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Sorry about my reply. I meant to post that as a separate post, which I will. Does anyone know where the Expositor was located in Nauvoo in 1844? There is a print shop highlighted on the city maps of that time period. Is this the Expositor?
Was it on the upper level or the lower level of town?
The pictures of the only issue of the Expositor does give an address either.
It’s probably isn’t pointed out on the “tour”.
Just curious.
Mike from Milton.
The building doesn’t exist anymore. It was on Mulholland Street (north side), between Page and Bluff Streets. If you type in Mulholland and Bluff Street in Google Maps, you can see many new buildings are located there now (such as a fudge factory, bank, and cafe.) For me, it’s interesting to think: how would church history be different if the Expositor wasn’t destroyed? Would the Church be different today?
Qualifier: I’m not a historical expert on the church. I’m just thinking out load.
I suspect that the church would be.
I’m not sure it would of been as successful or as big as it is today.
JS would of had difficulty explaining polygamy to the general membership. He didn’t seem ready at this time to reveal the principle.
D&C 132 was recorded on Jul 12, 1843. I don’t believe that it was released to the general membership until later.
There would of been even bigger factions within the church.
IMO: church history needed a martyr(s) to “rally” the true believers, accept BY (or someone else) & move west.
Maybe this was already discussed. If it was, I’m sorry.
Mike from Milton.
Yes, the church would be very different if Joseph had not been killed. How things would have changed is anyone’s guess. How many more issues might the Expositor have been produced? There are rumors that Joseph may have discontinued polygamy on his own as it was too divisive an issue. Would Joseph have organized the Relief Society into a priesthood quorum? (I think he would have.) Joseph was looking at Texas, Mexico, and Oregon as possible places for migration (not Utah.) Those are just 3 big changes that I think could have happened if Joseph had lived longer.
No way to know what would have been different, but I wonder if our D&C would be larger. There sure was a heap of stuff going on in Nauvoo and around it. The church movies may play the story there Was evil building around to try to oppose God’s work and persecute the Saints, and that is one view to peddle religion’s war of evil v. good in this world…this is not lying but a point of view to be shared in their context, certainly not a historical balanced point of view.
As was pointed out, the printing presses were destroyed in other situations, mobs amassed for other towns and situations, and people were killed and lynched and coerced with violence. It was a growing nation and on the frontiers the law enforcement was stretched thin, and groups (Mormons being one group in that time and place) at times had to take actions in their own hands, as did their opposers. It wasn’t like the rest of the nation was peaceful, but devils surrounded Mormons. That is just juvenile to think.
That doesn’t excuse actions, but just recognizes it was the way things evolved to in our nation’s history.
In one way, I think Nauvoo and Mormonism grew to a point they needed to play on a bigger stage with the big boys, and it wasn’t simple for Joseph to navigate through, and certainly not something his farming family and background had prepared him for. He was figuring it out while going along, bound to make mistakes, and also due credit for achieving what he did.
My opinion: he was in over his head and if it wasn’t the Expositor, it would have been something else, probably in Texas.
