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1 Junius And Joseph Robert Wicks, Fred R. Foister Published by Utah State University Press Wicks, Robert & Foister, R.. Junius And Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet. Logan: Utah State University Press, Project MUSE., For additional information about this book No institutional affiliation (15 Nov :03 GMT)

2 Chapter Twenty How Wide the Conspiracy? Joseph Smith uttered the first four words of the Masonic distress cry as he fell from the second story window of Carthage jail. Yet none of the Masons in the mob surrounding the jail made any effort to come to his aid. That circumstance gave rise to the suspicion that there was a Masonic conspiracy to take his life, a claim voiced privately and in public by Joseph Smith s successor, Brigham Young. Brigham Young s Masonic Plot By the spring of 1844, Freemasonry had become a vital part of social and ritual life in Nauvoo. Joseph Smith firmly believed there was similarity of priesthood in Masonry and that Freemasonry had been taken from the [ancient] priesthood but has become degenerated. Masonic symbols, gestures, and penalties were reflected in the newly revealed Mormon temple ritual. Almost every church leader was a Mason and nearly two-thirds of all Freemasons in Illinois were Latter-day Saints. With the deaths of two of the most prominent Mormon Freemasons, however, the privileged position of the craft among Latter-day Saints took a drastic fall from which it never recovered. 1 The Times and Seasons issue of July 15, 1844, contained an editorial headed, The Murder. Its purpose was not to present a descriptive account of the Carthage incident (that had been done earlier in the month), but to put before the world once again the Mormon cry of persecuted innocence and to present Joseph and Hyrum as true martyrs for the cause of God. The editorial condemned the Freemasons for not preventing the murders when it was within their power to do so. Joseph had given the Masonic sign of distress when hanging in the window of the jail and yet none had come to his aid. This was not the first time Joseph had used his Masonic ties in order to extricate himself from a difficult situation. Following the prophet s June 1843 arrest at Dixon, for example, a correspondent wrote from Nauvoo that today, Joseph was brought home in triumph, having suffered a few days imprisonment in an old barn; from which he escaped, I am told, by giving some Masonic sign, before his friends arrived. 2 Joseph s experience at Carthage, however, ended, not in triumph, but tragedy. The Times and Seasons editorial of July 15, 1844, read, in part, 1. Heber C. Kimball to Parley P. Pratt, 17 June 1842, in Kimball, Heber C. Kimball, 85. See Literski, Method Infinite. 2. Charlotte Haven to her parents, 2 July 1843, in Haven, A Girls Letters from Nauvoo,

3 How Wide the Conspiracy? 251 Leaving religion out of the case, where is the lover of his country, and his posterity, that does not condemn such an outrageous murder, and will not lend all his powers, energies and influence to bring the offenders to justice and judgment? Eve[n], that these two innocent men were confined in jail for a supposed crime, deprived of any weapons to defend themselves [sic!]: had the pledged faith of the State of Illinois, by Gov. Ford, for their protection, and were then shot to death, while, with uplifted hands they gave such signs of distress as would have commanded the interposition and benevolence of Savages or Pagans. They were both Masons in good standing. Ye brethren of the mystic tie what think ye! Where is our good Master Joseph and Hyrum? Is there a pagan, heathen, or savage nation on the globe that would not be moved on this great occasion, as the trees of the forest are moved by a mighty wind? Joseph s last exclamation was O Lord my God! Readers of the Mormon newspaper, most of whom were members of the Nauvoo Lodge, would have readily understood the Masonic references in this passage. The uplifted hands was the Masonic distress signal, known to all indoctrinated Freemasons, here called brethren of the mystic tie. Any Mason witnessing such a sign, especially when supplemented by the words, O Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow s son? was, by their sacred oath, required to offer assistance. The unwillingness of the Masons in the mob to come to Joseph and Hyrum s aid branded them as even less than pagans, heathens, or savages, all unbelievers in Christ. Joseph Smith s unheeded Masonic distress cry would echo throughout the Mormon and Masonic community for decades to come. 3 There is little evidence that the Illinois Freemasons, as a body, were behind the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Furthermore, the Carthage and Warsaw Lodges had their charters recalled by the Illinois Grand Lodge as a consequence of the involvement of lodge members in illegal activities surrounding the Carthage incident, as well as their subsequent efforts to use the Craft to protect individuals from prosecution. (Significantly, though, the Quincy Lodge was not censured for its anti- Mormon stance.) It is true, nonetheless, that several of the men indicted for Joseph Smith s murder attempted to benefit from the Masonic pledge of mutual protection in the months leading up to the 1845 trial. Local Masonic lodges in Carthage and Warsaw were first organized at the very time the Nauvoo Mormon lodges were being placed under suspension. Hancock Lodge No. 20, in Carthage, was established under dispensation in 1842; its charter was granted the following year. Wesley Williams (brother of Archibald and cousin of Colonel Levi Williams) was one of its original members. The 1844 return for the Carthage Lodge lists Wesley Williams, Robert F. Smith, and Onias C. Skinner as Master Masons. All three men were active in the anti-mormon movement. The founding Worshipful Master of Warsaw Lodge No. 21 was Abraham I. Chittenden; their first meeting was held in early Among those who served with Chittenden were Mark Aldrich, treasurer, and Henry Stephens, secretary. Again, all three men were noted anti-mormons. Following the October grand jury 3. Hogan, Mormonism and Freemasonry, 303. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 108. Wyl, Mormon Portraits, 154. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled, 153.

