When I was in high school, 10th grade was the year we took American History, and I opted to take the Advanced Placement version of the class, colloquially known as AP US History (APUSH). If you don’t remember or your school declined to participate in the gifted kid industrial complex, these classes were billed as college-level courses and provided as a substitute for an honor’s class, but instead of providing college credit outright, you had to take a test and hope whatever college you go to will accept your score. I got a 3 on the APUSH exam. My second trimester was a breeze, an easy-A learning about post-Civil War and 20th-century American history. No problems there. But the first trimester? My teacher was a football coach who started every single 54-minute class period with a 10-25 minute “Convo Question” that was literally just the teacher shooting the s**t with us. It was fun, but painfully obvious that we weren’t being set up for success. I was never really required to learn much about pre-Civil War America. My PoliSci degree was largely focused on the modern era, and when I did learn history, it was almost always 20th century. You’ll be surprised to learn that in my search for learning more about the early Mormon church that national politics were always at arm’s reach from Joseph Smith, and thus, I know now who the Know-Nothings are, and why the Whigs were important, and the steamroller on civic life that was the Jacksonian Democratic Party. It’s really hard to overstate just how shockingly powerful Joseph Smith had become in the 14 years since publishing the Book of Mormon. When the Mormons arrived in Illinois, they elected not to yoke themselves to the Whig or Democrat wagons, instead opting to stay “neutral,” and take advantage of Smith’s massive voter base to sway politicians towards his whims. Nauvoo was the closest thing to the Kingdom of Zion that Joseph saw in his lifetime. Joseph Smith was the prophet, mayor, justice of the peace, and gave himself the title of Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, a militia with real legal authority with 2,500 members under Joseph’s command, which was 1/3rd of the size of the entire United States Army. At the same time, Joseph Smith was amassing a, for lack of a better word, harem of “plural wives,” he was marrying in secret. He had successfully, on multiple occasions, pressured and coerced dozens of women and girls (remember: he was a pedophile) to be “eternally sealed” to him, whether they were married already or not. So what’s next for the Prophet? Running for President, obviously. This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Mormons, Martyrs, and Misery in Missouri. This week we're celebrating election day in Minneapolis with a bonus edition to cover Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for president of the United States, something that did, indeed, actually happen. We know why he did it (he was insane), but what did he believe? What kind of bonkers policies does a conman criminal with no real political experience put forward in a long-shot campaign for President? What did his friends and followers think? Did it get him killed? Thanks for reading and listening. I swear to God there’s only one more mainline article and one more bonus and then I’m done with the Mormons. Stick around for the funnier ones and subscribe now. Joseph Smith had ambitions beyond his theocracy in Nauvoo: he wanted power, and he wanted power that was illusive. One of Mormonism’s hallmarks is the secretive nature about what they “actually believe.” Depending on how out of the loop you are, you’ll be shocked learning about the various America-centric beliefs, like both reviling and worshipping Native Americans, or their unique eschatology and beliefs about the afterlife. Or maybe you’re just as surprised as most TBMs to learn just how terrible Joseph Smith was and that he claimed to translate the book (he couldn’t read) using “seeing stones” and looking into a hat. The secretive nature lends itself to Mormonism’s cult-like tendencies, while also building fervor, zealotry, and a large in-group. I’d argue this is largely out of Joseph Smith’s obsession with Freemasonry, most of which can be traced to John C. Bennett’s brief time as Joseph Smith’s number one man. Bennett, a Mormon, urged Smith to join and by 1844, Nauvoo had not one, not two, but three Masonic lodges. Many aspects of Mormon temple ceremonies, like secret “grips”/handshakes, passwords, special names, special clothes, are stolen one-for-one with Freemasonry with added Mormon flair. However like the Mormons, Masons were the target of significant public ire throughout the first half of the 19th century. A shockingly powerful national anti-Mason movement began in the 1830s, who were courted away from their one-issue political party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and fell under the tutelage of the Whigs by 1838. The most baffling way this