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When you want to look smart in Sunday school, if you want your friends to think you're cool, when you want to seem wise and not a fool, it's Christie's Corner. Welcome to the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm Garrett Dirkmot, your host. I'm joined here with my co host, Richard leduc. Hello. And we just, we did a two part podcast on the martyrdom of Joseph and Hiram Smith, but there was some other information we wanted to talk about. We didn't, we don't want the podcast to be so long that, you know, we, we assume that you sleep through most of them, but we didn't want to interrupt your sleep patterns so much. So we decided we'd add this as a supplemental podcast as a bonus episode that can talk about some of the particulars of the martyrdom that really kind of, there's some questions surrounding some of the things that happen and we can discuss that. And just as a little bit of an extra benefit, as you study that over these couple of weeks surrounding the martyrdom and its anniversary, one of the things that I think is a, is a fascinating aspect of the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith is we're not entirely sure how it is that the events of the actual murder took place. And what I, what I mean by that is most of us are most familiar with the explanation of events that is in Doctrine and Covenant Section 135. And that's very, very, very brief. If you want to, you know, section 135 of the doctrine and Covenants. This was actually originally published in the Times and Seasons newspaper and then added to the already almost completed Doctrine, the Doctrine and Covenants, the 1844 edition of it. So it already been published in 1835. Joseph was actually proofreading a new edition of the 1844 Doctrine and Covenants at the same time that he was arrested and went to Carthage and was murdered. And so they added this as a, they added this as an appendix item to the Doctrine and Covenants. Now you might notice, I guess while I'm at it, I might as well say you might notice if you go to the section heading of Doctrine and covenants, section 135, you go check it online. Or if you have a more recent version of the Doctrine and Covenants, you can read it. It says it's the announcement of the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, the prophet and his brother, Hiram Smith, the patriarch at Carthage, Illinois, June 27, 1844. Document was included at the end of the 1844 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, which was nearly ready for publication when Joseph and Hyrum Smith were murdered. You'll notice there's something that's missing there. Yeah. Who's the author of the section? And there isn't one. So there used to be. In the 1981 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, it ascribed the section heading, ascribed the authorship to John Taylor. And when we were working on the historical background of the section headings of the Doctrine Covenants through the work on the Joseph Smith Papers, that was one of the questions that was. It's one of the questions that was had. How do we know that John Taylor is the author of this? And so we kind of tracked it down and found that in the 19th century, though these words are quoted a lot, no one ever ascribes them to John Taylor. The text of the revelation itself, verse 2. John Taylor and Willard Richards, two of the 12, were the only persons in the room at the time. Well, that, that doesn't scream out John Taylor's writing this. Right. I mean not very many people write about themselves in the third person. And so we, we found that he never said that he wrote it. Now in point of fact, it might be a little bit difficult for him to have written it himself anyway as it was published very shortly after the martyrdom. And as we know, John Taylor, he's full of holes. I mean, immediately right after he's wounded very badly. And so, I mean he still could have dictated it. I mean it likely was kind of a joint effort with Willard Richards and maybe William Clayton. I don't really know. There are a couple of indicators in it. And that's part of the reason why I wanted to share it is first, the explanation of the martyrdom in DNC 135 provides a very, very small account of how that happened. They were shot in Carthage jail on 27 June 1844, about 5pm by an armed mob, painted black of from 150 to 200 persons. Hyrum was shot first and fell calmly exclaiming I am a dead man. Now that's exactly what John Taylor says that he says. Willard Richards says the same thing though too. So this is actually pretty consistent for both. Joseph leapt from the window and was shot dead in the temp in the attempt, exclaiming O Lord my God. They were both shot after they were dead in a brutal manner and both received four balls. So the explanation that's given in this tribute, which will later become Doctrine and Covenant Section 135, is that Joseph was killed as he was leaping from the window. But it also includes an explanation that they were shot after they were dead. So you really have a couple of aspects that are going on there. Now back to our authorship question. Before I move on. What we found, and you know, others have found this too, is that really the attribution of D&C 135 to John Taylor went back to Heber J. Grant that when he was the prophet, he quoted from it in general conference and said that he had been given to understand that John Taylor had authored it. So prior to that it didn't have an attribution to John Taylor that John Taylor was the author. But as you can see, people are. Well, if he, Bridget