Many faithful LDS scholars have tried to distance Joseph Smith from the Danite raids that took place in Missouri. But how responsible was Joseph for Danite actions in Missouri?  Historian Steve LeSueur answers.

https://youtu.be/UbIwSDxYkg4

Was Joseph Responsible for Danites?

GT:  Tell us what you think about Joseph Smith's involvement with the Danites was?

Steve:  Well, one of the questions is, to what extent might he have been directing them or telling them what to do, or creating their the rules and laws? We don't know.  We don't have any evidence that he was directly in those meetings telling him to do this or that. We just know that the things they did, he endorsed or approved of, and didn't seem to take issue with.  Except, there was one thing that some historians, now--I know, Alex has pointed out, and another historian by the name of Neymar. I can't remember his first name. He has written about Avard and the Danites.

Steve:  They have pointed this out, which is, that after the Gallatin Election Battle, the Danites organized in Far West and rode to Adam-ondi-Ahman, because they had heard that two Mormons had been killed and the Missourians wouldn't let them be buried. So, they rode up thinking there were problems. Joseph rode with them. Now, several accounts say Joseph was the leader of this group, that he led them up. He was, obviously, with them. If you know Joseph Smith, some people [say,] "Well, he was just along for the ride." Well, Joseph is never just along for the ride. I mean, Joseph is the leader of the Mormons, but they organized under the Danite generals, they rode up there to Adam-ondi-Ahman and they discovered that nobody had been killed. But there had been this brawl, and so they decided they would go visit Adam Black, who was one of the newly elected justices. They'd heard that he had been opposed to the Mormons, and they wanted to make sure that he would enforce the law and not be prejudiced against the Mormons.

Steve:  So, they sent a group of Danite leaders to visit him, and they wanted him to sign a statement, saying that he would rule fairly in Daviess County.  He was outraged, saying, "You have no right to come in and threaten me to do this.  I'm a justice, I'll be fair, but, this is outrageous." They couldn't get him to sign, despite threats from Avard and perhaps the others as well.

Steve:  So, they left, and then they came back with Joseph and about 100 other Mormons. They surrounded the house, though Joseph said they were just there to water their horses, that Adam Black, apparently, had better water on his property than they had in the Grand River and around Adam-ondi-Ahman, at least that's what they said. So, a whole company of Mormons now surrounds Black's house, and he still won't sign the paper. So, they say, "Well, would you like to talk to Joseph Smith?"

So, Joseph comes into the house, and Joseph is very nice. He said, "Well, listen. We've had trouble with mobbers, people. My people are upset. They would really like it if you'd sign this document. It would just make them feel a lot better."

Black was still pretty mad, and, apparently, he said, "Well, this guy, here, Avard, he's threatening to kill me or cut my throat or something." And Black asks Joseph, "Is that what you're like?"

Joseph says, "No, no, no. I don't agree to any kind of that rough stuff. That's not my nature.  We'd really like you to sign this statement that we have." Finally, Black says, "Well, I'll write one of my own." So, he writes his own statement to the effect of, "I, Adam Black, will not form a mob," or come against them.” I can't remember exactly what he said. But he signed his own statement, and everybody left. So, that was that. Then, after that, the Daviess County Missourians, including Adam Black, went to Richmond and filed statements that the Mormons were threatening.

With the last-lasting priesthood and temple ban that ended in 1978, Mormons have a poor record with regards to race relations.  I talked about reasons why Brigham Young changed from support of ordination of blacks to opposition my last episode, but Apostle Orson Pratt is a bright spot in Mormon history given his vocal support for black civil and voting rights.  Slavery was legalized in Utah in 1852 because of support by Mormon prophet Brigham Young.  However, his apostle/legislator Orson Pratt not only went on record to oppose slavery, but was a proponent of black voting rights!  Dr. Paul Reeve of the University of Utah describes his findings of recently discovered speeches of the 1852 Utah Territorial Legislative session.  My mind was blown to learn that a decade prior to the Civil War, Pratt was a proponent of voting rights for African Americans, and said “angels will blush” if Utah passed the slavery bill.  Please listen in!  You can get a transcript here, or at Amazon.

In March 1847, Brigham Young was quoted as being favorably aware of Q. Walker Lewis, a black Elder in the LDS Church in Boston.  But in February 1852, he is quoted as saying that black men will never hold the priesthood.  What caused this remarkable change in Brigham Young?  Listen in to find out!  Click here if you’d like a transcript, or you can get one at Amazon too!

What do you think of Brigham Young’s reaction?

It’s #BlackHistoryMonth and we’ve been discussing #BlackMormonHistory, but of course there are other marginalized groups, and I wanted to share a few quotes from my most recent podcast with Dr. Paul Reeve.  Lately President Trump has been in the news with his Muslim ban/not a ban on immigration into this country.  Paul Reeve wrote an Op Ed in the Deseret News saying Trump’s Muslim ban looks like Mormon ban.  I interviewed Paul in January, and here are some quotes from the podcast. (Click here to listen on Stitcher.)

