Joseph Smith was the first U.S. presidential candidate ever assassinated while campaigning — but almost no one knows why the Prophet decided to run in the first place. After Missouri's extermination order, a president who shrugged, and five candidates who refused to lift a finger, running for president became the last option left to secure the rights of the Latter-day Saints — and every other persecuted minority in America.

In this episode, hosts Jasmin Rappleye, Neal Rappleye, and Stephen Smoot work through Spencer McBride's Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom to unpack the 1844 campaign — what drove it, what it actually proposed, and how it ended in Carthage.

===Informed Saints Credits===

Produced by The Ancient America Foundation

Producer: Spencer Clark

Hosts: Stephen Smoot, Neal Rappleye, Jasmin Rappleye

In this episode:

The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, Governor Boggs' extermination order, and the ~800 redress petitions taken to Washington
The meeting with Martin Van Buren ("Little Van") and his infamous "your cause is just, but I can do nothing" reply
Joseph's letters to the five 1844 candidates — Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, Martin Van Buren, Lewis Cass, and Richard M. Johnson
The "states' rights doctrine… a dead carcass, a stink offering" quote — and why you can't map Joseph's politics onto modern parties
The campaign pamphlet "General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government" (printed by John Taylor, ghostwritten by W. W. Phelps)
The platform: federal protection of civil and religious rights, a smaller and pay-cut Congress, abolishing slavery by 1850, prison reform, a national bank, and westward expansion with Native consent
Abraham O. Smoot, the electioneering missionaries, and the courthouse mob in Dresden, Tennessee
The Council of Fifty, the westward look toward Deseret, and how local Hancock County politics fed the road to Carthage

Read the book: Spencer McBride, Joseph Smith for President (Oxford University Press) — https://amzn.to/4vuQg3p

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