In my estimation, the most tragic event in the history of the Church was the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in the Carthage jail on the 27th of June, 1844.

Coming up next, the aftermath of the martyrdom.

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.

Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered

on the 27th of June, 1844.

The only prophet that the Latter-day Saints had ever known was now dead.

Now who would lead? Or could anyone take Joseph Smith's place?

These were some of the questions that echoed among the Mormons after the death of their leaders.

Today in our show, our scholars will talk about the aftermath of the martyrdom,

and much of what they will tell us comes from the journals of those who were there.

We begin today’s show

still in the jail with Willard Richards and John Taylor.

Willard Richards, who had suffered only a nick in his left earlobe, moved John Taylor into the cell,

covered him by a straw mattress, and waited by the door

for his death. Fortunately for Willard Richards,

someone shouted, “Joseph has jumped from the window!”

and the men inside of the jail bent on killing the prisoners left to go see Joseph Smith outside,

and Willard's life was saved.

There was a shout “The Mormons are coming!”

and the mob left Joseph as he was, propped against the well,

and fled the city of Carthage. And thus nothing more was done

to the body of Joseph Smith at this time.

Willard Richards then,

with perhaps the help of Samuel Smith— Samuel arrives just after the martyrdom. He had tried to come earlier to be with his brothers and had not been allowed to enter the city of Carthage.

Anyway, with the help of Samuel Smith and also the help

of some others, some of the militia that were there,

the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum were taken to the Hamilton House.

From the Hamilton House, located near Carthage’s town center,

Willard Richards wrote a letter to the Saints back in Nauvoo informing them

of the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

The immediate aftermath, of course, was one of profound

grief, mixed with a great deal of disbelief that this could have ever happened, that the Prophet who had led the Church for so long and had been through so many difficult scrapes,

so every expectation was that that would pass—

but when Joseph Smith is killed, along with his brother, there is this

immense sense of grief and of rejection of reality,

that this could not have possibly have occurred.

Later on, in the evening of June 27th,

Willard Richards wrote another letter to the Saints in Nauvoo,

this one at the request of Governor Thomas Ford.

“Carthage Jail, 8 o’ clock 5 minutes”

—that is, five minutes after 8— “June the 27th. ...

Joseph and Hyrum are dead. Taylor wounded not very bad.”

They probably wrote that to calm the nerves of the people back there. “I am well.

Our guard was fired on as we believe by a band from Missouri from one to two hundred.

The job was done in an instant

and the party fled towards Nauvoo instantly.

This is as I believe it.

The citizens here are afraid of the Mormons attacking them.

I promise no! The citizens promise us protection.

Alarm guns have been fired.” And then it’s signed

Willard Richards and John Taylor,

in the actual handwriting of Richards. They sent from the jail.

The effect upon the Mormons was profound.

The following accounts chronicle the reaction of the people

to the devastating news.

They weren’t prepared for the loss of the Prophet. This was the Prophet who brought the Book of Mormon,

all these revelations.

He was always there, teaching and instructing and comforting and guiding them. And now suddenly to have him gone was a

disaster for them. Aroet Hale said:

“I never shall forget the morning

that the sad news of the deaths reached Nauvoo.

Father was a bishop of one of the wards, and naturally, the brethren would gather around their bishop.

To see stout men and women standing around in groups crying and mourning for the loss of their dear prophet and patriarch, was enough to break the heart of a stone.”

Sally Randall said, “If you can imagine for yourselves,

how the apostles and saints felt when the Savior was crucified,

you can give something of a guess

how the saints felt here, when they heard that their prophet and patriarch were both dead, and murdered to a lawless mob.”

One Latter-day Saint, a convert named Lewis Barney, lived just north of Carthage. He wrote:

“The whole country was deserted.

Men, women and children fled for their lives,

not taking time to shut their doors after them. ...

There was a gloom cast over the country

so much so that strangers passing through the country spoke of it.

As I was out looking for my stock, I met a stranger.

He asked me what was the matter that everything looked so gloomy and lonesome.” After describing the death of the Smiths,

Lewis Barney explained,

“When the blood of a Prophet is shed

it has a tendency to cast a gloom over the country” (end of quote).

Others recounted a similar despair.

Lucy Walker Kimball Smith, she wrote:

“We had just retired on the night of the 27th of June, when there came a loud rap at the door below.

News, I cried, and fled downstairs, opened the door,

a messenger quietly said Joseph and Hyrum have been murdered.

I seemed paralyzed with terror, had no power to speak or move.

Agnes called out, ‘What is the news?’ Receiving no answer,

she came rushing down to learn the awful truth.

