The "horse thief" thread got me to thinking: Why would a mob start shooting into a room with JS & company? Don't you think they would be there to drag him out and at least beat him publicly to satisfy the assembled mob if not out & out lynch him? Although I'm sure it would have come out in the trial, I think that either one of the attacks guns went off unintentionally as they were trying to push the door open, or JS shot first.

In any case, I'm sure it didn't happen anywhere near what the movies show. At least Dean Cain had a gun in 'September Dawn'.

Excellent point, CNB. A lynch victim doesn't get shot up in the cell. The rest of the enraged mob would be pissed for missing the coup de gras. I wonder if they may have thrown him out the window to share the lynching experience.

Meh, who cares. They did us a disservice by killing him and turning him into a martyr.

I heard that JS was literally tarred and feathered using hot tar, and on more than one occasion. Anyone here know if that's true?

"I heard that JS was literally tarred and feathered using hot tar, and on more than one occasion. Anyone here know if that's true?"

In addition to the link Twinker provided, here's some more info:

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080504114809AAKDkre

I wrote that about 12-13 years ago.

randyj and deconstructor are the same person ?

"randyj and deconstructor are the same person ?"

Nope. When Decon used to post here, he would put some of my posts on his website. So sometimes people assume that he wrote them, and they affix his name to them.

It's similar to the way Steve Benson quotes my writings in his lengthy posts. It's sometimes difficult to tell who wrote what.

Joe was not tarred and feathered with hot tar. They used pine tar that people used back then to patch holes in cabins. It was an impromptu back-up plan after the castrastion and poisoning didn't work out. It was meant to humiliate him, not to burn him, etc... Tarring with hot asphalt tar probably would have killed him...too bad they didn't have hot vats of that lying around instead of buckets of pine tar.

Yup, it's true.

Horny Joe actually got off easy that night. Some of the mob had resolved to castrate him but they eventually let him off with a good tar and feathering instead.

I think they even had the doctor with them but he got cold feet.
It's not hard to imagine why the mob felt castration was an appropriate action.

http://mormonthink.com/grant6.htm

Grant Palmer quotes Luke Johnson, brother of Miranda Johnson to whom unwanted sexual advances were made by JS.

"While Joseph was yet at my father's, a mob of forty or fifty came to his house, a few entered his room in the middle of the night, and Carnot Mason dragged Joseph out of bed by the hair of his head; he was then seized by as many as could get hold of him, and taken about forty rods from the house, stretched on a board, and tantalized in the most insulting and brutal manner; they tore off the few night clothes that he had on, for the purpose of emasculating him, and had Dr. Dennison there to perform the operation [castration]; but when the Dr. saw the Prophet stripped and stretched on the plank, his heart failed him, and he refused to operate. The mob. in attempting to force open his jaws, they broke one of his front teeth to pour a vial of some obnoxious drug [aqua-fortis, a poison] into his mouth. The mob [then] became divided [because they] did not succeed,. put poured tar over him, and then stuck feathers in it and left him. [then] part of the mob went to the house that Sidney Rigdon occupied, and dragged him out, and besmeared him with tar and feathers.[16]"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2016 09:11PM by Twinker.

Wow, so if they had actually casterated JS, instead of a martyr he would have become transgendered. And we all know how the church feels about transgendered individuals. Then they convict him and toss him in prison where he become's baba's bitch.

"Wow, so if they had actually casterated JS, instead of a martyr he would have become transgendered."

There's one thing for sure: If Joseph had been castrated in 1832, that would have been the last we heard about polygamy.

One could argue that he was lynched, given that it means "mob punishment." Lynching doesn't have to involve hanging, though that is the most effective method of making an absolutely terrifying and very visible point to a community.

They used pine tar on JS

Historically, petroleum tar was not used in the application of tarring and feathering for a variety of reasons. Modern tar, also called bitumen or asphalt, is produced from either petroleum or coal. Typically used for tarring roads and roofs, the material must be semi-solid in normal weather under the hot sun, so tar, which is a mixture of a large number of different complex hydrocarbons and doesn’t have a single melting point, must have a high "softening point," the temperature at which the material becomes too soft to do its job. (It becomes more and more liquid as temperature rises above that.) For example, one modern brand of roofing asphalt has a softening point of 100 °C (212 °F) but is applied at 380sigfig=2NaNsigfig=2.[3] At the latter temperature it is a liquid that can be sloshed around. This kind of petroleum-based hot tar would burn any skin it came into contact with. Paving materials, both coal and petroleum-based, are mixed at somewhat lower temperatures (105C for coal tar, 150C180C for bitumen),[4] but even then liquid would still be hot enough to cause severe injuries.
Pine tar

Pine tar is extracted from pine trees. It was used for waterproofing wooden ships and for weatherproofing rope. Melville, in Moby Dick, mentions "putting your hand in the tar-pot" as one of the undignified things sailors were expected to do. It was not a punishment, just a chore, like sweeping down the deck.[5]

