Early Mormonism

Unsure of Indian country in the West, Joseph Smith headed back east, purchasing land on the Mississippi River, north of Quincy, Illinois, in 1839, where the Mormons did exceedingly well. By 1844, the settlement of Nauvoo had become the largest town in Illinois with more than 10,000 people. Smith was at the pinnacle of his career as a prophet.

Massive religious revivalism along the Erie Canal in the 1820s earned the area the name “burned-over district.” A myriad of new Christian denominations had formed out of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening. Few of these denominations had any permanence, but one in particular, Mormonism, survived and flourished.

Vermont-born Joseph Smith (1805-1844) officially founded Mormonism in Palmyra, New York in 1830 as “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.” The fourth of nine children in a religious family, the charismatic Smith regularly read the Bible and attended religious revivals. In his late-teens, Smith found the number of competing denominations frustrating, especially as he watched his parents attempt to choose one. While praying one night in 1820, Smith claimed to have been visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ. They told him that Christianity had been in apostasy since roughly 105AD, when the last of the twelve apostles had died and that he was to rebuild the Christian religion on earth. For the apostolic succession to work there must be at least twelve disciples at all times.

In 1823, an angel by the name of Moroni appeared to Smith, and showed him Golden Tablets written in “reformed Egyptian.” Smith could not take the tablets until September 1827, after he had married and started farming in Manchester, New York. Using seer stones, Smith translated the tablets over a period of two years, from 1827 to 1829, dictating it to his wife and several others. When Smith finished the translation, John the Baptist appeared and baptized him. Published in 1830, the massive Book of Mormon provided the basis for a distinctive American religion.

According to Mormon belief, after the fall of the Tower of Babel, a group called Jaredites traveled by boat to the western hemisphere. In 600BC, following the earlier lead of the Jaredites, a man named Lehi led a tribes of Israelites to the Americas. He had two sons, Nephi and Laman. The followers of Nephi (the Nephites) worshiped God, creating great civilizations such as the Olmecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and the Mound builders. Laman and his followers, though, forgot God. God punished them, turning their skin dark. For 1000 years they fought, with the exception of 32AD to 200AD; Jesus appeared to the Nephites shortly after His resurrection, living with them during that time.

In 421AD, a huge battle occurred between the Nephites (who had become fairly corrupt as well) and the Lamanites. The Lamanites won that battle in what is now upstate New York at Hill Cumorah. Only two Nephites survived, Mormon and Moroni. Mormon wrote the story—that is, the Nephites’ 1,000 year history—on the golden tablets that Smith translated in the late-1820s.

On April 6, 1830, Joseph Smith gathered a few believers together in Fayette, New York. There he organized the Church of Christ, which would later be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Smith’s Church of Christ included a lay priesthood of adult males. The ultimate goal of any individual male in the Mormon church is to attain godhood. The Mormons believe that every adult male can attain it, thereby becoming equal to God the Father, inheriting a world of his own.

After establishing the Mormon religion in 1830, Smith and several hundred followers moved to Kirtland Mills in the Western Reserve of Ohio. Kirtland became the official headquarters of the Latter-Day Saints. Under the “Law of Consecration,” the Mormons lived communally, donating all property to Smith. Saints would receive goods according to individual needs, with surpluses given back to the Church.

With success in Kirtland, Smith began construction on a temple there, which was completed in 1836. The tide soon turned against the Mormons, however. As with many banks in 1837, the Mormon bank in Kirkland declared bankruptcy. When their economic security collapsed, do did the support of many of the saints. At the same time, rumors that Smith had introduced polygamy resulted in widespread disaffection among the Saints. In response, Smith the remaining loyal Saints to settlements in Missouri, near Independence.

Fearing violence and as well as angry creditors, the Mormons fled to northwestern Missouri to a town called Far West. The conflicts soon resurfaced and quickly turned violent. One Mormon spoke openly: “Our rights shall no more be trampled with impunity. The man, or set of men, who attempt it, does it at the expense of their lives. And that mob which comes on to us to disturb us, it shall be between us and them a war of extermination, for we will follow them till the last drop of their blood is spilled, or else they have to exterminate us.” The Mormons drilled their militias brazenly, creating such groups as the Daughters of Gideon, the Sons of Dan, and the Danites. When violence between Mormons and non-Mormons became open, Missouri’s governor ordered the Mormons to leave the state: the “Mormons must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, if necessary, for the public peace,” he announced. The Mormons, now numbering in the thousands, fled Missouri.

