The Press They Destroyed, and What Happened Next
Near Nauvoo, Illinois
By the spring of eighteen forty-four, tensions inside Nauvoo's leadership were deep enough that a group of former insiders decided to expose them publicly. William Law, once a member of the First Presidency and a close associate of Joseph Smith, had broken with Smith over the practice of plural marriage and what he considered serious abuses of authority. Law and his associates founded a newspaper called the Nauvoo Expositor.
They published its first issue in June of eighteen forty-four. The Expositor accused Smith of teaching polygamy in secret while denying it publicly, and of concentrating legal and political power in ways its editors considered dangerous to the surrounding community. At a meeting of the Nauvoo City Council on June tenth, eighteen forty-four, Smith ordered the newspaper's printing press destroyed.
City officials and a militia unit carried out the order that same day. That act set off a chain of events that ended with Smith's death. Officials from surrounding counties sought his arrest on charges related to the press destruction.
Illinois Governor Thomas Ford offered assurances of safety if Smith submitted to authorities. Smith and his brother Hyrum turned themselves in and were jailed in Carthage, about twelve miles from Nauvoo. On June twenty-seventh, eighteen forty-four, a mob estimated at two hundred men stormed the Carthage jail.
Both brothers were killed. Joseph Smith was thirty-eight years old. His death set off a succession crisis that resulted in most of the Mormon community following Brigham Young westward.
The exodus from Nauvoo began in early eighteen forty-six and was essentially complete by that September, when the last Mormon defenders surrendered the city after a brief siege.
