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Cultural Crisis in the Mormon Kingdom: A Reconsideration of the Causes of Kirtland Dissent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Marvin S. Hill
Marvin S. Hill
Affiliation:
Professor of American intellectual history in Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.
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Extract

Until the time that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints left western New York (where the church had been founded in 1830) and moved en masse to Kirtland, Ohio and then Far West, Missouri (where a second gathering place was established), the Mormons constituted a close-knit and fairly harmonious group. At Kirtland, however, serious internal discontent developed. In the wake of the collapse of the Anti-Banking Society in 1837 came widespread apostasy of many Mormons, several apostles included, who challenged Joseph Smith's role as prophetic leader whose word was the will of the Lord in secular as well as spiritual affairs. According to the prevailing interpretation, the causes were essentially economic. Fawn Brodie maintains in her chapter on the “Kirtland Disaster” that the “toppling of the Kirtland bank loosed a hornet's nest.” Quoting Apostle Heber C. Kimball, she says that afterward “there were not twenty persons on earth that would declare that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.” Despite Smith's efforts to salvage his Ohio community, “with mercantile firms bankrupt, the steam mill silent, and the land values sinking to an appalling low, Kirtland was fast disintegrating.” In a recent work, Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton repeat the generalization: “in Kirtland … Smith's failed bank led to internal dissension.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 286 - 297
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1980

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References

1. Brodie, Fawn M., No Man Knows My History (New York, 1945), pp. 199, 203, 205.Google Scholar

2. Arrington, Leonard and Bitton, Davis, The Mormon Experience (New York, 1979), p. 88.Google Scholar See also Allen, James B. and Leonard, Glen, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, 1976), pp. 113–114Google Scholar, for similar stress on economic issues.

3. Hill, Marvin S., Rooker, C. Keith and Wimmer, Larry T., “The Kirtland Economy Revisited: A Market Critique of Sectarian Economics,” Brigham Young University Studies 17 (Summer 1977): 391–476.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., pp. 451, 455.

5. Wyl, Wilhelm, Mormon Portraits (Salt Lake City, 1886), p. 35.Google Scholar

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7. Ensign of Liberty of the Church of Christ 1 (03 1847): 7.Google Scholar

8. The Kirtland Safety Society Stock Ledger Book, in the Chicago Historical Society, lists all the subscribers to the bank.

9. Journal of Wilford Woodruff, 6 and 9 April 1837, Historical Department of the Church, Salt Lake City.

10. The details of Zion's camp are found in Hill, Marvin S., “The Role of Christian Primitivism in the Origin and Development of the Mormon Kingdom, 1830–1844,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1968), pp. 143–149.Google Scholar

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17. On the American language of anticipation in this period see Boorstin, Daniel J., The Americans: The National Experience (New York: Random House, 1967), pp. 296–298Google Scholar; compare the letter of Joseph Young dated 27 October 1836, Richards Family Correspondence (typewritten manuscript), Historical Department of the Church, Salt Lake City.

18. Journal of Wilford Woodruff, 6 April 1837.

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24. At Boynton's trial, when the Apostle affirmed that it had been published that the bank would not fail, Joseph Smith said, “if this had been published, it was without authority, at least from him, he stated that he always said that unless the institution was conducted upon righteous principles it could not stand.” “Kirtland Council Minutes,” Historical Department of the Church, Salt Lake City, p. 236.

25. Journal of Wilford Woodruff, 6 April 1847.

26. See McClellin's, William E. report in Ensign of Liberty 1 (March 1847): 7.Google Scholar

27. Journal of Wilford Woodruff, 17 January 1847.

If we give all our privileges to one man, we virtually give him our money and our liberties, and make him a monarch, absolute and despotic, and ourselves abject slaves or fawning sycophants. If we grant privileges and monopolies to a few, they always continue to undermine the fundamental principles of freedom,

28. Painesville Republican, 15 February 1838.Google Scholar

29. Smith, , History of the Church 2: 126.Google Scholar

30. At Kirtland, Smith became involved in managing the United Firm, and later the bank. Hill, , “Role of Christian Primitivism,” pp. 134–135, 165–166.Google Scholar Banknotes issued in 1837 show Smith as the bank's treasurer.