Grant, thinks that he's the author, then I guess he probably, I mean, John Taylor very well could have been the author. But you can see how I think the church decided to be a little bit more careful and say, well, we don't have anyone claiming that they're the author. John Taylor certainly never says he's the author. I'm sure he's in some way involved. But you know, let's not get caught up in the semantics of who wrote it like I am right now and instead just explain, you know, that this is this, this glorious tribute to Joseph and Hyrum. And of course, you know, you all know that those beautiful words about Joseph, the prophet and seer of the Lord has done more save Jesus only for the salvation of men in this world than any other man that has ever lived in it. And they go on to list the things that he's done. But truly, you know, believers, believers, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Joseph Smith's revelations are the reason why we believe in Jesus the way we do. I mean, lots of Christians believe in Jesus. We believe in a premortal life. We believe in the multiple kingdoms of heaven. We believe that everyone's going to have an opportunity to be exalted. We believe that we can become like our heavenly Father and our heavenly mother, that we have a heavenly mother. We believe all those things because Joseph Smith was a prophet. And so there's a lot of things you could add to that list. At any rate, most Latter Day Saints at the time. Their first real public explanation that was in detail of the martyrdom came from a publication in the Times and seasons newspaper called Two Minutes in Jail. It was published in the August 1, 1844 edition of the of the Times and Seasons. And it's Willard Richards who's writing it. Willard Richards Provides many of the same details that we covered in part two of our podcast with John Taylor, his explanation of it. So the details are pretty similar, even though they're not contemporary with one another. And one of the things that he explains this is how the murder happened. Joseph attempted, as a last resort to leap the same. He means from, but he's left a word out to leap the same window from whence Mr. Taylor fell when two balls pierced him from the door and one entered his rice right breast from without. And he fell outward, exclaiming O Lord, my God, as his feet went out of the window. My head went in, the balls whistling all around. He fell on his left side, a dead man. At this instant, the cry was raised. He slept from the window and the mob on the stairs and in the entry ran out. I withdrew from the window, thinking it of no use to leap out a window onto a hundred bayonets, then around General Smith's body. Not satisfied with this, I again reached my head out of the window and watched some seconds to see if there were any signs of life regardless of my own. Determined to see the end of him, I of him. I loved being fully satisfied he was dead. And with a hundred men near the body and more coming around the corner of the jail and expecting a return to our room, I rushed towards the prison door at the head of the stairs. So the explanation that Willard Richards gives his understanding of it is Joseph is shot multiple times as he goes to the window. Which would make sense. It would make sense because that's exactly what just happened to John Taylor. John Taylor didn't get shot in the. In the whole conflagration until he said, my only hope is to go out the window. In the attempt to go out the window, he shot. And then when he falls back onto the floor, he's now in the direct line of fire from the muskets that are being pointed around the door jamb and fired blindly into the room. And he's hit three more times. Willard Richards seems to believe that Joseph is hit several times from the door, which would make total sense, but then also believes that someone is that one of those shots, the one that probably the fatal one that hits him, it hits him from the outside. This, of course, is something that Latter Day Saints at the time, the fact that there's people shooting from the outside is something that to them suggests even greater the conspiracy. Right? That it's not just a group of people that rushed the jailer and ran up the stairs. There's people shooting in the jail from the outside, the ballistics of that are not as easily rendered when you think about shooting into a second story room and hitting someone at the angle you'd have to be at. You'd have to be really, really, really, really far away actually to be able to shoot at the angle to hit in there. And so there's lots of questions about that. But that is the account that Willard Richards gives that Joseph is shot multiple times in the attempt to leap from the window and he's essentially dead when he hits the ground. Okay. And, and that's also what DNC135 says. It says that he's shot dead in the attempt. Now the reason why I mentioned this is because there is another source which I'm guessing most of you might have heard about, but you don't know where it comes from. And that is the source that's provided by William Daniels. William Daniels is a colorful figure in this period of church history. So I'm going to turn to his account. So Daniels is super interesting because he is a non Latter Day Saint that is living in the nearby town of Augusta. And he's actually going to give an affidavit. He actually gives the affidavit on the 4th of July actually. So just a few days after the, the martyrdom in 1844, he states in the affidavit that he saw Joseph Smith leap from the window of the jail and that one of the company picked him up and placed him