connects with our Mormons is not necessarily that President Andrew Jackson was a Mason, or that the Mormons planned to usurp Democratic power by joining the Whigs. Instead, we have to turn our attention to William Morgan, a prominent upstate New York (of course) anti-Mason who was in the process of publishing a book revealing all of the scandalous secrets of Freemasonry. Morgan was arrested on trumped-up charges, and was disappeared and likely murdered in 1826 in an act widely believed to have been carried out by Masons trying to prevent his book from being published. His death bolstered national anti-Masonic views and led to the creation of the Anti-Masonic Party. When William Morgan died in 1826, his wife Lucinda would remarry, and move to Missouri, where she converted to Mormonism. I don’t think it’s an accident, however, that Lucinda has been identified and is generally accepted to have been one of Joseph Smith’s first plural wives, because of course f*****g Joseph Smith would marry the widow of the most prominent and infamous Anti-Mason activist. Joseph Smith’s obsession with (and frankly jealousy of) Freemasonry led to perhaps the biggest innovations in Mormonism; many of the “revelations” from this time took an already high-demand religion and made it more and more cult-like, with secret rituals and teachings, barring all non-members from Temples, and one-of-a-kind theology like baptisms for the dead. And it all came from the Freemasons. I’m sure no one will ever have an issue with this. I bring this story up because it has multiple important intersections with Mormonism and the end of Smith’s life: * Mormonism’s secretive ceremonies are a sham, and whatever supposed divine purpose they have is really just so he could copy Masons, * Smith’s public support for Democrats in Illinois, on top of his private and public support for Freemasonry, pissed Whigs the f**k off, * His affair with Lucinda Morgan shows his promiscuity and carelessness with “the Principle” at the time; it doesn’t matter how prominent a Mormon woman or girl is: if Joseph Smith is interested, he’ll stop at nothing to get his way. You can probably imagine how a man as powerful and reckless as Smith would become paranoid. He feared and frequently risked his legal and physical safety, but also saw the fragility of his political and religious leadership. The arrival, ascension, and excommunication of John C. Bennett was proof Smith saw his church’s leadership, members, and political allies as disposable. And while the Anti-Mason Whigs and the Mason-friendly Jacksonian Democrats welcomed the Mormons, that didn’t last long. An angry mob always seems to be around the corner, will Illinois protect the Mormons when the mobs inevitably come to Nauvoo? Over the years since first arriving in Jackson County, Missouri, the Mormons had become intimately familiar with the legal system, even beyond Joseph Smith’s extensive arrest record. Mormons were frequently in DC advocating for protection from the angry mobs that always seemed to be wherever the Mormons went (weird how that works). They had earned and rightfully lost political protection in Missouri, but popular sympathy for fringe political groups during the Second Great Awakening meant the Mormons would find greater success in the years to come. In 1842, after Bennett’s excommunication, prominent Illinois politician and infamous Abe Lincoln rival Stephen Douglas publicly acknowledged that, while the Mormons benefited from positive political optics due to their persecution at the hands of the Missouri government, the tide of public opinion had shifted after “two years of popular sympathy.” Douglas would protect Smith one final time, blocking extradition orders to Missouri, which drew ire from the Whigs in Springfield and put the long-term legal and political prospects of the Mormons in Illinois in jeopardy. The Democrats abandoned Smith while the Whigs actively reviled him. He had demonstrated to his friends and followers that they were replaceable. But even if he had haters, he still had guns, a sham court, and the word of God. In late 1843, Joseph Smith was recovering from being “poisioned” (he blamed his first wife, Emma), and wrote to political leaders requesting Nauvoo be given independence as a separate territory but retain the ability to call federal troops to their aid. This was unsuccessful. Joseph Smith then wrote to five people who had announced their candidacies for the ‘44 election to see what protection/support the candidates would promise his 14,000 followers in Illinois. Only three replied and none of them made any promises to help the Mormons. Unsatisfied and paranoid, Smith took action. In January ‘44, Church leaders met in Nauvoo and decided that Joseph Smith would throw his hat (unclear if its the same hat he stared into to “translate” the golden plates) in the ring. He would announce his candidacy in February. His running mate (with Bennett now out of the
