--The Facts Don't Lie: The Mormon God was a No-Show for Joe
Even the pre-eminent hired legal gun for LDS Inc.--Dallin H. Oaks--doesn't buy the loony legend perpetrated by 21st century Danite wannabes--namely, that the killers of Joseph Smith ended up getting their just desserts in suffering grotesque and ignominious fates at the hands of Heaven's Avenging A-Team for having persecuted and murdered God's premier prophet of the Rock-in-the-Hat Restoration. (see: "Ezra Taft Benson and Hideous Tales of the Fate of the Persecutors of the Prophets,"
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,260465)
It would have been a helluva great story; too bad it ain't true. To the contrary, the opposite pretty much occurred.
In the book, co-authored with Marvin S. Hill, "Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accusaed Assassins of Joseph Smith," Oaks acknowledges the pure fiction behind the fabled claim that a just and powerful Mormon God rained hellish retribution down on the killers of the LDS Church's founding scam artists.
Ladies and gentlemen, the actual inconvenient record, brought to you by a confessing Oaks:
"A persistent Utah myth holds that some of the murderers of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith met fittingly gruesome deaths--that Providence intervened to dispense the justice denied in the Carthage trial (see Lundwall, 'Fate of the Persecutors,' pp. 292-358).
"But the five defendants who went to trial, including men who had been shown to be leaders of the murder plot and others associated with them, enjoyed notably successful careers.
"After losing his election for sheriff in Hancock County in 1846, Mark Aldrich left Illinois for California during the Gold Rush. By the 1860s, he had settled in Tucson, Arizona, where he served as postmaster and was elected to three terms in the upper house of the territorial legislature, acting during the 1866 terms as its president. He died in Tucson in 1874 at the age of 73.
"Jacob C. Davis distinguished himself as one of Hancock's most successful politicians. He was reelected to the state senate in 1846, 1850 and 1854, making four successive terms. In 1856 he was elected to Congress, filling a vacancy created by the resignation of William A. Richardson but he was defeated in his bid for reelection.
"William N. Grover ran last among four candidates for state representative from Hancock County in 1852; afterward he moved to St. Louis, where he practiced law. In 1865, he was appointed U.S. attorney for the eastern district of Missouri. He moved back to Warsaw prior to 1871 and was still living there in 1890, propserous and respected.
"His political objectives toward the Mormons attained, Thomas Sharp gave up the 'Warsaw Signal' in 1846. Thereafter he became an educator, lawyer, judge and, again, a newspaperman. He was elected delegate to the state constitutional convetion in 1847, was chosen justice of the peace in 1851, and in 1853 he began the first of three successful terms as mayor of Warsaw. He was unsuccessful as a Republican candidate for Congress in 1856 but in 1865 he was elected to a four-year term as judge of Hancock County, where he was 'greatly esteemed.' Still later he served as school principal. When he died in 1894 at the age of 80, he owned the 'Carthage Gazette,' which he left to his son.
"Levi Williams, psychologically a more violent man than the others, was active in raiding Mormon settlements as late as May 1846. Nothing is known about his career after this, except that he served as postmaster of Green Plains, that the Mormons took routine notice of his death in 1858 and the he is buried beneath an imposing gravestone in the cemetery in Green Plains.
"Captain Robert F. Smith, whose Carthage Greys failed in their guard duty at the jail, was a colonel of the Illinois militia in the Civil War. He participated at Sherman's siege of Atlanta and the march to the sea. At Savannah he was a brevetted brigadier general and he served for a time as military governor in that area.
"The subsequent careers of counsel for the defense were even more noteworthy. . . .
"Of all the participants in the trial, the one who made the greatest impact on the nation's history was Orville H. Browning, the leader of the defense. In 1856 he was one of the founders of the Republican party and in 1860 he played a signficant role in securing the Republican presidential nomination for Abraham Lincoln. In 1861 he served an interim appointment in the Senate until the state legislature filled the vacancy created by the death of Stephen A. Douglas and he acted as 'Lincoln's mouthpiece' in the Senate during this period. President Andrew Johnson named Browning Secreaty of the Interior in 1866. He concluded his career as a leading member of the Illinois bar.
