Posted by:
randyj
(
)
Date: December 10, 2014 11:04PM
"You correctly cite the two crimes he was charged with, but he was only in jail because of the second one."
I originally wrote those remarks to some TBMs who were making the typical ignorant assertion "Joseph Smith was jailed on false charges! He was martyred for his religious beliefs!" blah blah blah. My remarks were intended to counter those TBMs' assertions.
Here's some more documentation I wrote years ago while debating TBMs:
A Mormon wrote:
>>>Hate to point it out to you, but when he ordered the destruction of the
>>>Expositor, he violated no law at that time,
And Randy replied:
>>The actual criminal charge brought against Joseph Smith for the Expositor
>>destruction was "riot." When his arrest became imminent for the riot charge,
>>Smith declared martial law and activated his Nauvoo Legion to prevent his
>>arrest and extradition. Joseph Smith was then arrested for "treason"
>>against the state of Illinois.
To which "Ninja X" replied:
>And your source for this is...where?
"Joseph Smith, acting as mayor, ordered the city marshal to destroy the
newspaper and press without delay and instructed the major general of the
Nauvoo Legion to have the militia assist. Shortly after eight o'clock that
evening, citizens and legionniares marched to the 'Expositor' office and
smashed the press, scattering the type as they did so. This act infuriated the
non-Mormons of Hancock County, who saw it as a final act of contempt for their
laws. The 'Quincy Whig' denounced the 'high-handed outrage' and said that if
this was a specimen of 'Mormon attitude towards law and rights it is not
surprising that the Missourians were raised to madness and drove them from the
state.'.....At Warsaw Thomas Sharp said, 'We hold ourselves at al times in
readyness to co-operate with our fellow citizens...to exterminate, utterly
exterminate, the wicked and abominable Mormon leaders.'....Advocating an attack
upon the Mormon city, he screamed in his headlines, 'Strike them!' for the
time has fully come.' To provide justification for a march on Nauvoo, charges
of promoting a riot were made against Smith and several Mormon leaders, and
Constable David Bettisworth was sent to Nauvoo on June 12 to apprehend them.
When Bettisworth reached Nauvoo, Smith refused to go to Carthage, fearing his
life would be endangered. He said he would stand trial before any judge in
Nauvoo. To prevent Bettisworth from taking him, he secured a writ of habeas
corpus from a city court and later was tried and acquitted before a non-Mormon
judge. When Bettisworth came back to Carthage without his prisoner, the
reaction of the old citizens was nearly hysterical....One citizen remarked,
'Joe has tried the game too often.' The Carthaginians sent messengers...urging
armed men to come to Carthage to take Smith into custody. Emissaries were sent
to Governor Ford, charging that Smith had defied the law and asking Ford to
bring the state militia...In the face of an imminent attack on his city, Smith
declared Nauvoo under martial law and called out the Legion, a defensive action
which later led to treason charges being levied against him at
Carthage.....Ford had learned of the excitement and decided to intervene.....he
wrote the Mormon leader requesting that evidence be shown to justify the
actions taken against the 'Expositor.' After reviewing this and counter
evidence from the anti-Mormons, Ford wrote Smith on the next day, denouncing
the city's proceedings as unlawful and demanding that those involved in the
move against the Expositor submit to the processes of the law at Carthage."
("Carthage Conspiracy", Oaks and Hill, pp. 15-16.)
>>>nor did he violate the First Amendment at that time either.
>> If Joseph Smith had not died soon afterwards, and the "Expositor"
>>publishers had pressed civil charges, one charge against Smith
>>would have been violation of rights of free speech.
>Of course, if that were true, that case would have been for naught. There
>was no guarantee of free speech at that time as we know it. The right of
>free speech at that time only pertained to national laws, as it had not been
>extended to the states via the 14th admendment. In short, the case would
>have sunk...badly. You should have read up on your history.
Although the Bill of Rights was formally extended to the states in 1868,
freedom of speech and of the press had been recognized as an inalienable right
since the Peter Zenger case in New York in 1735. Zenger was tried for libel
for criticizing the British government, and he was acquitted because his
writings were true. Freedom of the press has been upheld in the US since that
time.