…in Nauvoo when they write their vision of religious equality, they simply say everyone’s welcome to worship in Nauvoo.  We don’t discriminate.  There’s no religious discrimination and there’s a whole long list of Christian denominations that are welcome in Nauvoo.  The only non-Christian group mentioned were Muslims, and they simply say yeah we welcome Muslims here as well.  So Joseph Smith was branded as an American Mohammad very early on in his religious career yet he is open and accepting of into his religious community in Nauvoo and simply says religious freedom should be for everyone.  An attack against religious liberty against one group is an attack against all groups, so we should be at the forefront defending religious freedom and religious liberty.

Given that the church has been promoting religious liberty, do you think we are standing up for Muslims as much as we should, especially given Pres. Trump’s rhetoric?

Paul also discussed how outsiders viewed Mormons as too friendly with Indians, what we now refer to as Native Americans.

But in the minds of outsiders, that’s just evidence that Mormons are attempting to conspire with Native Americans to wipe out the rest of white America.  So there are all kinds of really heightened rumors that circulate.  Mormons have thousands of Indians at their behest.  The Indians are just waiting for the signal from their Mormon overlords to go on the warpath and wipe out the rest of us.

The way that it plays out, Mormons are just sometimes branded as more savage than the savages.  They’re described sometimes as white Indians, white people who  have actually given themselves over to savagery, and because you have denied your racial identity, you actually sink to a level of depravity worse than the Native Americans was the argument, and so Mormons become worse than the Indians whom they go to live amongst, some of the accusations leveled against them.

Pres Trump has spoken against China as well, not necessarily Chinese immigrants as in Joseph Smith’s day.  Mormons were compared to Chinese as well.

Democracy is for the white race, the yellow horde is incapable of democracy.  Mormons are a version of Orientalism because they’re practicing polygamy, they’re giving their free will over to despots.  In all of those ways the argument was that they are more like the Chinese than they are like white Americans, like Anglo-Saxons.  Therefore they are suspect.

The same Congress that passes the Chinese Exclusion Act also passes the Edmunds Act and newspapers across the nation argue that America has now solved both Oriental problems.  Some of them say, well Chinese should be allowed to stay but the Mormons are the ones that should go, so they are conflated in editorials across the nation with the Chinese problem.  There’s the Mormon problem, and there’s a Chinese problem, and we’re trying to solve both Oriental problems at once.

I had to ask Paul about the Edmunds Act, which was enacted to take care of the polygamy problem.  The act helped send thousands of Mormons to jail not for polygamy per se, but for the new crime of “cohabitation.”

Mormons are familiar with stories of persecutions in Missouri back in the 1830s.  Why were Mormons so persecuted?  It turns out that the people of Missouri were concerned that Mormons were trying to start a Slave Rebellion.  On the other hand, Joseph Smith was known to be against the abolitionist movement.  Could both positions be true?  We asked these questions to Dr. Paul Reeve of the University of Utah and he gives his answers which may surprise you.  Here are a few excerpts from my interview with Paul.

Outsiders, non-Mormons in Missouri read that article and get up in arms really quickly. They suggest that the Mormons are inviting free blacks to the state of Missouri to incite a slave rebellion.  Beyond that they also argue they are inviting free blacks to the state of Missouri to steal our white wives and daughters.  Fear of race mixing is always bound up in these charges leveled against the Mormons almost from the beginning, that somehow they are inciting a slave rebellion is one argument, but also race mixing was the other argument.  You’re inviting free blacks, and black men.  There was the myth of the black beast rapist that animates white people’s concerns of who black people are, especially black men.  All black men just simply want white women, and that charge is leveled against the Mormons.

…

Mormons are labeled as abolitionists who are in favor of amalgamation—amalgamation is the pre-Civil War term for race mixing, then Joseph Smith finds it politically expedient to speak out against the immediate abolitionists and amalgamation, race mixing.

I also wondered if there any modern parallels, such as the LDS Church’s current position on abortion.

Yeah, that might work as an analogy.  I mean if you go with the church’s position on abortion in the 21st century, abortion has to be legal for its position to be valid, right?

Here is a link to a Transcript on our website or Amazon.com

Are you surprised that Joseph Smith was anti-slavery and anti-abolitionist?  Do you think abortion is a modern-day equivalent to slavery?

In today’s world, Mormonism is seen as a predominantly white church, but in Joseph Smith’s day, it was perceived as just the opposite.  Mormons were considered so different back then that many scientists and doctors thought a new race was coming from the Great Basin Kingdom.  How did outsiders get such strange ideas?  Dr. Paul Reeve, professor of history at the University of Utah will help us answer that question.