against the well curb and several shot him. So the account from William Daniels is not that Joseph was killed as he leapt from the jail, but in fact was alive and was executed execution style by the people that were outside after he went out. Now why does this. I said this is pretty colorful. And you might say, well it seems like, you know, it's an open and shut case. Why does this matter? Well, so in the following year it's going to actually surprise you to know that there actually were people indicted for Joseph and Hyrum's murder. There were multiple people indicted. You also might be surprised to find out that they weren't convicted. You know, spoiler alert, people murdering Mormons weren't convicted in the 1840s. But why did it become controversial? Well, you know, he told his story to quite a few people and one of the people that he apparently told his story to was a Latter Day Saint publisher by the name of Lyman Littlefield. Lyman O. Littlefield. Lyman Littlefield, just prior to the trial published this account that from William Daniels, attributing it to William Daniels it was called the correct account of the murder of Generals Joseph and Hyder Hiram Smith. Here's the problem. Lyman Littlefield greatly. He, he dramatized it. He, he. He went, you know, this story is based on true events. Basically, with this, he. He started adding things to it that apparently Daniels never actually said. So you can see why Daniels is such an important witness for the prosecution. He's not a Mormon. So anyone who's claiming, like, oh, yeah, just all those Mormons are just gonna lie about everything, which is hilarious, right, because all the people murdering him are all a bunch of Protestants. But no one's saying that. Well, of course they're gonna say that they hate Mormons. But you know that it ends up being a real nail in the coffin for the prosecution. Because what happens is Lyman Littlefield's account, it gets so, so, so this is botched from the beginning. He greatly expands on a bunch of this. A copy of it actually gets stolen before it's actually published. That stolen copy ends up at the trial. I mean, hard to believe people are willing to do dishonest things about this, but. And the defense begins to read from the Littlefield account of Daniel's claims. And they don't agree with Daniel's statements in court. And so it was instantly disqualifying of him as they're going through the trial. Did you say this because you told the court X, but here you said this. And there were multiple times that William Daniels had to say, I didn't say that to Lyman Littlefield. That's not part of what I said to him. And so really, all it really did was discredit the Lyman Littlefield account. But in reality, it ended up, I mean, you, frankly, you don't need a whole lot to discredit a Latter Day Saint witness on the stand in 1845 Illinois. But that. That's what it was used for. Now, that being said, so let me, Let me share part of that affidavit with you. He said, and he's very emphatic about this, in this, in this later statement that he made. He said that Joseph was not shot in his attempt to leap from the window, but he was executed by a firing squad. He said that Joseph landed on the ground, and according to that account, one of the mob grabbed Joseph Smith, set him up against, quote, the south side of the well curb that was situated a few feet from the jail. Colonel Levi Williams then ordered four men to shoot him. The fire was simultaneous. A slight cringe of the body was all the indication of pain that betrayed that he betrayed. When the ball struck him, he fell upon his face. One ball then entered the back part of his body. This is the ball that many people have supposed struck him about the time he was in the window. But this is a mistake. I was close by him and I know that he was not hit with a ball until after he was seated by the well curb. His death was instant and tranquil. So you can see that's a. That's a pretty big discrepancy. Right. Daniels is claiming not only that Joseph was not killed in attempting to leap the window, that he was 100% alive and actually unwounded when he hit the ground, that he's propped up, executed, and one more shot to the back for good measure is how he gets the shots that are in it. I don't know that it matters that much in the sense that these are murderers murdering people anyway. Regardless, it's murderers murdering people. But that it's not a firing squad is usually not how we think about this now. Is that what happened? Well, like I said, I don't really know because there are so many aspects of this affidavit that were expanded. Now. Why do I. Why does this become, you know, that's not the most controversial part of this. It's controversial in the sense because he says very directly, Levi Williams was the one who did it. That's. Levi Williams is one of the people that is charged in the murder. Spoiler alert, he's acquitted. Well, Daniels goes on to say, and this is probably something you might have heard as an apocryphal story, so I'm going to tell you where the story came from that he said that after Joseph Smith died, quote, a light so sudden and powerful burst from the heavens upon that bloody scene and paralyzed the four shooters as well as another man. So this is no longer, quote, that was trying to disfigure the body. So he claimed that they decided that they were going to behead Joseph Smith, that. That a man stepped forward with a bayonet and they were going to cut his head off. And that as he went to go do it, there was a flash of light. The dude with the bayonet is paralyzed and, like, freezes and they have