4 252 Junius and Joseph proceedings, Thomas Sharp and Levi Williams were initiated into the Warsaw Lodge. Jacob C. Davis and William H. Roosevelt were raised to the Master Mason degree. The Chittenden boys (William W. and E. F. Chittenden), both mentioned in October grand jury testimony, became Master Masons in January of George Rockwell was raised in late February; Levi Williams in March. 4 The Mormons at Nauvoo watched the Masonic activity in Warsaw with no small interest. Orson Hyde addressed the high priests of Nauvoo in late April I may be regarded as a treasonable, blasphemous character, he said, but I wanted to express my feelings. I want those murderers to know that their lies cannot always shield them; that although they join the fraternity of brethren, that is, the Freemasons, to save them from the just penalty of their crime, this cunning resort cannot rescue them from punishment. But it may possibly postpone it, and give it a chance to stand on interest till the Saints judge the world. The Mormon political Kingdom of God was yet at hand. Punishment of the murderers would come at last. 5 Although the Grand Lodge of Illinois was not pleased with the activities of its Hancock County brethren, there would be no official condemnation of the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, two of the most prominent Mormon Freemasons. Nonetheless, the charter of the Carthage Lodge was surrendered in late 1844 on account of [the] Mormon difficulties. It would not be rechartered until The Warsaw Lodge likewise lost its charter. Following the acquittal of Sharp, Williams, Davis, Aldrich, and Grover in 1845, however, the Grand Lodge received the Warsaw Lodge once again into its affectionate confidence. The justification for accepting the Warsaw Lodge was that although the lodge erred, and greatly erred by allowing the men to join the lodge (or become Master Masons) while under indictment, the error was an error of the head and not of the heart... the men have been since tried by the laws of their country by a jury of their peers and acquitted. 6 Abraham Jonas, once Illinois s most venerated Past Grand Master, also fell out of favor. Columbus Lodge No. 6 filed no returns in 1844 or In 1846 his lodge surrendered its charter. As a past grand master, Jonas was never officially censured for his role in the Carthage conspiracy but would remain forever relegated to the background of Illinois Masonic affairs. 7 William Gano Goforth was less fortunate. Following his Masonic work in the clandestine Nauvoo Lodge in the spring of 1844, Goforth was censured by the Illinois Grand Lodge and expelled from the fraternity. Goforth joined the Mormon church at Nauvoo in early 1845 (he was baptized by Brigham Young), and followed the new prophet to Utah. 8 In August 1860, Brigham Young, then in Salt Lake City, made a claim extending the charges of the 1844 Times and Seasons editorial. Brigham Young met with John Taylor, one of the two Carthage survivors, and several other members of the 4. Carr, Freemasonry and Nauvoo, Hyde, Speech, Carr, Freemasonry and Nauvoo, Hogan, Abraham Jonas. 8. See Carr, Freemasonry and Nauvoo, 28, Turnbull, 133. Hogan, Strange Case.

5 How Wide the Conspiracy? 253 Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Wilford Woodruff recorded President Young s comments on this occasion: President Young said the people of the United States had sought our destruction and they had used every Exertion to perfe[c]t it. They have worked through the masonic institution to perfect it. Joseph & Hyrum Smith were Master Masons and they were put to death by masons or through there instigation and he gave the sign of distress & he was shot by masons while in the act. And there were delegates from the various lodges in the Union to see that he was put to death. I hope to live to see the day when I can have power to make them do right. They have got the blood of the prophets upon their heads & they have got to meet it. 9 Three separate claims are here being made about Masonic involvement in the Carthage conspiracy. First, that Joseph and Hyrum were put to death by Masons or through their instigation. Second, that Joseph was shot by Masons while in the act of giving the Masonic distress sign. Third, and most important, Brigham Young asserted that there were delegates from the various lodges in the Union to see that he was put to death. In other words, Brigham Young apparently believed there was a national Masonic conspiracy to take Joseph Smith s life. Brigham Young s final point, an obligation to avenge the blood of the Prophets, was the subject of the previous chapter. However emphatic and authoritative his words may appear on the surface, Brigham Young s 1860 statement is not evidence for a national Masonic conspiracy to murder Joseph Smith. At the time Brigham Young made his assertions, rumors were surfacing that an attempt would be made to establish a gentile Masonic lodge in Utah, to try to get an influence with some here to lay a plan to try to murder me [Brigham Young] & the [other] leaders of the Church. The Masonic threat was again in the air. Nonetheless, it is true that Brigham Young had known for some time that representatives from throughout the Union met in Carthage on the night of June 26, 1844, (the day prior to the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum) and condemned the two incarcerated Smith brothers to death. 10 Carthage survivor Willard Richards died in His demise dealt a severe blow to the compilers of the Joseph Smith history. Requests were made of all remaining Carthage witnesses to record their observations in writing and forward them to the Church Historian s Office in Salt Lake City. One of the respondents was one of Joseph Smith s bodyguards, Stephen Markham, who in June of 1856 wrote a lengthy statement detailing events surrounding the final days of the prophet. Markham described the June 26, 1844, meeting of the Carthage Committee of Safety at the Hamilton Hotel, noting, There were delegates in the meeting from every state in the Union except three. Markham made no reference to Freemasons Woodruff, Journals 5:482 [19 August 1860]. 10. Woodruff, Journals 5:483 [19 August 1860]. In all published histories known to the authors the meeting has been placed erroneously on the morning of the 27th of June. (See note 13, below.) 11. Black, Who s Who in the Doctrine and Covenants, Stephen Markham to Wilford Woodruff, 20 June 1856, LDS Archives. See also Journal History, 27 June 1844, 1. Smith, History of the Church 6:605 6.

