Benjamin Park's Kingdom of Nauvoo is one of those books that intrigued, frustrated, enlightened, and puzzled me as I worked through it during my "one-hour reads" in May and early June. Yet, I also found the book was so well written and the narrative so worthwhile, I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about Joseph Smith's failed religious polis, Nauvoo, at the edge of American in the early 1840s.
My introduction to Nauvoo came during a cross country high school trip to the Nation's Capital that included a day at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. It caught my attention as it was in the same gallery as Horatio Greenough's bare-chested, Venice Beach body version of George Washington. To say that the symbolism of pudgy faced sun and the unusual depiction of the Founding Father was a juxtaposition of imagery my 17 year old mind was, and somewhat still, trying to reconcile. It's that same jarring position of the Nauvoo Capital, Joseph Smith's gun-wielding martyrdom and high school interactions with my Mormon friends and later parents that I brought to this reading exercise. Yes, I have biases, but a good history will challenge those, inform those, and yes, at times reinforce those. Park's Nauvoo did all of those things.
Park's sets out to explain the heady stuff of Joseph Smith's 1840s vision that mixed nullification, experimentalism, patriarchy, theocracy, and transformative democracy. He also argues that Joseph Smith's efforts and the response to those by federal and state governments were different than other religious dissenters. Park lays out a convincing narrative showing the horrendous treatment of the Mormon settlers by Missouri state officials, and in the end neighboring county and Illinois officials. Relying on a wealth of LDS archival material kept hidden for some 150 years, Park weaves a level of insight into the swirl of paranoia, religious fever, and religious newness that was Joseph Smith's Nauvoo. The chapters are rich with quoted annotations, notes, and letters from early leaders of the emerging LDS church and community. Joseph Smith, also a presidential candidate in the 1844 election, welded religious and spiritual power as the head of the LDS Church from Nauvoo with political protectionism to combat the local and state opposition to his growing frontier community. The paranoia was legitimate in that Missouri officials and citizens through mob "justice" ran the newly, self-anointed saints out of that state in the middle of winter. The terror, hardships, and deaths haunted the emerging polis of Nauvoo and its various leadership machinations that centered themselves around the Prophet. At the same time, the revelation of polygamy as a religious sacrament of the novel religious group was adding to the secret cabalic vibrations pulsating through the constantly expanding religious community.
Park does an amazing job utilizing the new archival material, as well as LDS historical sources and journals, to illustrate the challenges that confronted Smith, his various councils, and the Saints. Where he seems to pull back is where it comes to the tensions between Emma Smith and her spiritually poly exploring husband, Joseph. I actually felt that there was either an intentional or coincidental, effort to focus more on all of those around her, than on her response. If Abigail Adams’ ignored charge to "Remember the ladies" applied to historians, well, Park does that with LDS sisters, but one of the main survivors of Nauvoo seems to not get the ink space as some of Joseph Smith's spiritual wives.
Great detail is provided from the LDS archival materials, as well as the various LDS scholarly works and journals to help with Park's terrifically worded history. Yet, at times, as a government official and part-time historian, I found myself flipping to the endnotes and being puzzled. Puzzled to find no additional source in committee hearing notes, State court documents, non-LDS journals, or even other newspaper sources. I was left wondering if they did not exist, or if the focal point of the historical research was primarily on those new sources. Maybe it was just the lawyer in me wanting to see additional proof supporting Park’s argument.
I learned a tremendous amount about the frontier political aspects of the 1830s and 1840s from this book. I enjoyed reading it and it was like visiting with a friend that I didn't always agree with but respected for the great tale being shared. Yet, I had questions. Examples of a few of those unanswered questions follow.