to carry him away. His friends do. So that there was. There was this attempt to like, to. To decapitate the. The corpse of Joseph Smith. And they're not able to do it because of this miraculous event. So, of course, you know, this. This is something very, very powerful. But, you know, he said that they, they. This is again quoting from this. They fell to the ground and they all stood like marble statues, not having the power to move a single limb of their bodies. They seemed as helpless as if they were dead. What's interesting, though, is the men involved, of course, claim, well, no, that never happened. The murderers who are on trial here, they. They claim that that never happened. But while there's a lot of aspects of. Of this that are. Are disputed, when the defense attorney begins to rail on him, you know, pointing out, oh, there's another discrepancy, the response from William Daniels on the stand is, suppose I did tell you I saw light. Would you believe it if I told you that I did? I mean, kind of like putting it back on him. And so the reality is the Daniels account is it's a controversial account. It doesn't agree with the other accounts at all, and it involves this miracle that kind of makes people even more suspect of it. It's even more suspect because of all of the fact that there are a bunch of things in there that Lyman Littlefield just threw into the account to kind of gussy it up. Now in 2017, well, earlier than that, but we, the church began working through the Joseph Smith Papers and then eventually published the. The council of 15 minutes. In the council of 15 minutes, William Clayton also provides another account of the martyrdom, which he tells us that he got from talking to William Daniels. The reason why this matters is it's easy to say, well, if William Daniels didn't include all of the story that we're talking about in 1844 in his very first little snippet affidavit, well, then he just made it all up and the whole thing's lies, and we don't even have to pay any attention to it. But he apparently told William Clayton a story that sounds very, very, very similar to what, to what he says in this later lineman Little Field, you know, pamphlet. So let's, let's go to William Clayton here in the Council of 50. The brethren were in the front room, not apprehensive of danger, until suddenly alarmed by the report of several muskets below. There's also a great controversy over whether or not the guards at the front of the jail, whether they were in on it or not. Latter Day Saints, you know, tending to see a conspiracy everywhere, as if they were promised that their prophet would be protected and then was murdered. They tended to just assume that everyone was in on it. You know, that they either fired, that they had their guns loaded with blanks so it looked like they were trying to stop them or they just fired their guns up in the air. What do we know? We know that nobody is wounded from the mob as they're rushing the jail. And if you're shooting into a crowd, you're probably gonna hit somebody. But I would also guess that whether you're in on the conspiracy or not, if you're two men guarding a jail and 200 people charge at you with guns, you know, I ain't, I ain't dying for this, you know, whatever, whatever. The 25 cents they gave me to stand here isn't enough for me to die over. So we don't. Whether they were in on it or not. I mean, there's certainly a lot of people who conjecture that, that they, they made a plan beforehand. But anyway, in a moment, the mob rushed up. This is back to William Clayton's count. In a moment, the mob rushed up the stairs and commenced firing through the door at the brother. And a ball struck Hiram in the throat and he fell backwards exclaiming, brother Joseph, I am a dead man. Notice that's a little bit different. We know that Hiram was actually shot in the nose, but he also appears to have been glanced there in the throat. So you could see why that they might have. He might have thought that. Joseph defended himself with a six shooter pistol until his loading was out and then sprang for the window, a shower of balls flying in every direction. Brother Taylor received four balls in his body and fell near the window and rolled under the bed which stood in the room. Joseph opened the window, which is not accurate. So that's an inaccurate aspect of this. The window was already open, at least according to John Taylor and we have no other accounts, that Joseph opened the window. Window to get out. He opened the window and he sprang through. He fell heavily on his side, which evidently hurt him considerably. That's a great 19th century under understatement. He dropped, you know, 15ft to the ground on his side. So, yeah, probably the mob fiercely rushed at him with bayonets like so many fiends of hell. They raised him up and set him with his back to the well curb and began to tantalize him. That's a 19th century term for taunt. You know, today we use that more talking about like, oh, I'd like some brownies, I'll tantalize you with them. But that's, it's a, it's a, a, a, a 19th century term for taunt. Four of the mob then drew their rifles and shot him through and he expired instantly. Now, again, this Is he's pulling this away? The four who shot him were struck dumb and motionless. The rest fled. But seeing these four that they could not move, they returned and carried them away. The mob then fled the same way they came. Dr. Richards, who was in the room at the time the brethren were killed as soon as the mob was fled, took brother Taylor and carried him into the back room to secure him. Expecting another