6 254 Junius and Joseph Brigham Young used Markham s manuscript account (or the version published in the Deseret News as part of the Joseph Smith history) at least twice in public discourses delivered before the Saints in Utah. On February 10, 1860, several months before the aforementioned August meeting, President Young asked whether America s national leaders knew of the plan to murder Joseph Smith. Were they aware of it at the seat of government? Without citing specific evidence, he answered in the affirmative. I have no doubt, he said, they as well knew the plans for destroying the Prophet as did those in Carthage or in Warsaw, Illinois. It was planned by some of the leading men of the nation. I have said here once before, to the astonishment of many of our own countrymen, that there was a delegate from each State in the nation when Joseph was killed. These delegates held their council. In 1867, Brigham Young would again assert, The mob that collected at Carthage, Illinois, to commit that deed of blood contained a delegation representing every state in the Union. Each has received its blood stain. Brigham s numerical misrepresentation ( every state in the Union ) was no doubt affected to heighten the rhetorical impact of his remarks. 12 John Taylor, badly injured in the assault on the jail, also responded to a request from the Church Historian s Office for information about the martyrdom. Taylor s version of events was completed in August 1856, in consultation with George A. Smith, while the two men were in the eastern United States. They worked together for more than a month, composing entirely from memory, as we are without documents, other than Ford s History of Illinois. Taylor responded to assertions about a larger movement to murder the prophet, more than likely prompted by Markham s letter which had been received by the Church Historian s Office in June. The underlined passages (added by the authors) stress the caution that John Taylor exercised in assigning blame for the assassination. It was rumored that a strong political party, numbering in its ranks many of the prominent men of the nation, were engaged in a plot for the overthrow of Joseph Smith, and that the Governor was of the party, and Sharp, Williams, Captain Smith and others were his accomplices, but whether this was the case or not I do not know. It is very certain that a strong political feeling existed against Joseph Smith, and I have reasons to believe that his letters to Henry Clay, were made use of by political parties opposed to Henry Clay, and were the means of that statesman s defeat. Yet, if such a combination as the one referred to existed, I am not apprised of it. Taylor intimates ( I have reasons to believe ) he had information concerning Clay s 1844 presidential bid beyond that generally reported. In all likelihood Taylor s source was Dr. John Bernhisel, another Carthage witness and Council of Fifty member, who in 1850 was a newly seated territorial representative from Deseret. In early 1850 Bernhisel wrote to Brigham Young of his introductory visits to Washington politicians. Henry Clay, he reported, though cordial, was still writhing under the 12. Brigham Young, 10 February 1860, in Journal of Discourses 8:320 21, quoted in Lundwall, Fate of the Persecutors, 327. Brigham Young, 17 August 1867, in Journal of Discourses 12:121, quoted in Lundwall, Fate of the Persecutors,

7 How Wide the Conspiracy? 255 infliction of a certain letter addressed to him by Pres. Joseph Smith in 1844, which had soundly condemned the elder statesman. Dr. Bernhisel was in Washington, D.C., at the time Smith and Taylor were writing and served as a valued resource for information concerning Joseph Smith s last days. Taylor s remark, and Bernhisel s confirmation, is one more indicator of the long-term impact of Joseph Smith s 1844 presidential campaign. There is no suggestion that Taylor suspected Henry Clay (perhaps the most prominent Freemason in the United States at the time) of being behind the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum. Furthermore, Taylor does not identify the strong political party rumored to be behind the prophet s death. Of the men mentioned in Taylor s account, Governor Ford was a Democrat, Thomas Sharp was nominally Whig although effectively nonpartisan, while Levi Williams was a longtime supporter of Whig leader Henry Clay. 13 Based upon the comments of John Taylor and Brigham Young, there was apparently no material evidence available to the First Presidency of the church concerning a nationwide Masonic plot to murder Joseph Smith. Brigham Young simply inserted Freemasons into his 1860 equation in order to strengthen his case against allowing the formation of a non-mormon Masonic lodge in the Territory of Utah and discourage the growth of Gentile settlements in the region. Significantly, though, this conclusion does not diminish Stephen Markham s statement that national representatives met at the Hamilton Hotel the night before the assault on Carthage jail, a point returned to in the final section of this chapter. The Four Men at the Well Brigham Young s second claim, that Joseph Smith was shot by Masons, also requires clarification. Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin Hill (whose pivotal study, The Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith, was first published in 1975 and is still in print today) were unable to identify the men directly responsible for the murders. Not long after the volume was published, Dallin Oaks admitted that the book was an incomplete history because we do not know who pulled the trigger or who participated in the murders. Indeed, the two main surviving lists of the Carthage mob were compiled long after the event and were greatly influenced by 13. George A. Smith to Brigham Young, 19 September 1856, quoted in Jesse, Return to Carthage, 13. Their admission to a lack of documentary sources is especially significant. John Taylor, in Smith, History of the Church 7:116.Thomas Ford s History of Illinois simply states that a council of officers convened on the morning of the 27th of June. (Ford, History of Illinois, in Smith, History of the Church, 7:16) Ford makes no mention of the secret tribunal he participated in at Hamilton Hotel in Carthage the evening before. Initially, Times & Seasons 5.12 (1 July 1844), simply refers to another consultation of the officers on the morning of the 27th. Consequently, the tribunal, together with the Dr. Wall Southwick-Stephen Markham interchange, has been conflated with the council of officers and placed in the morning of the 27th in the Joseph Smith History (Journal History, 27 June 1844, 1) and in Smith, History of the Church 6: The erroneous chronology has been perpetuated in Leonard, Nauvoo, 388. A comment at the end of Markham s 20 June 1856 letter to Wilford Woodruff concerning the secret tribunal, that nothing more particularly passed through the day, could refer only to the 26th of June and could not apply to the 27th. (See also Roberts, Comprehensive History 2:275 and Smith, History of the Church 7:16.) Jesse, Return to Carthage, 14 is uncertain about the significance of the discrepancy between the Joseph Smith History and Markham versions. John H. Bernhisel to Brigham Young, 21 March 1850, in Journal History, 21 March 1850, 2 6.

