Joseph Smith was subjected to five legal proceedings in New York, being accused of such things as being a religious impostor, con-artist, or treasure seeking fraud. Of these, four of the outcomes are not in dispute with Joseph triumphing against his conspiring enemies.
1826 South Bainbridge, Chenango, NY Joseph is accused of being a disorderly person or vagrant pretending “to discover where lost goods may be found” while in the employ of Josiah Stowell. I will discuss the outcome of this hearing below.
March 1829 Lyons, Wayne, NY While Joseph lived in Harmony, Lucy Harris brought a suit against him for defrauding her husband by faking the plates. The magistrate “tore [a record of Lucy’s witnesses] in pieces before their eyes, and told them to go home about their business, and trouble him no more with such ridiculous folly.”
May 1829 Broome, NY or Susquehanna, PA Joseph Smith arrested for “being a false prophet and deceiving the people.” The prosecuting attorney asks for the case to be dismissed after Joseph successfully answers religious questions.
June 1830 South Bainbridge, Chenango, NY Joseph is again accused under the disorderly person act and of being a false prophet. Joseph’s character and conduct was examined in order to “open the eyes and understandings of those who blindly followed him.” Joseph was acquitted, but was tried again in Broome county the next day.
July 1830 Broome, NY A trial with similar charges and witnesses was held before three J/Ps. Joseph found not guilty.
The best historical reconstruction is that Joseph Smith was brought before a justice of the peace for an “examination” or pre-trial hearing. This is conceded by Dan Vogel and Wesley Walters, easily the top scholarly critics who have written on the subject. One can not be found criminally guilty at a pre-trial hearing. There are mixed reports about the outcome of the hearing as this link shows:
1. Benton [anti-mormon, 1st hand]: tried and condemned … designedly allowed to escape
2. Cowdery [mormon, 2nd hand]: honorably acquitted
3. Noble [anti-mormon, late]: was condemned, took leg bail
4. Marshall [anti-mormon, some editing]: guilty?
5. Tuttle [anti-mormon, some editing]: guilty?
6. Purple [non-mormon, late]: discharged
7. Constable De Zeng [non-mormon]: not a trial
8. Neely’s bill [I am adding this one to the wiki list, non-mormon]: fees [not a fine!] consistent with an examination not a trial
Only 4-5 claim he was guilty and those two really have the same source. The story goes that a page was tore out of docket book and published with some editorial discrepancies. So it has long been suspected that the part about being “guilty” was fraudulently added. Vogel argued that “guilty” just meant that the justice of the peace found enough evidence to hold Joseph over for trial. He found an Ohio legal code that uses “guilty” in that sense.
Two of the anti-mormon accounts indicate that Joseph was “condemned” (1 and 3). That does not mean Joseph was found criminally guilty of a misdemeanor. Rather it appears to mean something like Joseph was scolded. In the 1830 Broome County trial Noble was one of the 3 justices of the peace. He was said to have “condemned” Joseph, despite the J/Ps deciding Joseph was not guilty. John Reed, one of Joseph’s attorneys, felt the reprimand was “unlawful and uncalled for” and done solely “to please his accusers.” I think a similar ploy happened in the 1826 hearing, where the case against Joseph had as little merit then as it did in 1830.
Benton said that Joseph in 1826 was allowed to escape and Noble said he took leg bail. One of the ways to avoid prosecution in those days was to flee the territory. People that wanted to defend their reputation might have incentive to stick around and face trial. It is clear that Joseph was let go and a rumor (propagated by Noble) claimed Joseph was afraid to stand trial and hence left the area. But it is clear that Joseph was not too shy about returning to the area. For example he married Emma in January 1827 through a J/P there! The other indication that Joseph was let go and not fleeing the law comes from the constable’s bill (see this FARMS Review article):
And what was the outcome of the hearing? Your friend relies upon the so-called court record, as well as the equally suspect account of Judge King Noble, in claiming that Joseph was bound over for trial. Noble, although a judge, did not hear the case, and is not a primary source. Without anything more substantial to go on than his own and Walters’s wishful thinking, your friend confidently declares that the hearing “would have resulted in a later full trial had Joseph Smith not taken what Joel K. Noble called ‘leg bail’ (i.e., he fled the area)” (p. 124). In reality, the evidence points toward Joseph’s having been acquitted.
