From an endowment of power to a pall of gloom,

Kirtland is transformed in 1837.

Coming up next, The Kirtland Crisis.

KJZZ television, in cooperation with the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, presents this weekly series highlighting the research of scholars and historians as they prepare for the publication of the Joseph Smith Papers. And now your host, Glenn Rawson.

The men of Zion’s Camp return to Kirtland in August of 1834. Work then began anew on the Kirtland Temple.

Then came the endowment of power and the marvelous events of the dedication. Once that Pentecostal season was over, however, Joseph and his brethren faced a heavy burden.

They spent a lot of money building the Kirtland Temple, they’re deeply in debt.

And they also have to finance their basic operations, support the leadership of the Church,

provide land for the poor coming into Kirtland, provide land out in Missouri for those who are out there.

And so you have these financial pressures.

Plus you’re going to have a Zion society. And so you have to have some kind of equality economically

and you've got to work this out.

And there was a lot of pressure on Joseph,

for example. They were talking about building—turning the sawmill into a steam mill.

And one day a nonmember in the area

said that they were talking about steam mills and stores and

a bank operation. And he said Joseph walked away in frustration

because everybody was demanding his time and somebody ran after him and said,

“can I just talk to you for a few minutes?”

He said, “everybody wants me for just a few minutes.”

And in a quiet, audible prayer, he said, “Oh, God, I wish I were translated”

because of the pressure that he was feeling at the time.

Almost about everything that goes on during Joseph Smith’s lifetime,

the things that succeed and the things that don’t,

they’re essentially means to an end, the end is Zion.

Build a community, a society, one heart, one mind.

United together, righteous,

righteous enough that they could walk with God.

Have no poor among them.

And so all these things are means to an end.

OK, if they should fail,

Zion hasn’t failed, it’s just the effort.

So desperate was the poverty of the Saints that Joseph traveled to Salem, Massachusetts, on the rumor that there was a treasure hidden there.

Well, it turned out there was no economic remedy,

but a revelation was received wherein the Lord promised “concern not yourselves with your debts.

For I will give you power to pay them” Doctrine and Covenants, section 111.

A dramatic change occurred from the fall of 1836

into 1837, in the prosperity of the Latter-day Saints. They had struggled, they were poverty stricken.

The Apostles who went on their mission in the summer of 1836 after the Kirtland Temple

endowment and dedication returned later in the fall and discovered

a buzz of prosperity and activity and a changed society that concerned them as well as surprise them.

What did that mean for the life of the Saints? And when Joseph Smith moved to the temple enlargement of the borders of Zion, both his ambitious plans for Missouri and his temple strengthening he hoped and envisioned for Kirtland, it changed the groundwork.

The Saints gathered together resources so they could build

a bank operation. And within the same week that they started,

there were a number of other institutions in the area also issuing bank notes.

There was a canal issuing bank notes. There were some other businesses issuing bank notes and other institutions.

And so this was something that was expected and

it was something entirely

respectable to do, to start a bank operation. In 1836 it becomes apparent that

an effort at creating a banking-type operation might be able to benefit the Church. It might be able to generate funds that they could use to purchase land in Missouri, to to manage their debts more effectively, to enable them to build the local economy,

to invest, and invest in business activities and merchandising and so on, and also manage the local situation,

the local economy, have land available for the poor and try to control the inflation that’s in—

occurring locally. And so we’ve got a couple of documents that just represent this. This is a December 1836 broadside from the Messenger and Advocate, an extra not published in the newspaper itself, but published by them as a supplement.

And it outlines articles for constitution for a bank that they hope to set up.

And they're very serious about doing this. They're going to have investors have shares of ownership.

They’re going to approach the state of Ohio through the legislature, which is the channel that was authorized,

and request a charter. And as a result, they don't get a charter. And so

they turn to the alternative, which is to create a joint stock company and issue some notes on their own. So there have been some people who have suggested that they deliberately went ahead and created an illegal operation.

I don’t think that—no, it doesn’t warrant that. That it was a

less secure type of operation because it didn’t have a charter and so on, is certainly, I think, a fair assessment of it.

The next document we have is when they reorganize themselves as a joint stock company,

make modifications to their their articles, there are some minor differences that are appropriate for that kind of organization. And then it has a list of people who are are going to be investors in this. And these are the articles under which they actually operated as the Kirtland Safety Society, or Anti-Banking Society.

It got up and running at an unfortunate time because the speculative bubble in real estate was about to burst.

There were some actions on the national level that were taking place under

President Andrew Jackson. He had issued a

proclamation that required Western land to be purchased with what was called “specie”—gold and silver.