8 256 Junius and Joseph the grand jury indictments of the fall and events leading up to the 1845 trial of the accused assassins. 14 Another reason the chief gunmen have not been identified with any degree of certainty is that the individuals actually engaged in the shooting deliberately obscured their identities; with one possible exception, they were not among those indicted for the crime. Furthermore, there were no surviving Mormon witnesses to record Joseph Smith s demise. In the late afternoon of June 27, 1844, there were four Mormons in the upper room of the Carthage jail Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum, both of whom were killed, John Taylor, who was badly wounded and rolled under the bed to protect himself, and Willard Richards, who survived nearly unscathed save for a cut on his ear. Although Richards was the only Mormon left standing at the conclusion of the firefight, he was not in a position to have witnessed Joseph s final moments. Richards s journal provides insight into the extent of his personal knowledge regarding what took place at shortly after five p.m. on June 27, 1844: All [of us] sprang against the door. The balls whistled up the stairway and in an instant one came through the door. Joseph, Taylor, and Richards sprang to the left and Hyrum back in front of the door. [He] snapped his pistol, when a ball struck him in the left side of his nose. [He] fell back on the floor saying, I am a dead man. Joseph discharged his 6 shooters in the entry reaching round the door casing. Discharges continued [to] come in the room. 6 shooter missed fired 2 or 3 times. Taylor sprang to leap from the east window [and] was shot in the window. 15 The entry stops abruptly mid-scene. From this point Taylor responds to being shot by rolling under the bed, bleeding but alive. Joseph, still in the room, heads for the window. The panel door is forced open by the assailants, trapping Richards in the corner of the room. While this action providentially saved his life, it also prevented him from witnessing what was taking place in the courtyard. This is in accord with the physical layout of the room and is confirmed by Dr. Barnes, the physician who attended John Taylor s wounds. According to Barnes, Richards stood next to the hinges of the door... so when they [the mob] crowded the door open it shut him up against the wall and he stood there and did not move till the affair was all over Sheriff Jacob Backenstos s list of Those active in the massacre at Carthage was compiled (contrary to many published assertions) in 1846 (Lundwall, Fate of the Persecutors, , Smith, History of the Church 7:142 45, Journal History, 29 June 1844, 2). Willard Richards also attempted to compile a Listing of the mob at Carthage, (Lundwall, Fate of the Persecutors, 271, Smith, History of the Church 7:146, Journal History, 29 June 1844, 2). The date of his compilation is uncertain. Richards incorrectly places several of the Nauvoo dissidents at the scene. 15. Willard Richards, Journal, 27 June 1844, quoted in Old Mormon Nauvoo, Thomas Barnes to Miranda Barnes Haskett, 6 November 1897, in Mulder and Mortensen, Among the Mormons, 151. Huntress, Murder, Lundwall, Fate of the Persecutors, Davis, Authentic Account, concurs: Dr. Richards, who was also in the same room with the deceased, escaped uninjured, by retreating at the first onset behind the door, and against the wall. (p. 23) For an illustration of the interior of the jail showing Richards behind the door, see C. A. A. Christensen s 1890 painting, The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church, BYU Art Museum.

9 How Wide the Conspiracy? 257 Interior of Carthage Jail, by C. C. A. Christensen, ca In this late rendition, Joseph is shown holding a set of scriptures rather than the pepper box pistol that had been smuggled in to him hours before the onslaught. John Taylor attempts to keep the intruders out with a cane. Willard Richards waits behind the door. The men s coats hang beside the fireplace. The inscription comes from Tertullian, a second- to third-century Christian author. The phrase is used frequently in Latter-day Saint rhetoric. Courtesy of Brigham Young University Museum of Art. All rights reserved. Willard Richards s semi-official recital of that fateful day in June, called Two Minutes in Jail, appeared in the Nauvoo Neighbor for July 24, 1844, and was reprinted in the August 1 issue of TimesandSeasons. The relevant section reads: Joseph attempted as the last resort, to leap the same window from whence Mr. Taylor [nearly] fell, when two balls pierced him from the door, and one entered his right breast from without, and he fell outward exclaiming, O Lord my God! As his feet went out of the window my head went in, the balls whistling all around. He fell on his left side a dead man. At this instant the cry was raised, He s leaped the window, and the mob on the stairs ran out. I withdrew from the window, thinking it of no use to leap out on a hundred bayonets, then around Gen. Smith s body. 17 In this version of events, Richards presents himself as taking a more active role during the prophet s final moments than was actually the case. Indeed, it is difficult to envision how the wounded prophet could have fallen out of the window at the same time the corpulent Richards pulled himself back inside, all the while remaining unharmed See also Willard Richards to Brigham Young, 30 June 1844, in Smith, Historyofthe Church 7:147. Note Willard Richards to Reuben Hedlock, 9 July 1844, LDS Archives, Turley, SelectedCo le ctions, 1.31, in which he acknowledges that Joseph was shot after he fell from the window. 18. Compare John Taylor s version, in Taylor, Witnes, 92 and Smith, Historyofthe Church 7:105.