"The only principals in the Carthage trial who seem to have been stalked by tragedy in their later careers were the prosecutors, the sheriff, the judge and the govenor.
"The first prosecutor, Murray McConnell, enjoyed continued success in the political arena, including a presidential appointment as auditor of the U.S. Treasury and a term as state senator. In 1869 he was murdered in his law office in Jacksonville, shot by a man who owed him money.
"William Elliot, the prosecutor who obtained the indictment, served as a quartermaster of an Illilnois regiment during the Mexican War and died at home shortly after his return.
"James H. Ralston, the states attorney pro tem during the trail, also served in the Mexican War. He moved to California, where he perished in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
"Sheriff Minor Deming's [experienced a] sudden death soon after his indictment for the killing of Samuel Marshall . . . .
"Colonel John J. Hardin, who had been instrumental in the arrest of Sharp and Williams, was killed in the battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican War.
""But no sequels were more tragic than those of the chief prosecutor, the judge and the governor.
"Already in decline at the time of the trial, Josiah Lamborn continued his heavy drinking and lost any remaining respect among his colleagues at the bar. His biographer states that he abandoned his wife and child and consorted with gamblers. He died of delirium tremens at Whitehall, Green County, Illinois, in 1847, a miserable man who is remembered chiefly for his venality in office and for his association with contemporaries like Douglas and Lincoln, who rose the the great heights he sought but could not attain.
"Judge Richard M. Young sought the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1846 but was defeated. He took up residence in Washington, D.C., where a friend from his Senate days, President James K. Polk, appointed him commissioner of the General land Office in 1847. Dismissed from that job in less than two years, when the Whigs came to power with Zachary Taylor, Young then persuaded the House of Representatives to elect him clerk of the House for a two-year period ending in 1851. Thereafter he practiced law in Washington, graduallly descending the ladder of prominence which he longed to climb. In 1858 his reason failed him and he was forced to retire. In 1860 he was admitted to the Government Hospital for the Insane. He was released after six months but died a year later, broken in fortune, body and mind.
"Governor Thomas Ford, who had initiated the prosecution to vindicate the honor of the state, was turned out of office in 1846. He retired to his home in Peoria, where he was dependent upon the charity of local citizens to provide him with necessities. While afflicted with the consumption that took his life in 1850, he wrote his excellent 'History of Illinois,' by which he hoped to provide some support for his destitute children. In his history Ford lamented the possibility that the names of 'Nauvoo and the Carthage Jail may become holy and venerable names, places of classic interest in another age; like Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Mount of Olivees and Mount Calvary to the Christian. . . .' Ford wrote that if this were to be the case, he felt 'degraded by the reflection, that the humble governor of an obscure State, who would otherwise be forgotten in a few years, stands a fair chance, like Pilate and Herod, by their official connection with the true religion, of being dragged down to posterity with an immortal name, hitched on to the memory of a miserable imposter."
Ford certainly got the "miserable imposter" thing right.
(Dallin H. Oaks and Marvin S. Hill, "Carthage Conspiracy: The Trial of the Accused Assassins of Joseph Smith" [Urbana, Chicago, London: University of Illinois Press, 1976], pp. 217-221)
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--Lessons Learned from a Limp LDS Lord
Judging from what happened (not to mention what didn't happen) to the killers of Joseph Smith, the historical record strongly suggests that the Mormon God is, well, all garments and no horse.
It seems pretty clear that if some goofball wants to try knocking off the Mormon Lord's prophets and other anointed ones, there doesn't seem to be much that the Ever Ready Elohim can do to stop it--or anything meaningful that he can do to punish the perps once the dastardly deed's been done.
To the contrary (at least when it comes to the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith), in notable cases, some of the assassins and their accomplices in crime got off scott free, and from there went on to become prominent, successful and heralded financiers and/or powerful elected public officials. As they say, life's a switch, and then you die.
Oh, well, just remember:
"Vengeance is mine," saith the Mormon God, "I just don't follow through."
That's what the Mormon Church gets, one supposes, when it makes the whole thing up in the first place. The faithful are bound to be disappointed.
Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2015 07:46PM by steve benson.