Today, let us remember.

I would guess that very few people, even among the Latter-day Saints, are thinking about this.  But today marks the 180th anniversary of the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith by a mob while they were in the custody of the state in the jail at Carthage, Illinois.

I’ve been thinking about that terrible crime, and lines from a song have come, unbidden, into my mind.  In 1972, a Utah Valley singer (and later actor) by the name of Marvin Payne released an album of some of his songs.  I was and am an enthusiastic fan of them, and I still have the album (although I have no phonograph on which to play it.).  One of the songs on the album (entitled “Calm as a Summer’s Day,” I think), starting here at 10:28 and concluding at about 13:55, contains the words that have been repeating over and over in my mind:

Ah Joseph!  Had I been there then, things would have turned out differently I know (at least, I think so).

Back in 1854, to mark the tenth anniversary of those murders, the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reconvened that year’s April general conference for a day on 27 June.  With an email sent to me this past Monday,  LaJean Carruth has kindly called my attention to her transcriptions of speeches given on that day by Elder John Taylor, who was present in Carthage Jail when Joseph and Hyrum were assassinated and who was seriously wounded by members of the mob, and by President Brigham Young, who had succeeded Joseph Smith as the second president of the Church.

In the first of a pair of notes to me, Sister Carruth makes this comment:

Unfortunately, only part of JT’s sermon is extant, but it is powerful. was published in BYU studies; here is a current transcript, attached.  BY’s sermon has not yet been published and is not well known. Both these are in the CHL [Church History Library] public catalog.  I am personally convinced that no mortal was more loyal to JS than BY.

I strongly agree with her on that important point, and I find the notion being currently advanced in some circles, that Brigham Young consciously and deliberately betrayed Joseph, wholly unsupported by the facts and entirely foreign to Brigham’s character.

There is, as some may be aware, an even more toxic thesis out there, that it was Elders John Taylor and Willard Richards, who were in Carthage Jail with Joseph and Hyrum on the day of the Martyrdom, who actually killed the Prophet and the Patriarch at the command of Brigham Young — rather than a mob in league with the Carthage Greys militia, as everybody at the time believed (including members of the mob and the militia.  This is a crazy and unjustifiable slander that is, in my eyes, an utter obscenity.

I’m reminded of a meme that I saw the other day, about how to respond to crazy conspiracy theories.  It suggests meeting the assertion of a fruitcake conspiracy fantasy with a conspiracy fantasy that is even more extreme.  Two women are speaking.  One says to the other:  “You know, don’t you, that the moon landings were faked?”  To which the other woman responds, “Really?  You believe in the Moon?”

In another note to me, also dated 24 June 2024, Sister Carruth offers this interesting take on Brigham Young’s reputation as the “American Moses”:

I have come to see the term “American Moses” as an unfortunate misnomer.  Moses led a single large group of rebellious people to political freedom. He never entered the promised land, never established a city, could not establish the gospel among them, and the word “Zion” was not in his vocabulary.  Brigham Young often compared his people to the people of Enoch, and told his people how much better they were than the ancient children of Israel – it is clear he would not want to lead that crowd.  He was an American Enoch, he put all his heart, mind, will and effort into establishing Zion. I presented on this at MHA [Mormon History Association] last year.

Anyway, here is the published version of John Taylor’s sermon, which includes Thomas Bullock’s notes for the part of G. D. Watt’s shorthand transcription that is no longer extant:  https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4336&context=byusq

And here is Sister Carruth’s transcription of Brigham Young’s sermon:  https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets/e0e8f3e9-1ebe-4d7d-bc90-abb0bdf53169/0/0?lang=eng

These don’t seem to be the words of men who murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith.  Shame on the people who speak evil of the Lord’s anointed, who have created that slanderous lie against them and who seek to promote it among the Latter-day Saints!

Here are the lyrics to a seldom-remembered hymn that were written by Elder John Taylor and were published in the August 1845 edition of the Times and Seasons:

O give me back my Prophet dear,
And Patriarch, O give them back;
The Saints of latter days to cheer,
And lead them in the gospel track.
But ah! they’re gone from my embrace,
From earthly scenes their spirits fled;
Those two, the best of Adam’s race,
Now lie entombed among the dead.

Ye men of wisdom tell me why,
When guilt nor crime in them were found,
Why now their blood doth loudly cry,
From prison walls, and Carthage ground
Your tongues are mute, but pray attend,
The secret I will now relate,
Why those whom God to earth did lend,
Have met the suffering martyr’s fate.

It is because they strove to gain,
Beyond the grave a heaven of bliss;
Because they made the gospel plain,
And led the Saints in righteousness.
It is because God called them forth,
And led them by his own right hand
Christ’s coming to proclaim on earth,
And gather Israel to their land.

It is because the priests of Baal
Were desperate their craft to save;
And when they saw it doomed to fail,
They sent the Prophets to the grave.
Like scenes the ancient Prophets saw,
Like these, the ancient Prophets fell;
And till the resurrection dawn,
Prophet and Patriarch–Fare thee well.

I love the arrangement of Elder Taylor’s words that was done a while back by Rob Gardner.  (Confession:  A stone-hearted, unemotional Scandinavian, I teared up while listening to it just now.). Please give it five and a half minutes today, if you can.  And may I say, yet again, that the vile accusation that John Taylor murdered Joseph Smith is simply and flatly evil.

“Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it. . .  He 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!”  (John Taylor, in Doctrine and Covenants 135:3)