attack, Joseph was brought inside, but he and Hyrum were perfectly dead. Thus ended the lives of two of the members of this council. He signed with the Council of 50 by the hands of assassins, while under the most solemn pledge from the governor for their safety. This statement of the massacre of our beloved Brethren is according to the testimony of Mr. William M. Daniels, as he related it in my presence, who was at Carthage at the time. It differs in some little instances from the testimony of others, but it seems most likely to be correct. I need not state the sorrow of this people. When informed of the fact the following morning, a universal feeling of gloom and anguish prevailed. So we have these various accounts and. And really, for the longest time, the Daniels account has kind of been pushed to the side and discarded because of how, you know, how many holes were in it. I'm not saying that this proved that the Daniel's account is true. I can't prove whether or not people were struck dumb. Obviously, that's beyond a historian, as we talked earlier. That's beyond what a historian can prove. I can't prove that. What does this demonstrate? It demonstrates, at the very least, that the story William Daniels is telling is actually more consistent than we thought it was. He's telling William Clayton almost immediately afterwards, apparently. And that story that he tells seems to be pretty much the same story that he's telling in the trial in 1845. And so we actually are left with kind of a mystery about what happened was Joseph. You know, I mean, obviously I hope that. That Joseph Smith was killed leaping from the window because I want him to not have suffered or had to face the execution of the firing squad. But what's really interesting is that William Clayton, in his own journal, he kind of splits the difference. So you have Willard Richards saying he's killed as he leaps from the window and he's dead when he hits the ground. You have William Daniels saying he wasn't shot at all when he left from the window. He was executed when he hit the ground. And so in his own journal, William Clayton writes that he leapt from the window and was wounded and expired on the ground shortly thereafter. So both Things is where he ends up. So I just thought that's an interesting aspect. Like I said, you might have heard of that before, but there are certainly there are some historical questions about exactly how that that may have taken place. And really different people have different opinions on it. So William Daniels isn't a Latter Day Saint at the time of the martyrdom. What is his history moving forward? Do we know what happens with him? Well, so he lives in the nearby town. He explains it that these various little towns, they're kind of gathering their militia up because they hear of the troubles going on. And so they're. I mean, frankly, they're likely headed to Carthage to help the mob. I mean, I don't know. But they arrive right as the murders are happening. That's what he says he sees right as he gets there. And he's not a member of the church like I said. And so because of that, his testimony carries a lot of weight because it's not just a Mormon saying that this happened. Interestingly though, he actually becomes a Latter Day Saint. And so that will kind of taint his testimony. So, you know, a critic will say something like, well, he was probably already disposed towards Mormonism and that's the reason why he claimed this kind of crazy miracle thing and people being frozen and seeing lights and stuff like that. Or of course someone could, a faithful person could look at it the other way and say, yeah, he wasn't a Latter Day Saint before. He thinks he saw some miracle from God and became a Latter Day Saint. So that. Which is the whole reason why he's working with Lyman Whittlefield in Nauvoo and publishing it. So he does become a Latter Day Saint, but he's not a Latter Day Saint at the time of, of the murder. One last thing I think I'll share with you as a supplemental before we close this is there are a few times when I was working on the Joseph Smith papers that I felt a lot of emotion. I mean, a few that's. I'm really underselling it. That was a 19th century underselling of that. But one time that I really felt some strong feelings was as we were working on the documents surrounding the martyrdom, I came across the bill that the people at the Hamilton Hotel in Carthage sent Emma for the cost of the nails and the wood to build the coffin they built that they sent Joseph back in. I don't know why that made me so mad, but I gotta tell you, I was mad. It was this weird emotion. I was angry as I read that you murdered her husband up. And then here's the bill, by the way, for the, for the coffin and the nails. It really brought to life the fact that, you know, look, these are, these are real people. Hiram and Joseph leave wives and children at home and who no longer have their father figure that they love because of the murders of these people. The sacrifice they made goes on, as DNC135 says. But for the Latter Day Saints at the time, and certainly for Mary Fielding and for Emma Smith, this was an incredible tragedy to have their husbands taken from them. So thank you very much for joining us for this bonus podcast. I hope you enjoyed it and we will be talking to you again very soon. So please continue to keep listening and send in questions that you have. We might be able to get to them on a future podcast. Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Garrett Dirkmont. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com until next time.