The court record your friend relies on so heavily actually does include some valid details, although badly garbled. I mentioned Justice Neely’s costs of $2.68. There is also an amount of $.19 listed as “warrants.” Another document that Walters ran down was a bill presented by Constable De Zeng for that amount. Now it happens that $.19 was the prescribed amount for a pretrial mittimus (warrant of commitment to prison for lack of bail), as set down in A Conductor Generalis of 1819. In other words, it was the amount the constable would charge for bringing an accused person in. If Justice Neely had found that there was a case for Joseph to answer, he would have ordered him bound over for trial at the next court of General Sessions, and De Zeng would have charged an additional $.25, which was the prescribed amount for a posttrial warrant of commitment. But that charge was not levied; therefore, Joseph was not remanded to the custody of the constable, and so he was, in all probability, acquitted. That is precisely what Oliver Cowdery reported in Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate 2 (October 1835): 202
I will dispute the idea attributed to Walters above, because I think the 1826 pre-trial hearing did in fact result in a full trial in 1830. In 1830, Joseph was captured in a neighboring county and dragged to Bainbridge, presumably because that is where the original complaint had been filed in 1826. The trial failed in part because of the statute of limitations (4 years had lapsed the 3 year limit). So Joseph’s persecutors changed the venue back to the county he was captured at and brought up the same charges. Again they failed to convict Joseph despite trying to throw the kitchen sink at him. So if one sees the 1830 trials as a continuation of the 1826 hearing then the conclusion to the whole episode was that Joseph formally found “not guilty” twice in 1830 in addition to being informally “honorably acquitted” and “discharged” in 1826.
Hence our modern day critics would be well-advised to stop claiming that Joseph Smith was a convicted con-artist. Their 19th century counterparts in New York had 5 years to build their case and utterly failed to do so, despite being given 5 opportunities.
See my blog posts The Bainbridge Conspiracy for more details on how these early trials were manifestations of religious persecution and Seer or Pious Fraud? for a discussion of Joseph Smith’s gift of seeing.
Great post – this is a good example of why I read FAIRblog. Very timely and – is this weird? – relieved to hear some non-prop 8 related persecution (although I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s related).
Excellent Post!
Right now I am currently reading the New Testament. I am in the middle of Acts. It is amazing for me to see how Prophets like Peter, Paul and Joseph Smith all had to suffer from the same set of trials [pun intended]; spurious legal accusations and unjustifiable jail time.
Hmm… wasn’t it Robert Millet who wrote that there is no originality in Hell?
Good point, Steve, I think the early Mormons saw themselves as re-enacting biblical narratives. Even Joseph’s non-Mormon attorney, John Reed got caught up in this. Here are some interesting allusions to the Bible that he made in his Nauvoo speech.
“I did not know what it meant, but thought I must go and clear the Lord’s annointed. I said I would go; and started with as much faith as the apostles had when they could remove mountains, accompanied by father Knight, who was like the old patriarchs that followed the ark of God to the city of David.”
“There was not one particle of testimony against the prisoner. No Sir, he came out like the three children from the fiery furnace, without the smell of fire upon his garments.”
“This court puts me in mind of a certain trial held before Felix of old, when the enemies of Paul arraigned him before that venerable judge for some alleged crime, and nothing was found in him worthy of death or of bonds. Yet, to please the Jews, who were his accusers, he was left bound contrary to law; and this court has served Mr. Smith in the same way, by their unlawful and uncalled for reprimand after his discharge, to please his accusers.”
