When I was in high school, 10th grade was the year we took American History, and I opted to take the Advanced Placement version of the class, colloquially known as AP US History (APUSH).

If you don’t remember or your school declined to participate in the gifted kid industrial complex, these classes were billed as college-level courses and provided as a substitute for an honor’s class, but instead of providing college credit outright, you had to take a test and hope whatever college you go to will accept your score.

I got a 3 on the APUSH exam. My second trimester was a breeze, an easy-A learning about post-Civil War and 20th-century American history. No problems there. But the first trimester? My teacher was a football coach who started every single 54-minute class period with a 10-25 minute “Convo Question” that was literally just the teacher shooting the s**t with us. It was fun, but painfully obvious that we weren’t being set up for success.

I was never really required to learn much about pre-Civil War America. My PoliSci degree was largely focused on the modern era, and when I did learn history, it was almost always 20th century.

You’ll be surprised to learn that in my search for learning more about the early Mormon church that national politics were always at arm’s reach from Joseph Smith, and thus, I know now who the Know-Nothings are, and why the Whigs were important, and the steamroller on civic life that was the Jacksonian Democratic Party.

It’s really hard to overstate just how shockingly powerful Joseph Smith had become in the 14 years since publishing the Book of Mormon.

When the Mormons arrived in Illinois, they elected not to yoke themselves to the Whig or Democrat wagons, instead opting to stay “neutral,” and take advantage of Smith’s massive voter base to sway politicians towards his whims.

Nauvoo was the closest thing to the Kingdom of Zion that Joseph saw in his lifetime. Joseph Smith was the prophet, mayor, justice of the peace, and gave himself the title of Lieutenant General of the Nauvoo Legion, a militia with real legal authority with 2,500 members under Joseph’s command, which was 1/3rd of the size of the entire United States Army.

At the same time, Joseph Smith was amassing a, for lack of a better word, harem of “plural wives,” he was marrying in secret. He had successfully, on multiple occasions, pressured and coerced dozens of women and girls (remember: he was a pedophile) to be “eternally sealed” to him, whether they were married already or not.

So what’s next for the Prophet? Running for President, obviously.

This is Putting the Moron in Moroni: Mormons, Martyrs, and Misery in Missouri. This week we're celebrating election day in Minneapolis with a bonus edition to cover Joseph Smith’s 1844 campaign for president of the United States, something that did, indeed, actually happen. We know why he did it (he was insane), but what did he believe? What kind of bonkers policies does a conman criminal with no real political experience put forward in a long-shot campaign for President? What did his friends and followers think? Did it get him killed?

Thanks for reading and listening.

I swear to God there’s only one more mainline article and one more bonus and then I’m done with the Mormons. Stick around for the funnier ones and subscribe now.

Joseph Smith had ambitions beyond his theocracy in Nauvoo: he wanted power, and he wanted power that was illusive.

One of Mormonism’s hallmarks is the secretive nature about what they “actually believe.” Depending on how out of the loop you are, you’ll be shocked learning about the various America-centric beliefs, like both reviling and worshipping Native Americans, or their unique eschatology and beliefs about the afterlife. Or maybe you’re just as surprised as most TBMs to learn just how terrible Joseph Smith was and that he claimed to translate the book (he couldn’t read) using “seeing stones” and looking into a hat.

The secretive nature lends itself to Mormonism’s cult-like tendencies, while also building fervor, zealotry, and a large in-group. I’d argue this is largely out of Joseph Smith’s obsession with Freemasonry, most of which can be traced to John C. Bennett’s brief time as Joseph Smith’s number one man. Bennett, a Mormon, urged Smith to join and by 1844, Nauvoo had not one, not two, but three Masonic lodges.

Many aspects of Mormon temple ceremonies, like secret “grips”/handshakes, passwords, special names, special clothes, are stolen one-for-one with Freemasonry with added Mormon flair.

However like the Mormons, Masons were the target of significant public ire throughout the first half of the 19th century. A shockingly powerful national anti-Mason movement began in the 1830s, who were courted away from their one-issue political party, the Anti-Masonic Party, and fell under the tutelage of the Whigs by 1838.

The most baffling way this connects with our Mormons is not necessarily that President Andrew Jackson was a Mason, or that the Mormons planned to usurp Democratic power by joining the Whigs. Instead, we have to turn our attention to William Morgan, a prominent upstate New York (of course) anti-Mason who was in the process of publishing a book revealing all of the scandalous secrets of Freemasonry. Morgan was arrested on trumped-up charges, and was disappeared and likely murdered in 1826 in an act widely believed to have been carried out by Masons trying to prevent his book from being published. His death bolstered national anti-Masonic views and led to the creation of the Anti-Masonic Party.

