"Junius and Joseph examines Joseph Smith's nearly forgotten [1844] presidential bid, the events leading up to his assassination on June 27, 1844, and the tangled aftermath of the tragic incident. It... establishes that Joseph Smith's murder, rather than being the deadly outcome of a spontaneous mob uprising, was in fact a carefully planned military-style execution. It is now possible to identify many of the key individuals engaged in planning his assassination as well as those who took part in the assault on Carthage jail. And furthermore, this study presents incontrovertible evidence that the effort to remove the Mormon leader from power and influence extended well beyond Hancock County [Illinois] (and included prominent Whig politicians as well as the Democratic governor of the state), thereby transforming his death from an impulsive act by local vigilantes into a political assassination sanctioned by some of the most powerful men in Illinois. The circumstances surrounding Joseph Smith's death also serve to highlight the often unrecognized truth that a full understanding of early Mormon history can be gained only when considered in the context of events taking place in American society as a whole."
Junius and Joseph
Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon ProphetBy Robert S. Wicks Fred R. FoisterUtah State University Press
Copyright © 2005 Utah State University Press
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-0-87421-608-0Contents
Illustrations................................................................................................viiiAcknowledgments..............................................................................................ixIntroduction: Assassination of a Candidate...................................................................11 New World Eden: The Promise of America in Late Jacksonian Politics.......................................92 "Clear the Way for Henry Clay"...........................................................................293 "To Save the District for the Whigs".....................................................................364 "Nauvoo is no place for rational people".................................................................485 The Third Party..........................................................................................626 "Missourians seem determined not to let us alone"........................................................707 The Candidate............................................................................................818 Thy Kingdom Come ... in Texas............................................................................939 Two Conventions..........................................................................................11110 What Will Be the End of Things?..........................................................................12311 Retributive Justice......................................................................................13212 Gentlemen of Undoubted Veracity..........................................................................14513 Carthage.................................................................................................15714 Distance Lent Enchantment to the View....................................................................18115 The Kingdom Delayed......................................................................................19516 "Bound by common guilt and danger to commit almost any act to save them from infamy".....................20117 Wolf Hunts...............................................................................................21618 The Campaign Continues...................................................................................22319 "To avenge the blood that stains the walls of Carthage jail".............................................23520 How Wide the Conspiracy?.................................................................................250Epilogue: Two Endings........................................................................................272Biographical Profiles........................................................................................285Abbreviations................................................................................................293References...................................................................................................294Index........................................................................................................307
Chapter One
New World Eden: The Promise of America in Late Jacksonian Politics
The early to mid-nineteenth century was a time of constant and rapid change for most Americans. The period witnessed an explosion of religious fervor throughout the northern states, with scores of new religious movements all claiming exclusive authority from God; westward territorial expansion of Anglo-Protestant civilization accompanied by the displacement of native populations; the increasingly problematic position of black slavery in American society; the proposed annexation of Texas; the proliferation of urban centers and a dramatic increase in manufacturing; and the dominance of the two-party system in American politics. Some saw in these developments the glimmerings of a perfectible society. Others believed the unfamiliar social and economic landscape was an omen of the nation's downfall.
These intertwined themes of the late Jacksonian period influenced political rhetoric and discourse during the 1844 presidential campaign in very significant ways. This chapter begins with a brief overview of America's western movement and its devastating impact on the life and culture of indigenous peoples. The second section examines Democratic and Whig political philosophies and the emergence of third parties in national politics. The chapter concludes with a consideration of partisan attitudes towards black slavery and the annexation of Texas in the 1840s. The issues touched upon here will reappear in multiple forms and take on various guises throughout the subsequent narrative.
The Promise of America
"What need wee then to feare, but to goe up at once as a peculier people marked and chosen by the finger of God to possess it?" John Rolf, Virginia Colony, 1615
The vision of North America as a Promised Land arrived with the first European colonists. For them America had been saved for the civilizing grace of Christianity and represented an opportunity to establish upon its soil a new utopian society. Individual liberty, the right to do as one pleased without interference, became a national ideal. Native peoples, who had possessed the land for untold generations, presented an awkward challenge to this vision of a New World Eden. To some of the newcomers the first Americans were regarded as a degraded remnant of the Lost Tribes of Israel, a people waiting to be converted to Christ. To others they were less than civilized, destined for removal or annihilation.
The Northwest Ordinance, approved by the United States Congress in 1787, was the first act following American independence to open unorganized land north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi to white settlement, territory that would eventually become the states of Ohio (in 1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), and Wisconsin (1848).
The same year the Northwest Ordinance was passed, John Cleves Symmes, a New Jersey Supreme Court judge, was granted permission to sell two million acres in the Ohio country, a tract located between the Great and Little Miami Rivers, tributaries of the Ohio named after one of the Indian tribes that formerly inhabited the region.
The earliest river town to be established in the Symmes Purchase on the land between the Miamis was named Columbia, at that time a popular allegorical symbol of American exceptionalism. The naming of Columbia proudly compared the settlers' task on America's newest frontier with Columbus's discovery of the New World almost three centuries before, both accepted as predestined events acted out in accordance with God's will. The initial group of Columbia settlers, made up of just over two dozen individuals (twenty men and five women), arrived in November of 1788. Four years later the settlement had grown to more than a thousand residents.
By the mid-1790s Columbia's prospects were in decline, soon to be eclipsed by rival Cincinnati three miles down river, founded shortly after the establishment of Columbia. At first called Losantiville, in 1790 the town was renamed after the Society of Cincinnati, an association of Revolutionary War officers. In 1794 Cincinnati was still "a village of...
