The Martyrdom ofJoseph and Hyrum Smith

How early did the Prophet know that he might be required to seal his testimony of his mission and

the Restoration with his own blood?D&C 5:22: 6:30; 122:9

• D&C 5:22 And that you be firm in keeping the commandments wherewith I have commanded you; and if you do this, behold I grant unto you eternal life, even if you should be slain. (15 Years before his death)

• D&C 6:30 And even if they do unto you even as they have done unto me, blessed are ye, for you shall dwell with me in glory. (April 1829)

• D&C 122:9 Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever. (March 1939)

On August 31, 1842 the Prophet Joseph Smith said, “Inasmuch as the Lord almighty has preserved me until today, He will continue to preserve me…until I have fully accomplished my

mission”. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp 63-66, January 22, 1834)

On January 22, 1843, the Prophet Joseph told the Saints, “I shall not be sacrificed until my time comes; then I shall be offered freely.” Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

On October 15, 1842, the Prophet said, “I prophesy they (his enemies) never will have power to kill me till my work is accomplished, and I am ready to die.”Teaching of the Prophet Joseph Smith

On April 7, 1844 he said, “I cannot lie down until all my work is finished.”

In April 1844, he said: “Brethren, I have desired to live to see this temple built. I shall never live to see it, but you will.” On June 22, 1844, he said, “I told Stephen Markham that if I and Hyrum were ever taken again we should be massacred, or I was not a prophet of God.”

On June 23, 1844, Hyrum said to his brother, “Let us go back and give ourselves up, and see the thing out.” The Prophet Joseph replied, “If you go back, I will go with you, but we shall be butchered.”

• Brigham Young recalled: “I heard Joseph say many a time, ‘I shall not live until I am forty years of age.’ At another time Brigham Young added, “Yet we all cherished hopes that that would be a false prophecy, and we should keep him for ever with us; we thought our faith would outreach it, but we were mistaken.”

• Truman G. Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet, p. 109-110

• Wilford Woodruff, who conversed with the Prophet just after April Conference 1844, recalled that he later sent ten of the Twelve East on a mission, and that the Prophet seem to linger in saying goodbye to him. Then, looking him through and through, he said, “Brother Woodruff, I want you to go, and if you do not, you will die.” And he looked “unspeakably sorrowful, as if weighted down by a foreboding of something dreadful.” Truman G. Madsen, Joseph Smith the Prophet, p. 109-110

The last Months and the Martyrdom• During the last winter, he manifested four

dominant anxieties and did all in his power to relieve them, as he had been commanded:

1. The first was related to the temple. He yearned for it to be finished. For example, he with Hyrum, went from house to house in Nauvoo in the role, we would say now, of home teachers, and recommitted the Saints to give to time and means to the speedy erection of that building.

2. Joseph’s anxiety about the temple was compounded by his anxiety concerning the records of the Church, that they be kept, preserved, and accurately transmitted. That was the responsibility of several scribes. Six men were working around the clock to bring the history up-to-date. One of them was Willard Richards, a loyal man who often burned candles until midnight, writing with his quill pen. Joseph had said, after a dream, “I told Phelps a dream that the history must go ahead before anything else.

3. In addition…,he had a concern to teach in summary all that had theretofore been made known and to make sure that the brethren understood it. To that end, he spent much of every day for three months with the Twelve, with other of the Church leaders, and also often in counsel with husbands and wives, sharing, summarizing, reiterating restored truth and ordinances. “You give us no rest,” Orson Pratt said. “The Spirit urges me,” the Prophet replied.

4. Finally there was the Prophet’s major concern-that the Saints understand his role and be willing to do what in an extremity they might be required to do. Strangely, throughout the days of the last of May and early June 1844, many who were associated with the Prophet exhibited unusual optimism. Among these was his brother Hyrum, who seemed to feel, even down to the time that they were in jail in Carthage, that everything would work out, that this was just one more of the many crises from which they had always emerged. In radical contrast, the Prophet Joseph had for some time had all kinds of ominous presentiments.

