“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why
right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1964 Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance
Speech
June 27th is a reverent day, as we remember the death of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844. While many may not agree or may dislike the LDS faith, I don't know anyone that can say that they were not murdered in Carthage. I understand that the country was new, the Bill of Rights had not long been signed into law, and law on the Western Frontier was spotty at best. Both sides were fearful and therefore distrusted each other. However, I honestly do not know how a large group of men would be able to paint their faces black with mud and feel that it was ok to storm a jail (where Joseph and Hyrum were being held for trail on drummed up charges of treason) for the intent of killing. I honestly do not understand hate that much when no personal grievance. No bail, no trial, just imprisonment.
This year, 170 years after the death of Joseph and his brother Hyrum, no one can doubt their efforts or the force of their work for God. On June 25, 1844 Joseph and Hyrum Smith left for the county seat in Carthage on this road (picture to left) to wait trial for the charge of treason. Governor Ford, of Illinois, promised safety for all who went with Joseph and Hyrum. However, soon after they arrived at the prison, Governor Ford and the army left for Nauvoo after disbanding the militia. This gave way to the opening of the Carthage Greys and others disaffected associates to organize and carry on their own.
I can only imagine what it must have been like that day. Mid West weather is never pleasant in the summer, and the humidity is high. (There is a reason why people call Missouri - Misery.) Seeing the promised protection leave. Seeing a mob gathering and noise! Feelings must have been unsettled, and scary to say the least.
A little after 5:00, the jailer, upon seeing the mob forces gathering, suggested that they might be safer in the actual jail cell, instead of the jailer's own bedroom that he let Joseph and Hyrum, along with Willard Richards and John Taylor stay in. Agreeing to go in after supper, John Taylor sang A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief at the request of Joseph. I know, sounds like it should be a country/sad song, but it is actually a comforting song. 7 verses long, it tells the story of a man that keeps passing by a stranger in different stages of need: hunger, thirst, shelter, healing, support. Finally in the last verse, it is revealed this man, this stranger, is the Savior.
Then in a moment to my view
The stranger started from disguise.
The tokens in his hands I knew,
The Savior stood before mine eyes.
He spake, and my poor name he named,
"Of me thou hast not been ashamed.
These deeds shall thy memorial be;
Fear not, thou didst them unto me."
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Door to the upstairs bedroom, can still see the
bullet holes from the mob.
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The mob, no longer constrained by any outside force, stormed the jail, rain up the stairs to the second story bedroom. The first gunshot was through the door, struck Hyrum in the face, killing him after exclaiming, "I am a dead man!" A second shot breaking the lock on the door.
John Taylor trying to escape out the bedroom window was stuck by bullets, pushing him back into the room. Rolling under the bed, he was struck again several times.
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Window John Taylor and Joseph both
attempted to escape through.
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Joseph, upon seeing no safety in the room attempted the same escape route as John Taylor. Being struck twice in the back, he fell out the window while crying "My Lord, My God." Accounts differ if he was dead before his fall or after, no one denies that he was shot several more times once upon the ground. Willard Richards, not a small man (who liked to boast he was the only man who had equal chest measurements both front to back as well as across) was the only one to come out of the jail without wound. Thus fulfilling a prophecy given by Joseph to Willard over a year earlier stating: "...that the time would come that the balls would fly around him like hail, and he should see his friends fall on the right and on the left, but that there should not be a hole in his garment" (History of the Church 6:619). Willard Richards later wrote a letter back to Nauvoo (after the mob ran with rumors that the Nauvoo Legion was coming, which was actually still in Nauvoo at the time) announcing the Prophet's death.
John Taylor later wrote:"He (Joseph) lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like
most of the Lord's anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with
his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death
they were not separated!"
Doctrine and Covenants 135:3
Josiah Quincy, mayor of Boston and prominent member of New England society met the Prophet about 2 months prior to his death. In 1883 he wrote Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals of the Prophet:
"It is by no means improbable that some future text-book, for the use of generations
yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the
nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his
countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answers to that interrogatory
may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet."
Josiah Quincy, Figures of the Past from the Leaves of Old Journals, 5th ed. (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883), p. 376.
To me, this is just one way in which Dr. King's quote is so true. His statement stirs deep within my heart the truth behind the principle. Many ways can his statement be applied, and to me this is one of those examples. While the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum was difficult for the church, but especially for the families, the mobbers rejoiced in the ending of what they perceived as a wicked man and a wicked and dangerous movement. Which mobber would have guessed that the work would continue to grow and to prosper?
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Sunset on the Mississippi River on the shores of Nauvoo
where Joseph decided to head to Carthage.
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"And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony,
last of all, which we give on him: That he lives!
"For we saw him, even on the right hand of God; and we heard the voice bearing record
that he is the Only Begotten of the Father-
"That by him, and through him, and of him, the worlds are and were created, and the
inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God."
Doctrine and Covenants 76: 22-24
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