10 258 Junius and Joseph Richards s mention of Joseph s distinctive injuries is more significant. More than likely Richards s description (and chronology) of the wounds is based upon a postmortem examination of the body of Joseph Smith, not his actual experience at the jail. On June 30, for instance, Richards wrote to Brigham Young, then still in the east, about Joseph s murder. He described Joseph s wounds: Joseph received four bullets, one in right collar bone, one in right breast, and two others in his back, he leaped from the east window of the front room, and was dead in an instant. For Richards, then, Joseph Smith was killed as he sat on the window ledge preparing to jump to the ground below. In time this would become the standard LDS view of the murder; the fatal act would be provided with additional moral force by asserting that Joseph s jump from the window was a deliberate attempt on his part to draw attention away from the other men in the room. 19 In any event, it was the bullet that struck Joseph in the right breast that delivered the fatal injury. The indictment prepared by United States Attorney William Elliott for the October 1844 term of Hancock County Circuit Court described Joseph s mortal wound, in and upon the right breast of him the said Joseph Smith a little below the right pap of him the said Joseph Smith one mortal wound of the depth of six inches and of the breadth of one inch of which said mortal wound he the said Joseph Smith, then and there instantly died. One of the witnesses at the 1845 trial similarly testified that he examined [Joseph s] wounds. He was shot in the right breast, abdomen and left shoulder. Shot a little below the right pap... The wound in the breast was mortal, think it was made with a rifle ball. 20 In all probability, Joseph Smith was shot no more than once in the thigh while he remained in the upper room of the jail. His remaining wounds were inflicted by a four-man firing squad. The shot in his right breast, which would have proved fatal, was fired by John C. Elliott (no relation to U.S. Attorney Elliott), known to the Mormons of Nauvoo as a Warsaw-area schoolteacher. No one suspected that Elliott, infamous for his part in the December 1843 kidnapping of Daniel Avery, was an undercover deputy United States marshal from Ohio. Overlooked as a primary suspect during the grand jury proceedings in the fall of 1844 and seldom mentioned during the 1845 trial, Elliott s role in the murder of Joseph Smith has gone almost unnoticed by later writers. Through the early 1840s, John C. Elliott worked as a woodcutter contracting with landowners to harvest timber on unimproved land near Hamilton on the Great Miami River north of Cincinnati, Ohio. From he helped Cincinnatian Jacob Burnet settle a major logging claim in Burnet s favor, leaving him indebted to the young Butler County woodsman. Burnet s bond to John C. was reinforced by the fact that Elliott s 19. John Taylor s account in Doctrine and Covenants 135 has Joseph Smith shot in the window and falling dead to the ground below and then shot again after he was already a lifeless corpse. Gordon B. Hinckley s Truth Restored (written before he was sustained as president of the church in 1995), indicates, With bullets bursting through the door, Joseph sprang to the window. Three bullets struck him almost simultaneously, two coming from the door and one from the window. Dying, he fell from the open window, exclaiming, O Lord, my God! (78 79). A similar view is presented in Fulness of Times, William Elliott indictment, October 1844, LDS Archives. Jonas Hobart 1845 trial testimony (Sharp, Trial, 2).

11 How Wide the Conspiracy? 259 uncle, the Reverend Arthur W. Elliott, had been a major contributor to William Henry Harrison s presidential campaign of (Burnet was Harrison s campaign manager.) By mid-1843, however, the younger Elliott was unemployed; his bankruptcy claim (on a debt of $15.38) had been denied. Desperate for work, Elliott s appointment as a deputy United States marshal was probably made at his uncle s request. 21 In mid-november of 1843, Elliott departed Hamilton by flatboat, caught a steamer in Cincinnati, and disembarked at the Warsaw dock a week later. (Is it coincidence that Elliott departed Ohio shortly after Henry Clay received Joseph Smith s presidential inquiry?) Elliott boarded with Schrench Freeman of Green Plains, about four miles and a half south of Warsaw. His physical appearance was singular. Elliott looked to be a man of some twenty six or eight years; nearly five feet eight inches tall; stoutly built, and athletic. He had on a jeans coat, with large pearl buttons, which was united at the upper part of his breast in a careless manner. The pants were taken from casinett [sic] and were considerably tattered. This dress was covered by an overcoat, cut from a green Mackinaw blanket. When he doffed his white nutria hat, it disclosed a prominent forehead and a rather disordered head of black hair. His countenance was dark; his eyes were hazel and sunk to a considerable depth in his head, over which jutted out his heavy dark eyebrows, which a continual scowl knit closely together, giving him at once a savage and heartless look... he flourished a pearl handled dirk knife, which he plied with considerable dexterity in the cavity of his ample mouth, which filled the office of a tooth-pick. 22 To make his sudden arrival in Green Plains appear less conspicuous, Elliott posed as a schoolmaster, no easy task for a woodsman more at home in the wilderness than among civil society. Although many suspected his occupation was hardly that of a teacher (more likely, teaching the young... how to shoot, said one), Elliott s ties to Jacob Burnet, Hamilton, Ohio, and the 1844 Whig presidential race were never revealed publicly during his Illinois sojourn Cone, Biographical and Historical Sketches, 184. John C. Elliott s 1842 deposition makes it clear that Elliott was personally acquainted with the Cincinnati businessman: In August or Sept 1840 I called on Jacob Burnet to leace a part of the land spoken of and he replied that he had given the land to his sun William. The details of the trial of Jacob Burnet vs. Hall and Lee are in Butler County Chancery Record, Vol. 8, [June Term 1843]. John C. Elliott is not mentioned in the summary. All Butler County (Ohio) Records Center. Rev. A. W. Elliott, Hamilton Telegraph, 14 September A History and Biographical Cyclopedia of Butler County, Ohio, 365. Heizer, Hamilton in the Making, Application of John C. Elliott for the benefit of Insolvency, 23 December (Butler County (Ohio) Records Center). See also Butler County Common Pleas Record, [1842]. Case was dismissed at the costs of the said applicant. Deputy appointments were chiefly the result of the political spoils system. Note also Henry Clay to John Woods, 17 August 1842, quoted in Papers of Henry Clay 9:760, and John McLean s 1847 case, in which he permitted deputy U.S. marshals to cross state lines (Calhoun, The Lawmen, 62). Elliott s presence in Illinois would not have been that unusual. 22. Elliott s actual arrival in Warsaw and his precise mode of transportation is not recorded. His description is from Examination of John C. Elliott, Nauvoo Neighbor, 19 February Kidnapping, Times and Seasons, 1 November 1843 [sic, for 20 December 1843] (shoot quote). On Elliott as a schoolmaster, see also Woodruff, Journal, 18 December Daniel Avery affidavit, in Smith, History of the Church 6:

