later, and so there’s questions about memory and accuracy there as well, and we love and respect John Taylor—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —but we also have to be cautious sometimes being too definitive about what we know and what we don’t know.

Scott Woodward: So here we are wading into these waters with some degree of tentativeness.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So let’s do it, shall we?

Casey Griffiths: Let’s jump in, yeah. Let’s do a little recap.

Scott Woodward: Series recap so far. We’ve been looking at and trying to understand what led to the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and to do so we have talked about how we need to understand the confluence of factors both outside the church and inside the church that converged in 1844 to bring about this tragedy, including, we talked about outside the church there’s the actions of Joseph’s political enemies. Chief agitator, we’ll call him agitator-in-chief, would be Thomas Sharp, the editor of a newspaper down in Warsaw, Illinois, called the Warsaw Signal. Fears and paranoia about the saints’ political power, which is heightened by Joseph Smith’s announcement that he’s running for president of the United States in that year of 1844. Add to that that Joseph’s political ideas were starting to spread like wildfire, according to one account—that, you know, some might think of him as only a protest candidate, but others felt like if he didn’t win the election of 1844, he would win the election of 1848. Others had interest in and reasons to want Joseph dead tied to his political aspirations as well. And we tried to be very clear in our first episode of this series that this was a political assassination.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And that’s not our opinion solely: it’s what Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin Hill wrote—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —when they wrote Carthage Conspiracy back in 1975: that this was a political assassination. Wasn’t a mob action, wasn’t an act of passion.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It was pre-planned, thought out, and carried out with malice.

Scott Woodward: So there’s a group of people who want to get Joseph Smith into their clutches so they can kill him, but they couldn’t have done it without inside help. And so, our second episode, we talked about the fall and apostasy of key individuals within the church who then conspire to basically set a legal trap for Joseph to get him into the hands of those who would kill him. We talked about John C. Bennett. We talked about William and Wilson Law, Chauncey and Francis Higbee, Robert and Charles Foster, and others in the church. Besides John C. Bennett, who was weaving his own nefarious web through publishing slander, these other men were those who were all excommunicated from the church and then conspired together to publish one issue of a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor, which we went into great detail in our last episode reviewing all the stream of insults, accusations, vilification of the worst kind toward Joseph Smith and his inner circle.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And all of which was calculated by them to stir up mob violence against the saints in Nauvoo and ultimately to remove Joseph Smith from power.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, so the dilemma, then, with Joseph is what do you do about this newspaper?

Scott Woodward: Right?

Casey Griffiths: This is kind of what we dealt with last time, but this wasn’t a sudden act. The city council met together in multiple sessions that lasted multiple hours, and then published the minutes, so we know exactly what the discussion was as to how dangerous is the Expositor, and does it meet the legal standard for being a public nuisance? The idea being you have freedom of speech, you have freedom of the press, but you don’t have the right to yell “Fire” in a public theater. They felt that the Expositor was dangerous, and so after two days of deliberations, and a Sabbath day in between—they deliberate all day Saturday, all day Monday—they make the decision to destroy the Expositor and the press itself, and then they order the city marshal to carry that out, and he does. There’s no violence inflicted upon the publishers of the Expositor, but the Expositor press and all the copies of the Nauvoo Expositor in existence are destroyed. Not all—there’s still surviving copies, I suppose.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But all the ones that are in the printing office are destroyed at that time.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And we talked about the legality of that, right? Like—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Most scholars would agree today that it was legal to destroy the Nauvoo Expositor . . .

Casey Griffiths: Mm-hmm. Based on the laws of the time.

Scott Woodward: Based on the laws of the time. The destruction of the press itself is a little more debated. What we know for sure from the historical record here is that this action gave his enemies outside of Nauvoo now an excuse to try to extradite Joseph to Carthage, where he’s going to be much more vulnerable, and it seems like this was the trap that had been set from the beginning.

Casey Griffiths: Right. And it’s hard to say that people like Francis and Chauncey Higbee, who are smart people and lawyers, don’t know what they’re doing when they do this. They have a very clear idea in mind of what the publication of the Expositor will possibly lead to and probably, and then what you’re going to see in the story we tell today is the speed at which the outside enemies connect with the inside enemies. It’s so fast that, I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist here, but it’s hard to say that there probably wasn’t some idea of how this was all going to go down. Like, it just seems like it’s connected.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. It was a chess match: We’ll do this move, and if Joseph does X, we’ll move over here. If he does Y, we’ll move here. But it does totally seem like they’re coming in for the king, coming in for the checkmate.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So we want to talk about what happens next today, right? We want to talk about what led to Joseph and Hyrum making the decision, and it was a decision, to go to Carthage Jail.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: They didn’t have to legally go to Carthage, right, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Well, that’s up for debate, too, right? It depends on your perspective as well. We’re going to get into that, but that is the major disputed question here, and in some ways it’s one of the most disputed aspects of the entire martyrdom story itself, is why did they choose to go to Carthage?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: What led to that decision, and what did they think was going to happen when they got there? So . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: That’s the burning question for today, is why did they choose to go to Carthage? And we want to give you kind of a brief overview of the time frame here.

Scott Woodward: Little flyby.

