I mean, he was an asshole, but usually you don't murder someone just for being an asshole. Well, maybe you do if you're insane.

What did Smith do to get these people so riled up that they wanted to kill him? They wouldn't have killed him just for wrecking their printing press, would they? Did they kill him for f**king their wives and daughters, or for ripping them off, or because they didn't like his book, or for copying their secret handshakes?

Or because he was a fugitive of the law who had a penchant for getting out of jail and who managed to surround himself with a legion of loyal soldiers and protect himself in his city's charter? Add that to the wives and daughters stuff, and you get the recipe for some really fidgety neighbors.

Maybe it wasn't deliberate, just a stray bullet?
They would have deliberately killed all of them, if they were that bloodthirsty?

. . . he had lost his Lord of Kolob action figure immortal powers when he ditched his garments.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2011 05:47PM by steve benson.

They killed him because they were Americans, individualists, and Protestants in religion, and Smith was in charge of something that they recognized, even if only instinctively, as corporatist (communitarian), fraudulent, immoral (multiple wives), cheating others of their spouses, families, even souls--beliefs, allegiances--(people hate cheaters, thieves).

He was a low-down crook who had taken on airs (greater than Chirst he said, running for President, a Prophet) and showed his true colors (authoritarian, fascist) by destroying a printing press (attacking an American right (free speech) enumerated in the USA's founding documents) and who had incomprehensibly gained control over thousands of people by means of obvious fraud (a "golden bible" that was now gone to heaven) in religion, in sacred things.

In short, Americans react violently to obvious assholes who try to lord it over others.

Edit: "Americans USED TO react violently to obvious assholes who try to lord it over others."



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2011 06:15PM by derrida.

He was a threat both politically and militarily (is that a word?). Shoot his ass.

Ron

Because he went to the other side! ;o))

Or maybe Brigham Young paid someone to form a mob and arrange for a little 'accident' to befall Joseph?

After all, it's odd how the Mormon Army never came to his rescue?

Brigham was nowhere near, of course. He wasn't anywhere near Mountain Meadows, either...

(Please help with sources!)

Sometime ago I read an account of how Nauvoo was run by JS pretty much like a mafia boss.. if anything was stolen from the neighboring cities or farms, it was sure to "somehow" turn up in Nauvoo, and good luck trying get your horse or other property back, if you were not Mormon and part of the inner circle there was no chance of getting justice.

Also, the Masons just despised JS for ripping off their ceremony and symbols and setting up his own shop, telling his followers that their customs were fallen into error and his was "restored". Complete disrespect.

I also think the surrounding cities knew something was terribly wrong with the power structure in Nauvoo. Wasn't JS Mayor of the City, Head of the Church, and "Lieutenant General" of the Nauvoo Legion?? No "balance of power" whatsoever. He was a dictator, and running for President.

That tends to make a lot of folks nervous and get their trigger fingers itchy.

Everything everyone else has said, including Steve Benson.

Plus, the Mormons were warring the gentiles in MO. Joseph even bragged that he would have their governor killed--and than had O.P. Rockwell try to pull it off.

He had stolen money, lands, women, and masonic secrets. He used the Danites to extract his personal vengence on anyone, and I mean anyone, who opposed him with acts of murder, robbery, casteration, fire, etc.

He used the Nauvoo Legion as a threat to all his enemies, and as it has been posted here, they were larger than the standing US Army of the time--and was trying to activate them to break him from jail.

In short, he was a dangerous, crazy douche bag.

The mormons and townspeople met for several nights to work out their differences. The talks broke down when the mormons backed Joe in spite of his polygamy and pedophilia antics and ordering the the newspaper to be burned to the ground.

The jailer let them have access and Joe used his gun, but the towspeople had their way.

The one and only issue of the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper had come out. It detailed Joseph's shenanigans, particularly with regard to engaging the girls and women of the community in plural marriage. This angered the townspeople. They now knew exactly what Joseph was up to. They did not want to see the women of the community abused in this manner. The subsequent order of the destruction of the printing press was probably the last straw.

Scans of the Nauvoo Expositor:

http://solomonspalding.com/docs/exposit1.htm

He started shooting at them! He had a hidden 6-shooter with him. Several were wounded by his shots and a few died later.

The City Council backed Joseph's order to destroy the printing press. Who was going to uphold the law?

Surely not today, but those days they could hang people on the spot even for stealing a horse, right?

yours_truly Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Surely not today, but those days they could hang
> people on the spot even for stealing a horse,
> right?

No. You had to have a trial, first.

Hey, if killing were legal, there would be a few more people that are deserving of a bullet of two. However, it isn't legal and so problematic people continue to live and annoy the rest of us.

1. He wasn't lynched (as some Morg members and trolls like to claim) he was shot.

2. He was shot in a gunfight in which Joseph Smith killed one man and wounded (one?) other. If someone today was trying to escape from jail firing a weapon, even they were in only for jay walking, all bets are off, and anyone who shoots the person (police or a private citizen carrying a gun) has the right to do so.

