While I learned a lot about Joe's death in my last thread, there also seemed to be a lot of conspiracy theories thrown in that I either don't completely buy, or feel there is not enough evidence to pursue.

What I think happened was this. Joseph Smith had bribed the jailer at Carthage Jail, and instead of being held secure in a jail cell, was living in the jailers own personal quarters, and was continuing to run his suspected criminal operations from behind bars. The local officials formed a posse, not a mob, with the intention of removing Smith from Carthage and moving him to more secure facilities much further away from Navoo.

Realizing that he was about to spend the rest of his life in prison, Smith panicked and began shooting. The posse then returned fire, killing Smith and his brother and wounding one of the GAs who was imprisoned with him. Since they had only come to move Smith, and not to execute him, the Posse then left the remaining surviving GAs, who had not offered resistance to the care of proper medical business, and return about their day. This would explain why they did not suffer any reprocussions, because Joseph Smith's death was a justified homicide suffered while resisting arrest while deputized officers of the law attempted to move him to a new facility.

My own theory is supported by Makurosu who stated "Marsh, in her paper "Respectable Assassins: A Collective Biography and Socioeconomic Study of the Carthage Mob," said that contrary to popular belief the mobsters did not suffer for their actions, and actually were respected people who went on to greater accomplishments.

"The Carthage mob members lived normal life spans, through which they prospered financially," Marsh said. "They ran for and won political office, and generally appear to be protected and honored by their fellow citizens for their participation in the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. "

Marsh used a list of 89 men compiled by Sheriff Jacob Backenstos and a variety of other records to paint a picture of who these mobsters were. According to her research, while they came from the same regions of the country as others who lived in the area, mobsters were generally older than the general male population of Hancock County and were mostly learned professionals, businessmen and farmers who had their own property. The mob also had 16 men who held 24 different public offices, including state senator and U.S. senator. A large majority of the mob would have been considered in the upper class.

"This was a group of men that represented the top tier of Hancock county, in regards to power and socioeconomic status."

Note that these were older men, from the top tiers of local society, exactly the kinds of men a Sheriff would recruit for a posse. Cool heads who wouldn't murder Joseph Smith out of blood lust, unless their own safety was threatened. As opposed to a lynch mob which would be composed of the dregs of society, like Joseph's own Danites.

For starters, what makes you think this was a jail in the traditional sense? Were there iron bars and locks on any of the rooms in the building? It doesn't sound like it. This was the frontier at the time. Infrastructure was pretty primitive.

People had written about how the members of the mob lived out normal successful lives to counter claims by the Utah church that the mob members were punished by God for their dastardly act, and had short miserable lives and miserable deaths. Didn't happen that way. OTOH, they didn't have extraordinarily good lives either. They were just people.

Lynch mobs are composed of the dregs of society? You have any citations to demonstrate that? Lynchings were family affairs right up into the early 20th century, complete with postcards commemorating the event. Doesn't sound much like a "dregs of society" kind of event. Polite society did not get all up in arms about lynchings until after WW I.

I'd also like to see some evidence that Danites were "dregs of society". I'm not up on Danite history, but old Orrin Porter ran a road house, and I suspect the rest were generally speaking working class to middle class "responsible citizens". That was certainly true of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sounds like you are trying to turn the Smith murder into a Victorian morality tale. "Twenty good men and true risked their lives to see that justice was done" - that sort of thing. I doubt it was near that noble.

First, Carthage Jail was a three story building. There were traditional cells, complete with bars on the second floor. And it was cells plural. Joseph and his gang were kept on the third floor, which were basically the jailers own personal loft apartment.

Second, I am proposing a theory, and I want to know if anyone has any facts or information that backs up my theory, or disproves it. I am sorry if that was not clear.