I think it was actually C.S. Lewis who wrote something or other on the monotony of evil.
Outside of the general historical value surrounding the founder a major American religion, I fail to see the relevance behind the 1826 court trial. Hugh Nibley went to great lenghts early on suggesting that a trial was doubtful. Other LDS writers/scholars seem to view the matter with a great deal of gravity. Even the Church critics hold to this bit of history as though it exonerates/discredits Joseph Smith. What am I missing (sincerely)?
This “treasure seeking” activities of Joseph Smith have been instrumental in my overall disenchantment (no pun intended) with Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church. There are plenty of sources which corroborate the assertion that Joseph did engage in this conduct. Lucy Mack Smith accounts for it, many of the Church’s co-founders do as well. In not so many words Joseph even admits to it in his 1838 Church history. Modern Church scholars, pro-LDS, such as Bushman, even accept this as fact. How does the trial and or it’s outcomes affect this in any way? Is there some evidence which suggests that Joseph perhaps was not “treasure seeking”?
Unless it can be proved that Joseph Smith was not engaged in “treasure seeking” this trial does little to further claims against him, or to preserve his prophetic integrity. Perhaps with the exception of whether we really believe that he possessed the abilities he appears to have pretended to, divine or otherwise.
Often to downplay Joseph’s involvement in the activity apologists will refer to the observations of his Mother that Joseph wasn’t really interested in doing this work for Mr. Stowell, but that he was persuaded with a high salary ($14 per month I believe) and incessant requests. Joseph volunteers that part of his reluctance was due to the fact that staring into the hat caused his eyes to hurt. The apologists assert that therefore Joseph displayed only a passive acceptance to the job. It is very difficult for anyone living one hundred and eighty years from the event to claim to know what level of enthusiasm Joseph possessed for the enterprise from a few reflective statements. In order to further the point, many apologists – including Joseph Smith himself – will point out that it was Joseph Smith who called off the search. Suggesting that Joseph really only did play a passive role here. They falsely assume that a true con-artist would milk the enterprise for all that it is worth. This is a shortsighted perspective, Joseph clearly held himself out as a “seer”, long before the Stowell event infact. This is hypothetical I realize, but if he was infact a fraud and knew that, he would also know that he can only run the party around the woods for so long before suspicions arise. Knowing that he could not locate gold he would have to contrive an explanation for the groups failure, hence the sinking treasure chest stories/spiritual transportation of the treasure, guardian spirits, etc. His best alternative would be to cut the expedition short. At very least this explanation discounts the apologist hypothetical that Joseph just got tired of digging for treasure at 2 – 3 times a normal salary.
One final point worth contending is the apologist claim that magical thinking was very much a part of nineteenth century thinking in the eastern United States. Certainly the evidences listed on the “fairwiki” site give some credence here. What the trial does demonstrate, however, is that it was at least taboo enough to be prosecutable, particularly when the services are being hired out by a percieved idler. The fact that a law was put on the books in 1813 seems to suggest that just as common as magical thinking may have been at that time, the practice of con-artistry which capitalized on of that type thinking was just as common.
Obviously this fact challenges Joseph Smiths integrity during his youth. This matter is not further helped by the fact that by all reasonable observation, the same seer stone which was used unsuccesfully, allegedly, to search for buried treasure, was also used “primarily” in the translation of the Gold Plates, among it’s employment, allegedly, in other of the founding events of the resoration.
Cowboy, I am more interested in Joseph Smith’s treasure seeking more than I am in the outcome of the 1826 hearing (rather than trial). In fact I have written several articles before I ever got to this one. There are two reasons why I address this issue with disproportionate gravity (if Joseph had ever been found guilty, it would say more about the ridiculousness of a NY law that can convict a genuinely gifted seer than it does about Joseph). 1) In our soundbyte era, this criticism is often the entry point into the larger milieu for Mormon non-history buffs. 2) This is one apologetic area where there has been significant and recent progress on. For example, it simply won’t do to elevate Hugh Nibley’s sarcastic remarks as the last word on the subject.