Never was such a night spent since the crucifixion of our Savior.

The dogs barked, the cattle bellowed, and all creation was astir. We knelt by the open window with our arms around each other, [till] the dawn, witnessing the terrible commotion

and calling to mind his prophetic words.”

Governor Thomas Ford, who had been in Nauvoo at the time of the martyrdom, returned to Carthage,

and in the middle of the night, he called the citizens together and warned them to run for their lives.

The governor also asks William Hamilton, a young man, to obtain a wagon and a team of horses, and they preserve valuable legal documents and court records, and Hamilton takes those to Quincy,

and the governor himself leaves Carthage and goes to Quincy.

June 28, 1844. Two wagons were obtained, and the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith were placed in them.

And with Willard driving one wagon and Samuel driving the other, an escort of eight soldiers that have been ordered by the governor to escort the bodies back to Nauvoo,

they leave for the City Beautiful.

They arrive on the outskirts of Nauvoo about 3 o’clock in the afternoon. The inhabitants of Nauvoo were all out in the streets, on the roofs,

on the housetops, and everywhere to see if they could get a glimpse of the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum.

There was a large crowd gathered at the temple,

but the bodies were taken past the temple

and then turned on Main Street,

where the Masonic Hall is, and Lyons Drug,

and were taken to the Mansion House.

“Many thousands of the people assembled there,

and such was a time of mourning, I never beheld neither before nor since. Some expressed their sorrow by praying for vengeance on their murderers, others by shedding tears, and many could neither shed tears nor speak.

Some, yea, a great many wanted to go and take vengeance on their enemies, by going and laying Carthage in ashes.

But, through the labors and exertions of Parley P. Pratt and Dr. Willard Richards, and a few others

of the more considerate part of the community,

the people were kept calm.”

There, they were taken inside into the dining room,

and the door was closed. Willard Richards went back out,

because there were a large number of people that had congregated outside of the Mansion House, and spoke to them.

Some of his—in part of that speech, he said,

“O Americans, weep, for the glory of freedom has departed.”

Then he told the people to go home and said that on the 29th of June, the remains would be viewed by all.

Some have thought that this was one of the finest moments in all of Mormon history:

that the Latter-day Saints did not retaliate.

The bodies of Joseph and Hyrum were washed and dressed

for the final time. They were laid in state in Joseph’s own home for public view. That evening, the families came down to view them.

Emma Smith was very distraught and has to—

and requests a priesthood blessing from John P. Greene,

and he gives her one.

Mary Fielding is also distraught, as is Mother Smith,

who cries out, “What have they done to my dear boys? What have they done to my dear boys?”

At 7 a.m. in the morning of the 29th,

the bodies were placed in white-cambric-lined coffins

covered with black velvet and fastened with brass nails.

Over the face of each corpse was a lid hung with brass hinges that held a square of glass.

Over 10,000 people

visited Nauvoo that day and saw the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. They came from as far away as Burlington, Iowa,

and from Quincy, Illinois.

W. W. Phelps, late in the afternoon, preached the funeral sermon for Joseph Smith.

He said, “Joseph the seer whose innocent blood stains the land of freedom, stains the halls of legislation,

stains the judge's bench,

stains the priest’s pulpit and stains the nation’s panoply.”

While W. W. Phelps is giving the sermon,

a wagon passes with two coffins in it

believed to be the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Instead, these coffins were filled with sand.

About midnight on the 29th of June,

the coffins that contained the bodies of Joseph and Hyrum

were buried in the unfinished Nauvoo House.

A heavy rain then descended, which washed away any traces of graves having been dug there.

Among those who agonized the most over the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith were those who knew them the longest. One such individual was Newel Knight.

He had known the brothers since the early days of New York.

“I have taken up considerable space in telling you”—meaning the diary—“the circumstances under which two of the best men that ever lived, lost their lives for the truth’s sake.”

And then he says—

And he’s not writing this for an audience. He’s just venting.

He says, “I have known them from boyhood, have been associated with Joseph from the time before he received the first revelation” —meaning Moroni’s visit, or getting the plates—“until the present, and Hyrum has been his constant companion since the Church has been organized.” In essence, I know these men.

And then he says, based on his long experience, he said both of them (quote) “loved righteousness

and taught it to their followers.

Their friends loved them all for the good they did, and their enemies hated them

because they reproved their sins and wickedness.

Oh, how I loved those men, and rejoiced under their teachings!

It seems as if all is gone,

and as if my very heartstrings will break,

and were it not for my beloved wife and dear children, I feel as if I have nothing to live for,

and would rejoice to be with them in the courts of glory.