The Expositor was a principal factor in my loss of faith… not the only one, but a major one. At a time when I was questioning the polygamy doctrine, and looking into its implementation in the Nauvoo period, I got a copy of the Expositor. I expected to see outlandish lies. I didn’t. While it certainly exposed the secret, and not in complimentary terms, it seemed to be pretty accurate. I remember a talk by a GA, think it was Elder Oaks, that mentioned that Joseph was just carrying out the order of the council, as he was required to do. Lost in that is that Joseph himself, pressed the council on the issue. From the meeting minutes:
= = =
Mayor (Joseph Smith) said, if he had a City Council who felt as he did, the establishment (referring to the Nauvoo Expositor) would be declared a nuisance before night; and then he read an editorial from the Nauvoo Expositor. He then asked who ever said a word against Judge Emmons until he attacked this Council or even against Joseph H. Jackson or the Laws, until they came out against the city? Here is a paper (Nauvoo Expositor) that is exciting our enemies abroad. Joseph H. Jackson has been proved a murderer before the Council, and he declared the paper a nuisance-a greater nuisance than a dead carcass. They make it a criminality for a man to have a wife on the earth while he has one in heaven, according to the keys of the Holy Priesthood; and he then read a statement of William Law’s from the Expositor, where the truth of God was transformed into a lie concerning this thing. He then read several statements of Austin Cowles in the Expositor concerning a private interview, and said he never had any private conversations with Austin Cowles on these subjects; that he preached on the stand from the Bible, showing the order in ancient days. What the opposition party want is to raise a mob on us and take the spoil from us, as they did in Missouri. He said it was as much as he could do to keep his clerk, Thompson, from publishing the proceeding of the Laws and causing the people to rise up against them. Said he would rather die tomorrow and have the thing smashed, than live and have it go on, for it was exciting the spirit of mobocracy among the people, and bringing death and destruction upon us.
= = =
In a sense, I sympathize with JS on this issue. Not saying he was right, but that I understand the fear that drove the response. They lived in a frontier town, where their neighbors where increasingly suspicious and potentially hostile. They’d seen this before in Missouri with devastating consequences. To me, the destruction of the Expositor press was not too unlike Israel taking out nuclear research sites within Iran. Legal? No. Endearing to nations of the Arab League? Absolutely Not. Justifiable? Well…
In my view, however, I believe it was more the Expositor itself, and less its destruction, that led to the murder of J and HS. Sure, there was righteous indignation about the freedom of the press, yada yada yada, but I doubt that issue of itself is what caused a mob to form, crying for blood.
Couple of pics of the Nauvoo Expositor building. Quote:In my view, however, I believe it was more the Expositor itself, and less its destruction, that led to the murder of J and HS. Sure, there was righteous indignation about the freedom of the press, yada yada yada, but I doubt that issue of itself is what caused a mob to form, crying for blood.
That’s a great point. The destruction of the press was probably just another underscoring of the truthfulness of what was printed, at least to those in the know.
Quote:I remember a talk by a GA, think it was Elder Oaks, that mentioned that Joseph was just carrying out the order of the council, as he was required to do.
For completeness and accuracy, I just want to include the talk I referred to above, by Dallin H. Oaks:
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1996/04/joseph-the-man-and-the-prophet?lang=eng and also admit that my memory was a bit faulty… Elder Oaks didn’t soften the charges against JS regarding the expositor by declaring that he was “just carrying out the order of the council”, though Elder Oaks did discuss the whole venture from a legal standpoint. The talk was an interesting one on its own, but for those wanting the specific Expositor portion, here it is:
Quote:The event that focused anti-Mormon hostilities and led directly to the Martyrdom was the action of Mayor Joseph Smith and the city council in closing a newly established opposition newspaper in Nauvoo. Mormon historians—including Elder B. H. Roberts—had conceded that this action was illegal, but as a young law professor pursuing original research, I was pleased to find a legal basis for this action in the Illinois law of 1844. The amendment to the United States Constitution that extended the guarantee of freedom of the press to protect against the actions of city and state governments was not adopted until 1868, and it was not enforced as a matter of federal law until 1931. (See Dallin H. Oaks, “The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor,” Utah Law Review 9 [1965]: 862.) We should judge the actions of our predecessors on the basis of the laws and commandments and circumstances of their day, not ours.
On Own Now wrote:We should judge the actions of our predecessors on the basis of the laws and commandments and circumstances of their day, not ours.
I agree with the end of this quote from Elder Oaks. However, if we do this, we must be fair to equally judge the “mobs” and “anti-Mormon hostilities” in the same light, and not according to our laws or social standards of our day. It is the best approach, and a call to mormons and non-mormons alike.
The whole freedom of the press thing is so 18th century.
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