• June 23, 1844, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were on the Iowa side of the river on their way to the Great Basin. Orrin P. Rockwell and Reynolds Cahoon carried a message from Emma requesting that Joseph return to Nauvoo (History of the Church, Vol.6, p.549). Joseph Smith replied to their requests with, "If my life is of no value to my friends it is of none to myself' (p.549

• Before returning to Nauvoo later that same evening, he made a statement that he would repeat several times in the next few days. He declared that if he and Hyrum returned "we shall be butchered" (p. 550). Yet regardless of his foreknowledge of his pending death, that afternoon he, Hyrum and others started back. While some of the party were in a hurry to return to Nauvoo, Joseph said, "It is of no use to hurry, for we are going back to be slaughtered" p.551). Obviously the prophet knew the fate that was awaiting him, yet he chose to "he killed because of his beliefs" rather than to escape death, which he could have easily done.

• The next morning a reported 200 people were at Joseph's home in Nauvoo, wanting to see the prophet one more time and to give him their support before he left for Carthage. His mother is reported to have asked him to promise her that he would return, as he had promised during other times of trial. There was no such assurance from the prophet on this occasion.

• William Law, second counselor to Joseph Smith, and William’s brother Wilson, led the conspiracy against the Prophet. Throughout the early months of 1844 their followers gradually grew to approximately two hundred people. Other leaders including the brothers Robert and Charles Foster, Chauncy and Francis Higbee and two influential non-Mormons-Sylvester Emmons, a member of the Nauvoo City Council and Joseph H. Jackson, a notorious criminal.

• On Sunday, March 24, 1844, Joseph Smith spoke at the temple about the conspiracy, having just learned of it from an informant. He revealed who some of his enemies were and added that, “The lies that Higbee has hatched up as a foundation to work upon is, he says that I had men’s heads cut off in Missouri and that I had a sword run through the hearts of the people that I wanted to kill and put out of the way. I won’t swear out a warrant against them for I don’t fear any of them. They would not scare off an old setting hen.” (CHFofT; p. 274)

The ”EXPOSITOR” Affair

• “Leaders of the conspiracy were exposed in the Times and Seasons and were excommunicated from the Church. Thwarted in their plans, the dissenters decided to publish an opposition newspaper. The first and only issue of their paper, which was called the Nauvoo Expositor, appeared on June 7, 1944. Throughout the paper they accused Joseph Smith of teaching vicious principles, practicing whoredoms, advocating so-called spiritual wifery grasping for political power, preaching that there were many God, speaking blasphemously of God and promoting an inquisition.

• Joseph and Hyrum Smith rode on horseback from Nauvoo to Carthage of their own volition to answer false charges of riot. As they rode, "Joseph paused when they got to the Temple, and looked with admiration first on that, and then on the city, and remarked, This is the loveliest place and the best people under the heavens; little do they know the trials that await them' " (History of the Church, 6:554).

• On the way to Carthage later in the day, the party stopped at the farm of Albert G. Fellow, four miles west of Carthage, where Joseph Smith uttered these fateful words:

• I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I am calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of offense toward God and toward all men. If they take my life I shall die an innocent man, and my blood shall cry from the ground for vengeance, and it shall be said of me 'He was murdered in cold blood!' (p.555).

• Built 1840–1841, the 34-by-28 foot Jail held the Prophet and his companions behind brick walls two and a half feet thick. Being situated 400 yards northwest of the courthouse, the jail was on the outskirts of town at the time of the Martyrdom.

● On June 25, 1844, he told his enemies in Carthage, “I can see that you thirst for blood, and nothing but my blood will satisfy you.”

• June 27th found the prophet, his brother Hyrum, John Taylor, and Willard Richards in jail without the protection Governor Ford had promised.

• June 27, 1844 at 3:15 p.m.‑‑ Elder Taylor sang the following: “The Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief.” When he got through, Joseph requested him to sing it again, which he did.

• 5 p.m.‑‑Jailor Stigall returned to the jail, and said that Stephen Markham had been surrounded by a mob, who had driven him out of Carthage, and he had gone to Nauvoo. Stigall suggested that they would be safer in the cell.