12 260 Junius and Joseph Elliott s account of his involvement in the murder of Joseph Smith was preserved by an acquaintance, Stephen D. Cone, a Hamilton, Ohio, newspaperman and local historian. Cone included Elliott s remarkable life story in his 1896 volume of biographical sketches of prominent individuals with ties to southwest Ohio. As if to ensure it would not be missed by even casual readers, Elliott s entry is by far the longest, sandwiched between the lives of Ohio s governors and congressmen. Cone recorded that Elliott, as a deputy U.S. marshal, had responded to a secret national call to kill the Mormon leader after Smith withdrew support for existing political parties and asserted that the government was to be conducted by Joe Smith, as the servant of God. Prior to his departure from Ohio, Elliott was provided with a large bore long rifle made by a local Butler County gunsmith. On the day of the attack, Elliott said he was one of the advance assailants, who, after overpowering the guard, entered the jail. Cone reported that Joe Smith attempted to escape by jumping from the second story window and fell against the curb of an old fashioned well... while in a sitting position, the conspirators dispatched him with four rifle balls through the body. The rifle that John C. Elliott carried... was the largest bore in the attacking party. Upon examination of Smith s body it was found that John C. Elliott had fired the fatal shot. Elliott took the gun with him when he returned to Ohio in The rifle remained in the possession of a Hamilton, Ohio, family through the late 1890s. It has since disappeared. 24 Elliott s highly placed political connections, together with his considerable native ability, enabled him to elude justice. Elliott remained in hiding for several years following the Carthage incident and only returned to his home near Hamilton, Ohio, in late During the 1850s Elliott served as Butler County deputy sheriff, Hamilton City marshal, and a deputy U.S. marshal for Ohio s Southern District. It was in this last capacity that Elliott became one of the principal defendants in a fugitive slave case brought before the United States Supreme Court in At the outbreak of the Civil War, forty-four-year-old Elliott enlisted as a private in the Ohio Volunteers. Plagued by poor health throughout his military service, he died of a ruptured blood vessel during a company wrestling match in Taylorsville, Kentucky. 25 It remains unclear as to why Elliott a backwoodsman from Hamilton, Ohio would have been chosen to spearhead the assassination of the Mormon prophet in western Illinois. Certainly there were other men perfectly devoid of fear who would have served just as well. One potentially important fact in this regard is that Laomi Rigdon, brother of Mormon leader Sidney Rigdon, was a prominent physician from Hamilton, Ohio, and, moreover, a noted southwest Ohio Whig. (See Chapter One.) Furthermore, Anthony Howard Dunlevy, of Lebanon, Ohio, a legal partner of Supreme Court justice (and presidential hopeful) John McLean as well as Laomi and Sidney Rigdon s brother-in-law, was in Hancock County at the time of Joseph Smith s murder. Dunlevy s presence in Illinois in June of 1844 makes absolutely no sense unless it had something to do with the demise of the Mormon prophet. 24. Cone, Biographical and Historical Sketches, , The case is reviewed in Prince, Rescue Case of Calhoun, The Lawmen, Campbell, The Slave Catchers,