"Beginning with Virginia in 1776, state after state wrote the idea of a free
press into its constitution. In 1778, Massachusetts rejected a proposed
constitution because it did not contain such a provision. Today, all state
constitutions have a provision guaranteeing freedom of the press. Several
states ratified the Federal Constitution itself only after being assured that
the document would be amended to protect freedom of expression. Amendment 1 to
the United States Constitution states that 'Congress shall make no
law...abridging the freedom...of the press.' "
(World Book)
I assume that Illinois had such a law guaranteeing a free press, because both
Governor Ford and the
"Expositor" publishers pointed to Smith's violation of freedom of the press in
their complaints against him:
"General Smith,...I attribute the last outbreak to the destruction of the
'Expositor,' and to your refusal to comply with the writ issued by Esq.
Morrison. The press in the United States is looked upon as the great bulwark
of freedom, and its destruction in Nauvoo was represented and looked upon as a
high-handed measure, and manifests to the people a disposition on your part to
suppress the liberty of speech and of the press; this, with your refusal to
comply with the requisition of a writ, I conceive to be the principal cause of
this difficulty, and you are, moreover, represented to me as turbulent and
defiant of the laws and institutions of your country."
(Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 384.)
"We are earnestly seeking to explode the vicious principles of Joseph
Smith, and those who practice the same abominations and whoredoms;
which we verily know and are not accordant and consonant with the
principles of Jesus Christ and the Apostles; and for that purpose, and
with that end in view, with an eye single to the glory of God, we have
dared to gird on the armor, and with God at our head, we most solemnly
and sincerely declare that the sword of truth shall not depart from the
thigh, nor the buckler from the arm, until we can enjoy those glorious
privileges which nature's God and our country's laws have guarantied
(sic) to us -- freedom of speech, the liberty of the press, and the
right to worship God as seemeth us good."
(William Law, Francis Higbee, 'Nauvoo Expositor')
The violation of the 'Expositor's' rights to free speech was only half of
Smith's error; the other half being that he ordered its destruction without due
process; that is why he was arrested for inciting riot. His excuse for its
destruction was that the paper was a 'public nuisance'; however, the
'Expositor' does not contain a hint of inciting to riot, or to disturbing the
public peace.
Its only 'crime' was that it criticized Joseph Smith, exposed his secret
practice of polygamy, his financial irregularities, and his plans to create a
theocratic government headed by himself, and it called for Nauvoo citizens to vote
against Hyrum Smith in the legislative election.
Even LDS apostle (and lawyer) Dallin Oaks conceded that Smith had "no legal
justification for the destruction of the Expositor press."
(Carthage Conspiracy, p. 26.)
Smith had yet another motive to rid himself of the threat of William Law:
"The marriage to the Lawrence sisters became public knowledge when William Law,
Joseph's second counselor in the First Presidency, became alienated from the
prophet......On May 23 he filed suit against the Mormon leader in Hancock
County Circuit Court, at Carthage, charging that Smith had been living with
Maria Lawrence 'in an open state of adultery' from October 12, 1843, to the day
of the suit. In response, Smith flatly denied polygamy in a speech delivered
on May 26: '[The charges against me are false].....What a thing it is for a
man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can
only find one.....[I can prove them all perjurers.]' As polygamy was illegal
under US law, Smith had little choice but to repudiate the practice."
(In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, pp. 476-477.)
As it played out, Smith's method of 'proving them all perjurers' was not to
take them to court, as would have been proper, but to attempt to silence them
without due process by destroying their
printing press.
Unfortunately, the later admission of the polygamy practice, along with the
revelation of the organization of the "Council of Fifty," and of Joseph Smith
having himself crowned as "King of Israel," showed that what the
'Expositor' publishers wrote was the truth. Smith had the press destroyed not
because it lied, but because it revealed his true secret acts. Smith realized that
if his secret acts and plans became public, his empire would crumble. He knew
that he couldn't sue the publishers, because he would lose; therefore, his
destruction of the press was a desperate act of lawlessness, done purely to
maintain his power; he miscalculated the retaliation from non-Mormons, and it
led directly to his death two weeks later.
In America, you don't mess with freedom of the press.
Randy J.