Unsure of Indian country in the West, Smith headed back east, purchasing land on the Mississippi River, north of Quincy, Illinois, in 1839. He named the new settlement Nauvoo. Prosperity seemed to be theirs for the taking, and the Mormons did exceedingly well. By 1844, Nauvoo had become the largest town in Illinois with more than 10,000 people. It featured two thousand very tidy, New England-style homes with a huge stone temple in the middle of town. Smith was at the pinnacle of his career as a prophet. Unwisely, he asked the state legislature to declare Nauvoo a free territory, not subject to Illinois state government. He also nullified any legislation from the state he disliked. Further, city ordinances allowed the imprisonment of anyone who spoke against the Mormon church. To make matters worse, he ran for the presidency of the United States on a platform demanding, among other things, the immediate end of slavery and the annexation of Canada and Mexico. When a local newspaper owned by disaffected Mormons challenged Smith’s authority, pro-Smith forces destroyed the press and chased the editors out of town.

The governor placed Smith and his brother Hyrum in jail on charges of arson, treason, and polygamy. On June 27, 1844, a mob stormed the jail and killed Smith and his brother.^[*]

The zealous Brigham Young, president of the twelve Mormon apostles, took charge. Under hiss direction, the Mormons decided they would need to move beyond the Rockies, beyond United States control, to protect themselves. In June 1846 all of the Mormons began their long trek to the West. The 12,000 Mormons divided into parties of 100 and they moved relatively quickly. Six hundred died. They spent the winter of 1846-47 camped on the banks of the Missouri River in Indian territory at a place simply called Winter Quarters, near today’s Omaha, Nebraska.

They departed again in April 1847, led by Young and a group of 146 called the “Pioneer Band.” They followed the Oregon Trail to Fort Bridger but stayed on the north side of the Platte so as to avoid Missourians traveling on the south side to Oregon. They enforced a rigid discipline throughout the trek–prayers at five in the morning, departure at seven for a twenty-mile march, a nightly wagon corral, evening prayers, and bed at nine. When they told mountain man Jim Bridger that they wanted to settle in the desert-like Great Basin, he laughed at them.

Young and the Pioneer Band arrived at the overlook of what would become Salt Lake City on July 24, 1847. They immediately began to irrigate the desert, which was no easy feat. As Young began to head back east to get ready for the 1848 migration, he was surprised to see a second Mormon company of 1,553 people arrive.

Despite the suffering Mormons endured during their first few years in the Great Basin, they not only survived, but prospered. The first and second winters were horrible in Utah, a true starving time for the Mormons. With tenacity and determination, Mormons overcame the hardships of weather and environment and built Salt Lake City, one of the best planned cities in the country, featuring wide streets, large yards for big gardens, and irrigation running down every street. In essence a theocracy in its early years (what Joseph Smith called a theo-democracy), the church supervised all aspects of life. Church leaders and political leaders were one and the same. And the church owned sugar beet factories, mining smelters, general stores, sugar and textile factories, and a bank and life insurance company, all of which employed the masses of Mormon emigrants. Church supervision over all aspects of life, tithing, communalism, tight religious bonds, and unity made the Mormon establishment in the Great Basin an alternative model to Western settlement. Everything about Mormon history and their trek West became part of a distinctive and tightly-knit culture.

The California Gold Rush brought an economic bonanza to Mormon suppliers. The Mormons set up shops to sell supplies to those going West. They earned extensive profits. Most important, gold rushers brought in hard currency. Mormon suppliers made a killing, buying at wholesale prices and selling at outrageous rates: a mule at $200 and flour at $25 a pound. The Gold Rush also brought the first sizeable non-Mormon (known as Gentiles) settlers to Salt Lake City.

After arriving in Utah, the Mormons set about creating the Deseret empire. Deseret (“honeybee” in The Book of Mormon) claimed a vast expanse of land, including present-day Utah, most of Idaho, Nevada, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. As part of the expansion effort, Young created a system of missions to the American East, England, and continental Europe, targeting the poor and telling them of free land and prosperity in the West. These missions proved very successful. About 3,000 converts arrived each year. Some 40,000 Mormons populated the Great Basin by 1860.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

Sources

The Book of Mormon (1830)

Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (1945)

Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country (1942)

Leonard Arrington, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints (1992)

Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900 (1966)

Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (1985)

Gary J Bergera, ed., Confessions of a Mormon Historian, The Diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1999 (2018)

Mark Twain, Roughing It (1872-1873)

Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (1892)

Online Sources

https://history.lds.org/article/web-resources?lang=eng

http://www.mormonthink.com/ldslinks.htm

https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Primary_sources

[*].  Lamar, Encyclopedia, Latter-day Saints entry, 621-624.

The featured image is a painting of Joseph Smith preaching to Native Americans (1890) by William Armitage, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.