Recently, the University of Utah Press published Craig S. Smith’s edited collection of Juanita Brooks’s letters. Brooks is known as one of the founders of academic Mormon history, and was part of a generation of historians like Fawn Brodie and Dale Morgan, as well as literary authors like Maurine Whipple and Virginia Sorensen, that set the stage for New Mormon History. She is perhaps most recognized for her monumental book, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, first published by Stanford University Press in 1950 and then released in multiple editions since then. It remains one of the most influential books today, and is rightfully understood as a watershed in Mormonism’s historical conscience.

(Side note: it’s wonderful to see how Dixie State University has embraced her legacy, given she spent many years teaching there. They already run the Juanita Brooks Lecture Series. However, if you know some obscenely rich donor with an interest in the region’s past, you should talk them into endowing the Juanita Brooks Chair for Mormon/Utah History at the university.) Read More

Though my first, and still primary, attachment to Mormon history focused on the movement’s first two decades, I originally became familiar with the field in the midst of the Mountain Meadows Massacre battles. The first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed several of the most significant books on the topic since Juanita Brooks’s classic 1950 work, and the conflicting interpretations were often explosive. Was Brigham Young responsible for orchestrating the killing of 120 unarmed men, women, and children? It was a hotly contested question. Though outside my field of study, I devoured everything I could on the topic, and attended a number of public lectures and debates while I lived in Utah. And anyone somewhat familiar with these developments would have been well-acquainted with Will Bagley, a western historian known for his dogged research, lively prose, and well, let’s call it “lively” personality.

I was intrigued, then, when I saw that he had written a memoir, River Fever: Adventures on the Mississippi, 1967-1971, that Signature had published just in time for this year’s MHA. Knowing I’d need some reading material for a coming trip, I picked up a copy and dove in.

Though my “to read” pile was already ridiculously high, I decided to move River Fever to the top of my list for two reasons. First, even when I disagree with Bagley’s conclusions, or am annoyed with his antics, I find him a fascinating character, and I, of course, know he’s a very talented writer. And second, having recently finished my book on Nauvoo, as well as being a longtime fan of Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, I’m always intrigued by any narrative of traveling the mighty Mississippi River. Happily, the memoir proved both entertaining and rewarding, and I devoured it in only a few sittings. Read More

Among the small number of African Americans who converted to the Mormon faith during the nineteenth century, Jane Manning James is perhaps the best known. Born free to a woman who had been born enslaved, Jane’s life exhibited many of the complexities associated with racial discrimination during the era. She joined the LDS church in Connecticut, migrated–mostly by foot–to Nauvoo, lived in Joseph Smith’s home as a housekeeper, and was part of the vanguard company that entered Utah in 1847. She did not die until 1908, which granted her enough time to leave several reminiscences of her unlikely life. By all accounts, her story is a hallmark of dogged faith and preservation.

Starting a couple decades ago, she began cropping up in many popular places, like the 2005 movie about Joseph Smith that played in LDS visitors centers, often in service of highlighting the founding prophet’s “progressive” racial views, given her insistance that she was treated like family in Nauvoo. And unlike Elijah Able, another early black convert, the fact she was a woman allowed story-tellers to subtly leave out the implications of the priesthood restriction, though her poignant appeals for temple blessings also became a common feature of her contemporary image. In short, Jane Manning James has become part of the modern Mormon psyche, even if she is typically found on the peripheries of traditional narratives, rarely challenging their typical themes and lessons. Read More

In 2016, the LDS Church released, for the first time, the minutes kept in the Council of Fifty. Known as the “kingdom,” the council was created by Joseph Smith in his last few months as a new political order that would return God’s rule to earth. Though the council has been long-known, its minutes have always been deemed confidential and sequestered from researchers. Their publication, then, allowed scholars to reconstruct one of the most audacious moments in Mormon history.

I was fortunate enough to get an early copy of the published volume, which allowed me to write an essay for Religion and Politics that was timed with the book’s release. But then I also got to work on two new scholarly projects. The big project was a book manuscript on Nauvoo’s political history, which should be released early next year by W. W. Norton/Liveright, and directed at a general audience. (More details soon!) The other was an scholarly article that contextualized the council for the academic community.

I’m thrilled to share that the article was just appeared Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, a premier journal in religious history that is published by Oxford University Press and affiliated with the American Society of Church History. Here is the synopsis for the article:

This article contextualizes the origins and development of Joseph Smith’s secretive Council of Fifty, a clandestine assembly whose minutes were sequestered from public access since their creation in 1844 and were only made available in September 2016. Organized by Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only months before his death at the hands of a mob in June 1844, the council was destined to introduce a new form of world governance. Colloquially named the “Council of Fifty,” it blended democratic principles with theocratic rule. More than a significant moment in the development of America’s largest home-grown religion, however, Joseph Smith’s controversial organization and the ideals it represented hint at broader anxieties over the nation’s cultural disunity and democratic excesses in the wake of disestablishment. While many embraced the democratization of religious authority, the Mormons and some of their contemporaries countered that it only introduced cultural and political chaos. Examining how groups such as the Mormons grappled with these implications—through orchestrated electoral participation, appeals to higher laws, and revisions to democratized authoritative structures—sheds light on this dynamic challenge of political self-rule during America’s antebellum period.

Put simply, this article was a way for me to make the dense academic arguments that my larger book mostly sets aside.

If you have institutional access, you can download the article at this link.

Nauvoo is constantly on my mind. Has been for a while, actually. Before starting The Kingdom of Nauvoo: A Story of Mormon Politics, Plural Marriage, and Power in Nineteenth-Century America—which I’m pleased to share is moving along in the line-editing stage right now, with an early-2020 release date—I was a BYU student participating in their “Semester at Nauvoo” program. For four months I got to live fifty yards from the Nauvoo Temple, where I could learn about the city’s history while walking its streets, touring its homes, and enjoying its gorgeous sunsets. From then on, Nauvoo has always claimed a piece of my soul, which is partly why I jumped at the opportunity to write about it. Read More