The Life of Joseph Smith, the Prophet

by George Q. Cannon

Foster stammered in reply: "It's my pistol."

He would have lied, but under that piercing glance his bravado deserted him, and he was compelled to acknowledge the fact.

The reason of his visit was soon made plain, and it was made plainer at a later time by the testimony of unimpeachable witnesses, Saints and strangers alike. He had not come to seek forgiveness and restoration of fellowship; he had not come to make amends. He had come to lure Joseph away to his death. His party had sworn to slay the Prophet, and every attempt up to this time had failed. The situation was desperate for the plotters. They were about to commit a flagrant violation of the law, and the one man whom they most feared as the defender and executor of law was the mayor of the city. If they could have taken Joseph away where his assassination could have been accomplished without the instant capture of his murderer, they believed that safe refuge could be found in the bosom of the waiting mob at Carthage and other places.

Joseph smiled upon the craven wretch, and told him to bring his witnesses if he desired and they would confer concerning his restoration to fellowship. This, Foster willingly promised and left the mansion, saying that he would return with his friends immediately. He never came back. His answer was to send forth the Expositor, edited by Sylvester Emmons, reeking with libel and fulfilling its promise to override the law in its determination to deal a death blow at the city of Nauvoo. Naturally the inhabitants were enraged. Citizens said:

If these men do not like Nauvoo, why do they continue to reside here? The repeal of the charter means the financial and social ruin of the city. This would despoil us without benefiting these men, except by the gratification of vengeful hate.

It would have been easy in that state of public feeling to incite an attack upon the paper or its publishers. But the leading men remained cool and counseled strict observance of law. Let this be remembered; for it shows that Joseph was never willing to meet evil with evil; that he would rather suffer wrong than to do wrong; and that his appeal was always made to law and justice instead of passion. And let it be remembered that not only then but afterward through all the difficulties which followed closely upon the publication of the Expositor, the lives of the Laws, the Higbees and the Fosters were as safe in Nauvoo as they would have been in Carthage, Springfield or Washington.

Three days later, June 10, at a meeting of the city council the Expositor was declared a public nuisance and was ordered to be abated. Under the resolution to this effect the marshal was ordered to proceed as he would for the removal of any other nuisance—he was to eradicate it. If a vile odor assail the nostrils of decent people, the only effectual remedy is to abolish the cause; and such was the course pursued in this case. Marshal John P. Greene with his assistants proceeded to the office of the Expositor and destroyed the press and pied the type.

This was summary action; but it was legal. It was the only remedy for any public or private wrong inflicted by the Expositor. Its publishers were impecunious. Suits for private redress or fines for public recompense would have been unavailing; while the imprisonment of the publishers would have been heralded as a still greater wrong against the freedom of the press than was the destruction of the offending materials.

Immediate events showed that the league to ruin Nauvoo by newspaper lies was widely extended, for mobocratic excitement outside of Nauvoo arose on the instant, and wholesale and indiscriminate vengeance was threatened.

And yet the destruction of an offending press was not new in Illinois. Thomas Ford was governor at this time, and in the awful crimes which closely followed he was the responsible participant. It is interesting, therefore, to note what he said of a similar destruction of an unpopular press and type, at another time and in another community. In the history of Illinois, published after his death to get bread for his destitute children, he details the proceedings of the Alton mob. In 1837, Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, of the Presbyterian church, published the Alton, Illinois, Observer as a religious paper, in which slavery was opposed. Abolitionism was not popular there and to quote Ford's words: "The people assembled and quietly took the press and type and threw them into the Mississippi. It now became manifest to all rational men that the Alton Observer could no longer be published in Alton as an abolition paper. The more reasonable of the abolitionists themselves thought it would be useless to try it again. However, a few of them, who were most violent seemed to think that the salvation of the black race depended upon continuing the publication at Alton." Certain members of the Presbyterian church determined to continue this paper. One of the principal men engaged in the movement to re-establish the Observer was Reverend Mr. Beecher, president of Illinois college; and of him Ford says: "Mr. Beecher was a man of great learning and decided talents; but he belonged to the class of reformers who disregard all considerations of policy and expediency. He believed slavery to be a sin and a great evil, and his indignant and impatient soul could not await God's own good time to overthrow it, by acts of His providence working continual change and revolution in the affairs of men." A new press was bought, and it was determined that Lovejoy, who was very objectionable to the rabble, should continue as editor. After the arrival of the press it was guarded in a warehouse; but the mob gathered and demanded its possession. Ford speaks of the protectors of the press as being converted into demons of obstinacy. A fight occurred, the mob being the first assailants. Lovejoy and one of the mobocrats were killed; other men were wounded. The press was seized and, like the other, it was thrown into the river—although not a single copy of the paper had yet been printed with these materials. No man was punished for this crime of abolishing a free press at the expense of murder. Thus it will be seen that the will of a community, in other parts of Illinois, was considered sufficient without legal process to secure the extinction of an obnoxious paper and the perpetual silence of its editor—the silence of death by assassination. In Nauvoo no such highhanded course was pursued: no man was injured in his person; and the destroying of the press was in pursuance of a municipal order. At Alton, the unpopular publishers advocated merely a national reform, in the highest interest of human liberty and morality; at Nauvoo the publishers attacked the most vital local well-being and assailed the character of the community for the purpose of advancing an immoral purpose and gratifying the revenge of lustful men. At Nauvoo, the publishers had practically avowed their intention to incite a mob to come upon the city; and the matter printed in the first and only issue of their paper was manifestly of a character to aid the sanguinary plot.