I would say that Joseph was occasionally enthusiastic about treasure seeking. After all he had a number of successes that make the pious fraud model implausible to me (even taking into account the failures you mention). Yet I also see that he was pressured into some activities by his family and others. As Joseph Smith matured, he needed to learn to use his gift to serve God rather than treasure seekers. This is a constant theme running through a variety of accounts of Joseph’s early life.
After all he had a number of successes that make the pious fraud model implausible to me (even taking into account the failures you mention).
I don’t mean for this to sound sarcastic, can you provide some references to the number of successes that you mention. Nothing I have read indicates a bona fide success in his ability to find lost treasures. I realize that there were a number of people who swore up and down that Joseph possessed this ability, but again I am not aware of any substantial finds.
Interestingly you seem to espouse a possibility I have entertained, but frankly never given much credence to. That is the idea that someone his treasure seeking was a divine manifestation, or the product and misuse perhaps of a divine gift. I have generally discounted this theory, though I will admit largely due to certain expectations that I hold of God and Prophets. If this theory were correct then certainly there would be some type of significant display of this ability. So again, if you can provide resources which point this out, I would be grateful.
Thanks,
Cowboy
I have a paragraph on successes in my Seer or Pious Fraud post. I just went up and fixed the link. A more thorough treatment is Mark Ashurst-McGee’s Master’s Thesis.
Keller:
I think we will have to disagree on the alleged successes of Joseph Smith’s pre-restoration seership. I have done my best to research the accounts you have listed, and have found no real new information. Most of the claims seem to have come from the 1826 hearing, but most of those claims can be easily dissmissed as hearsay. Particularly because none of people who professed in Joseph’s seer abilities could produce bona fide evidence. In every case the treasures were “found” but then sank deeper and deeper into the earth, due to a protective enchantment. The other explanations for found but unrecovered treasure is due to protective guardian spirits. Perhaps a better argument could be made for the well water, but even that is not too remarkable. I have a hard time with any claims made by either Martin Harris or David Whitmer, largely because as a Church we sort of pick and choose which statements from them are credible and which are not. Martin Harris is claimed to have first seen Jesus in the shape of a deer. Neither men could ever provide a consistent account for having witnessed the account known as “The Testimony of the Three Witnesses”. Both claimed by spiritual means that Joseph had become a fallen prophet. So unless you have some more credible source data, we will have to let the friendly disagreement suffice.
I will admit that the evidence is not conclusive, so largely the conclusions that I am drawing are subjective. I can certainly respect divergent opinions from my own. Just a final thought and question though. As I think through everything that would have to be assumed for Josephs “treasure seeking” abilities to be authentic, this route seems even more implausible. You would also have to believe the explanations of treasure sinking into the earth, guardian spirits, enchantments, ritual sacrifice, etc. Society has largely abandoned this type of thinking because greater understanding has clearly shown that this is just not how things operate in the natural world. This gives way to the natural conclusion that Joseph’s thinking and conduct was subject to the culture and time in which he lived. Unfortunately this is not an adequate justification for his “foibles”, rather an explanation for his all of his claims. I think that the best thing which could happen for the Church, from a historical position, would be for evidence to come forth which shows that this behavior has falsely been attributed to Joseph Smiths “youthfull” conduct.
Cowboy, I appreciate you checking into things further and I think you have a reasonable take on things. Depending on what side of the divide one finds themselves on with Joseph Smith, it is always possible to find some resonance in either the early skeptical accounts or the early believers accounts. Both have some value as to telling us how believers justified their belief and skeptics their unbelief.