The Danites clearly operated outside the law. That would make them a criminal element. The mob at Carthage Jail seems to have been composed of the more respectable members of Carthage society, were listed by the Sheriff by name in a report (that admit that I have not seen) and did not suffer any legal consequences for their actions. Even if lynch mobs were celebrated in their time, it sounds suspicious that the members of the mob would co-operate in having their names recorded by the local Sheriff, if they felt that their action was in no way legal.

I think it was a simple legal procedure. A group of good citizens, led by the town Sheriff, trying to move a high profile prisoner, who commanded his own private militia, either to a new holding facility or to his court appointment, and then someone started shooting and all hell broke loose.

Also you kind of made my point for me. As you noted, Carthage was a frontier town with limited means. A good deal of their people were tied up on militia guard duty at the jail house itself, and if Smith was being temporarily moved, say for a court hearing, then it would make might sense to keep the militia at the jail and other strategic points in case the Navoo Legion arrived, while a posse of older town citizens escorted the Sheriff as he moved Smith to court. Smith might have then had a "revelation" convincing himself that he was about to be murdered, and thus opened fire on the men as they came up the stairs.

I wonder.

If names are known of the posse or lynch mobs, are there any family history notes that may have another account of the incidient?

Probably any contrary evidence is locked in the LDS vault. However, there may be account or two, from the families that may document other evidence.

Might be worth looking into.

The families descended from the opposition are not very trusting, due to the results of D&C 121. It would take some very sensitive research to get any information from them. My family has next to nothing in terms of physical information. One of my ancestors is on the list on the page linked below. http://www.carthage.lib.il.us/community/churches/primbap/MormonTrouble.html

I found this stanza particularly intriguing:

"In a letter to the editor of the Hancock County Journal-Pilot, dated July 5, 1989, Junior Dittmer, now deceased (a deacon in Smyrna Primitive Baptist Church in Hancock County), wrote: "There is practically no evidence of people in the Midwest objecting to the LDS religious beliefs, other than polygamy**"

Do mormons have evidence that says that people disagreed with them for reasons other than polygamy?

You must realize that "Primitive Baptist" is a Restoration-minded church. As such, their theology isn't much different from other Restoration churches, and therefore the primary issue that they had with them is polygamy. It has only been recently that they have been looking at the larger picture. More story than that, but that is enough. Mormons apparently thought that the Primitive Baptists were involved, which is why they started doing some research.

My research says that there were a lot of other issues-- including the obvious-- freedom of the press.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2012 03:55PM by me.

I really think you all ought to consider BY's involvment along with Governor Ford. I know BY was in Boston at the time, but JS's brother who died in his early 30's of poison strikes me strange. There was another person who dodged the poison at the same time. BY comes across as a nut case like charlie manson if you follow his teachings all the way to the MMM.

I personally think that JS was so big headed at the time of his death and that he was clearly trying to take over the country with his scam by anouncing his run for president. I think BY and Ford saw this along with many others who were chased out of navoou and out of the mormon cult at gun point. I am referring to key ppl from the beginning of the creation thereof like Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdry, Whitmer, Harris etc....

I am, now that I am looking into it. I think that Sidney Rigdon's gunshot into Hyrum, if not a simple accidental case of friendly fire, may have been meant to excite the mob, and cause them to think they had come under fire. Either way, if the Mos shot first, then it raises a lot of questions about rather it being a lynch mob or a posse.

I have also wondered about Brigham Youngs possible involvement.

He did not have to be there, and being away from the action gives an alabi, yet not necessarily exoneration.

Watch any Sopranos episode.

Brigham Young only needed to have his foot soldiers starting rumors etc. They did not even have to be in the posse/mob. To be away from the scene of the incident, but have his people working there, is almost like the forward people in a politcal campaign.

I can understand that many people believe in, and are passionate about their religion. However, such as in the case of LDS Inc, to purposefully cover up historical events simply to make their cause more marketable is truly sinister.

JS did shoot the gun he had after the "mob" fired first killing Hyrum. This dismisses the claim that the "posse" was there to move them.

We don't know that for sure.