And so that began to dry up the gold and silver,

and it affected the value of these notes and their redeemability, because in theory, they're redeemable for gold and silver. But if there's no gold and silver around,

that's not going to happen.

Bank of Geauga in Painesville, right next to Kirtland, had Grandison Newell on their board of directors. And he was prominent in a lot of financial activities in the area, was in the—was building a railroad,

ran a furniture business, and did a number of other things,

making quite a bit of money and the Latter-day Saints had come in and were competing against his businesses.

Newell, as a one man opposition, if you will,

to what the Latter-day Saints were doing,

began pulling every string he could to stop their competition

against his businesses.

And the day after the bank, the Kirtland Safety Society,

they began calling it, the day after the Kirtland Safety Society opened,

one of Grandison Newell’s employees said that he went around the country and began buying up bank notes.

And he went in and began exchanging them for specie, for gold and silver coin within the bank.

And so as a one man operation, he started a run on the bank while Joseph was out of town, Sidney Rigdon panicked.

And within a few weeks of this Safety Society opening,

he closed its doors and stopped paying out specie.

Now, this is what Grandison Newell wanted.

And immediately the bank notes began to drop in value that allowed him to buy even more up and other people,

speculators, bought up more money, and over time they spun out of control. And there were a lot of other factors going on as well.

The spirit of speculation proved to be one of the factors that eroded the American financial system at this time.

Provoking what was known as the panic of 1837.

Banks failed all over the country.

Even the Latter-day Saints felt the effects of these financial reversals.

So all of this taken together,

the confidence in the Safety Society just collapsed and a lot of blame was placed on Joseph Smith for

moving forward in this direction. And so you get into a period of opposition within the Church itself by some fairly important members, some members of the Quorum of the Twelve, like Luke Johnson and John Boynton and Warren Parrish,

who is his secretary, one of his clerks, a number of people.

And it is really a great deal of turmoil.

And it goes on through 1837.

A number of leading brethren lost faith in Joseph.

Part of this was because they could trust him as long as he was saying things about the next life.

But when he began saying things about how they should manage their money and how they should live this life,

that made them skittish.

Joseph was disheartened by the pride and the contention that seemed to set in on his people as the economy collapsed, as it was stated in Joseph's history.

“It seemed, as though all the powers of Earth and Hell were

combining their influence in an especial manner to overthrow the Church at once, and make a final end.” End of quote.

Consequently, Joseph disposed of his interests and withdrew from the bank.

He recommended that they purchase all the notes that were out,

cover their losses, and continue in a different direction.

Joseph Smith was cashier of the bank,

which means that he was responsible for day-to-day operations, for checking the books.

But he wasn't a bank director.

He didn't have control over continuing the bank or stopping the bank. Other people were bank directors, and they selected Warren Parish to replace Joseph as the bank's cashier. Warren was put in a position where he

had direct access to all the bank records.

And now Warren Parrish accused Joseph Smith of malfeasance of—

Warren Parrish accused Joseph of

counterfeiting bank notes.

And Joseph Smith accused Warren Parrish of the same thing.

Although there aren't good records to say which one was responsible, we do have surviving

stock ledgers that Warren Parrish acknowledged that he changed,

that he counterfeited some of the names in those records. And at least eight names in those records can be clearly seen as being changed. And

several nonmembers in the area went around telling people that, for money, that Warren Parish would remove their names from the records, too. And so although Warren claimed Joseph was counterfeiting,

Joseph claimed Warren was,

the surviving records show that

Warren Parish was up to counterfeiting.

The failure of the bank was, sure enough, a troubling problem.

But for the Latter-day Saints, there was a deeper,

much more fundamental issue.

But what was at stake, in fact, was the nature of prophetic leadership.

Do we, in fact, want to have—on the Protestant American model—

a preacher-teacher on religious themes on Sunday only?

Or do we want a Moses at our head that can lead

the people of Zion in their whole society?

And this is illustrated very nicely by

Oliver Cowdrey and his brother, Warren Cowdrey,

both of whom left the Church by 1838 over these issues.

Warren Cowdery was the

editor of the Church’s Messenger and Advocate, the Church’s newspaper. Here is one of the editorials of

Warren Cowdrey in the Messenger and Advocate of July 1837.

He writes that “whenever a people have unlimited confidence in a civil or ecclesiastical ruler or rulers, who are but men like themselves, and begin to think they can do no wrong,

they increase their tyranny, and oppression,

establish a principle that poor man,

frail lump of mortality like themselves is infallible.”