31. Ibid., pp. 179–181.

32. Ibid., pp. 156–158; Journal of Newel Knight, 23 November 1835, Historical Department of the Church, Salt Lake City, where Joseph Smith performed the marriage of Newel and Lydia Bailey under religious authority only. Smith told Hyrum Smith that the “Lord said it was all right. She is his and the sooner they are married the better tell them no law shall hurt them.” Knight recorded that Joseph taught them “much” with regard to matrimony and “what the ancient order of God was and what it must be again concerning marriage.” Knight also recorded that on Sunday, 24 November, in a public address, Joseph Smith said that he performed the marriage “by authority of the Holy Priesthood, and the Gentile law has no power to call me to account for it … I have done as I was commanded and I know the Kingdom of God will prevail.”

33. Johnson, Benjamin F. to Gibbs, George S., 1903Google Scholar (typewritten copy of the letter), Special Collections, Brigham Young University (BYU) library, Provo. Utah. Compare Jensen, Andrew, ed., Historical Record, 9 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1882–1890), 6: 219, 233Google Scholar, and Woodward, , “The First Half Century of Mormonism,” p. 195.Google Scholar

34. Latter-day Saint Messenger and Advocate 3 (July 1837): 538.Google Scholar

35. Ensign of Liberty 1 (March 1847): 7.Google Scholar

36. Lion's Watchman, 24 March 1838.Google Scholar

37. The Newell K. Whitney Collection at BYU has a note drawn up by Pratt and Johnson.

38. Cowdery explained his differences with Joseph Smith in a letter dated 21 January 1838. Cowdery's original letters are in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

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40. Oliver Cowdery to Cowdery, Lyman, 13 January 1834.Google Scholar

41. Oliver Cowdery's letter to Cowdery, Warren, 24 February 1838Google Scholar, mentions several letters being sent, including one from Warren Parrish to J.E. Johnson in Far West. See also the minutes of the 30 January meeting in the same collection.

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43. The minutes of the meeting are included among Oliver Cowdery's letters.

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46. Cowdery, Oliver to Cowdery, Warren, n. d. (perhaps March 1838).Google Scholar

47. See the 30 January 1838 minutes of the meeting in the Cowdery letters.

48. Burnet to Johnson, , April 1838Google Scholar, Joseph Smith's Letter Book.

49. Parrish's charges were recorded and preserved by Newel K. Whitney. See these allegations of 29 May 1837 in the Newel K. Whitney Collection, BYU.

50. Smith, , History of the Church 2: 489Google Scholar; and “History of Wilford Woodruff,” Millennial Star 27 (29 April 1865): 264.Google Scholar

51. Whitmer, David, Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, Mo., 1887), pp. 26, 33–35, 42, 47, 49–51, 56–62, 71–72.Google Scholar

52. Brewster, James C., “The Gathering of the Saints,” The Olive Branch 1 (12 1849): 88–89.Google Scholar

53. Whitmer, , History, p. 21.Google Scholar

54. Whitmer, , Address to All Believers, pp. 34, 71.Google Scholar

55. One of the charges made against Lyman Johnson at his church trial at Far West was that he had threatened to take a church member to court outside the jurisdiction of Caldwell County which the Mormons controlled. Johnson, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer were excommunicated for, among other reasons, bringing “vexatious lawsuits” against church members. See Gentry, , “A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri from 1836 to 1839,” pp. 140Google Scholar, 149, 151, and 152, and compare “Far West Record,” pp. 119, 123, Historical Department of the Church, Salt Lake City. On this conflict between man-made law and higher law in Missouri and Illinois see Hill, , “Role of Christian Primitivism,” pp. 188–190Google Scholar, 193–198; and Oaks, Dallin H. and Hill, Marvin S., Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, Ill., 1975), pp. 210–214.Google Scholar

56. Whitmer, , History, p. 24.Google Scholar

57. Other events would of course have to occur, such as the succession crisis in 1844; yet I believe much of the general cultural outlook of the Reorganized Church has its roots here, at Kirtland.

58. For an excellent and informative essay concerning the Reorganized Latter-day Saints, see Alma Blair's chapter in McKiernan, F. Mark, Blair, Alma and Edwards, Paul, eds., The Restoration Movement; Essays in Mormon History (Lawrence, Kans., 1973), pp. 209–230.Google Scholar