But I must live, and labor, and try to do good,

and help to build up the kingdom of our God here on the earth,

and I pray, God my Father,

that I may be reconciled unto my lot, and live and die

a faithful follower of the teachings of our murdered Prophet.”

June 30th, 1844.

Willard Richards wrote a letter to his quorum president, Brigham Young,

who was then in the east preaching the gospel and advancing Joseph Smith's presidential bid.

Willard informed him what had happened.

While Brigham Young was in Boston, he had first received word that Joseph had been killed,

but it was not until the 16th of July that that news was confirmed.

He describes for Brigham Young that each one of them were shot four times. He goes on. He says: “The effect of this hellish butchery was like the bursting of a tornado on Carthage and Warsaw.

These villages were without inhabitants,

as in an instant they ran for their lives lest the Mormon should burn and kill them suddenly.

The wicked flee when no man pursueth.”

Brigham Young personally, as a friend of Joseph,

as a leader of the Church, never came to terms with the martyrdom.

He did come to understand and occasionally spoke about the necessity of Joseph Smith and Hyrum having sealed their testimony with their blood.

That he could accept intellectually, but emotionally,

he always said in his heart and knew, Had I been there, had the Twelve been there, we would not have let him cross the river again.

He had headed across the river to the west,

to a place of safety, and we would not have let him come back.

During the time that they were in Carthage Jail,

Willard Richards kept a diary,

an almost moment-by-moment account of the events that transpired there.

Later, Willard would write an article about the martyrdom

for the newspaper, the Nauvoo Neighbor.

It’s an extra, Nauvoo Neighbor extra, of Sunday at 8:00 p.m., June 30th, 1844. And in this, they have

the black border around that designates the death

of the Prophet and his brother.

In this, he briefly reviews the facts that took place each of the days they were in the jail there, starting on the 24th,

25th, 26th, and 27th. We also have in this

newsprint the account of the report given by the lawyers.

With the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum, the Prophet and patriarch,

there was for the Latter-day Saints then what many consider to be a crisis.

And indeed it was a great crisis of faith, of confidence.

It was not so much a crisis over authority or power.

Certainly it wasn’t after the August 8th meeting where the Quorum of the Twelve received the almost unanimous vote

in favor of their leadership of the membership of the Church.

But it was a crisis for some weeks, before the Twelve returned and before they had the great conference.

There was a sense in which people wondered,

could anyone possibly lead the Church in Joseph’s absence?

And emotionally, they felt deserted, abandoned,

and had to wonder whether God was still with the Saints.

It was devastating enough to lose the Prophet Joseph Smith. It was doubly devastating to lose Hyrum. We sometimes overlook

that double negative effect of the Smith brothers’ death

on that hot summer day in 1844.

Had Hyrum survived, he would have at least been able to give the Church temporary leadership.

And until it was straightened out as to the full succession question, the matter of ultimate succession, in the consequence of

the loss of both brothers, there was a true vacuum of leadership that develops in the Church.

Sidney Rigdon had been the First Counselor

in the First Presidency,

even though he'd been out of harmony with Joseph Smith for months. Now, with the Prophet’s death, he returned to Nauvoo and asserted himself before the people with a definite agenda.

Everyone who knew Sidney Rigdon knew that he wasn’t really committed to some of the new doctrines that were developing in Nauvoo, particularly temple work,

particularly the endowment and the move towards temple work that was going on.

Sidney Rigdon was in many ways a foreigner to, or an alien to, the new developments in temple work, and those in the know, those in the leadership of the Church, knew that that was the case.

And so there was a sentiment that, you know,

the highest leadership of the Church felt that

he’s not really with us, but the rank-and-file membership of the Church had a sympathy for Sidney Rigdon.

And he’d begun a series of private meetings and discussions gathering support.

So Sidney, in a sense, offered a real alternative.

Sidney was the surviving member of the First Presidency.

But he didn’t have the confidence of the Saints, he hadn’t been actively involved alongside Joseph in the last great events of Nauvoo,

and he didn’t have all of the keys and authority

that the Twelve had at the hands of Joseph Smith.

He’s coming back now. He says, “I’ve had a vision.

The Lord wants me to be the guardian of this Church.”

Not the President. Note that. He says, “The guardian of the Church,

at least for the time being.

And that as counselor in the First Presidency,

I have every right to be the guardian of the Church.”

The Apostles had been in the east, directing Joseph Smith’s campaign for president of the United States.