Casey Griffiths: And we’ll be honest and admit that there’s a lot of information and it’s not always easy to pin down exactly when it happened, though we’ll do our best to do so. So the Expositor and its press is destroyed on June 10.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And then in the days following, there’s a public outcry that Joseph and Hyrum need to be brought to justice—originally, it’s not just Joseph and Hyrum: It’s the entire city council of Nauvoo—and that they need to come to trial in Carthage. That Joseph’s enemies are saying he won’t get a fair trial: He’s got the system rigged in Nauvoo. He needs to come to Carthage, which is the county seat, about twelve miles away from where Nauvoo is.

Scott Woodward: Well, and it’s interesting, too, that there is a group from the city council that do turn themselves in at Carthage—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —but they don’t have Joseph and Hyrum with them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And there’s an outcry in Carthage against them to say, no, you guys are not sufficient. We won’t stop until we have Joseph and Hyrum. They mentioned both of them. Joseph and Hyrum need to come with you. And so they wanted Joseph and Hyrum and the city council, sure, but definitely Joseph and Hyrum. So it’s really interesting to see who they were really angling at.

Casey Griffiths: Highly suspect. And we’ll talk a little bit about this in our next episode, but Joseph and Hyrum are actually released for the charge of destroying the Expositor, which was riot. But then they’re re-indicted under a charge of treason.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: And just Joseph and Hyrum are, and that’s why they’re in Carthage Jail on June 27. So we’re in the days basically from around June 10 up to about June 24 when they agree to go to Carthage, and then on June 27 they’re killed. So there’s back and forth. Joseph Smith tries to deal with this in legal ways from about the 12th to the 22nd. On the 22nd Joseph and Hyrum make the determination to leave Nauvoo and head west for several reasons. They could be going west to prepare a new home for the saints. They could be trying to go east to go to Washington. There’s a letter to Emma Smith that indicates that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But whatever happens, they’re gone less than a day before they return to Nauvoo on June 23, and why they come back to Nauvoo is another major question we’re going to deal with.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So the day after the Nauvoo Expositor was destroyed, Francis Higbee, one of those conspirators who was part of the Nauvoo Expositor‘s publication—and by the way, this is the same Francis Higbee who predicted after the press was destroyed, he said, “In ten days, there will not be a Mormon left in Nauvoo.” I mean, he’s fired up, right?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He goes right to the Carthage justice of the peace. Two days later, we’ve got a constable from Carthage coming in here to arrest Joseph for riot and suppression of the press. Of course, they’re in Nauvoo, and so, thanks to writs of habeas corpus, etc., Joseph and those arrested were released by the municipal court as usual, but the constable, who was very wrathy, according to William Clayton—

Casey Griffiths: Love that wording.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. He swore he was certain to return.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Now, lest you think, listeners, that Joseph Smith was being paranoid by thinking he shouldn’t go to Carthage, even before the Expositor was published, this was the plan that old Tom Sharp and other people who were enemies of Joseph Smith were planning out. For instance, on May 29, so this is more than a week before the Expositor was published, Thomas Sharp writes in the Warsaw Signal, that’s his newspaper. He wrote, “Joe Smith is not safe out of Nauvoo. We would not be surprised to hear of his death by violent means in a short time.”

Scott Woodward: Jeez.

Casey Griffiths: So that’s one of those things that make me go, oh, man, he’s, like, saying the quiet part out loud.

Scott Woodward: Yeah!

Casey Griffiths: And now, ten days later, they’re doing everything they can to try and get Joseph Smith to leave Nauvoo, when Thomas Sharp has already announced he’s not safe outside of Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Then this is what Tom Sharp writes after the Expositor is destroyed. He writes, all caps, “Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!!” Three exclamation points.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: “Can you stand by and suffer such INFERNAL DEVILS!” All caps, exclamation points, “to ROB,” all caps, “men of their property and RIGHTS,” all caps, “without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own.” Again, all caps, “LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!!” three exclamation points.

Scott Woodward: That’s not subtle.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. For a person in their newspaper, a public record, just basically saying, we don’t have time to let the courts deal with this; these guys have to die, is pretty extraordinary and pretty damning.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and it’s shortly after he publishes that that we have anti-Mormon committees starting to gather. They start to set off rumors that there’s going to be plans to expel the Mormons.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And at the Warsaw meeting, Thomas Sharp tells the people that, “If the safety of our lives and property cannot be ensured to us by legal means, the only recourse left us is to take up arms.” Like, this guy’s quick to the trigger, right? He’s like, let’s pick up arms—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —and let’s go settle this swiftly.

Casey Griffiths: And it’s just clear. I mean, it’s clear from even before the Expositor is published that Tom Sharp and his buddies are looking for an excuse to do a Missouri-style war of extermination. Like, the Expositor is published on June 7. In the Warsaw Signal on June 5, two days previous, this is what Thomas Sharp writes: “It should be the firm determination of everyone holding in veneration the institutions of his country upon the first outrage against a citizen of this county to give those latter-day devils a scathing that will eclipse the Missouri persecutions, or in other words, Missouri justice.”

Scott Woodward: Ooh.

Casey Griffiths: And so that helps a lot to understand the actions of the Nauvoo City Council, where the minutes of the council meetings after the Expositor is published go out of their way. They keep saying, are we facing another Missouri?

