The Nauvoo Expositor — What the Paper Actually Said, and Why the Press Was Abated

Critics treat the destruction of the Expositor as the moment the mask slipped. The paper’s own front page contains a sentence they never quote.

The Argument

The charge is straightforward. The Nauvoo Expositor published allegations about Joseph Smith’s plural marriages and his combined religious and political authority. Joseph, acting as mayor, joined the Nauvoo City Council in declaring the press a public nuisance. The press was removed and the remaining papers burned. Within seventeen days Joseph was dead in Carthage.

Then comes the question, and it is a fair one: why was a newspaper destroyed rather than allowing its accusations to be answered publicly? There is an answer. Was the act lawful under the law of 1844? Did Joseph refuse to answer his critics in print? Was the paper even what critics say it was? Each of those has a documented answer, and the third one comes first, because almost nobody has read the newspaper in question.

What the Expositor Said About the Book of Mormon

The Expositor ran one issue, dated June 7, 1844. Its publishers were insiders: William Law, Joseph’s former counselor in the First Presidency, his brother Wilson Law, Charles Ivins, Robert D. and Charles A. Foster, and Francis M. and Chauncey L. Higbee. Their paper opened with a preamble stating exactly where they stood.

NAUVOO EXPOSITOR, JUNE 7, 1844 — PREAMBLE

“We all verily believe, and many of us know of a surety, that the religion of the Latter Day Saints, as originally taught by Joseph Smith, which is contained in the Old and New Testaments, Book of Covenants, and Book of Mormon, is verily true; and that the pure principles set forth in those books, are the immutable and eternal principles of Heaven.”

Read that again. The men who published the Expositor put in print, over their own names, that the Book of Mormon is true. Not plausible. Not well-intentioned. Verily true. They said the same of the Bible and of the Book of Covenants — the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. Their thirteenth resolution repeated it, calling on the Saints to uphold “the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ, whether set forth in the Bible, Book of Mormon, or Book of Covenants.”

WHAT THE EXPOSITOR AFFIRMED AS TRUE

  • The Book of Mormon — named directly in the preamble as containing principles that are “immutable and eternal”
  • The Book of Covenants — the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph’s recorded revelations
  • The Old and New Testaments — listed alongside the Restoration scriptures, not against them
  • Joseph’s original teaching — “the religion of the Latter Day Saints, as originally taught by Joseph Smith”
  • Resolution 13th — a call to sustain “the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ” as set forth in all three books

What the dissenters rejected was everything they classified as later innovation. Their second resolution named “a plurality of Gods above the God of this universe,” “the plurality of wives, for time and eternity,” and unconditional sealing up to eternal life. Their third opposed “every attempt to unite church and state” and Joseph’s pursuit of political office. Their twelfth declared: “We will not acknowledge any man as king or law-giver to the church; for Christ is our only king and law-giver.”

That is not a fraud exposé. It is a doctrinal quarrel over developments after 1841, published by men who still believed the gold plates were real and the revelations authentic. The Expositor is a reform manifesto, and its authors said so.

The Trap the Critic Walks Into

Anyone using the Expositor to prove Joseph was a conman is calling William Law to the stand. So the witness has to be examined. Were Law and his co-publishers honest, informed men whose testimony about Nauvoo deserves weight? If yes, then their sworn published statement that the Book of Mormon is “verily true” deserves the same weight. Were they liars and axe-grinders? Then the accusations built on the same page collapse with them.

There is no third door. The critic wants the second half of the document and not the first. That is not evidence. It is editing.

Joseph Answered Critics in Print Constantly

The premise buried in the question — that Joseph suppressed criticism rather than answer it — does not survive the record. Nauvoo had two Church-aligned papers, the Times and Seasons and the Nauvoo Neighbor, and both answered hostile claims in print for years. Joseph answered John C. Bennett’s charges publicly and at length. He answered from the pulpit on May 26, 1844, eleven days before the Expositor ever ran.

And consider what he never touched. Thomas Sharp’s Warsaw Signal, twenty miles downriver, printed anti-Mormon material continuously and openly called for violence against the Saints. Sharp published straight through 1844 and beyond. He was later tried for Joseph’s murder and acquitted. His press was never molested by anyone in Nauvoo. So why is the Warsaw Signal missing from every telling of this story? A man who silences critics as a policy does not leave the loudest one running for four years.