When William Morgan died in 1826, his wife Lucinda would remarry, and move to Missouri, where she converted to Mormonism. I don’t think it’s an accident, however, that Lucinda has been identified and is generally accepted to have been one of Joseph Smith’s first plural wives, because of course f*****g Joseph Smith would marry the widow of the most prominent and infamous Anti-Mason activist.

Joseph Smith’s obsession with (and frankly jealousy of) Freemasonry led to perhaps the biggest innovations in Mormonism; many of the “revelations” from this time took an already high-demand religion and made it more and more cult-like, with secret rituals and teachings, barring all non-members from Temples, and one-of-a-kind theology like baptisms for the dead. And it all came from the Freemasons. I’m sure no one will ever have an issue with this.

I bring this story up because it has multiple important intersections with Mormonism and the end of Smith’s life:

* Mormonism’s secretive ceremonies are a sham, and whatever supposed divine purpose they have is really just so he could copy Masons,

* Smith’s public support for Democrats in Illinois, on top of his private and public support for Freemasonry, pissed Whigs the f**k off,

* His affair with Lucinda Morgan shows his promiscuity and carelessness with “the Principle” at the time; it doesn’t matter how prominent a Mormon woman or girl is: if Joseph Smith is interested, he’ll stop at nothing to get his way.

You can probably imagine how a man as powerful and reckless as Smith would become paranoid. He feared and frequently risked his legal and physical safety, but also saw the fragility of his political and religious leadership.

The arrival, ascension, and excommunication of John C. Bennett was proof Smith saw his church’s leadership, members, and political allies as disposable. And while the Anti-Mason Whigs and the Mason-friendly Jacksonian Democrats welcomed the Mormons, that didn’t last long. An angry mob always seems to be around the corner, will Illinois protect the Mormons when the mobs inevitably come to Nauvoo?

Over the years since first arriving in Jackson County, Missouri, the Mormons had become intimately familiar with the legal system, even beyond Joseph Smith’s extensive arrest record. Mormons were frequently in DC advocating for protection from the angry mobs that always seemed to be wherever the Mormons went (weird how that works). They had earned and rightfully lost political protection in Missouri, but popular sympathy for fringe political groups during the Second Great Awakening meant the Mormons would find greater success in the years to come.

In 1842, after Bennett’s excommunication, prominent Illinois politician and infamous Abe Lincoln rival Stephen Douglas publicly acknowledged that, while the Mormons benefited from positive political optics due to their persecution at the hands of the Missouri government, the tide of public opinion had shifted after “two years of popular sympathy.” Douglas would protect Smith one final time, blocking extradition orders to Missouri, which drew ire from the Whigs in Springfield and put the long-term legal and political prospects of the Mormons in Illinois in jeopardy.

The Democrats abandoned Smith while the Whigs actively reviled him. He had demonstrated to his friends and followers that they were replaceable. But even if he had haters, he still had guns, a sham court, and the word of God.

In late 1843, Joseph Smith was recovering from being “poisioned” (he blamed his first wife, Emma), and wrote to political leaders requesting Nauvoo be given independence as a separate territory but retain the ability to call federal troops to their aid. This was unsuccessful.

Joseph Smith then wrote to five people who had announced their candidacies for the ‘44 election to see what protection/support the candidates would promise his 14,000 followers in Illinois. Only three replied and none of them made any promises to help the Mormons.

Unsatisfied and paranoid, Smith took action. In January ‘44, Church leaders met in Nauvoo and decided that Joseph Smith would throw his hat (unclear if its the same hat he stared into to “translate” the golden plates) in the ring. He would announce his candidacy in February.

His running mate (with Bennett now out of the picture) would obviously be longtime co-conspirator Sidney Rigdon, who many speculate was really the one pulling the strings of creating the more…religious Mormon doctrines, including probably writing the Book of Mormon.

They created a new political party they called the Reform Party, which nominated Smith and Rigdon in May ‘44.

Long before the IRS was sending nasty letters to politically active churches, the Mormons really wanted to tear down the wall between church and state and instead conjoin them at the hip. They established an official church council devoted to “electioneering,” and in the church’s own words, sent folks to “serve” on “electioneering missions.”

“Church leaders recognized the power of print media to spread their message through the country, so they printed and distributed thousands of copies of Joseph Smith’s campaign pamphlet. In New York City, Church leaders started a newspaper called the Prophet, which was dedicated to covering Joseph’s candidacy and compared his policy positions to the other candidates in the race. In addition to printed campaign messaging, over 300 Church members served electioneering missions throughout the country.”

We’ve got the rubes, time to put them to work. Supposedly, there were Reform Party political conferences organized in every state. They clearly had the manpower; church leaders were also sent to the national conventions of the Whigs and Democrats to unsuccessfully lobby for Smith-Rigdon ‘44.

I neglected to mention that the official political committee of the church, the so-called Council of Fifty (which is named like a bunch of other stupid church committees, like the Seventies, Quorum of the Twelve, etc.), was more than a committee to run a political campaign—they were laying the ground work to overthrow the existing political system to establish a theocratic monarchy with Joseph Smith squarely at the top.