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Is there going to be another war of extermination waged against us? If the Expositor is allowed to continue to do what it’s doing, that’s what we’ll face.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And it’s not something that they’re conjuring up out of thin air. They’re not being paranoid. Thomas Sharp has openly said this in his newspaper just two days before the Expositor was published. So the stakes are clear, and—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —nobody should think that the saints are overreacting here by saying, this is dangerous. This could start a war.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. The writing was already on the wall. It was literally already in the newspapers.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so the actions they took need to be interpreted through that lens.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And it’s not like Joseph and the city council were against being tried for this. They were okay having the legality of their actions tried in court. In fact, they actually agree to do it, but they just didn’t want to do it outside of Nauvoo because of those threats.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: It’s like when Higbee and the other Expositor publishers charge Joseph with riot, they get that constable to help and try to bring him to Carthage, but John Taylor wrote about that. He talked about why they didn’t want to do that and what they did instead. Here’s John Taylor. He said, “They requested to be taken before another magistrate, either in the city of Nauvoo or at any reasonable distance out of it. This the constable, who was a mobocrat, refused to do. And as this was our legal privilege, we refused to be dragged, contrary to law, a distance of eighteen miles to Carthage, when at the same time we had reason to believe that an organized band of mobocrats were assembled for the purpose of extermination or murder, and among whom it would not be safe to go without a superior force of armed men. So a writ of habeas corpus was called for and issued by the municipal court of Nauvoo taking us out of the hands of Bettysworth,” that Carthage guy, “and placing us in the charge of the city marshal.” Then he says, “we went before the municipal court of Nauvoo on these charges of riot and destroying the press,” and he says, “we were dismissed. Our refusal to obey this illegal proceeding” of being taken to Carthage “was by them,” by the enemies of the church, “construed into a refusal to submit to the law and circulated as such, and the people either did believe or professed to believe that we were in open rebellion against the laws and authorities of the state.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So they go before the municipal court of Nauvoo. They’re acquitted. This doesn’t satisfy their enemies. John Taylor even says that they agreed to go before another official, this time a non-Latter-day-Saint. John Taylor wrote, “To avoid the appearance of all hostility on our part, and to fulfill the law in every particular, at the suggestion of Judge Thomas, judge of that judicial district, who had come to Nauvoo at the time, and who stated that we had fulfilled the law, but in order to satisfy all, he would counsel us to go before Esquire Wells, who was not in our church, and have a hearing. We did so, and after a full hearing, we were again dismissed.” So they go before a Latter-day-Saint judge, and they go before a non-Latter-day-Saint judge, and they’re acquitted both times. But that’s not good enough.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so they make it clear that they’re going out of their way to try and comply with the law, but again, I have to emphasize, Thomas Sharp has openly said, if they leave Nauvoo, Joseph Smith will be killed.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so they’re doing everything they can to avoid that, which is quite sensible, in my opinion.

Scott Woodward: Rather sensible.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yes. In fact, Joseph even writes a letter to Governor Ford explaining his actions, knowing that the rumors and how this gets exacerbated among the common folk and everyone gets whipped up in a frenzy, like happened in Missouri—he wanted to try to get ahead of that, and so he writes a letter to Governor Ford explaining the reasons for the destruction of the Expositor. On June 14—we have this letter, and I’ll just read a quick little excerpt of that. He explains what happened. He explains that they got together on the 8th and the 10th as a city council to talk about their legal options, and he says, “In the investigation, it appeared evident to the council that the proprietors” of the Nauvoo Expositor “were a set of unprincipled, lawless, debouchés, counterfeiters, bogus makers, gamblers, peace disturbers, and that the grand object of said proprietors was to destroy our constitutional rights and chartered privileges,” that’s the Nauvoo Charter, “to overthrow all good and wholesome regulations in society, to strengthen themselves against the municipality, to fortify themselves against the church, of which I am a member, and destroy all our religious rights and privileges by libels, slanders, falsehoods, perjury, stopping at no corruption to accomplish their hellish purposes, and that the said paper of itself was libelous of the deepest dye and very injurious as a vehicle of defamation, tending to corrupt the morals, disturb the peace, tranquility, and happiness of the whole community, especially that of Nauvoo.” So he goes on to talk about how the city council decided that it was necessary for the peace, benefit, good order, and regulations of the city, and for the protection of property and happiness of the citizens, to get rid of it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: There’s another direct quote: he says, “Nothing has been transacted here but what has been in perfect accordance with the strictest principles of law and good order on the part of the authorities of this city. And if you’re not satisfied with this, after reading the proceedings of the entire meeting which we’re about to publish in the Nauvoo Neighbor,” like, hopefully you will be at that point. But he says, whatever you need, like, let me know whatever evidence you need.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Etc. “I remain, as ever, a friend to truth, good order, and Your Excellency’s humble servant, Joseph Smith.” He’s trying to get out ahead of the rumors and the way that people are going to try to make this look like some angry LDS mob went in there with blood and thunder and etc. He says, we’re just trying to get out ahead of that, Governor, let you know the facts as they actually occurred.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: I find that responsible, and he’s trying to help the governor have confidence that they’re doing things according to law and order.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And Thomas Ford is a complicated figure. We’ve mentioned before that we’re going to spend a little time dealing with next time, but Joseph Smith is explaining the legal rationale here. Like, hey, he even at one point in that letter says, “After a long and patient investigation of the character of the Expositor and the character and designs of its proprietors thereof, then we acted.” So—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —he’s trying to say, this wasn’t an emotional act. We did it after a lot of deliberation. We didn’t want to do it, but we felt like it was more dangerous to not do something than to do something.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so with that there, there’s going to turn into this back and forth where Tom Ford is writing letters to Joseph, Joseph’s writing letters to Tom Ford. And over time Joseph’s confidence that Governor Ford is going to intervene to try and prevent further violence starts to dip.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And we’ll get to that, but first, let’s talk about his inward response.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: How he deals with this with the saints. So June 16, 1844 is Joseph Smith’s last public sermon that he gives to the saints.

