Posted by:
nomoremon
(
)
Date: May 16, 2018 10:47AM
So the mormon story is essentially "mormons were persecuted" and "Smith was innocent".
The real story is that Joseph Smith attempted to murder the governor of Missouri. The Missouri government tried to extradite him, and try him in court. Smith escaped arrest. (with the help of his followers of course)
The municipal court of Nauvoo, acting outside of its authority, discharged Smith, and ruled not to extradite him to Missouri. Now, remember that Nauvoo was a town formed by mormons, and nearly all the people in Nauvoo were mormon. In other words, not only were the people in the town followers of Smith, so were the people in the court. So naturally they sided with Smith on everything. And also remember that Smith was the mayor of Nauvoo as well as the chief justice of the court that let him escape extradition. So basically, he used his own power to escape being tried for when he attempted murder.
Naturally, the people of the neighboring town, Carthage, thought that Smith was abusing his power. (because he was). So they requested that the Governor send in a militia to arrest Smith. The governor declined. So Smith wasn't arrested because of the governor.
So a paper was published by the Nauvoo Expositor. The only paper they ever published. The Nauvoo Expositor was a newspaper that was created by ex-mormons and other non mormons in Nauvoo. The paper reports the story and all the details of Smith's abuse of power. It was also critical of things like the doctrine of plural marriage and exaltation/becoming gods. Smith as mayor, along with his city council made up of his followers, ordered the newspaper to be destroyed.
This caused a huge uproar, because obviously, it was a huge attack on the freedom of speech and of the press.
Smith was charged with causing a riot. And naturally, the court controlled by Smith and his followers dismissed the charge.
Nearby cities began raising a militia to capture Smith.
The governor came and warned him that if he didn't surrender, the milita would be sent out.
Smith declared martial law. And sent out his own militia of Nauvoo, called the Nauvoo Legion, made up of his own followers, to protect himself from arrest, and the militias that would be sent out because of his refusal to comply.
The governor sent some people out and put an end to Smith's martial law. Smith managed to escape into Iowa. Somehow his followers convinced him to return.
He was then arrested for treason for declaring martial law.
As you can see, it is rather obvious that Smith was not wrongfully arrested. He was a criminal.
While awaiting trial in Carthage, he was killed by a mob. This part was wrongful, as they should have just let the justice system handle it, instead of taking it into their own hands, but Smith was nowhere near innocent. He would have been in prison for a very long time if not executed.
Because of Nauvoo's abuse of power,it was stripped of its charter.
A large part of this I got from Wikipedia along with other details I added. Here is the link. It's under the section on Nauvoo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_the_United_StatesWikipedia may not be the best source, but all the info I got from Wikipedia does have citations to other more reliable sources. So the info does ultimately come from good sources, and it is all true. You can check those sources if you want.
I know this is long, but it's important. And the details are all important. We should know the truth.