13 How Wide the Conspiracy? 261 It should also be noted that Elliott was not the only person engaged in the murders at Carthage with ties to southwest Ohio. Late in life Warsaw militiaman William Chittenden, one of the Chittenden boys and an advance assailant at the jail, admitted he was present when Smith, the Mormon prophet, was killed. He knew the men who fired the fatal shots there were four of them. The young Chittenden, coincidentally, was born and raised in Oxford, Ohio, where his father, Abraham, was the founding master of the Oxford Masonic Lodge. Oxford was just five miles from Darrtown, the boyhood home of John C. Elliott. Both would have been about years old when the Chittenden family moved to the Illinois frontier in It is possible the two men knew each other as youths and renewed their acquaintance in Warsaw. True to the oath of silence sworn by the assailants, Chittenden named no names. 26 At least two of the other men in the four-man firing squad can be identified with certainty. James Belton, a member of the Warsaw Rifle Company under Captain Jacob C. Davis, left Illinois shortly after the murder of Joseph Smith and made his home in Mount Airy, North Carolina. In 1898, when he was near death, Belton called a Methodist pastor to his bedside. There is something I want to tell you, something I have had on my conscience a long time, he said. I am going to die, and I want to make a full confession before I pass on. Significantly, Belton presents the identical scenario as put forward by Elliott and Cone, namely that the same men who entered the jail also formed the four-man firing squad near the well curb and were responsible for Joseph Smith s death. Belton admitted that he and three other men murdered Joseph Smith in Carthage, Ill., in About a dozen men met in Carthage the night before, he said, and pledged that they would neither eat nor sleep until Smith was dead. They had planned to murder Smith in jail, but somehow the man escaped by jumping through a window... the blow stunned him so he lay on the ground until the four men, including Belton, ran around to where he was. Once in position, the men shot the prophet propped against the well curb. 27 William Vorhees was the third gunman at the well. Like Elliott and Belton, Vorhees participated in the initial assault on the jail but was wounded in the shoulder by Joseph Smith during the altercation on the second-story landing. Shortly after the murders Jeremiah Willey, a Mormon resident of Warsaw (who lived on Mr. Pinchback s Farm, where the Warsaw militiamen regrouped following their assault on the jail) was told that Vorhees shot [Joseph Smith] from outside of the prison. After Joseph fell from the window, Vorhees turned the prophet over, cursed, and struck him as he lay against the well curb. Vorus then left him, the informant said, 26. Gregg, History of Hancock County, Man Who Helped Kill Mormon Head In 1844 Confessed in Mount Airy, Mount Airy News, 24 February This account concludes, somewhat inaccurately, and one of the number shot him through the head and killed him. An abbreviated version of Belton s account consonant with the traditional LDS view of the murder relates that as the Mormon leader leaped out of a window, [the mob] riddled his body with bullets. ( Death Bed Story Reveals Murderer of Prophet, Deseret News, 18 February 1927 and Anachronisms, Et Cetera, Saints Herald, 5 October 1946, 19). Belton s militia service record can be found with Militia records, Chicago Historical Society. Lundwall, Fate of the Persecutors, 305 6, contains a mythical rendering of Belton s later life.

14 262 Junius and Joseph after which there were more guns fired at him. Vorhees later received a fine suit of broad cloth from the people of Green Plains and Warsaw for [his] bravery. This version of events is confirmed by William Daniels s July 4 affidavit and his grand jury testimony of October 1844 (before his account was amplified by Lyman O. Littlefield), in which he recalled that when Joseph fell near the well one of the men went and raised him up and cursed the prophet. They then shot him. 28 The identity of the fourth gunman is less certain. Two possible candidates stand out. One was Jacob C. Davis (mentioned above), a Democratic state legislator and captain of the Warsaw Rifle Company. Although Davis later claimed he had finished Joseph Smith, it is not certain if his remark was intended to refer to his personal involvement or simply to the actions of the men under his command (i.e. Belton). 29 Certainly Davis s position as the leader of a rifle company presupposes considerable skill with firearms. He would have been a logical choice to ensure that the job was done. If Davis was indeed one of the four gunmen at the well (and this is by no means certain), he was the only one who joined the Masonic fraternity; Davis was raised to the Master Mason degree following his indictment by the October 1844 grand jury. 30 Another candidate for the fourth man at the well is William N. Grover, captain of the Warsaw Cadets. Like Davis, he was indicted for the murder of Joseph Smith in the fall of During the 1845 trial, a witness (whose testimony would later be thrown out of court) claimed that Grover had said he had killed Old Jo. With the charges against Davis and Grover dropped for lack of legal evidence, the likelihood of establishing with any degree of certainty which of the two was indeed the fourth gunman at the well remains problematic. 31 Furthermore, as part of the effort to protect the men in the firing squad from discovery, several conspirators and their associates before the 1845 trial, in perjured trial testimony, and even decades later were insistent in their claims that Joseph Smith was not shot after he fell from the window. Others argued that if he was shot by the well, the semi-barbarous Missourians were to blame. 32 G. T. M. Davis, for example, wrote the following account of Joseph Smith s last moments in his July 1844 pamphlet An Authentic Account of the Massacre of Joseph Smith: Upon reaching the window and throwing aside the curtain, and perceiving unexpectedly, a large armed force in disguise at the end of the building, upon the ground, he exclaimed, Oh! My God, when a number of muskets were, with the rapidity of 28. William Daniels, October 1844 grand jury testimony, P13, f41, Community of Christ, Archives (wounded in shoulder). Jeremiah Willey statement reporting a conversation with Henry Mathias on 27 June 1844, 13 August Each of these accounts provides a slightly different rendition of what Vorhees said to Joseph as he lay by the well. See also Turley, Victims. 29. Eliza Jane Graham, 1845 trial testimony (Sharp, Trial, 20). 30. On Jacob C. Davis, see Eliza Jane Graham, 1845 trial testimony (Sharp, Trial, 18 21). George Walker, 1845 trial testimony, said he heard [Davis] say, he d be d d if he was going to kill men confined in prison. (Sharp, Trial, 4). Which Davis is to be believed? 31. Hill and Oaks, Carthage Conspiracy, 147. On dropping of charges, Hay, The Mormon Prophet s Tragedy, 676.

