--Introduction: Ezra Taft Benson on the Horrible Fate That Reportedly Befell Assassins of Joseph and Hyrum Smith
During the Benson family reunion in the summer of 1979, our faithful clan took a reverent pilgrimage to the murder site of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at the Carthage, Illinois, jail. During our visit to this hallowed place in Mormondum, I witnessed my grandfather’s serious and skeptical reaction to tales describing the gruesome final chapters in the allegedly haunted lives of many of the members of the mob who participated in the murder of the Smith boys in June of 1844.
To my surprise, Ezra Taft Benson thought it was all a buncha bloody bunk.
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--Touring Carthage Jail and Shuffling Across Hyrum's Blood
Led by my grandfather, we managed to squeeze our sizeable Benson caravan into the small, brick jailhouse. Our group was led up the narrow staircase from the first floor to the second-story jail cell (actually a bedroom) where Joseph and Hyrum bought the farm by a small, chatty tour guide—a man who stuck close to my grandfather’s side and pointed him through the exhibits with a sober sense of earnestness.
At the top of the stairs, we entered the cramped room. I had heard that there were still blood stains from the Smiths somewhere on the floor and asked the guide where they were located. Come to find out, the guide informed us that we were literally standing on top of them. He said that a blood stain was partially covered by a rug spread over the floorboards but was still visible if we looked carefully. Peering down at my feet, I noticed a large, irregular, faded spot, outlined by a darker outer ring encased in the wood grain of the planks. The guide said that this was Hyrum’s blood, spilled when he was shot in the face and fell to the floor, exclaiming, "I am a dead man."
The guide then turned to my grandfather and informed him that the Mormon Church had removed a sheet of plexiglass that had previously been used to cover the blood stain because, he said, the Church did not want to encourage its members to “worship” the blood of the prophets. The guide said that unless visitors to Carthage Jail specifically asked about the location of the bloodstains, the guides did not point it out and even allowed people to unknowingly walk on it.
My grandfather nodded somberly.
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--Drum Roll, Please: The Reported Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith
On the way down the stairs from our visit to the hallowed upper room where Joseph Smith had tried to save his own skin by jumping out a window while yelling a Masonic cry for help to Lodge members in the mob below, the guide began to solemnly speak to my grandfather about stories of ominous, horrible plagues supposedly visited by a wrathful God upon members of the murderous band who had killed the Lord’s chosen prophets.
By way of background, one web-wacko enthusiast of these post-martyrdom killer karma stories likened the fate of the doomed Carthage mob to that of plundering excavators who had violated the sanctity of the ancient tombs of the Pharaohs in search of treasure:
"The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt were said to have mystic powers that surrounded them after death. When King Tut's tomb was discovered in the early 1900's, there was a curse that surrounded the tomb and brought death unto all who entered the tomb.
"So it was with Joseph Smith. A curse followed members of the mob that murdered Smith and his brother Hyrum.
". . . [M]any witnesses . . . swear that what they saw and heard is true concerning the sufferings of the mobocrats that participated in the murder of Smith and his brother Hyrum."
Gruesome accounts of mob members supposedly becoming marked men by a God who was a-gunnin' for 'em eventually appeared in a sensational book, compiled by N. B. Lundwall, entitled, The "Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith" [Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft Publishers, 1952, 365 pp].
According to the claims in the book by a devout Mormon who supposedly encountered a doomed mob member who had participated in the killings of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, the murderer was visited with horrific physical afflictions:
"I noticed that the lower part of one ear was gone, a part of the left side of his nose had rotted away, and there were other repulsive sores on his face. He showed me his hands. There was very little solid flesh on them. I expressed my sympathy for him and he said his feet were worse than his hands. I asked him what had caused all this trouble and he replied: 'I don't know unless it was a curse God had placed on me.' He said some men had told him that was it, because he was with the men who killed Joe Smith, the Mormon Prophet. 'I guess that was the main reason I drifted out here; I wanted to know how the Mormons made out without Joe Smith to lead them'"
(Lundwall, "The Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophet Joseph Smith," pp. 297-98).
Another witness to the heavenly plagues that were said to have befallen Joseph and Hyrum Smith’s assassins described the physical torture dished out upon another mob member:
"About the year 1892, when I was eighteen years of age . . . an old man by the name of Brooks moved into[our] neighborhood . . . The old man used to come to my father's home, sit on the porch and talk to my father . . . [about] Joseph Smith the Prophet. On one particular evening after my father had talked about Joseph Smith, the old man . . . said: ‘ . . . I saw the last bullet shot onto the old boy.' After Mr. Brooks had gone to his cabin, my father said: 'No wonder he is a miserable old soul. If he saw the last bullet shot into Joseph Smith, he was in that mob. If he was in that mob, it has been prophesied that he will suffer all kinds of torment, his limbs shall rot off of his body and he will not have the courage to take his own life.'