Clearly, this would not have been possible with asphalt. But rope, unlike roads, must remain flexible, so the tar used had to be softer (closer to liquid) at lower temperatures. The melting point of pine tar is 130to.[6] Pine tar’s boiling point is listed at .[6]

Since each of these materials – bitumen, coal tar, pine tar, pitch – is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, its viscosity/temperature characteristics can vary greatly, depending on how it was made and treated, though pitch is by definition darker and thicker than tar. Somewhat like molasses, which comes in different grades apparently, some pine tars were like golden syrup at room temperature, others much blacker and more viscous. The latter had to be heated to a higher temperature to use, and so was called "hot tar."[7] Therefore, it is difficult to know, in any particular instance, just what the material might have been that someone was tarred and feathered with. Unless the tar was boiling, it was not necessarily a brutal procedure. Often it seems to have been more a matter of humiliation than torture.

I think that the issue was with Joseph Smith leaving the State where the crimes were committed. Joseph Smith had a history of committing crimes then leaving to avoid prosecution. This was possible back in his day because there wasn't a FBI or Federal Police Force to catch him. Every time Joseph Smith was caught he would just move west to a new State and set up his scams again. Joseph Smith would bribe a jail guard or judge then run away before any punishment could be given.

Remember that Joseph Smith crossed the Mississippi river with plans to move west yet again to avoid prosecution. Joseph Smith was already on the run before he turned around and returned to Nauvoo. This is what allowed the police to arrest him and put him in Carthage Jail.

"Remember that Joseph Smith crossed the Mississippi river with plans to move west yet again to avoid prosecution."

True, and Joseph went back to Carthage because his wife and some followers called him a coward for not facing trial to determine his guilt or innocence. That's why Smith lamented that he was "going like a lamb to the slaughter"; he knew that he was guilty, and that he would not likely escape prosecution yet again. The anti-Mormons were tired of Smith dodging justice by legal tricks and payoffs, so they took the law into their own hands and lynched him.

From wikipedia:

The "Warsaw Signal" was vigorously anti-Mormon in its editorial stance. During the two separate periods of time when it bore the name Warsaw Signal, the owner and editor of the newspaper was Thomas C. Sharp, a leader in opposing Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saint presence in Illinois. Upon hearing news of the city-ordered destruction of neighboring, Mormon-critical press Nauvoo Expositor with assistance from an armed pro-Mormon mob, Sharp editorialized:

War and extermination is inevitable! Citizens ARISE, ONE and ALL!!!—Can you stand by, and suffer such INFERNAL DEVILS! To ROB men of their property and RIGHTS, without avenging them. We have no time for comment, every man will make his own. LET IT BE MADE WITH POWDER AND BALL!!![2]

In a June 14, 1844 extra edition, the Signal published the minutes of a meeting of Warsaw residents organized by Sharp whereby those in attendance condemned Smith's destruction of the printing press of the anti-Mormon Nauvoo Expositor and resolved that "the Prophet [Smith] and his miscreant adherents, should ... be demanded at their [the Latter Day Saints'] hands, and if not surrendered, a war of extermination should be waged to the entire destruction, if necessary for our protection, of his adherents."[3]

After Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob on June 27, Sharp editorialized in the July 10 edition:

Joe and Hiram [sic] Smith, at the time their lives were taken, were in the custody of the officers of the law; and it is asked by those who condemn the act, why the law was not first allowed to take its course before violence was resorted to? We answer that the course of law in the case of these wretches would have been a mere mockery; and such was the conviction of every sensible man.[4]

The mob went to Carthage to castrate Smith, but most likely to murder him as well. However, the low probability that his murder was contingent upon his fighting back can't be ignored. Castration would have been a sufficient motive for most of the mob. Reports that Smith's body was "mutilated" after his murder obviously refer to castration, as well as to someone absconding with his penis as a souvenir.

There was a stong sexual component to most frontier lynchings. The mobs were composed of local perverts who had no acceptable sexual outlet othet than prostitution. Laws against prostitution, fornication, and adultery were generally ignored, but made a convenient pretext to apprehend a victim and assemble a mob when public opinion allowed it.

"The mob went to Carthage to castrate Smith, but most likely to murder him as well."

I don't know where you came up with that. As I documented in my post above, the plotters made it clear that they intended to kill Smith. I've never read anything about castration being in the plans. I see no point in castrating a man you're planning to kill.

"There was a strong sexual component to most frontier lynchings. The mobs were composed of local perverts who had no acceptable sexual outlet other than prostitution."

I know of no evidence of "perverts" being among the Smith's killers. Here's a profile of the leaders:

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/carthage/defendantsbios.html

Here's how I came up with that: if a mob castrates someone after killing him, we can infer that they most likely intended to do so. Accidental castrations do happen, but in this case there was a predictable sequence of events, familiar to anyone who has studied mob violence from the 1820s to at least the 1930s. More recent photographs of lynching victims can also give us a good idea of what was happening in the earlier lynchings.

Historischer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... If a mob castrates
> someone after killing him, we can infer that they
> most likely intended to do so.

Or, in a word or two:

... If a lyncher can knife a six-incher,
He comes home with a Smyth souvenir.