Scott Woodward: The Sermon at the Grove, it’s sometimes called.

Casey Griffiths: Sermon at the Grove, and it’s sort of a miniature King Follett sermon where he returns to a lot of the principles that he had taught in the King Follett sermon just over a month and a half earlier. The sermon is recorded by several people: Thomas Bullock, William McIntyre, George Laub, Willard Richards. They all, however, emphasize different things. The first three focus their notes is what Joseph Smith said theologically in this address. Willard Richards, who’s close to Joseph and keeps his journal, records a part of the address that the other three don’t—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —which speaks to the situation he’s in. So here’s what Willard Richards writes: “He instructed them to keep cool, prepare their arms for defense of the city, as it was reported a mob was collecting at Carthage, and be quiet, make no disturbance. He instructed the meeting to organize and send delegates to the surrounding towns and villages and explain the cause of the disturbance and show them all was peace at Nauvoo and there was no cause for mobs.” So his practical instructions to the saints, and you’re going to see this repeated over and over again in the days leading up to his departure for Carthage, are, stay calm, let’s prepare for the worst, let’s hope for the best, and let’s do everything we can to try and ensure that peace happens. He chooses the non-violent option almost every instance when he’s given the chance to.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He doesn’t want there to be further violence, and again, I’ve got to point out that Nauvoo has by far the largest militia of any of these cities, but I think Joseph can see that it would spiral out of control really quickly and turn into another Missouri-type situation.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. In fact, that same day that he gives that sermon, and Willard Richards alluded to it, Joseph had heard rumors that a mob was collecting at Carthage.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so he actually writes a letter to Thomas Ford again. This is the 16th of June, 1844, and he says to him, “Thomas Ford, Sir, I am informed from credible sources as well as from the proceedings of a public meeting at Carthage, as published in the Warsaw Signal extra, that an energetic attempt is being made by some of the citizens of this and the surrounding counties to drive and exterminate the saints by force of arms.” He goes on to say, “Judge Thomas has been here and given his advice in the case, which I shall strictly follow until I hear from Your Excellency, and in all cases shall adhere to the Constitution and laws.” He says, “The Nauvoo Legion is at your service to quell all insurrections and support the dignity of the Commonwealth.” Like, if you need our help, let me know, but Joseph is not going to instigate anything without the Governor’s say so here. He says, “I wish, urgently wish, Your Excellency to come down in person with your staff and investigate the whole matter without delay and cause peace to be restored to the country. And I know not but this will be the only means of stopping an effusion of blood.” And then he says, “I remain, sir, the friend of peace and your excellency’s humble servant.” I think what you’re saying is really evident in these letters, Casey, that he is a friend of peace. I like that phrase for himself, and he’s trying everything he can to bring about peace. The Nauvoo Legion is at the disposal of the governor if that’s helpful, but the whole goal would be to maintain peace and not to let things escalate.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And we will say, when he says, I want you to come here personally, Ford does do that, to his credit, and to his credit also, when Ford comes, he brings neutral militia. We introduced this a couple episodes, but back in this time period, almost every town had its own militia. Nauvoo has the biggest militia by a wide margin—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —but almost every town in Hancock County, where they were at, was already aligned against Joseph Smith or for Joseph Smith, and Joseph Smith is suggesting that if the governor comes and brings some neutral troops with him, that will calm the situation down. You bring in these militia from other towns throughout the state that don’t really have a dog in the fight, and that will stop these two already opposed groups from starting a conflict. So the documentary record shows that again and again, Joseph Smith is offering peaceful solutions. We don’t want there to be an effusion of blood. On the other side, you got Tom Sharp saying, you know, powder and ball.

Scott Woodward: We want an effusion of blood.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. But Joseph Smith has also been burned by state governments before.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: In Missouri, they appealed to the governor of the state for help, and so he goes back to another thing they try after the trials of Missouri, which is to try to get the federal government to intervene.

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: See, if something like this had happened and two towns were lining up to go to war, the federal government today would intervene. They’d send in the Army, or the Marines, or whoever.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But this is pre-Civil War, and the supremacy of the federal government over the states’ governments isn’t exactly settled yet.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So Joseph Smith writes a letter to John Tyler, who’s president of the United States at the time, and appeals to him for help.

Scott Woodward: What day is this?

Casey Griffiths: This is June 20. So this is—

Scott Woodward: Four days after he writes that letter to Ford.

Casey Griffiths: Four days after he’s written to Governor Ford, yeah. He writes and says, “Sir, I’ve just enclosed the governor of the state of Illinois copies of the enclosed affidavits and extra.” The extra probably refers to records of these meetings that are happening in Carthage to attack the saints.