Their intent as a whole was to take him to Missouri to stand trial for charges there. That would not preclude out of control individual members from taking matters into their own hand, not trusting the slow wheels of justice.

I thought this was interesting. The thing is this, there is ALWAYS more to the story, especially if it is a Mormon history related story.

So maybe the "mob" was trying to bring Joe to a place where he would actually be tried? Maybe they were not going to kill him but he freaked and started firing his pistol? Maybe the Carthage jailer was paid off by Joe? Yea, it could be.

Not to defend JS, but as I understand it, JS and the other prisoners received meals, wine and smokes (I think) without shooting the place up. I am sure if a few representatives of the "law" walked up the stairs and announced themselves and their intentions, then I am sure it would have worked out without incident. Stupid jailer for not saying the Smiths had guns.

The Mississippi River at Nauvoo can not be dismissed as frontier territory in 1844. Settlement patterns were not so simple, and the term is rather vague. Nauvoo was twelve times more heavily populated then than it is now, and, by 1844, all the counties constituting what would become the state of Iowa shortly thereafter had been surveyed and the land was being sold off.

Missouri became a state on August 10, 1821. Arkansas became a state on June 15, 1836. Texas and Iowa were admitted as states in the two years following the shootout at Carthage (1845, 1846). Iowa was a U.S. Territory from from July 4, 1838 until December 28, 1846. It had a population of almost 23,000 at the time of its first census (1836) and by 1844 the population was over 75,000, mostly concentrated in the southeast corner of the state, as you can see on this map:
http://iagenweb.org/census/1905/index.html#xviii

What are now the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas was Unorganized Territory that Americans were technically restricted from settling (though some probably did anyway) until 1854:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_SlaveFree1837.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Territory

The actual "frontier" at the time of the shootout at the Carthage Corral depends on how one defines the extent of settlement. Historians consider certain forms of hard infrastructure serving a community to be tipping-point metrics in determining this, which can be rather fluid. For example, in the settlement of territory west of the Mississippi River, those metrics would include buildings like survey offices, mills for the production of flour, county seats, jails or prisons, etc. A survey office was the first built establishment in every county of the Midwest, because that was where local land was bought and sold by the government. The presence of a printing press is considered an unreliable metric in this instance, since many early "cities" in the Midwest were the imaginary products of leaflet and newspaper "boosterism" marketing and never amounted to anything. An area was most often considered settled when a community had access to a local mill (remember Haun's Mill? Caldwell County, northwestern Missouri). No Midwestern area became a named territory until its geography had been fully documented by government surveyors.

In 1844, if one went directly west from Nauvoo, IL, one would reach what a government surveyor would call "the frontier" at the western edge of the Iowa Territory. Others might say it started two or three counties west of the Mississippi River, where the population began to drop off. In the counties under discussion (West North Central States and East North Central States) the average population only six years later (1850) was between 5,572 and 12,887.
http://soks.wustl.edu/immigration.pdf

In other words, with the more heavily settled counties of Illinois (statehood in 1818) and Missouri, and the strong development through the late 1830s in Iowa's southeastern counties, one would be hard-pressed to insist that Nauvoo, with a population said to be around 12,000 in 1840, developed farms and orchards, solid homes and businesses of frame or brick construction, a masonic hall, a hotel, municipal court, several churches, and its access to some level of river trade with Saint Louis, was a frontier town. Like it or not, by 1844 the industriousness of the Mormons and the density of population in the surrounding counties on both sides of the Mississippi made Nauvoo no more a frontier town than Saint Louis.

We must not forget that to Mormon eyes in 1840, anything outside of New England and New York must have looked like an undeveloped wilderness. The fact remains, however, that the lands they occupied (Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois) until they actually left the United States for Mexico's northern territories in 1845-46 had already been "developed" by others and bought and sold several times over by the time the Mormons arrived. And they did not lay eyes on true wilderness until they reached the Great Salt Lake. Even today, a native New Englander will still claim Chicago is "way out west there." Come on, it's only halfway!