". . . [A]fter this conversation I took particular notice of the old man and how he suffered. The old man had a belt which he wore around his waist which the son would take off, then beat the old man with it just to hear him scream and when beating him, the son would laugh and profane and seemed to enjoy it. All of this I saw.
"The old man was crippled and could walk with only the aid of two sticks---one in each hand and without aid of these he was totally helpless and unable to walk. The cause of this crippled condition was unknown to me. The son would drive the old man up the coal mine dump about three or four hundred yards from their cabin like he would drive cattle and fill sacks with coal, tie the sacks on the old man's back and drive him back to the cabin. The old man would beg his son not to fill the sacks too full of coal. If he would not go fast enough the son would whip him with his belt which he had taken from the father before going for the coal.
"They . . . then moved to Coalville . . . While living here his toes rotted off his feet. Later, a Dr. Cannon . . . who owned a ranch in Weber canyon . . . made arrangements with this old man and his son to start a chicken ranch on Dr. Cannon's premises, on to which the father and son moved. . . . Dr. Cannon made inquiry concerning the disappearance of the chickens on the farm and the old man replied that 'The skunks had eaten them up.' To which Dr. Cannon replied: 'You are the biggest skunk.'
"The son would often leave his father for three or four days and sometimes a week without food. I was up to my brother-in-law's ranch one fall, in November, when an eight inch snow fell, the weather clearing up in the afternoon, and dropping to zero weather by night. My brother-in-law and I took over an extra quilt and some supper to the old man and also chopped wood which we piled close to the stove so that he could handily keep the fire going during the night without getting out of bed.
After returning home later in the night, I heard him screaming. I awoke my brother-in-law and he said: 'Don't take notice of him; he always screams like that.' When we got up the next morning, we looked towards his cabin and saw that the house was gone. We immediately went to where his cabin had been and found it had burned to the ground during the night. All the old man's clothes had burned off of him and he was burned all over his body from his feet to the top of his head. He was alive and lay curled up in ashes of the burned cabin, trying to keep warm.
"We secured some quilts and with a team and sleigh we took him to Peoa where we found the son. The people of Peoa took up a collection which amounted to five dollars, gave it to the son and told him to go to Park City for the particular medicine he was directed to buy. With the money the son bought liquor and became drunk and did not return for four days. The old man died on the fourth day after he was burned, before his son returned . . . The son was ordered out of the county and he left immediately for parts unknown.
(ibid., pp. 292-93).
Finally, another devout Mormon laid out--in stark-and-hark detail--the supposed horrible fate prepared for yet another hapless prophet-murdering mob member:
"One man, a 'Jack Reed,' an old man who was respected in the valley . . . said that he was a member of the mob who martyred the prophet. He was about fifteen years old at the time. He said he took his gun and marched proudly to Carthage and took part in the killing of the two prophets . . .
"About the last of September I heard that Jack Reed was very sick of a strange ailment. He was taken ill in a few days after having made the statement that he took part in the affair at Carthage---but no one had told me of his sickness until I heard it from one of my Indian friends who said he had worms in his flesh. I determined to see him if I could and try to get him to verify the statement he had made . . .
"The man had no family . . . . I asked . . . if . . . Mrs. Whitmore and myself [would be allowed] to visit Mr. Reed. [I was told] that Mr. Reed was a sight that no white woman could be allowed to look upon.
"He was literally eaten alive by worms. His eyeballs had fallen out, the flesh on his cheeks and neck had fallen off and though he could breathe he could take nourishment only through an opening in his throat . . . and [I was told that] 'Pieces of flesh as large as my two hands have fallen off from different parts of his body.'
"The sick man's farm was given to the white men who attended him in the first of his ailment. Finally when they could no longer endure the ordeal the Indians were called in to pour water into his throat and give him whatever other attention they could and these received the sick man's bunch of horses for their pay. When he finally passed, the Indians carried out the awful remains by the four corners of the blanket upon which he had lain for weeks, and lowered that into the box the white had prepared. The blanket was tucked in over him and the box quickly nailed up and put into the deep grave as soon as possible. No funeral was held.
". . . [I gathered that a] bunch of enemies were heading a petition against me because I was a polygamist. . . .
"One called 'Jack Longstreet' became Reed's first attendant in company . . . To these men Reed confessed that his participation in the murder of the Prophets was the cause of his affliction. He said to Longstreet: 'It is the Mormon curse that is upon me. I cannot live---I must utterly rot before I die.'
"He said that Brigham Young had pronounced that curse upon all that mob, and he had known thirteen of them to die just as he was dying. But he had lived so long and had passed the unlucky number thirteen, that he had thought to escape the curse. He charged his attendants to never do anything against the Mormons, to be their friends, or said he, 'You may suffer the Mormon curse.' Longstreet related . . . this confession of Reed's as a warning . . . and declared that he himself would not dare to raise a hand against them. I don't think he ever did."