He went on to say, “Who does not see in principle of popery and religious tyranny involved in such order of things?

Who is worthy the name of a freeman who thus tamely surrenders the rights and the privileges and immunities of an independent citizen?”

So that's the one point of view.

And it's also represented by Oliver Cowdrey. And it surfaces the most dramatic and direct way in his excommunication

nine months later in Missouri. One of the charges against him—

he is charged with virtually denying the faith by declaring that he would not be governed by any ecclesiastical authority, nor revelation, whatever, in temporal affairs. In other words,

if you reveal to me about religion, Joseph, I want a prophet, but don't talk to me about the rest of my life. I’m a free, independent American son of ’76.

And what was his response to that charge?

He wrote to the committee,

“If I were to be controlled by any other than my own judgment in a compulsory manner in my temporal interests, of course,

that would be against my interest as a citizen,

and I would not consent to some real or supposed authority

over my life.” Do we want an Enoch, or a Moses?

Are we going to relive the Old Testament or are we simply going to revere the stories of the Old Testament, and be New Testament Christians?

And part of what Joseph Smith was about in Kirtland

was to say, “the Old Testament is our story.”

We are gathering Israel again,

and we are going to live their worldview with God at our head.

Moses-like, not simply be other Christians that believe in the Book of Mormon.

Dissent in the Church

began long before the Kirtland Safety Society.

Indeed, it was evident as early as 1830, shortly after the organization of the Church.

But in Kirtland, the problems began as early as January of 1837.

In February of 1837, before the demise of the bank,

before the economic collapse, there was mutiny,

as Wilford Woodruff called it a few weeks later. An

attempt to depose Joseph Smith and put David Wittmer in his stead.

He writes this way: “He stood in the midst of the congregation of the Saints, where I beheld President Joseph Smith Jr., arise in the stand and for several hours address the Saints, in the power of God.

He had been absent from Kirtland on business,

though not half as long as Moses was on the Mount, and many were stirred up in their hearts, and some were against him, as the Israelites were against Moses.

But when he arose in the power of God in their midst, as Moses did anciently, they were put to silence, for the complainers saw that he stood in the power of the Prophet.”

And again, that's what's at stake.

Is he Moses, a prophet who’s empowered in the latter days to do the works of Moses,

or is he something else with a lesser assignment?

“He unbosomed his mind and his feelings in the house of his friends.

He presented many things of vast importance to the minds of the Elders of Israel.

I say, such evidence presented in such a forceful manner ought to drive into oblivion every particle of

unbelief and dubiety

from the minds of the hearers. For such language and sentiment and principle and the Spirit cannot flow from darkness.

Joseph Smith is a prophet of God,

raised up for the deliverance of Israel,

as true as my heart now burns within me.”

The diary of Wilford Woodruff is very valuable to us in piecing together the history of Kirtland at this time. In the spring of 1837, he tells of several meetings like this one in April of that year where more dissent was recorded.

“Joseph arose, and like the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, he poured out his soul in the midst of the congregation of the Saints. He uttered the feelings of his soul in pain, while viewing the poverty and afflictions of the Saints in Kirtland...

There is not a greater man, in my view, than Joseph, standing in this generation.

The Gentiles look upon him

and he is to them like a bed of gold, concealed from human view.

They cannot see his worth.

They know not his principles, his spirit, his wisdom, virtues, philanthropy, nor his calling.”

And you might add his brethren, who didn’t yet resonate with this view, who didn’t get it either,

but Wilford did. He says, “His mind is like Enoch’s, swelling wide as eternity, nothing short of God can comprehend his soul.”

So this division in the Church in the minds of the Saints continues

and there is a dramatic meeting in the temple. It’s Joseph Scribe, formerly,

the one who kept much of his diary in 1836, Warren Parrish,

and he gets up and denounces Joseph Smith in the temple meeting. And curses him—while Joseph is sitting there?—that he will die. And as you can imagine, this was not only dramatic, it was a scene of chaos and people were—like Wilford, beyond belief that this could happen. “Joseph acted wisely while all saw the spirit of his foe.”

At this precarious time,

Joseph would find Heber C Kimball in the temple,

and he would say to him, “Brother Heber,

the Spirit of the Lord has whispered to me,

’let my servant Heber go to England and proclaim my gospel and open the door of salvation to that nation.’”

This was the time with the Church in crisis,

that less than a week later,

Joseph Smith goes to Heber Kimball and says,

for the salvation of the Church, the Lord has revealed something new must be done, and sent him on his mission to England. So on the 4th of June, he calls Kimball and Hyde joins him a little later.

