“On November 4, [1843] Smith wrote the five probable candidates for president. Noting the Mormon’s suffering at the hands of Missouri, the prophet asked each candidate for “an immediate, specific, and candid reply to ‘What will be your rule of action relative to us as a people, should fortune favor your ascension to the chief magistry?’ After the candidates responded, Smith deemed their answers entirely unsatisfactory, and he wrote back angry letters denouncing corrupt and vacillating politicians and bewailing America’s ruination.
“With all other choices ruled out, Joseph Smith and the Twelve Apostles decided on January 29 that the prophet would run for president. There were actually a number of realistic reasons for Smith’s candidacy. For one, the Mormons had nothing to lose. The success of either of the leading presidential contenders, Henry Clay or the hated Martin Van Buren, offered the Saints no real hope of assistance in their claims against Missouri, or protection from their enemies in Illinois. As Nauvoo Neighbor editor John Taylor put it, “Under existing circumstances we have no other alternative [than to run our own candidate;] if we throw away our votes, we had better do so upon a worthy, rather than unworthy individual, who might make use of the weapon we put in his hand to destroy us with.” Bur it was more than a matter of going down to honorable defeat. Smith’s candidacy offered potential benefits as well.”[1]
“Joseph suffered from no illusions about his chances of winning the supreme political post in the nation. He entered the ring not only to win publicity for himself and his church, but most of all to shock the other candidates into some measure of respect. ‘e have as good a right to make a political party to gain power to defend ourselves,” he said, “as for demagogues to make use of our religion to get power to destroy us.’ This was his justification for what otherwise might have seemed to be preposterous megalomania. He was simply following the tactics of the abolitionist Liberty Party, which, though extremely small, was to take enough votes away from Henry Clay in New York State in the 1844 election to throw the state to Polk and thus secure him the Presidency (which incidentally resulted in what the Liberty Party feared most, the annexation of Texas)”.[2]
Smith announced his own third-party candidacy for President of the United States, suspended regular proselytizing, and sent out the Quorum of the Twelve and hundreds of other political missionaries.[3] The Anointed Quorum chose Sidney Rigdon as Smith’s running mate. He ran as an independent. He proposed the redemption of slaves by selling public lands and decreasing the size and salary of Congress; the closure of prisons; the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada; the securing of international rights on high seas; free trade; and the reestablishment of a national bank. His top aide Brigham Young campaigned for Smith saying, “He it is that God of Heaven designs to save this nation from destruction and preserve the Constitution.”[4] The campaign ended when he was attacked and killed by a mob while in the Carthage, Illinois, jail on June 27, 1844.
[1] Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830 – 1846, (The University of North Carolina Press) 1989, p. 198
[2] Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf), 1976, p. 362.
[3] D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books.) (1994)
[4] Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, p. 203.