(ibid., pp. 294-96).
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--Returning to the Carthage Slide-Across-the-Blood Show
As we followed the Carthage Jail tour guide and Ezra Taft Benson down the stairs, the guide emphasized to my grandfather in no uncertain terms that these graphic accounts supposedly detailing the fate of the Smiths’ murderers were not to be believed. To the contrary, the guide said that many of the members of the mob who were responsible for the death of Mormonism’s two most prominent founders actually went on to very successful business and political careers.
Well, I'll be.
My grandfather again nodded approvingly, scowling slightly as he listened and voicing his agreement with the guide’s views. All of which I found quite interesting.
This was the same Ezra Taft Benson who believed unswervingly in the literal truthfulness of Book of Mormon tales vividly describing, say, the gruesome fate of a premier prophet persecutor named Korihor--who was struck dumb through the power of God, reduced to abject beggary and eventually trampled to death for his wickedness. The same held true for the sinful Book of Mormon Lamanites who because of their wicked, adulterous and murderous ways, were said to have been relegated by a vengeful God to darkened loathsomeness, marked by the finger of an accusing Maker with the curse of a brown skin and consigned to wear loincloths, to shave their heads and to stare into a bleak and miserable future.
Woe, woe and double-whammy woe.
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But hold your holy horror horses.
Even Mormon apologetic apostle Dallin H. Oaks doesn't buy the fable of ghastly ghoulishness supposedly following Smith's killers to their graves:
"A persistent Utah myth holds that some of the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith met fittingly gruesome deaths--that Providence intervened to dispense the justice denied in the Carthage trial. (endnote 1: See Lundwall, 'The Fate of the Persecutors,' pp. 292-358) But the five defendants who went to trial, including men who had been shown to be leaders in the murder plot and others associated with them, enjoyed notably successful careers.
"After losing his election for sheriff in Hancock County in 1846, Mark Aldrich left Illinois for California during the Gold Rush. By the 1860s he had settled in Tucson, Arizona, where he served as postmaster and was elected to three terms in the upper house of the territorial legislature, acting during the 1866 terms as its president. He died in Tucson in 1874 at the age of 73.
"Jacob C. Davis distinguished himself as one of Hancock's most successful politicians. He was reelected to the state senate in 1846, 1850 and 1854, making four successive terms. In 1856 he was elected to Congress, filling a vacancy created by the resignation of William A. Richardson but he was defeated in his bid for reelection.
"William N. Grover ran last among four candidates for state representative from Hancock County in 1852; afterward he moved to St. Louis, where he practiced law. In 1865, he was appointed U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Missouri. He moved back to Warsaw prior to 1871 and was still living there in 1890, propserous and respected.
"His political objectives toward the Mormons attained, Thomas Sharp gave up the 'Warsaw Signal' in 1846. Thereafter he became an educator, lawyer, judge and, again, a newspaperman. He was elected delegate to the state constitutional convetion in 1847, was chosen justice of the peace in 1851, and in 1853 he began the first of three successful terms as mayor of Warsaw. He was unsuccessful as a Republican candidate for Congress in 1856 but in 1865 he was elected to a four-year term as judge of Hancock County, where he was 'greatly esteemed.' Still later he served as school principal. When he died in 1894 at the age of 80, he owned the 'Carthage Gazette,' which he left to his son.
"Levi Williams, psychologically a more violent man than the others, was active in raiding Mormon settlements as late as May 1846. Nothing is known about his career after this, except that he served as postmaster of Green Plains, that the Mormons took routine notice of his death in 1858 and the he is buried beneath an imposing gravestone in the cemetery in Green Plains.
"Captain Robert F. Smith, whose Carthage Greys failed in their guard duty at the jail, was a colonel of the Illinois militia in the Civil War. He participated at Sherman's siege of Atlanta and the march to the sea. At Savannah he was a brevetted brigadier general and he served for a time as military governor in that area.
"The subsequent careers of counsel for the defense were even more noteworthy. . . .
""Of all the participants in the trial, the one who made the greatest impact on the nation's history was Orville H. Browning, the leader of the defense. In 1856 he was one of the founders of the Republican party and in 1860 he played a signficant role in securing the Republican presidential nomination for Abraham Lincoln. In 1861 he served an interim appointment in the Senate until the state legislature filled the vacancy created by the death of Stephen A. Douglas and he acted as 'Lincoln's mouthpiece' in the Senate during this period. President Andrew Jackson named Browning Secreaty of the Interior in 1866. He concluded his career as a leading member of the Illinois bar.
"The only principals in the Carthage trial who seem ot have been stalked by tragedy in their later careers were the prosecutors, the sheriff, the judge and the govenor.