As the Twelve returned to Nauvoo,

Sidney Rigdon was already there and had scheduled a meeting for the general Church membership on August the 8th, 1844.

And Brigham Young returns the night before the scheduled meeting.

Now, Brigham Young is considered by most people at Nauvoo as the interim leader of the Church.

He says, “Let Brother Sidney speak. Let him speak.”

And so for two hours,

Sidney Rigdon, in the morning meeting of that day,

go on and on and on in a talk which to this day, no one really knows exactly what he said,

but it rambled and rambled on. It wasn't in that classical

Rigdon kind of a presentation, which is usually Bible-centered.

It wasn’t even a systematically well-argued

statement about guardianship.

And the wind was blowing, and the people were all sitting there,

and really there was no inspiration to it hardly at all.

He was uncomfortable. He was uncomfortable with the fact that the Twelve were there. He was certainly uncomfortable with the fact that Brigham Young was there.

And in many, many ways, disgraced himself even before he sat down.

Brigham Young was unrefined, unsophisticated,

not a preacher, in terms of technical skills, that Sidney Rigdon was, but he had a very simple message.

Let me read the way he put this message right afterward.

He said: “There has been much said about President Rigdon leading this people. If the people want President Rigdon to lead them,

they may have him, but I say to you that the Quorum of the Twelve have the keys of the Kingdom of God in all the world. The Twelve are appointed by the finger of God.

Here is Brigham. Have his knees ever faltered?

Have his lips ever quivered? Did he ever flinch before the bullets of Missouri?

Here are the Twelve, an independent body who have the keys of the priesthood—the keys of the kingdom to deliver to all the world. This is true, so help me God.”

And Brigham Young’s talk, as opposed to Sidney Rigdon’s,

was firmly rooted in priesthood and Church government reasoning

and revelation, which the Saints

chimed to. They understood that. They understood the argument,

and consequently they were sympathetic to what Brigham Young was saying.

Much has been said about Brigham Young being transfigured in this meeting, before the people, to resemble Joseph Smith.

Now, one of those accounts, which represents over a hundred

people who later recorded that they witnessed the event,

was Anson Call. He wrote:

“Before Brigham Young had spoken many sentences, I discovered that it was the voice of Joseph,

and had I have been where my eyes could not have beheld him,

I should have believed that Joseph had been speaking.

It was Joseph’s voice and Joseph’s gestures through the entire discourse.

I became perfectly satisfied that it was the voice for me to follow in connection with the majority of the brethren.”

I think what happened is that the Saints had a renewal of faith and a confirmation personally, with whatever

spiritual experience each man or woman had,

that the Lord was still with the Church.

And many of them later wrote that account down

that they had seen Brigham as if he were Joseph

and that that had renewed their confidence.

He spoke with such great authority

that when he asked for the vote in the afternoon— and he did put it to a vote—

“All in favor of the guardianship route,

all in favor of the counselorship taking regency

or guardianship of the Church —Sidney Rigdon—

vote in favor of him,” and there wasn’t a hand went up.

“And all in favor of supporting the Twelve as

the leadership in this situation, equal to the First Presidency in this interim period.”

Every hand went up. Well, at least, let’s put it this way.

There may have been some who abstained,

but none voted in the negative so far as we know.

Within hours, he wrote to his daughter what had happened that day and described it this way:

“I stood before the congregation and explained the power of the priesthood and the power and the order thereof,

on which the whole Church lifted up their hands and hearts and voices for the Twelve to move forward and to organize the Church and lead it as Joseph led it,

which it is our indispensable duty to do.”

With that vote on August the 8th, 1844, the rank and file of the Church rallied around the Twelve and went to work.

This is demonstrated in a number of ways, but one of the most dramatic is because of dissenters,

because of the difficulties of

balancing the interests of so many people who were

at odds with some parts of the teachings of Joseph Smith, of the program of Joseph Smith, during his last year or two,

the temple progressed very slowly,

but after this vote of the Saints in support of the Twelve,

the temple progressed in the next year more than it had in the year or two before, and they were actually ready,

within a matter of 18 months after Joseph Smith’s death, to begin endowments.

The matter of succession then was settled for most members of the Church. They would follow the Twelve.

But it wasn’t settled for those who were at odds with some of the things that Joseph Smith did in the last months or years of his life in Nauvoo.

Next week on The Joseph Smith Papers,

we’ll talk about those others who challenged Brigham Young and the Twelve for Church leadership, individuals such as James J. Strang. We’ll also discuss

the culmination of Joseph Smith's vision for the Saints in the future. I’m Glenn Rawson.

Thanks for joining us.