Scott Woodward: In the Warsaw Signal, right? He says it’s the Warsaw Signal extra.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Then he goes on to say, “I’m sorry to say that the state of Missouri, not contented with robbing, driving, and murdering many of the Latter-day Saints, are now joining the mobs of this state for the purpose of the utter extermination of the Mormons, as they have resolved. And now, sir, as President of the United States, will you render that protection which the Constitution guarantees in case of insurrection and rebellion, and save the innocent and oppressed from such horrid persecution? With great respect, I have the honor to be your obedient servant, Joseph Smith, Mayor.” So he appeals to the federal government to try and get them to intervene to stop any conflict from happening beforehand.

Scott Woodward: And how about that extra detail, that Missourians are starting to collude with the mobs of Illinois—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —to try to finish what they started in exterminating the saints.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Dang. It’s not just Missouri all over again in principle, it’s that Missourians are actually coming to Illinois to enact the same stuff that they had started back in Missouri. I mean, talk about a fraught situation.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And now you’ve got a mayor appealing to the president of the United States to please help us, please do something.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And admittedly, this is kind of a Hail Mary, because Washington’s so far away, and the power of the federal government was kind of so weak during this time. But, again, just goes to our point: He’s trying to find alternatives. He’s trying to find peaceful solutions. Maybe a letter from the president of the United States will cause people to calm down and find other solutions, but, admittedly, this is a long shot.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But it just does go to show how desperate the situation was becoming.

Scott Woodward: And I expect that Joseph Smith was dead before President Tyler read this letter.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know how long it took for a letter to get from Nauvoo to Washington during that time, but probably longer than the time frame before Joseph’s martyrdom.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So with the writing on the wall, having heard of the conspiracy happening in Carthage, having heard that Missourians were now willing to join with those in Illinois, the mobs in Illinois, to exterminate the Mormons, Joseph is feeling like it might be time for them to take some sort of evasive action.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And he calls a council, actually, on the evening of June 22, late into the night, and he meets with the council about what to do. In fact, Stephen Markham, who was a close friend of Joseph, part of the city council, in a recollection that he gave—this is twelve years after the fact, but he gives us a few precious morsels that we don’t get anywhere else. So here’s what he said: he said, “We, Joseph and I, walked together towards the river and sat down.” This is before the council happens. “I asked him how this thing was going to come out. He replied, if the brethren would let him manage the business, there should be no bloodshed. But if not, it would be the hardest blow the church ever had or would receive. That if he and Hyrum were ever taken again, they would be massacred, or he was not a prophet of God. So in council with seventeen men before 4 a. m.,” Stephen Markham says, this is a late night meeting or early morning meeting, he says, “Joseph said it was the voice of the Spirit for him to go to the West among the natives and take Hyrum and several others along with him and look out a place for the ” which is interesting, because doesn’t he leave a letter to Emma Smith?

Casey Griffiths: He leaves a letter to Emma that sounds like that’s not the reason.

Scott Woodward: Sounds a little different. Yes.

Casey Griffiths: But it’s possible Stephen Markham misunderstood or that they were still kind of brainstorming what they were going to do.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. What does he say to Emma?

Casey Griffiths: He writes a letter to Emma, and the first things he’s concerned about are making sure she’s okay.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He tells her, you know, I—here’s some friends that have money. He says, you can sell this property in Quincy, and it sounds like he’s going to be gone for a little while. “If God ever opens a door that it is possible for me, I will see you again.”

Scott Woodward: Geez.

Casey Griffiths: But then he writes, “I do not know where I shall go or what I shall do but, if possible, endeavor to get to the city of Washington.” And so it sounds like his plan is to cross the river and then make his way back east and see if he can meet with John Tyler, or the federal government in person to get them to intervene. He goes on and writes, “May God Almighty bless you, the children, and mother and all my friends. My heart bleeds no more at present. If you conclude to go to Kirtland, Cincinnati, or any other place, I wish you would continue to inform me this evening.” So it’s so bad that he’s saying, if you need to leave town, I will understand. Just let me know where you’re going to be, and I’ll meet you there as well. And then he crosses the river, the Mississippi River, over to Iowa, to where Montrose, Iowa is now, and this is where the story also takes a complicated turn, because this is where the decision appears to be made to go to Carthage.

Scott Woodward: So let’s just pause for a second and think about that. So this letter to Emma says, I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but if possible, I’d like to get to Washington.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Stephen Markham says that Joseph told the council that it was the voice of the Spirit for him to go west among the natives and take Hyrum and several others with him and look out a place for the church. So here’s an interesting example in historical sleuthing when you’re trying to put all the pieces together as to why it’s hard. This is hard to piece together exactly what happened. We have what seems to be contradictory statements here. Is he going to go to Washington? Is he going to go west? Maybe it’s both. Maybe they’re not contradictory. Maybe he’s going to go to Washington first.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: See if he can get some help from the president. And then he’s going to go out west and try to prepare a place that the Council of Fifty had already been talking about, you know, preparing a place out west where they could go unimpeded and live out their religion.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So maybe these can be reconciled, but this is just a interesting example of how when you try to piece together the story from historical records, sometimes you come across things like this that make it a little tricky to have a coherent narrative.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and the letter is contemporary, and it’s a primary source, so . . .

Scott Woodward: Yes.

