Carthage: martyrdom or gunfight?
Joseph died in a hail of bullets after firing a smuggled pistol, in custody for destroying a press that told the truth.
What the Church claims
Joseph went 'like a lamb to the slaughter' and sealed his testimony with his blood (D&C 135).
Once the evidence is in, this claim: Contested. Joseph was armed with a smuggled pistol and fired it in the jail, which sits awkwardly beside 'lamb to the slaughter', and the destruction of the Expositor that led to the arrest is left out of most official tellings. The phrase is canonized scripture making a theological point about martyrdom rather than a claim about conduct in the room, so this is contested rather than weak.
The record
- The proximate cause of the arrest was the destruction of the Expositor; the charge became treason for declaring martial law.
- Saints (2018) concedes that visitors 'smuggled two guns to the prisoners' and that Joseph 'opened the door a few inches and fired'; FAIR concedes he snapped the pepperbox six times, three barrels discharged, and the men hit 'were not killed (as was first reported in some Church publications) but only wounded'.
- John Taylor later stated that two attackers died; FAIR says he 'mistakenly stated' this.
- Joseph's last words were 'O Lord, my God', which some Saints then and since have read as the opening of the Masonic cry of distress.
- D&C 135, written by John Taylor, describes Joseph going 'like a lamb to the slaughter' and does not mention the pistol.
- Five men were tried for the murders in 1845 and acquitted.
The moving target
- 1844: 'Lamb to the slaughter'; 'martyr'.
- 1850s-1900s: Includes the pistol episode and Taylor's claim of two dead attackers.
- 2018-09: Narrates the smuggled guns and Joseph firing; does not mention the wounded or the Masonic reading.
- current: Omits the pistol altogether.
The exchange
FAIR
A martyr is one who dies rather than renounce his faith; self-defense does not cancel martyrdom, and the Church never hid the pistol, which is in History of the Church.
The answer: Fair enough on the definition, and critics who make the pistol decisive overreach. The stronger point is causal: Joseph was in jail because he ordered a press destroyed for publishing true statements about his secret marriages and his kingship. He died for his conduct as much as for his faith, and the Church's curated tellings drop the parts - press, polygamy, pistol - that complicate the lamb.
What they get right: The mob committed murder of prisoners under the governor's pledge of protection; nothing about the pistol changes that.
FAIR; Church History Topics, 'Deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith'
Doctrine and Covenants 135 was written by John Taylor, who was shot four times in the same room. It is an eyewitness eulogy in the idiom of 1844, not a forensic report, and reading it as a factual claim about Joseph's conduct misreads the genre.
The answer: It is canonized scripture, printed in every copy of the Doctrine and Covenants, and read as history by the members who receive it. That is the difficulty with the genre defense: a eulogy in the canon does not stay a eulogy. The specific phrase 'like a lamb to the slaughter' is Joseph's own, recorded before he went, and the Church has taught it as a description of what happened rather than as how a grieving friend wrote. Saying it is poetry now is a concession that the plain reading members were given is not accurate.
What they get right: Firing a smuggled pistol at an armed mob of roughly 150 men who have just murdered your brother does not disqualify anyone from being murdered, and most Christian traditions count the killed-in-custody among their martyrs.
Both cases at full strength
The skeptics' case
The 'lamb' image is a literary construction by a participant: Joseph armed himself, fired into the attackers and wounded three, and was in custody for suppressing a newspaper whose key claims were true. His death was a lynching, but the chain that led there ran through polygamy, denial and the Council of Fifty.
The apologetic case
Joseph surrendered voluntarily on the governor's promise of safety, expected to die, and was shot by a painted mob while unarmed men were murdered beside Joseph; using a smuggled six-shooter against 150 attackers is not a gunfight, and every Christian tradition counts the killed-in-custody among its martyrs.
What would change this
On 'martyr' nothing; on causation, evidence that the arrest would have occurred without the Expositor destruction.
Closely related
- Public denials and the Nauvoo Expositor
- The Council of Fifty and Joseph as king
- Freemasonry and the temple endowment
Sources
- Nauvoo Expositor, 7 June 1844 (full transcription)
- Nauvoo Expositor (Church History Topics)
- Masonry (Church History Topics)
- Introduction to Administrative Records, Volume 1 (Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844-January 1846)
- Deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith (Church History Topics)
- Saints, vol. 1, chapter 44, 'A Lamb to the Slaughter'
- Joseph Smith fired a gun at Carthage Jail (FAIR Answers)
- Killing of Joseph Smith (Wikipedia; tertiary finder)
- Doctrine and Covenants 135
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