07-14-2009, 02:25 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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Originally Posted by its_Chet
One book I can recommend, though it's been a while since I read it and I can't remember much of it anymore, is "The Fate of the Persecutors of Joseph Smith". As I remember, the book wasn't so much about Joseph Smith as it was about what happened to the people who persecuted him, especially the ones that stormed the Carthage Jail.
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I would not recommend this book at all unless you’re interested in Mormon folklore. In point of fact, there is no evidence that any person of the mob suffered any maladies after murdering Joseph. The only men who suffered in later life were the principals involved in the Carthage trial, not the massacre itself. They were the prosecutors, the sheriff, the judge and the governor.
According to Richard C. Poulson, in his 1978 essay titled: Fate and the Persecutor s of Joseph Smith: Transmutations of an American Myth:
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About some of those involved in the martyrdom, Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill note:
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A consistent Utah myth holds that some of the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith met fittingly gruesome deaths--that Providence intervened to dispense the justice denied in the Carthage trial. But the five defendants who went to trial, including men who had been shown to be leaders in the murder plot and others associated with them, enjoyed notably successful careers. (emphasis mine)
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I also remember reading a story (also from this book, if I remember correctly) about a boy who was at Haun's Mill when it was attacked. He tried to run into the blacksmith's shop, but every time he got within arm's length of the doorway, his arms shot up and grabbed the doorjamb, ON THEIR OWN.
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I have done a lot of research about the Church’s history, and have never heard this before. I suspect it is Mormon folklore as well, yet I can’t say for sure. Do you have a reference other than the book?
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And as we all know, everyone who was inside the blacksmith's shop was killed, including a couple of children both around the age of 10.
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This is true, though the other child was seven. Nevertheless, IMO, this is one of the most horrifying incidents of persecution in the Church’s history.
Militia member William Reynolds entered the shop and found ten-year-old Sardius Smith hiding under the blacksmith’s bellows. Reynolds put his musket against the boy's skull and blew off the top of his head. Reynolds later explained, "Nits will make lice, and if he had lived he would have become a Mormon.” Unspeakable.
Again, TFOTPOJS does not contain accurate portrayals of the mob’s lives after they massacred Joseph and Hyrum. It is full of Mormon folklore, and should be read only as such.
Elphaba
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We can't change the country. Let us change the subject. Stephen Dedalus, Ulysses
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