The Mormons at Nauvoo

In eighteen thirty-nine, a religious community driven out of Missouri by an extermination order arrived on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River in western Illinois. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, purchased a swampy bend in the river and named it Nauvoo, from a Hebrew word he said meant beautiful place. Within five years, the city had grown to roughly twelve thousand residents, making it one of the largest cities in Illinois and roughly the same size as Chicago.

The Nauvoo years were productive and violent. Smith drafted a city charter that gave the city almost sovereign authority. The Nauvoo Legion, a militia that answered to Smith alone, numbered several thousand men. The temple, begun in eighteen forty-one and still unfinished at Smith's death, was one of the grandest religious buildings in the American interior.

In the spring of eighteen forty-four, Smith ordered the destruction of a printing press that had published accounts of plural marriage, the secret practice that was already dividing his church and alarming his neighbors. He was arrested on charges of riot and inciting riot and jailed in Carthage, the county seat. On the evening of June twenty-seventh, eighteen forty-four, a mob stormed the Carthage Jail and killed Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Smith was thirty-eight years old.

What followed was a succession crisis, a split in the movement, and ultimately an expulsion. By eighteen forty-six, Brigham Young was leading the main body of the church west across Iowa toward the Rocky Mountains. The beautiful city on the river they left behind was largely abandoned, and then burned. Illinois had added one more chapter to the long American story of religious violence and displacement. The temple was rebuilt and re-dedicated in two thousand and two. Nauvoo is today a historic site, a quiet river town, and a pilgrimage destination.