I avoided doing source criticism in my other post, although it is a big issue. I suspect, however, when we take bias, time removed from the account to the event, degree of provenance (1st hand, 2nd hand, hearsay, rumor), corroboration with other information, and analyze each account maker for reliability that the success accounts will carry more weight than failure ones. But that is an analysis for another day as I have a lot on my plate at the moment.
As a limited example, the account that Martin Harris saw Christ in the form of a deer is on extremely shaky grounds. John A. Clark wrote a letter 10-11 years after he met Martin Harris and yet reported hearing the tale from an unnamed “gentleman in Palmyra.” As unreliable as the tale is, at least Martin didn’t claim to be speaking to his ass like Balaam. I will also say this about Martin, that sometimes he could be baited into saying something he had no first hand knowledge of in the heat of a debate or perhaps when he had too much to drink. That is my take on what happened when he was brought before the Kirtland high council for making an incorrect allegation against Joseph Smith.
I have not seen much evidence that he or David Whitmer were inconsistent in their witness of the Book of Mormon. Whitmer had problems with people misquoting him. On other issues, though I will agree that he was inconsistent, for example his take on the Priesthood restoration, the name of the angel he encountered while moving Joseph to Fayette, or his theories on how Joseph translated the Book of Mormon. Ken Godfrey has a nice chapter about how Whitmer was amazing consistent on his witness of the Book of Mormon, but not so much in these other areas.
While Whitmer’s and Harris’s apostasy means to me that they are not perfect witnesses, in some ways I think leaving the church actually improves their credibility about the Book of Mormon.
Keller:
Sounds good. I appreciate your insights and apparent depth of research surrounding these issues. If nothing else your comments have rejuvinated my interest in these matters and caused me to research this period of Church history more thoroughly. Good luck in your efforts, and again thanks for the comments.
“While Whitmer’s and Harris’s apostasy means to me that they are not perfect witnesses, in some ways I think leaving the church actually improves their credibility about the Book of Mormon.”
Just a thought here on this comment, and a few others. The above quote is the classic reinforcement employed in defense of The Book of Mormon’s divine origin. The idea is that if these men were aware of any kind of deception, surely they would not have protected the secret following their falling out the mainstream Church. This is a reasonable argument in many respects, particularly with their relationship with Joseph Smith. However the argument is not bullet-proof because, though both Martin Harris and David Whitmer left the mainstream Church, they never permanently left Mormonism per se. They both would also have to sacrifice their own reputations by “whistleblowing” and admitting their personal complicity in the fraud. This may serve as a hypothetical explanation in lieu of traditional defenses, as to why they never left the Mormon ideaology.
I hesitated with the claim that Martin Harris saw Jesus in the form of a deer. While I don’t believe the account is entirely dissmissable, I agree perhaps I gave it too much weight in characterizing Martin’s credibility. I think there are plenty of contemporary comments from those who knew Martin, that confirm that his beliefs were a bit extravagant.
Finally, I should have clarified my statement that Martin Harris and David Whitmer were inconsistent in their retelling of their role as the Witnesses. David Whitmer in particular told a fairly consistent story, however I mean that in his actual telling of it. His story has some stark inconsistencies with the affidavit printed in the front of The Book of Mormon. Perhaps not a total contradiction, but certainly inconsistencies. During his final interview regarding the matter, the interviewer had to prod pretty hard to find out whether the experience was literal or metaphysical. If nothing else I think this demonstrates that even amongst his contemporary audience, David Whitmers claims were fairly ambiguous. Unfortunately, I think that is where are individual resonant tendencies dictate the interpretation we give these claims in light of the ambiguity.
I see what you mean now by ambiguity. However, I think it would be rather difficult though, to explain whether an experience that involved both supernatural elements and ordinarily real elements fit neatly in one category or the other.
I agree with you that the Witnesses not whistle-blowing is not full-proof. But then, all I ask from them to help establish some degree of plausibility.
But then, all I ask from them to help establish some degree of plausibility.
Very reasonable, again thanks for the insights.