If he had just left his garments on this wouldn't have happened. He would have been spared. The mob had no power over him until he took off those garments. Once the garments were taken off, the powers of hell were unleashed.

Pretty simple really.

Ziller remembers seeing an old woodcut of a scene depicting the aftermath of the mob action at Carthage Jail.

Joseph Smith is seen lying on the ground after his fall from the window.

A black man is kneeling beside the fallen prophet with a drawn knife and looking back toward a man wearing a top hat.

The man in the top hat represents the Worshipful Master of the local Masonic Lodge. In the woodcut he is holding up his open hand as if to gain the attention of the black man.

The black man was most probably a slave who had been ordered to extract from Joseph Smith those several penalties to which he obligated himself when the Grand Master of Illinois made him a Master Mason.

Seeing that the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. had already succumbed to his gunshot wounds and fall, the Worshipful Master ordered the black man to desist.

That's what I suspect.
Smith was a Mason, then stole the ceremony.
He BROKE the masonic oaths by IMPORTING them nearly wholesale into his temple ceremony. Smith was murdered for the same oaths that mormons made in the temple cermony under penalty of death.

Even so, murdering Smith was the worst thing they could have done, and not only because Freemasonry is bull shit. Smith's bull shit was catching up to him...quick. The flock was catching on. But the murder gave Smith's reputation allot of cover it wouldn't have had had he lived. I think given a little while longer to live, he would have been openly discredited.

He actually thought that he could intimidate the mob of loaded guns with a pistol. It was a pepperbox, and two of the barrels misfired. He shot at the mob coming up the stairs. They returned fire. Two of the mob were wounded by JS, and later died from their wounds. He was killed in a shootout with a local militia, the Carthage Greys. He was no martyr.

They killed him because it was a golden opportunity to be rid of what many people in town considdered a menace. They had the added bonus of being able to get rid of the heir to the throne at the same time. I always thought it was kind of an odd twist that Hyrum went even without any charges laid against him, more stupid than odd if you ask me.

I think it was a set-up and someone just wanted to get rid of Joseph. What would a trial have exposed? Would the Mormon populace just allow the Smith to be put on trial without reacting? What about the Nauvoo Legion? Would another frontier war start? The thinking probably was "With the Prophet out of the way, the Mormons will fall into disarray." The entire episode has a "shot while escaping" smell to it.

According to Wikipedia, the mob broke into the jail and started firing through the door. Smith wasn't trying to escape. The mob just wanted him dead. Smith was charged with treason against the state of Illinois for declaring martial law in Nauvoo. Forerunner of Jim Jones or not he should not have been allowed to die at the hands of a mob -- I can't help but think of Leo Frank and other innocent people who "deserved" to die and get strung up mobs.

the debil made them do it.

I always stand in amazement of what passes as "history of the Church" from a TBM's perspective.
From a previous post. "There were very real reasons why the Saints were forced out of everywhere they went, why the states of Illinois and Missouri activated the State Militias, and why somewhat later President Buchanan sent the U.S. Army to the Utah Territory. The secular and religious realms were very much part of the same, and as the saints became more powerful economically, politically, and militarily---well, that was just not going to fly in the new republic of America."
Here's a passage from Fawn Brodie's well researched book about Joseph, No Man Knows My History: "He was not only candidate for President, but also Mayor of Nauvoo, judge of the municipal court, merchant of the leading store, hotel-keeper, official temple architect, real-estate agent, contractor, recorder of deeds,steam-boat-owner, trustee-in-trust for all finances of the church, King of the new Kingdom of God, and husband of almost fifty wives." (from Chapter XXV)

The Church's sanctioned version of history presents Joseph as prophet, seer, and revealator, and conveniently leaves out a whole bunch of other stuff. No Man Knows My History--such an appropriate title.

There's a good question: Who shot first? I always assumed he fired back, but what if he was the first to fire. Hell, I probably would shoot if an armed mob was busting in the door.

The gentiles in that area of Illinois were also extremely intimidated by the 2nd largest standing army in North America perched on their doorsteps. No doubt many thought of JS as a renegade.

Shame he was turned into a martyr though.

Finally, one of them went off.

He was in such deep doo with so many people, it was only a matter of time before someone took care of business.

Thomas Gregg, a Hancock county native, and associate of Thomas Sharp and Alexander Deming, wrote in "the Prophet of Palmyra" that many probably went with the intention of taking JS from the jail and back to Missouri to stand trial there. Thomas Sharp also published around that time a number of depositions about crimes committed in Missouri.

This can also explain why Gov. Ford backed off. "OK. We have a plan. Take the problem back to Missouri."

IMO, Joseph shot first.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2011 11:06AM by me.