• Joseph: "After supper we will go in."• Narrator: Mr. Stigall went out, and

Joseph said to Dr. Richards,• Joseph: "If we go into the cell, will you

go in with us?" • Dr. Richards: "Brother Joseph you did

not ask me to cross the river with you‑‑you did not ask me to come to Carthage‑‑you did not ask me to come to jail with you‑‑and do you think I would forsake you now? But I will tell you what I will do; if you are condemned to be hung for treason, I will be hung in your stead, and you shall go free."

• Joseph: "You cannot."

• 5:10 pm. An armed mob of 150 to 200 people "encircled the building" (History of the Church, 6:617).

• The mob stormed up the stairs, forced the cell door open and began firing into the room as others fired in the window. Hyrum fell a "dead man" and as John Taylor was hit several times with flying bullets

• Part of the mob burst open the door of the 16x16 jailer's bedroom "and began the work of death, while others fired in through the open windows. . . . A shower of balls was pouring through all parts of the room, many of which lodged in the ceiling" (History of the Church, 6:617).

• "Joseph, seeing there was no safety in the room, . . . sprang into the window when two [bullets] pierced him from the door, and one entered his right breast from without." The Prophet exclaimed, "O Lord my God!" as he fell out of the window and onto the ground near a well below (History of the Church, 6:618).

Who were the witness of the martydom?

• Two Apostles

• John Taylor & Willard Richards

•D&C 135:2 John Taylor and Willard Richards, two of the Twelve, were the only persons in the room at the time; the former was wounded in a savage manner with four balls, but has since recovered; the latter, through the providence of God, escaped, without even a hole in his robe.

• John Taylor and Willard Richards were in jail with Joseph and Hyrum Smith. John Taylor was severely wounded in the attack. Thinking the mob would return to kill them, Willard Richards quickly moved him from the bedroom to this nearby dungeon and covered him with a mattress to hide him from the mob.

• The promise the Prophet Joseph had made to Willard Richards had been fulfilled:

• “Willard…you will stand where the ball will fly around you like hail and men will fall dead by your side and…there never shall a ball injure you.”

Joseph Smith, the Prophet, by Truman Madsen

Lucy Mack Smith said this at the funeral of her sons:

• After the corpses were washed and dressed in their burial clothes, we were allowed to see them. I had for a long time braced every nerve, roused every energy of my soul and call upon God to strengthen me, but when I entered the room and saw my murdered sons extended both at once before my eyes and head the sobs and groans of my family…”

• …it was too much; I sank back, crying to the Lord in agony of my soul, “my God, my God, why has thou forsaken this family!” A voice replied, “I have taken them to myself, that they might have rest”…At that moment how my mind flew through every scene of sorrow and distress which we had passed, together…As I looked upon their peaceful, smiling countenances, I seemed almost to hear them say, “Mother, weep not for us, we have overcome the world by love; we carried to them the gospel, that their should might be saved; they slew us for our testimony, and thus placed us beyond their power; their ascendancy is for a moment, our is an eternal triumph.”

At the time of his brothers’ funeral, Samuel Smith was suffering from fatigue as a result of having been

chased by a mob himself the day of the Martyrdom. He died four weeks

later on July 30th. Samuel Harrison Smith, born in Tunbridge, Vt., March 13, 1808. Died July 30, 1844, broken hearted, and worn out with persecution. Aged 36. The righteous are removed from the evils to come."- Times and Seasons, Vol.5, No.24, p.760

He died a third witness and martyr.

What did Elder Taylor write about the Prophet Joseph?

•“Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it…  He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord's anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood; and so has his brother Hyrum.  In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated!” (Doctrine and Covenants 135: 3).

Why did the prophet have to seal his witness?

• To Elizabeth Rollins he had confided in the spring of 1844, “I must seal my testimony with my blood.” The testament is of no force, Paul said, until the death of the testator.

• “The depth of that doctrine is beyond me-why death should somehow be the full glorifying sanction of life; why blood must be shed as the price of freedom and of truth, and most of all of the witness of Christ. But so it is. Joseph taught that principle.” Truman Madsen

• If a martyr is a person who chooses to suffer or die rather than give up his faith or his principles, Joseph Smith fits this definition as well as any other person who has ever been slain.

• He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people, and like most of the Lord's anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood-and so has his brother Hyrum. In life they were not divided, and in death they were not separated (p.630).

Brothers – Joseph and Hyrum