Joseph Smith/Martyrdom/Nauvoo Legion to rescue Joseph

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This page is based on an answer to a question submitted to the FAIR web site, or a frequently asked question.

Question

• Critics claim that Joseph Smith was panicking at Carthage Jail, and wrote an order to Jonathan Dunham (head of the Nauvoo legion), telling him to attack the jail and "save him at all costs" (Brodie, 392). What can you tell me about this?

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Richard Abanes, One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), 199, 547-548n131-132 ( Index of claims )
• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 392. ( Index of claims )
• D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 141, 179.

Response

The critics and their sources

There are two basic 'streams' of this theory.

Origins: Brodie

The first derives from Fawn Brodie (1945):

Other authors have followed Brodie. Abanes (One Nation Under Gods), for example, merely quotes Brodie as his source.

Brodie's evidence derives from two sources:

• Allen J. Stout, manuscript journal, 1815-89, p. 13.
• T.B.H. Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints: a full and complete history of the Mormons, from the first vision of Joseph Smith to the last courtship of Brigham Young (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873), 164n..

Brodie says that Stout's story "is confirmed" by Stenhouse, but Stenhouse mentions no names.^[1]

New wrinkle: Hofmann forgeries

The second evidential stream draws on the first, but adds a new wrinkle. This wrinkle is one of the Hofmann forgeries.^[2] Mark Hofmann forged the supposed letter from Joseph to Dunham, and it was published in a collection of Joseph's personal writings before the forgery was discovered. The forged document reads:

 ^{[needs work]}

Despite the fact that the document is a forgery, some historians have continued to use it. For example, D. Michael Quinn uses it as evidence, and cites the Jessee transcript of the letter (cited above):

Endnotes

1. [note]  D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), footnote 194.
2. [note]  Allen D. Roberts, "'The Truth is the Most Important Thing': The New Mormon History According to Mark Hofmann," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 20 no. 4 (Winter 1987), 92.
3. [note]  D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 141.
4. [note]  D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 179.

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FairMormon Topical Guide: Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith FairMormon link
  

Printed material

• Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, Carthage Conspiracy, the Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 1. ISBN 025200762X. (Key source)