The LDS church’s official apologist arm has this to say:

Just as the Church was to bring about religious changes in the world, the Council of Fifty was intended to bring a political transformation. It was therefore designed to serve as something of a preparatory legislature in the Kingdom of God. Joseph Smith ordained the council to be the governing body of the world, with himself as chairman, over the Council and the world (subject to Jesus Christ, who is “King of kings”).

19th century Mormon Christian Nationalism. Great.

But what was Joseph Smith actually running on? A bespoke political ideology conveniently combining American ideals with the theocracy of the world’s most American religion. He called it “Theodemocracy.”

Joseph Smith intentionally divorced himself with the Whigs and the Democrats by 1842, leaving him to take liberties on shaping his new political ideology and the campaign at large.

In a pamphlet conveniently titled General Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States, in classic prophetic form, Joseph Smith goes on a litany of political and ecclesiastical tirades. As someone who spent a lot of time and money in undergrad thinking about political views and systems comparatively, I’d say Joseph was pretty firmly a “populist” whose worldview was mostly “the government should leave me alone and let me be in charge.”

* He changed his tone from staunchly abolitionist to a kind of Republican Jesus view of slavery, where it should be abolished, but those who owned slaves must be compensated by the government. He felt that southern slave-owning whites were “hospitable and noble.” He claimed “they will help to rid so free a country of every vestige of slavery, whenever they are assured of an equivalent for their property.” D*****s.

* Unsurprisingly, he loved manifest destiny and wanted the US to expand by purchasing Texas, California, and Oregon. He wanted a central bank, advocated expanding immigration, and reduce the number of people in Congress, as well as reducing their pay.

* The most amusing ideas Smith put forward are those that seem like they suspiciously apply to him and his Mormon community in Nauvoo vs. everyday Americans. For instance, he wanted to abolish all prisons, especially debtor’s prisons.

* He believed in an idea of prison abolition where the government did as Jesus did in a bible story and say “go thy way and sin no more,” which means the ex-cons will not sin anymore. Trust me bro. I can’t possibly imagine why a man with an incredibly long rap sheet and arrest record would possibly be focused on abolishing the carceral part of the criminal justice system.

* More absurd and even more eyebrow-raising was Joseph’s insistence that local governments can demand the President mobilize federal troops to (get this) quell angry mobs. You read that right: the nation’s greatest magnet for angry mobs thinks that the President should have to help him and his cronies fight back against mobs and so-called “mobocracy.”

The truth is that we really don’t know how close Joseph Smith got to becoming President, because his hubris all came to a head after a group of church leaders declared independence from Joseph’s Church after his April 18 revelations and subsequent excommunications.

Smith’s followers were not as compliant in preparing for the new Kingdom of God as he would have liked. The inner circle of his supporters had been taught “The Principle” by Joseph, but it was still far from public knowledge, especially by TBMs, and the pill was tough to swallow for many Mormons.

In January 1844, he was caught sleeping with a follower’s wife (her husband wasn’t aware of The Principle), and another in the following months.

He also preached a new polytheistic doctrine and that God is an exalted man, and that Mormon men getting their own planets were indeed gods at the same level as the big man upstairs, which pissed off a decent chunk of his adherents. The same day (April 18, 1844), he declared himself Prophet, Priest, and King of the world to the Council of Fifty. He excommunicated dissenters on the spot.

Trouble was brewing within the flock while Smith’s attention was elsewhere, much like it had when the Mormons were split between Palmyra and Kirtland, then Kirtland and Jackson County, then Jackson County and Far West. But this time it was split between the faithful and the heretics.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, Joseph Smith’s charismatic leadership and cult was largely based on tenuous b******t to begin with, and he managed to convince 12,000 or so people to giving up literally everything to be part of his personal kingdom. These people would probably not be too pleased with being kicked out now, all because Joseph came up with brand new views that were in contention with mainstream protestant beliefs.

The disillusioned Mormons created the “True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” which held that while the Book of Mormon was true, Joseph Smith had lost his way. Specifically, this group was pissed about the new polytheistic theology, how those outside his closest confidants were learning about “the Principle,” and irritation with his vain long-shot Presidential run.

Over the next two months, Joseph would make a series of illegal and criminal moves as leader of the city of Nauvoo against his hyperlocal political enemies that would ultimately lead to his final arrest and internment at Carthage Jail in Carthage, IL.

Next time, we visit the Carthage Jail and subject ourselves to the cultiest experience of our lives as we visit the death site of Joseph Smith Jr., prophet and founder of the Mormon church.

Congratulations, you have been called by the First Presidency of The UTP Church to serve on the first-ever Council of Fifty-ish. I am prophet, priest, and king—let your friends know.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit uffdatimespicayune.substack.com