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prophet and the presidency: Mormonism and politics in Joseph Smith's 1844 Presidential campaign, The

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2000 by Wood, Timothy L

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25 Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 113.

26 Arrington and Bitton, 68-69; Brodie, 256-74. In 1844, Thomas Ford estimated Nauvoo's population to be between 12,000 - 15,000 residents. Ford, 320.

27 Flanders, 104.

28 For further information on the issues that loomed large on the American political scene in the two decades before the Civil War, see David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1976).

29 Melville, 73.

30 Smith, History, 6:197.

31 Ibid., 6:204.

32 Ibid., 6:207.

33 Ibid., 6:205.

34 Ibid., 6:204-05.

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35 Ibid., 6:206.

36 Ibid., 6:206.

37 Smith, Diaries and Journals, 457. Brackets inserted by editor.

38 Nauvoo Neighbor, 3 April 1844, p. 1.

39 Smith, History, 6:206.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., 6:205.

42 Ibid.

43 Neighbor, 10 April 1844, p. 2.

44 Smith, Diaries and Journals, 443.

45 Ibid., 456.

46 Neighbor, 3 April 1844, p. 1.

47 Neighbor, 10 April 1844, p. 3.

48 Neighbor, 1 May 1844, p. 2.

49 Neighbor, 27 March 1844, p. 2.

50 Brodie, 364.

51 Arrington and Bitton, 69; Smith, 387.

52 Expositor, 7 June 1844, p. 1.

53 Ibid., 2.

54 Neighbor, 19 June 1844, p. 3.

55 In retrospect, Thomas Ford saw the eruption of violence against the Mormons as a failure of frontier democracy. Ford contended that: "If the people will have anarchy, there is no power short of despotism capable of forcing them to submission; and the despotism which naturally grows out of anarchy, can never be established by those who are elected to administer regular government. If the mob spirit is to continue, it must necessarily lead to despotism; but this despotism will be erected upon the ruins of government, and not spring out of it .... Where the people are unfit for liberty; where they will not be free without violence, license and injustice to others; where they do not deserve to be free, nature itself will give them a master. No form of constitution can make them free and keep them so. On the contrary, a people who are fit for and deserve liberty, cannot be enslaved." Ford, 435-36.

However, over half a century later, historian Theodore Calvin Pease still offered a classic rationalization of anti-Mormon violence as a "safety valve" against the encroachment of theocracy when he remarked: "After full allowance is made for the violence and perhaps greed of the opponents of the Mormons in Illinois, it must be admitted that they saw clearly how terrible an excrescence on the political life of the state the Mormon community would be, once it had attained full growth. Because legal means would not protect them from the danger they used violence. The machinery of state government was then ... but a slight affair; and to enforce the will of public opinion, the resort to private war, though to be deplored, was inevitable." Theodore Calvin Pease, Centennial History of Illinois, It: The Frontier State, 1818-1846 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1918), 362.

Timothy L. Wood holds an M.A. in history from the University of Louisville and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He has previously written on such topics as the impact of Puritanism and Methodism on early America, and his work has appeared in such journals as The New England Quarterly, Fides et Historia, Methodist History, and Rhode Island History. He presently resides in his hometown of Clarksville, Indiana.

prophet and the presidency: Mormonism and politics in Joseph Smith's 1844 Presidential campaign, The

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer 2000 by Wood, Timothy L

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