Please click on the link to listen, but I wanted to share a few quotes from Paul that I really enjoyed from the interview.

…in the 19th century Mormonism was actually born into a very charged racial context.  Even immigrants from northern and western Europe were being racialized as not fully white.  There was a racial hierarchy that animated 19th century thought about where people fit in, and Anglo-Saxons were at the top of that hierarchy, and then Irish immigrants or Italian immigrants were seen as less than fully white somewhere down that racial ladder, and obviously you have Native Americans, Asians, African Americans at the bottom of the racial ladder, and 19th century observers were trying to figure out where to situate Mormons.

The argument of the book is that they weren’t merely religiously suspect but also racially suspect.  You had medical doctors who actually argued that Mormonism, Mormon polygamy in particular was giving rise to a new race, a degraded, sunken, degenerate race and therefore Mormons and their bodies were denigrated as not white.

Another quote:

But you have what we would consider pseudo-scientists today, but in the 19th century people who are arguing that in fact that there was more than one genesis, or more than one origin, that the races were so distinct, black and white were so distinct that there must have been separate species.  It’s called the polygenesis theory, more than one genesis.

Religious thinkers rejected it because they saw it as an attack against the Bible.

What do you think of these strange notions?

Here is our recording on YouTube:

As part of #BlackHistoryMonth, we continue our conversation with Margaret Young and she tells about her attempts to get her play about black Mormon Pioneer Jane Manning James televised, (don’t forget to check out part 1 of our conversation), but the project was quashed as some executives were concerned about the topic, despite Jane’s faithfulness to the end of her life.

Margaret also discusses ways she and her family have tried to combat racism in her life, including a disappointing experience with a seminary teacher.  She talks about her experiences learning about the lifting of the ban in 1978, and, when asked about what we can learn from Jane’s life, says

“I want Jane’s story to be certainly an example how far we still need to come.  If there are people who regard blacks as less than, their hearts must change.  Jane is an example of one who persevered through trials that we could hardly imagine, and did it through her relationship with God and praised God throughout.”

Listen in, and find out who we will be talking to next!

If you’re interested in a transcript, click here!  (You can also get one for your Kindle at Amazon.com!)

I’m excited to post our first podcast!  I interviewed Margaret Young, a professor of English and Literature at BYU on the life of black Mormon Pioneer Jane Manning James.  Listen to Margaret describe Jane’s conversion in Wilton, Connecticut, Jane’s travel by foot to Nauvoo, and her intimate relationship with every prophet from Joseph Smith through her death under President Wilford Woodruff.  Especially interesting is Jane’s unusual sealing to the Prophet Joseph.  It’s a truly inspiring tale, and I thank Margaret for sitting down with me to discuss Jane’s life.  I hope you’ll come back when I post part 2 of our discussion with Margaret about her experiences dealing with race.

I’d also like to invite you to support our work.  This podcast is just a part of what we’re trying to put together here at Gospel Tangents.  We’d like to put together some high quality documentaries about Mormon history, and need your support.  You can support us in a few different ways:

* Become a monthly subscriber at our website, GospelTangents.com. This will help us put together high quality interviews for documentaries on Mormon History.  We’re trying to follow the admonition in Doctrine & Covenants 88:18 to teach “out of the best books … by study and also by faith.”  Donate any amount you feel comfortable.

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Thanks again for listening, and we hope you’ll continue to support our work here at Gospel Tangents!  Do you have any questions for me or Margaret?

With the last-lasting priesthood and temple ban that ended in 1978, Mormons have a poor record with regards to race relations.  I talked about reasons why Brigham Young changed from support of ordination of blacks to opposition my last episode, but Apostle Orson Pratt is a bright spot in Mormon history given his vocal support for black civil and voting rights.  Slavery was legalized in Utah in 1852 because of support by Mormon prophet Brigham Young.  However, his apostle/legislator Orson Pratt not only went on record to oppose slavery, but was a proponent of black voting rights!  Dr. Paul Reeve of the University of Utah describes his findings of recently discovered speeches of the 1852 Utah Territorial Legislative session.  My mind was blown to learn that a decade prior to the Civil War, Pratt was a proponent of voting rights for African Americans, and said “angels will blush” if Utah passed the slavery bill.  Please listen in!  You can get a transcript here, or at Amazon.

In March 1847, Brigham Young was quoted as being favorably aware of Q. Walker Lewis, a black Elder in the LDS Church in Boston.  But in February 1852, he is quoted as saying that black men will never hold the priesthood.  What caused this remarkable change in Brigham Young?  Listen in to find out!  Click here if you’d like a transcript, or you can get one at Amazon too!

What do you think of Brigham Young’s reaction?