Rough stone rolling V: isolation

"Egypt is trying to break him."
Deliverer


We don't know, exactly, what Emma thought. Or Joseph. We see them in 1837 and 1838 elliptically, through the eyes and in the words of those around them, with the brief, rending exceptions of Joseph's cries from prison.

But we know Joseph, or are coming to. We know that he wept on his father's chest after baptizing the broken old man, and that the soothing cool of forgiveness and the joy of standing within the powerful circles of the councils he raised up were the palliatives that calmed his temper and quieted the restless insecurities that drove him to seek a religion that bound people together with the power of heaven. And because of all this we know that the years of 1837 and 1838 were likely the worst of his life.

God and men and his own mistakes forced Joseph alone into the wilderness in 1837.

Joseph's oldest friend, in his own words his "bosom friend," was Oliver Cowdery, the man who baptized him, who scribed the Book of Mormon, who had stood next to Joseph during the keystone visions of the Church. In late 1837, Cowdery was shaken to the core, because he became convinced that Joseph Smith had been sleeping with Emma's maid, a teenage girl named Fanny Alger.

We are not sure why he came to this conclusion. There are late reports, forty years after the fact, that Cowdery caught his friend in a compromising position. There are also reports - from Alger's family as well as other Mormons - that Joseph had married Fanny polygamously sometime around 1833. Fanny, still a teenager, went with her family when they moved from Kirtland in 1836. Decades later, she said only that her relationship with Joseph was "a matter of my own."

But Cowdery knew nothing of that. He turned to David Patten, president of the Quorum of the Twelve, and found himself denounced and eventually on trial for apostasy. Joseph vigorously, and specifically, denied that he had committed adultery; Patten and Thomas Marsh, another senior apostle to whom Cowdery went, were horrified at the accusation.

Of Emma's reaction, we know nothing. She had just given birth when Cowdery was excommunicated in April1838. Joseph appeared at the trial, but he remained silent. If his mind had lighted upon polygamy already, he chose to brood over the doctrine privately. He never seems to have mentioned his lost friend again. He threw himself into his church, but found the rock turning to water beneath his fingers.

For almost simultaneously, the strong twin stakes of Zion, Kirtland and Far West, collapsed.

The Saints constantly had struggled for money. Joseph, exhibiting characteristic exuberance and optimism, believed that founding a bank would not only provide the church with financial stability; it would also be among the greatest financial institutions in America, and make Kirtland the central city of the nation. His confidence in his power to build shone through. But this time he was wrong. The Kirtland Safety Society was terribly underfunded; the state refused to grant it a charter, a warning sign Joseph ignored. The Saints (Joseph included) invested heavily, purchasing the notes that Joseph himself signed with a flourish. But the bank collapsed within a month. Cumulative losses exceeded what the Saints had donated to the Kirtland temple; families began to starve and lose their homes.

More terrifying than the money was that Joseph's dreams for his brethren had turned them against him. Patten, who had defended Joseph so staunchly against Cowdery, went to him with financial frustrations; Joseph took his complaints personally, slapped him in the face and threw him from the house. The Pratt brothers, apostles both, similarly confronted their prophet in rage when Joseph came to Parley and demanded repayment of debt to the bank only weeks after the currency collapsed. By June, 1837, Heber Kimball (in a poetic exaggeration) said that not twenty men in Kirtland remained unshaken behind Joseph Smith.

In late May Joseph's loyalists, with his approval, brought charges against those who complained, accusing the Pratts, David Whitmer, First Presidency member Frederick Williams and others of apostasy. And the council system that had worked so well before collapsed. Williams argued that, per the Doctrine and Covenants, only a bishop's court could try someone in his position; Parley Pratt argued that Joseph Smith would not be a fair judge. The council collapsed, and Joseph with it. By June, he lay stricken with illness, and would not rise for weeks. And Kirtland never recovered. By December, there were forty excommunications among the church leadership, growing turmoil, and Joseph had lost his first Zion. He and Sidney Rigdon fled the city for Far West, Missouri, late at night in January 1838, just ahead of a mob of impoverished, angry excommunicants. He left a quarter of his quorum and his second counselor behind.