So the two of them are set apart on the 11th of June to go on their mission. The 12th Joseph Smith falls ill while they're preparing for their mission. On the 13th

they go by his house to take leave of him

and he cannot even raise his head from

the bed to tell them farewell.

So less than two weeks after Warren Parrish curses him in the temple, he falls deathly ill.

Though Joseph nearly died,

his brethren gathered together in fasting and prayer

and Joseph is healed,

notwithstanding Warren Parrish’s curse. For a time,

peace and order are restored in Kirtland,

enough so that Joseph feels confident to leave on a mission for Canada. But while he's gone,

the respite proves to be short lived.

There is a riot in the temple.

Father Joseph Smith Senior is conducting the meeting.

And in the midst of the meeting, Warren Parrish and John Boynton, of the Quorum of the Twelve, get up and cause a grand disturbance.

Father Smith orders in the police.

And there is a riot, as it's described afterward.

This was actually with—these apostates brought weapons into

the temple. There were weapons. There were swords.

There was apparently a pistol or two. Women were scrambling,

screaming, men were jumping out of the windows so that they're saying it was a riot and appalling, again, to everybody involved.

Because of this riot in the temple,

Joseph convenes meetings in Kirtland when he returns to set the leadership in order and to discipline those responsible.

As a result, peace is restored.

Joseph then travels to Missouri to do the same thing there.

By the time they got home, however, in Kirtland itself,

there was now not just mutiny and open rebellion, but full apostacy. And those who had opposed Joseph Smith over all of these issues decided to openly come out and support a new church. They call themselves the New Standard.

And so there was now an apostasy in Kirtland.

Thirty-eight leaders were cut off

by the high council and by courts,

and eventually about 40 to 50 people.

In the meantime, other events were going on with the descenders riling up people that were anti-Mormons in the community. And those who had defended Joseph Smith most vigorously in these court cases, the trials,

and in all of the dissent that year, were the first at risk.

And because of that, Brigham Young, on the 22nd of December, fled for his life.

Not a timid man, but fled for his life from Kirtland to Missouri.

And less than three weeks later, Sydney Rigdon,

Joseph Smith, and their families leave

Kirtland and head to Missouri.

Joseph Smith and other leaders in Kirtland taught that, “From

apostates the faithful have received the severest persecution. When once that light which is in them is taken from them, they become as much darkened

as they were previously enlightened,

and then, no marvel, if all their power should be enlisted against the truth.” It was a terrible time.

But when it was through, the rank and file members of the Church stayed with Joseph Smith.

It was a leadership crisis.

We didn’t lose a third of the members of the Church. We lost a third of some of the top leaders.

But in the end, the support for Joseph Smith was strong and most of the Saints gathered around him,

left Kirtland and rejoined him in Missouri during the next months, and on through ’38.

The Kirtland Safety Society was not the only cause of the Kirtland crisis, but it certainly became the focal point, symbolically, for those who wanted to criticize Joseph Smith.

The apostacy and betrayal that Joseph experienced in Kirtland

left so deep an impression on him that it haunted him to the very end of his life.

The last night of Joseph Smith's life, he was in Carthage jail,

sleeping between two of his friends. While he slept, he had a dream and he dreamt he was back in Kirtland in his barn.

Now, he spent six months before that trying to fight off these very same individuals who had stolen money from him

and were claiming that they now owned his property, that they owned mummies and other things that they were trying to take from the Church. And Joseph wrote letters back and said those things belong to the Church. The Church gave them to me.

That night Joseph dreamt that they were going to take those things from him.

The last night of his life, he was still worrying about what these friends of his— and he even called them in some of these letters, his friends—

what they were doing to the Church and what they were doing to him.

The next day, Almon Babbitt,

who was a stake president out in Kirtland, came to Carthage jail. And Joseph related the story to him and others

telling them

about this event. And he called it a prophecy or a vision.

Joseph was killed. And shortly after that,

this property was taken by these people who had once been his friends in Kirtland. And

they continued on their way,

having taken advantage of Joseph and having turned their back on him. But it bothered him enough that for the rest of his life, to his dying—

to the last night of his life,

Joseph continued to worry about what had happened in Kirtland.

In a letter to John Corrill and others dated September the 4th 1837,

Joseph would speak of the Kirtland crisis in this way:

“Brethren, we waded through a scene of affliction and sorrow thus far for the will of God

that language is inadequate to describe.

Pray ye therefore, with more earnestness for our redemption.

Next week on the Joseph Smith papers,

part one of Joseph Smith and the Law. I’m Glen Rawson.

Thanks for joining us.