Carthage Jail: The Day the Mormon Prophet Died

A few miles north of where you are driving sat a two-story stone jailhouse in the county seat of Carthage, Illinois, and on the afternoon of June twenty-seventh, eighteen forty-four, a mob stormed it and killed the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Joseph Smith had arrived in Carthage just two days earlier, on June twenty-fifth. He and his brother Hyrum, along with several church leaders, had surrendered to Illinois authorities on a charge of treason. The charge grew out of a chain of events that began when the Nauvoo city council ordered the destruction of a newspaper that had publicly accused Smith of secretly marrying other men's wives. State officials issued warrants, and Smith, rather than flee, chose to submit, reportedly telling followers he was going like a lamb to the slaughter.

They were held in the Carthage Jail, a modest stone building that still stands today as a historic site. On the afternoon of June twenty-seventh, while the official guard was sent away on a pretext, somewhere between one hundred fifty and two hundred armed men with blackened faces swarmed the building. They fired through the door, fatally wounding Hyrum first. Joseph Smith was shot multiple times and fell from the second-story window. Both brothers died that day. Two companions, John Taylor and Willard Richards, survived.

That October, nine men were indicted. By May of the following year, only five stood trial. All five were acquitted within minutes. No one was ever convicted for the killings.

The murders convulsed the early church. Within months, the majority of Latter-day Saints began the great westward migration that would eventually land them in the Salt Lake Valley of Utah. The Carthage Jail, now preserved by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, remains one of the most emotionally charged historic sites on the entire Mississippi frontier, a place where a religious movement became a martyr faith and where the American West was set in motion.