"The first prosecutor, Murray McConnell, enjoyed continued success in the political arena, including a presidential appointment as auditor of the U.S. Treasury and a term as state senator. In 1869 he was murdered in his law office in Jacksonville, shot by a man who owed him money.
"William Elliot, the prosecutor who obtained the indictment, served as a quartermaster of an Illilnois regiment during the Mexican War and died at home shortly after his return.
"James H. Ralston, the states attorney pro tem during the trail, also served in the Mexican War. He moved to California, where he perished in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
"Sheriff Minor Deming's [experienced a] sudden death soon after his indictment for the killing of Samuel Marshall . . . .
"Colonel John J. Hardin, who had been instrumental in the arrest of Sharp and Williams, was killed in the battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican War.
""But no sequels were more tragic than those of the chief prosecutor, the judge and the governor.
"Already in decline at the time of the trial, Josiah Lamborn continued his heavy drinking and lost any remaining respect among his colleagues at the bar. His biographer states that he abandoned his wife and child and consorted with gamblers. He died of delirium tremens at Whitehall, Green County, Illinois, in 1847, a miserable man who is remembered chiefly for his venality in office and for his association with contemporaries like Douglas and Lincoln, who rose the the great heights he sought but could not attain.
"Judge Richard M. Young sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1846 but was defeated. He took up residence in Washington, D.C., where a friend from his Senate days, President James K. Polk, appointed him commissioner of the General land Office in 1847. Dismissed from that job in less than two years, when the Whigs came to power with Zachary Taylor, Young then persuaded the House of Representatives to elect him clerk of the House for a two-year period ending in 1851. Thereafter he practiced law in Washington, graduallly descending the ladder of prominence which he longed to climb. In 1858 his reason failed him and he was forced to retire. In 1860 he was admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane. He was released after six months but died a year later, broken in fortune, body and mind.
"Governor Thomas Ford, who had initiated the prosecution to vindicate the honor of the state, was turned out of office in 1846. He retired to his home in Peoria, where he was dependent upon the charity of local citizens to provide him with necessities. While afflicted with the consumption that took his life in 1850, he wrote his excellent 'History of Illinois,' by which he hoped to provide some support for his destitute children. In his history Ford lamented the possibility that the names of 'Nauvoo and the Carthage Jail may become holy and venerable names, places of classic interest in another age; like Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olivees and Mount Calvary to the Christian. . . .' Ford wrote that if this were to be the case, he felt 'degraded by the reflection, that the humble governor of an obscure State, who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years, stands a fair chance, like Pilate and Herod, by their official connection with the true religion, of being dragged down to posterity with an immortal name, hitched on to the memory of a miserable imposter."
Ford certainly got the "miserable imposter" thing right.
(Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, "Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith" [Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1976], pp. 217-21)
Such are the travails and triumphs of life.
Not to mention the stuff of Mormon fairy tales.
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--A Warning from Mormon Mythology for Wannabe Prophet-Killers
Thus saith the Mormon God, if you’re going to kill the Lord’s prophets and other anointed ones, you'd be much better off doing it in modern times--you know, when there is an actual, historical paper trail that can be used to document what actually happened in your life following your murderous deeds. As luck could have it, the evidence might end up showing you became a successful financier or a powerful elected public official.
Whatever you do, don’t be unlucky or dumb enough to choose murderous, wicked ways in the hazy, distant past—whereafter spine-tingling scripture stories can be invented and passed down from generation to generation, describing to wide-eyed little children in Sunday School how you were horribly punished by God for what you did. That's not good because, with no recent paper trail, there's no way for anyone to prove any different.
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Conclusion: "Heh, Heh, Heh, Cackle, Cackle, Cackle . . ."
Lo, what's that? Behold, the creeped-out voice of Vincent Price, accompanied by Michael the "Thriller" Jackson and his Tap-Dancing Troupe of Bug-Eyed Corpses:
"Darkness falls across the land,
The Prophet's blood against you stands,
Your skin falls off, your sperm's a dud,
Your house is gone, God sent a flood.
"And whosoever shall be found
With gun in hand for shooting down my prophet
Shall face the hounds of Hell,
And rot a lot, with feet that smell.
"The foulest stench is in the air,
Your eyeballs gone, and so's your hair,
Your ears fall off, I curse your womb,
An unmarked grave will be your tomb.
"And even though it's all a lie,
Your body starts to shiver,
For no mere Mormon can resist
God messin' with your liver.
"Heh, heh, heh, cackle, cackle, cackle, HEH, HEH, HEH, CACKLE, CACKLE, CACKLE, HEH, HEH, HEH, CACKLE, CACKLE, CACKLE . . ."
"Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak.
"SLAM!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1pwhR75eQ0Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2013 01:59AM by steve benson.