Casey Griffiths: If we’re being good historians, we’d say the letter is probably more accurate.

Scott Woodward: Right.

Casey Griffiths: But we also don’t have any reason to believe that Stephen Markham is being misleading. He’s writing this twelve years later, and it’s possible that in this council meeting they discussed a whole host of possibilities about what they could do. But I mean, it’s not either/or: It could be both. A—right here, all we know is that Joseph believed that if he left, the situation would be defused to a certain degree.

Scott Woodward: Right. So he crosses the river. Yeah, we know that for sure. He goes over to Montrose, and then he is persuaded to return and turn himself over to the protection of Governor Ford.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Why is that? What persuades Joseph to come back after having determined to leave Nauvoo, to try to protect the saints, to get out of there so that he could let things calm down and they could come up with another solution to avoid the bloodshed of Missouri? What persuades him to come back, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Well, that’s the big question. There’s attempts to try and assign blame to what’s happening. So Josephson Montrose, the History of the Church, records, “At 1 p. m., Emma sent over O. P. Rockwell,” this is Porter Rockwell, “requesting him to entreat of Joseph to come back. Reynolds Cahoon accompanied him with a letter, which Emma had written to the same effect, and she insisted that Cahoon should persuade Joseph to come back and give himself up. When they went over, they found Joseph, Hyrum, and Willard in a room by themselves, having flour and other provisions on the floor ready for packing.”

Scott Woodward: So they’re getting ready to leave. They’re packing up their flour, getting ready for a long journey here.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah. It goes on to say Reynolds Cahoon informed Joseph what the troops intended to do and urged upon him to give himself up inasmuch as the governor had pledged his faith and the faith of the state to protect him while he underwent a legal and fair trial. R. Cahoon, L. D. Wasson, and Hiram Kimball accused Joseph of cowardice for wishing to leave the people, adding that their property would be destroyed, and they left without house or home, like the fable when the wolves came and the shepherd ran from the flock and left the sheep to be devoured, to which Joseph replied, “If my life is of no value to my friends, it is of none to myself.”

Scott Woodward: Mm. That’s such a painful line.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: You know, for a time, some people thought we didn’t have many contemporary primary documents to reconstruct this moment of Joseph’s decision to come back to Nauvoo, and so it was shrouded with some doubt as to exactly what happened. But, thanks again to the great historians at the Joseph Smith Papers, who’ve culled together contemporary sources and a few later recollections, we’ve actually been able to reconstruct this moment with a fairly high degree of confidence.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: For example, we have a contemporary account from William Clayton’s journal on June 23, 1844, where he wrote, “Emma sent messengers over the river to Joseph and informed him what they intended to do and urged him to give himself up inasmuch as the governor had offered him protection.” So that seems to jive pretty well with what you just said. And then we have years later, people reconstructing like Stephen Markham, who explains that Alpheus Cutler, Reynolds Cahoon, and Lucian Woodworth, all members of the Council of Fifty, along with guys like Hiram Kimball and other people, they formed a committee to try to convince Joseph to return to Nauvoo, and then they got Emma involved. And we have a second account, this is by Lucian Woodworth, who agrees with Stephen Markham, who identified Alpheus Cutler and Reynolds Cahoon as the guys who are urging Joseph Smith to return to Nauvoo. They’re kind of the chief instigators. Woodworth also stated that there was a general feeling among the residents of Nauvoo that Joseph should return. And then Theodore Turley says that Cahoon, Cutler, and Kimball asked him to cross the river to deliver the message to Joseph, asking him to return to Nauvoo because, “the governor had promised that he should have a fair trial and guard to protect him.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And then Turley also adds, interesting detail, that Emma Smith told him to tell Joseph, “to remember his covenants that he has made to live and die for the saints.” And I think it’s from that little line that some people have suggested that Emma was asking him to come back and die, but I don’t think that’s what she’s saying. I think—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —there’s a general sense that Joseph is running from the problem, and people are asking him to come back and face it with them. In fact, Vilate Kimball, this is the wife of Heber C. Kimball, she wrote on the 24th of June, 1844, in hearing that Joseph had crossed the river to Iowa, how did the saints feel about that? She wrote, “some were tried almost to death to think Joseph should leave them in the hour of danger.” She believed that Joseph and Hyrum giving themselves up was the only thing that would “save our city from destruction.” So there’s this sense of abandonment, and when Joseph is called a coward, when they’re saying, look, when wolves come in, the shepherd’s running away, what’s going on with that? Like, he cannot abide that.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: He thinks he’s leaving to protect them. They’re accusing him of leaving them open to destruction, abandoning them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And so he says, okay, and that’s the famous line: if my life is of no value to my friends, then it’s of no value to me.

Casey Griffiths: There’s a further conversation recorded in the History of the Church. Joseph said to Rockwell, “What shall I do?” Porter replied, “You are the oldest and ought to know best, and as you make your bed, I will lay with you.” Joseph then turned to Hyrum, who was talking with Cahoon, and said, “Brother Hyrum, you are the oldest. What shall we do?” Hyrum said, “Let us go back and give ourselves up and see the thing out.” After studying a few moments, Joseph said, “If you go back, I shall go with you, but we shall be butchered.” Hyrum said, “No, no, let us go back and put our trust in God. We shall not be harmed. The Lord is in it. If we live or have to die, we will be reconciled to our fate.”

