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In the Book Reviews forum, Silent Dawning posted the following on an Oliver Cowdery book. Since I didn’t want to sidetrack that discussion, I decided to create a new topic. Quote:From the PBS documentary on the Mormon’s, this lack of separation between Church and State is what led to JS being arrested — the documentary said JS was mayor and ordered the destruction of a printing press that printed [a]spersions on JS land deals related to the Church, sexual habits related to doctrine, etcetera (Nauvoo Expositor?).
The Church history books published by the Church said JS was arrested for “disturbing the peace”; I wasn’t aware he actually ordered destroying a printing press however — in a land that values free speech, I see how that might bother people…..
Well, I’m not finding either of these explanations totally accurate. Too often, we look at the final events and don’t see the big picture, so I’d like to expand a bit here. Believe it or not, Wikipedia seems more accurate: Joseph and 15 others
Quote:surrendered to Carthage constable William Bettisworth on the original charge of riot. Almost immediately Joseph and Hyrum were charged with treason against the state of Illinois for declaring martial law in Nauvoo, by a warrant founded upon the oaths of A. O. Norton and Augustine Spencer. At a preliminary hearing that afternoon the city council members were released on $500 bonds, pending later trial. The judge ordered Joseph and Hyrum Smith to be held in jail until they could be tried for treason, a capital offense.
It’s important to remember that the state of Missouri had been trying to arrest Joseph for years. They wanted to get him for treason, and it is likely that the charges were upgraded because of influence from Missouri. John C. Bennett was instrumental in inciting the mob violence and exploiting Missouri anger to get the charge upgraded so Joseph wouldn’t get out of jail on bond. So, the Expositor was more of a “last straw”, rather than sole instigator of his death. There were many powerful people in the state of Illinois in the mob, and they were determined that Joseph would not leave that jail alive. These upgraded charges were trumped up to keep him in jail. Due to the extraordinary powers of habeus corpus in Nauvoo, Joseph had often avoided jail, and that is why the mob wanted him out of Nauvoo. Like I said, there’s much more to the story than simply the Expositor.
As for destruction of the press, that was a relatively common thing back then. I’m not defending Joseph, because that was the decision that gave his enemies power over him. However, let’s not forget that in Missouri just 10 or so years earlier, Missouri mobs had destroyed the Mormon press for pro-black statements in the Mormon newspaper. Nobody was arrested for destroying the Mormon press. I’m sure Joseph felt justified in destroying the press based on what happened in Missouri, but he fatally miscalculated on this one.
We have previously discussed some events at Carthage, but the exchange got a bit testy, so it was locked. But there are some things you may find interesting. See
http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=805&hilit=carthage Thanks for that MH, some great information. History is never as simple as our first impressions would lead us to think. Anyone else find it ironic that JS was shoved in LibertyJail… While it was true that ordering (and carrying out) the destruction of the Expositor press was not the powder keg itself that exploded, destroying Joseph, it was the match that lit the fuse. So saying the Expositor incident caused Joseph’s martyrdom is correct, it just isn’t the sum total of the story. I think it was the final straw that broke the heavily burdened camel’s back. It was the incident they used to get Joseph out of Nauvoo to a place where Joseph couldn’t use his unusually strong powers as mayor to dodge the legal charges.
Joseph destroyed the press because it was leaking details of his polygamy that were also going to destroy him. I hate to say it, but he was really at the end of his rope in 1844. He had taken his ideas so far that it was to a point of no return.
Thing that everyone has to remember is in history BOTH sides are biased. We know that the church account is whitewashed, but equally, the other side is blackened. Some of the charges against Smith may have been created, overblown etc. Maybe some local men felt threatened by his prowess with women, success and the devotion of his followers as much as anything else. Excellent point! There are some people that take the mob’s “blackened” point of view at face value, and that is just as bad as the “whitewashed” version. Quote:“Thing that everyone has to remember is in history BOTH sides are biased. We know that the church account is whitewashed, but equally, the other side is blackened. Some of the charges against Smith may have been created, overblown etc. Maybe some local men felt threatened by his prowess with women, success and the devotion of his followers as much as anything else.”
I so disagree with this sentiment. There is no history that has only two sides. Please. That’s boring and embarrassing at the best. History can have many sides, not just two. And it is more often the fact that it is neither pure or blackened, but something in between. I think you probably meant that but you didn’t come off that way. At any rate, history is anybody’s game; just needs to be rational and legitimate in its claims.
Quote:I think you probably meant that but you didn’t come off that way.
curt, I think it came off exactly that way to everyone who has been reading here for any length of time – as long as they weren’t looking for problems with it in the first place.
I’ve said this in other threads about many issues to multiple people, but, as your own comment illustrates about multiple perspectives, just about anything can be read in just about any way – depending on the mindset and attitude of the person doing the reading.
I’m sure you agree with that, based on what you just wrote, so please understand that such a negative comment comes inevitably from a negative attitude brought into the reading. It isn’t caused by the previous comments; it’s the natural result of your mindset when you came here before even reading the comments. Quote:Please. That’s boring and embarrassing at the best.
I am interested in why you felt the need to say something like that – especially since the people you are addressing are known as some of the people who are most open to things having many possible interpretations. Mormon Heretic, for example, has written extensively about many interpretations of Book of Mormon location possibilities – and nothing I’ve ever read of his is “boring and embarrassing at best”.
Please don’t take that as a personal attack or as an emotional, defensive response from me. It’s not – at all. I thought long and hard about how to say what I feel needs to be said before beginning to type my own comment.curt wrote:Quote:“Thing that everyone has to remember is in history BOTH sides are biased. We know that the church account is whitewashed, but equally, the other side is blackened. Some of the charges against Smith may have been created, overblown etc. Maybe some local men felt threatened by his prowess with women, success and the devotion of his followers as much as anything else.”
I so disagree with this sentiment. There is no history that has only two sides. Please. That’s boring and embarrassing at the best. History can have many sides, not just two. And it is more often the fact that it is neither pure or blackened, but something in between. I think you probably meant that but you didn’t come off that way. At any rate, history is anybody’s game; just needs to be rational and legitimate in its claims.
History is ALWAYS biased. Archeology less so.
We can say this especially of a person such as Joseph Smith who usually created strong reactions of one kind or another in the people he met. Very few people give a fairly neutral account of him.
But there are two main sides in this. Probably others, but two sides that count. The others are of little relevance, since they don’t feature much. I suppose we could add the female angle, but that’s about it.
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