Mitt Romney is not the first Mormon to make a run for the Presidency. His father, George, was briefly the G.O.P. frontrunner in 1968, before losing the nomination to Richard Nixon. That same year, Eldridge Cleaver, one of the founders of the Black Panthers, ran for President as the Peace and Freedom Party candidate, but he didn’t get baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints until 1983. Mo Udall, an Arizona congressman, narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to Jimmy Carter in 1976. One could say that Mormons have been a presence in Presidential politics for decades. (I wrote about the Church, and spoke to Mitt Romney about his faith, for The New Yorker in 2002.)

The very first Mormon Presidential candidate, however, was the very first Mormon—Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, who announced his candidacy in 1844, as an independent. He ran on a platform that advocated the redemption of slaves through the sale of public lands, the creation of a national bank, and the annexation of Texas. At the same time, he envisioned the eventual collapse of the U.S. government, and a theocracy that might succeed it.

Smith’s Presidential candidacy came to a disastrous end. As mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois (his only political office), Smith ordered the destruction of an opponent’s newspaper. For that, he was jailed and ordered to stand trial. Before that could happen, a mob burst into the jail and killed him.

Mormons now are overrepresented in Congress, with six senators (including Harry Reid, the majority leader) and ten House members. The Presidency is the last barrier to this extraordinary movement. Romney’s tumultuous journey through the primaries has shown that the relationship between this uniquely American religion and the country that it once aspired to leave is still unsettled.