The Legal Question Critics Skip

The Nauvoo Charter, granted by the Illinois legislature, gave the city council express power “to declare what shall be a nuisance, and to prevent and remove the same.” That is the authority the council acted under. It also had Blackstone, whose Commentaries permitted a nuisance to be abated directly, without waiting on a trial. Did the council know it held that power? They read the charter and the commentary aloud in session. They did not act on impulse.

The council met on June 8 for roughly six and a half hours and again on June 10 for roughly seven and a half. Fourteen hours of debate. Joseph argued the paper was “calculated to destroy the peace of the city.—and it is not safe that such things should exist.” John Taylor said no city on earth would bear such slander. Benjamin Warrington, the one councilman who was not a member of the Church, argued for fines and a warning instead. He was heard, and he was outvoted. Every other member voted for the resolution.

RESOLUTION OF THE NAUVOO CITY COUNCIL, JUNE 10, 1844

“Resolved by the City Council of the City of Nauvoo that the printing establishment from whence issues the ‘Nauvoo Expositor’ is a public Nuisance and also all of said Nauvoo Expositors which may be, or exist in said establishment, and the Mayor is instructed to cause said printing establishment and papers to be removed without delay, in such manner as he shall direct.”

Joseph, as mayor, ordered City Marshal John P. Greene to carry it out. Roughly a hundred men removed the press, scattered the type, and burned the copies still in the office. No one was hurt. The building was left standing.

The Anachronism at the Center of the Charge

Modern readers hear “a newspaper was shut down” and think First Amendment. In 1844 that instinct is simply wrong as a matter of law. The First Amendment restrained Congress, not states and not cities. Its protections were not applied against state and municipal action until the Fourteenth Amendment and a line of Supreme Court decisions in the 1920s and 1930s. President Dallin H. Oaks, who published the standard legal study of the episode in the Utah Law Review in 1965, has stated the point plainly: freedom of the press under the First Amendment “did not apply to state action or to city action at that period.”

Nor was press destruction rare in Jacksonian America. It was common enough that the councilmen had recent local examples in mind.

PRESSES DESTROYED IN THIS ERA

  • Independence, Missouri, 1833 — a mob destroyed the Saints’ own press, the Evening and the Morning Star, and tarred and feathered Bishop Edward Partridge. No one was punished.
  • Alton, Illinois, 1837 — mobs destroyed Elijah Lovejoy’s abolitionist press three times and then killed him. His murderers were acquitted.
  • Nauvoo, Illinois, 1844 — a chartered city council voted, in open session, after fourteen hours of recorded debate, and destroyed no one.

Which of those three is remembered as the outrage? When a mob burned a Mormon press and drove twelve hundred Saints out of Jackson County, no state official called it the death of the republic. When a lawful municipal body voted on a nuisance ordinance, that became the crime of the century. The standard moves depending on who is holding the type.

What Is Genuinely Discussed by Historians

There is one real question here, and it is narrower than critics want. Did the abatement reach too far? The Church’s own history summarizes the scholarly assessment this way: the council acted within its authority in destroying the copies of the paper, and whether that authority extended to the press itself is the point historians weigh. That is a question about the reach of a municipal remedy under an unsettled body of frontier law. It is not a question about whether Joseph was hiding a fraud.

And the man supposedly hiding something did the opposite of hide. Joseph submitted to legal process immediately. He was arraigned, he answered the riot charge, and when Governor Thomas Ford demanded he stand trial in Carthage — hostile ground, a county seat full of armed enemies — he went. He surrendered voluntarily and was in custody awaiting trial when the mob came through the jail door. Does that look like a man running from an accusation? Five men were tried for the murders in 1845. All five were acquitted.

The Verdict

The Expositor was abated by a recorded vote of a chartered city council, under an express grant of nuisance power, after two days of debate, with the lone dissenter given the floor. Joseph executed that ordinance as mayor. He then walked into the jurisdiction of his enemies to answer for it, and it cost him his life.

As for the paper itself, it is one of the strangest exhibits a critic has ever chosen. Its authors declared in their opening paragraph that Joseph’s revelations were true, that the Book of Mormon was true, and that the religion he restored contains “the immutable and eternal principles of Heaven.” They wanted the Church reformed, not exposed as a hoax. Their own words rule out the conclusion the critic is trying to reach with them.

Quote the whole document or quote none of it.

Sources

PRIMARY AND SCHOLARLY SOURCES

Related: Why Joseph Smith Could Not Openly Confirm Plural Marriage, The Council of Fifty, and Joseph Smith’s Legal Troubles.