He hoped for peace in Missouri. Soon after arriving he again began building a sacred world around him. He identified Caldwell and Daviess counties, newly created by the Missouri government in an attempt to provide the Mormons with a safe place, as Edens, literally putting Adam-ondi-Ahman in the center, and a new temple lot in Far West. From the cold nights of Kirtland the church could be born again in the warm Missouri summer.

But his efforts only seemed to turn back upon him. The Mormons of Missouri, increasingly bitter about their expulsion from Jackson County, rose up against the presidency Joseph had placed over them: David Whitmer, WW Phelps and Cowdery. These men had sold their land in Jackson County; this was, members of the Missouri high council believed, tatamount to repudiating Joseph's prophecies. Tensions rose, and Joseph, eager to restore harmony, allowed the high council to draw a picture placing Whitmer's presidency against Joseph and to proceed with excommunications. Cowdery was the first to fall; the other two men soon after. Joseph increasingly prized loyalty; after Kirtland, he no longer trusted friendship.

But loyalty itself backfired. The Mormons who followed him to Missouri, eager to build Joseph's vision, rushed past their prophet, settling not only in Caldwell, designated particularly for Mormons, but increasingly dominating Daviess. Sampson Avard, a brash and confrontational physician, resolved that to protect Joseph's church from dissenters, a secret society was necessary. The Sons of Dan were born in the summer of 1838, intimidating the faction in support of the Presidency. It is unclear to what extent Avard received Joseph's sanction. He knew about the society, attended at least one meeting, and blessed its officers, giving a speech endorsing strong action. These are the behaviors of a man in need of support. But beyond that?

By the fall of 1838 war had broken out in Missouri. Mobs had intimidated and assailed Mormons outside Caldwell County, attempts had been made to stop Mormons from voting. and in response Joseph and Rigdon had preached fiery sermons. Joseph resolved to call out the Caldwell County militia - made up of and headed by Mormons - to defend the Mormons of Daviess. The apostles Lyman Wight and David Patten led raiding parties, burning homes and farms across Daviess County, and Joseph exulted in the righteousness of self defense. He had had enough of persecution from inside and out; now he would resist.

But the Mormons could not stand up to the state of Missouri, and Joseph was quick to realize it. He had been angry, frustrated, feeling powerless and betrayed; in that state he had let men like Avard and Wight lash out in proxy. But Patten was killed at the Battle at Crooked River, and soon after, a mob brutally massacred seventeen defenseless Mormons at Haun's Mill. Joseph realized that overcorrection would not heal his pain or fix his errors. On November 1, Far West surrendered to Colonel Samuel Lucas, and Joseph, Hyrum, Amasa Lyman, Rigdon, and Wight went quietly into chains.

Joseph would remain in Missouri prison, accused of treason, nearly executed as a prisoner of war, for six months. He cried to God. He did not know why the work had failed, so utterly and spectacularly. And he rose above his pain by going through it. He reached out again to Emma, by letter, pledging that he was "yours forever," and asking, pitifully, "Dear Emma do you think that my being cast into prison by the mob renders me less worthy of your friendship?"
He begged her to "never give up an old tried friend," and "not to harber a spirit of revenge." And she reponded, visiting him in prison.

Characteristically, he sought healing in binding ties. It was a solution for the church as well. He wrote to the Saints that they should pursue understanding, forgiveness, and common ground with the non Mormons of America. And finally, his faith was rewarded. The Missouri officials quietly decided that the Mormon War had been an embarrasment, and in April of 1839 let their prisoners escape.

Joseph had already directed the scattered remains of his church north, to a small town on the banks of the Mississippi River named Quincy, Illinois. He followed, and there was a renewed community to greet him. He met Emma and his children first, and the next day, called a council. Wilford Woodruff, a new apostle, noted that "Brother Joseph greeted us with great Joy." Joseph's will was strong; again, for the third time, he resolved to build Zion.