15 How Wide the Conspiracy? 263 thought, discharged at the unfortunate wretch, five or six of which took effect. He fell head forward to the earth, and was dead, as I am informed by one who examined him immediately on falling, when he struck the ground. He was wounded in the breast by five or six different shots, either of which would, in all human probability, have proved fatal. Later in the booklet Davis taunted his readers. The expectations of the public, may possibly, anticipate a disclosure of the names of the persons connected with the destruction of the Smiths, and the extent to which the citizens, generally, were privy to the affair. To say that I do not know any who participated in the attack, would not be true. But the circumstances under which I came in possession of that knowledge, were of that nature, that no inducement on earth, could prompt, or coerce me, to divulge their names. 33 During the 1845 trial, Thomas Dixon testified for the prosecution that he did not see [Joseph] set up by the well curb. He set himself up. Did not see any strange miraculous light, or four men shoot Smith, or any one paralyzed. Similarly, Thomas R. Griffiths, who years later discovered the June 27, 1844, coroner s inquest, recalled that he was eighteen years old when the Smiths were killed, and witnessed the tragedy, he being a member of the old Carthage Greys. He says Smith was not shot at after he fell from the jail window. 34 One of the most influential articles on the murder of the Mormon prophet was written more than two decades after the event by John Hay, the son of Charles Hay, Warsaw militia surgeon and former Kentucky neighbor of Henry Clay. The younger Hay, who served as secretary to Abraham Lincoln and later became his biographer, was just seven years old at the time of Joseph Smith s death. Following a visit to his hometown of Warsaw in 1869, where he interviewed some of the surviving assailants and examined trial documents in the Carthage courthouse, Hay composed his own version of events surrounding the death of the first Mormon prophet for the Boston literary magazine The Atlantic Monthly. Called The Mormon Prophet s Tragedy, Hay s description of Joseph s final moments includes the scene at the well. With his last dying energies he gathered himself up, and leaned in a sitting posture against the rude stone well-curb. In place of the selectmen from the Warsaw militia, however, Hay inserts a squad of Missourians who were standing by the fence. These men leveled their pieces at him, and, before they could see him again for the smoke they made, Joe Smith was dead. Hay s critical substitution of actors in this drama (keeping in mind that his effort was more on the level of popular literature than serious history) effectively deflected blame away from the actual participants in the assault on the jail, many of whom at the time of his writing were still living in Hancock County. Hay s account also served to reinforce the popularly held belief that the Missourians were the prime movers behind the conspiracy to murder the Mormon prophet Davis, Authentic Account, Thomas Dixon, 1845 trial testimony (Sharp, Trial, 18). Coroner s Jury Verdict in Murder of Joseph Smith, [unknown newspaper] John Hay, The Mormon Prophet s Tragedy, The Atlantic Monthly 24 (1869):676. Hay apparently follows O. C. Skinner s closing arguments at the 1845 trial, in which the latter claimed, The fact that

16 264 Junius and Joseph In 1886 Jason H. Sherman, then an attorney in upstate New York, published his reminiscences. An acknowledged participant in the attack on Carthage jail, Sherman stressed, But it is not true, as was sometimes reported, that his assailants leaned his body up against the curb and made it a target. * * * (Asterisks, signifying missing words, are in the original.) Likewise, in 1890 Hancock historian Thomas Gregg (the same individual who in 1844 was campaigning for Henry Clay in Rock Island, Illinois,) disputed the claim that a firing squad shot the prophet as he was propped up by the well curb. This, from reliable information, we believe was not the case. Gregg s unnamed source was identified only by his initials, J. H. S., a highly intelligent gentleman who was a resident of Carthage at that time and well-known in the county. That man was, of course, Jason H. Sherman. Even in their old age Sherman and Gregg were intent upon keeping the identity of the assailants a secret. 36 At the end of the century, by which time most of the participants had passed away, the scene at the well could go unmentioned. William R. Hamilton, son of Artois Hamilton (the proprietor of Carthage s main hotel), perhaps the youngest member of the Carthage Greys in 1844, and one of the last surviving eyewitnesses, concluded a 1902 recounting of events at Carthage with these telling words: There are many facts and names of persons connected with that tragedy, which are now lost to the world where it seems best to let them remain. Hamilton s account of the assassination makes no mention of a firing squad. 37 Clay s Men There is more truth whispered round Hal, than your philosophy ever dreamed of. appended to The Murders at Carthage, Nauvoo Neighbor, October 30, The Murders at Carthage reported on the October indictments of nine Hancock County men for the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith the previous June. The cryptic epigram appended to the notice is a reference to Henry Clay, who, following his successful negotiations for the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, became popularly known as Prince Hal, named after a character in Shakespeare s play Henry IV. The unimaginable truth alluded to in this verse was recognition that Joseph Smith s assassination was looked upon favorably by Clay and his political managers. Numerous editorials in the Mormon press chastised Henry Clay (and the Whigs generally) for not condemning the Carthage affair and insisting that the men neither of them [Franklin Worrell and two other witnesses] saw one person among them he knew is the clearest proof that they were not the Warsaw troops but others and strangers in the county, in other words, Missourians. (29 May 1845, Wilford C. Wood Collection, trial transcript, 96). 36. Published in the Ithaca Daily Journal 26 April 1886, quoted in Marsh, Mormons in Hancock County, 52 53, Gregg, Prophet of Palmyra, , Scofield, History of Hancock County, 84 87, Hallwas and Launius, Cultures in Conflict, Gregg, The Prophet of Palmyra, William R. Hamilton to Foster Walker, 24 December 1902, Martin Collection, Regional Archives, Western Illinois University. 38. The Murders at Carthage, Nauvoo Neighbor, 30 October 1844.