Scott Woodward: Geez.

Casey Griffiths: And, again, that conversation in the History of the Church is reproduced in Saints. There’s other sources that corroborate it a little bit. For instance, this is another excerpt from the History of the Church: “About four o’clock p. m. Joseph, Hyrum, the doctor,” that’s probably Willard Richards, “and others started back. While walking towards the river, Joseph fell behind with Orrin Porter Rockwell. The others shouted to him to come on. Joseph replied, ‘It is of no use to hurry, for we are going back to be slaughtered,’ and continually expressed himself that he would like to get the people once more together and talk to them tonight.”

Scott Woodward: So let’s put this together, then. So they leave across the river, they’re kind of preparing, trying to decide what to do. A committee, meanwhile, assembles in Nauvoo, word’s getting out that Joseph and Hyrum have left them. There’s a sense of abandonment spreading through the city. Emma now urges them back and says, Joseph, remember your covenants to live or die for your people. Like, they need you now. They need you here. And that letter is taken to them. Joseph turns to Hyrum and says, what should we do? Hyrum says, let’s go back and see the thing out. Is that a fair reconstruction of what’s going on in this little time period here?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. The bottom line is he comes back, and people want to assign blame to other people, but I don’t think that there’s that much blame to go around. Vilate Kimball’s letter seems to suggest that there was this general feeling that if he left the people would be unsafe. There are some sources that indicate that Joseph Smith wanted to see things out, or that he went back and forth between pessimism and optimism about what their fate would finally be. There’s a lot of conflict here, and you could just put yourself in their shoes and say, you know, this was a tough decision to make.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. I have to admit that I have stood at the grave of Reynolds Cahoon. He’s buried in Salt Lake City Cemetery, and he’s one of the main, you know, instigators to get Joseph to come back, and I just shook my head and, like, come on, Reynolds.

Casey Griffiths: Come on, man.

Scott Woodward: Dang it, Reynolds. Like, let him go. See what happens, you know? But . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: We all want to change parts of history that wound our feelings, and I wish I could just go back and, you know, have a chat with him, but . . .

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: But I think he thought they were doing the best they could for the people.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: They thought that the governor’s pledge of protection was sufficient. They had committed to pooling their own money to bail Joseph out of any sort of incarceration. They said this was a bailable case. It doesn’t seem like this is going to lead to their death. Certainly nobody in Nauvoo that was part of Joseph’s faithful group of followers would have wanted him dead. That goes without saying. And so these people that are calling him back, to their credit, they didn’t think it was going to end how it ended.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: They believed the governor. They believed the promises of protection. They had money pooled ready to bail Joseph out, if that’s what it came to, and they felt like if Joseph leaves, not only are we going to be vulnerable, but our property values are going to go down, ruining people financially. There’s a lot of motives going on, but certainly none of them felt like if Joseph comes back, he’s going to die. I don’t think we can see that in any of the sources.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So what we know for sure is he comes back across the river, and he’s now willing to put himself, him and Hyrum, in the protection of the governor, and it’s a tender moment when he first sees Emma again. Emma’s heart sank when Joseph arrives home late that afternoon. Now that she saw him again, she feared that she may have called him back to his death, and so this is a pretty tender moment where Joseph is going to gather Emma and the children together and bless them before he leaves for Carthage.

Casey Griffiths: In fact, this is from Mormon Enigma, which is probably the best book written on Emma Smith, by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, but one witness says that Joseph turned to his wife Emma and said, “Would you train my sons to walk in their father’s footsteps?” “Oh, Joseph, you’re coming back.” Joseph repeated the question. Emma gave the same response, almost as though her saying it would make it so. The third time he asked, Emma’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Joseph,” she said again, “you are coming back.” And there’s one last story that came forth during the 20th century about Joseph and Emma that, while Joseph is there, Emma asks Joseph for a blessing. And all this stuff is going on, and Joseph Smith says, I don’t have time to give you a blessing, but write a blessing, and I’ll sign it. And Emma writes out the blessing. I’ll just read a couple excerpts from it. She wrote, “First of all, I would crave as the richest blessings of heavens would be wisdom from my Heavenly Father bestowed daily, so that whatever I might do or say, I would not look back at the close of the day with regret, nor neglect the performance of any act that would bring a blessing. I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself, that I might be able to overcome whatever tradition or nature that would not tend to my exaltation in the eternal worlds. I desire a fruitful, active mind, that I may be able to comprehend the designs of God, when revealed through His servants without doubting. I desire the spirit of discernment.” And then, just to jump down a little bit further, “I desire with all my heart to honor and respect my husband as my head, to ever live in his confidence, and by acting in unison with him to retain the place which God has given me by his side. I desire to see my kindred friends embrace the principles of eternal truth, that I may rejoice with them in the blessings which God has in store for all who are willing to be obedient to his requirements. Finally, I desire that whatever my lot through life, I may be enabled to acknowledge the hand of God of all things.” Joseph’s never able to sign the blessing, but that’s kind of their parting moments together there, too, as he leaves to go down the road to Carthage.