For example, is it unfair to think of the marble capital that I saw in the Smithsonian as anything other than an acquired relic of the restoration of the Union and the rule of law when confronted with the religious zeal wielded by the faithful at Nauvoo? Park makes the argument that what was occurring at Nauvoo and the response to it was so new, that it illustrated a challenge to the order of the Union; its notions of freedoms - religious or civil; and, its political systems. Yet, there seemed to be a bit of overplay in this argument. Perhaps things like the Puritan's attack on Merry Mount or later Mary Dyer are not worthy comparisons? Nor then would be the attack of the various religious, political and social standard bearers on Quakerism or Baptists? I don't know the answer to those questions, but I would like to sit down over a few Arnold Palmers with Dr. Park and have that discussion. I think that it would be one of those incredible opportunities that sadly COVID prevented as he was scheduled to visit the Pacific Northwest in mid-Spring. If we did have that opportunity, I would also ask Dr. Park if the same sentiment that fueled the anti-Mormonism responses of the citizens of Jackson County Missouri, and then about Nauvoo, was the same sentiment that fueled the Anti-Masonic movements of the same era?
At times, I also felt that Dr. Park took a rose-colored view of some of the Prophet's more disturbing concepts of governance, let alone polygamy. For example, the militia created by Smith was seen as a growing threat to the established state and county rule of law in Illinois. Numbering in the thousands, and called out to help hide Smith and his fellow LDS leaders, I found myself cringing at the justifications offered for this behavior in light of the expected approach to the legal system and the civilizing belief in the rule of law. Further, the Nauvoo political structure's novel, creative, and highly illegal use of the judicial system left many in 1840s Illinois in a similar level of bewilderment as many who watch today’s events in the Nation’s capital.
At other times, Park clearly called out problems that he saw. One such example was with the Prophet's successor, Brigham Young tossing aside the evolving teachings of the Prophet on interracial religious practices and specifically the newly empowered Mormon priesthood. Park does not mince words for Young's institution of "a policy of white supremacy" in a manner that foreshadowed the pseudo-science of eugenics with Young's prohibition of the rewards of the priesthood from "[a]ny man having one drop of the seed of Cane in him." (Pg 275). Prof. Park highlighted Young's response to his Prophet's dream of racial inclusion was a troubling one that led to decades of "racial exclusion." More could have been said, but the candid, simple language used to lay bare what had been done by Young.
Park argued that the Union's legal and political systems established to "manage different interests and grant individual freedoms" by the United Stated failed the Mormons and "broke down" in Missouri and again in Nauvoo. (Pg. 279). However, one has to ask whether the heady vision of the Prophet and his followers in their mix of nullification, experimentalism, spiritualism, patriarchy, and theology were so beyond the expectations and norms of American society of the time that when he seized military and political systems, the American political system had to respond? Yet, it was the “mob” that seized him and in the failure to protect him, there may lay the blame Park casts against American political and legal systems in failing to control the brutal mob attack on Joseph Smith.
I am better and wiser for reading this book. That is the power of a well written, researched and argued narrative. Benjamin Park exceeded my expectations and hopes in his history of the Kingdom of Nauvoo. He also fulfilled his objective of "giving voice" to one of the more intriguing and influential group of "discontents." The book will be one I will weave into my survey courses for years to come. However, I also felt that unlike the Nauvoo of today, which Park describes as something akin to a "Mormon Williamsburg," he opened the closet door where the dirty laundry, a few skeletons, and such have been kept for a century and half. However, he opened the door only enough to show that those things were there, then shut it as an inquisitive eye focused on what had been revealed. Then, he ushered us on to the next artifact within the collection he tends.
I suspect that Park will be revisiting those things tucked away and somewhat out of sight. I hope so, and I would be the first in line to purchase that next endeavor. I just hope that all of the discontents within the early LDS story make more of an appearance in his work. Because, I have little doubt, he is one who could tell their story.
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About the author
The Cult of Personality
This was one of my all-time favorite reads as it literally hit home— I moved to Hancock County, IL, 15 miles from Nauvoo thirty years ago to marry my wife, who is Katherine Smith’s great, great, great granddaughter.* The area has a very real magnetism about it and Dr. Park captured that, as well as the natural beauty and history of the area, in general. He weaves this in nicely throughout. The story about the rise of a charismatic leader who created an image of being somehow “chosen” to finally give the “common people” their due; of promising them great things if they just obey what they say; of creating an alternate reality through deception; of their ultimate failings due to oversized self-grandiosity — also hit home as I read this during the January 6 coup attempt. It seems there will alway be people who are going to exploit and shill people who feel disenfranchised and angry. It was riveting in this context. *the family joke passed down through time was that Uncle Joe started this whole thing because he was too lazy to work.