Scott Woodward: Joseph goes to Carthage and does not make it back.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So the blessing was never signed.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So there were a number of contemporaries that talked about what happened on the road to Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: You mean the road to Carthage?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Okay, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: For instance, Saints records that Joseph was riding up past the temple, and he looked down on the city, he looked at the temple. Joseph stopped his horse and looked out over the city and said, “This is the loveliest place and the best people under the heavens. Little do they know the trials that await them.” There’s another one that come from Dan Jones. Dan Jones is a little Welsh guy who I really like. He goes with Joseph to Carthage and is there right up until just an hour or two before the attack happens.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He said that Joseph Smith told him, “I love the city of Nauvoo too well to save my life at your expense. If I go not to them, they will come and act out the horrid Missouri scenes in Nauvoo. I may prevent it. I fear not death. My work is well nigh done. Keep the faith, and I will die for Nauvoo.”

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And there’s another one very similar to that, not by Dan Jones, where Joseph says, “If I don’t go, the result will be the destruction of this city and its inhabitants. I cannot think of my dear brothers and sisters and their children suffering the scenes of Missouri again in Nauvoo. It’s better for your brother Joseph to die for his brothers and sisters, for I am willing to die for them. My work is finished.”

Casey Griffiths: And let’s add in one more, because this is the one that’s canonized and placed in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Scott Woodward: Oh, yes.

Casey Griffiths: John Taylor, or someone around this time, we’re going to have to have another discussion about that, but section 135, when Joseph went to Carthage to deliver himself up to the pretended requirements of the law, two or three days previous to his assassination, he said, “I’m going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I am calm as a summer’s morning. I have a conscience void of offense towards God and towards all men. I shall die innocent, and it shall yet be said of me, he was murdered in cold blood.” So it really seems like once they start the road to Carthage that the die is cast, that . . .

Scott Woodward: He’s feeling it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. He’s feeling it, and that’s not to say that he didn’t have moments of optimism once he got to Carthage to think maybe that it would be worked out, but it also seems like he fully understands what he’s doing, and the way it was framed in most of his statements was that he hadn’t done anything wrong, but that he felt that his death could stop further violence from happening.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. He starts out for Carthage in the morning, 6:30 a. m., on the 24th of June. He’s with Hyrum, John Taylor, Willard Richards, fifteen other members of the City Council and other friends, and they’re going from 6:30 ’til about 10 a. m. They’re about four miles out from Carthage when about sixty men of Governor Ford’s soldiers meet Joseph and his group and say that Governor Ford had ordered him to return to Nauvoo and surrender all the guns of the Nauvoo Legion. So Joseph actually turns around, goes back to Nauvoo, and tells the Nauvoo Legion to submit to the governor’s orders, and then bids farewell to his family again a second time. And it’s on his way out of town the second time, that as he’s riding across the street from the Masonic Hall, he sees some men there, and he calls out to them and says, “Boys! If I don’t come back, take care of yourselves. I’m going like a lamb to the slaughter.” And then while passing his farm, he hesitates, and he looks at it several times, and he says, “If some of you had got such a farm and knew you would not see it anymore, you’d want to take a good look at it for the last time.” And so they head to Carthage a second time, and now they don’t get there until about midnight of Monday, June 24/Tuesday, June 25. About midnight, they arrive in Carthage, and there they are paraded before troops, shouting vile and vulgar insults and death threats and oaths. Things are starting to ramp up. The writing is on the wall.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Whew, that’s a lot to deal with, and it gets more complex when we get to Carthage as well.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So that’s the next chapter.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And I think you were very astute in your observation, Casey, that it seems like at every step, Joseph is trying to choose the nonviolent path, and I think the historical record is bearing that out. Is there anything more you wanted to say about that before we wrap up here?

Casey Griffiths: Just that that was one of the things that when I reviewed the sources this time really stood out to me. I mean, Joseph chooses the nonviolent course, or the course of less violence, almost every time it’s presented to him. You know what? They’re accusing us of breaking the law. Okay. We’ll go before the law. They don’t accept our judge? We’ll go before a non-Latter-day-Saint judge. I’m going to write to the governor and get him to intervene. I’m going to write to the president and get him to intervene. I’m going to leave Nauvoo because I think that that will quell the violence. And then he speaks to the Nauvoo Legion and says to them, don’t do anything rash. Like . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He’s the one that’s playing it cool here, and it’s the other side that are constantly calling for violence and just broadcasting loudly what their intentions are. Like, based on what Thomas Sharp was writing, it would have been justifiable for Joseph to say, no, their aim is to kill me, and I’m going to put up a fight.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He chooses to value the lives of people more than his own life. That’s what this whole narrative presents. And, I mean, if these are the final days of Joseph Smith’s life, I think it just speaks to his character that he found his own safety to be less important than the safety of the people in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, he left Nauvoo thinking that would protect the saints. When it became clear that that would not protect the saints, he comes back and turns himself in to protect the lives of the saints. I think you’re dead on following his motivations throughout all of this. And so his character is on full display. If you want to know what someone’s really like, put them under really stressful situations.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: And you’ll see their character come out. And talk about stressful situations here.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: You see his character shining through, and he’s an imperfect man, but he is a good man. Joseph Smith’s a good man.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Join us next week as Casey and I walk through a play-by-play of what happens from the time Joseph, Hyrum, and members of the city council arrive at Carthage on June 24 under the supposed protection of Governor Thomas Ford to the time of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum on June 27. 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.