Description:

Smith Joseph 1832 - 1914
Important Mormon Joseph Smith III ALS, polygamy and the Kelley-Braden Debate: "I become identified, or compromised in this present anti-polygamic political raid"




4pp cream unlined note paper with modified "Office of Board of Publication of the Church of Jesus Christ, Publishers, Booksellers, and Stationers" letterhead, signed "Yours in Bonds, J. Smith" at bottom right of last page. Stationery letterhead subtitles originally printed "Plano, Ill." at center and "H.A. Stebbins, Business Manager" at extreme left, but both have been crossed out and replaced with "Lamoni, Iowa" and "Joseph Smith, Business Manager" respectively. Letter is dated "Dec. 29, 83" and addressed to "E.L." In very fine condition, with expected paper folds and some light pencil markings throughout. Each page measures 5.5" x 8.625".

Significant excerpts from the letter can be found below:

"[Clark Braden] is quite well known by our brethren N.M. Reeder and J.V. L. Sherwood of this place. I send you a statement by the latter. I do it that you may know something of the man's antecedents and views. For, if the Church he represents is the Church of Christ, possessing authority to act for Christ whence is it, and by what sale is Clark Braden an accredited servant of Christ".

"W. Blair left yesterday for the western borders of Joseph's land called via Colorado, where he goes by a letter from a number of dissatisfied Brighamites who have gone in there under Utah teaching but are disgusted ... "

"You may be right in your estimate of the Utah situation, at all events, W. Blair and I agree that it was better for our cause, if he went. I become identified, or compromised in this present anti-polygamic political raid".

"Of that I am not in a position to say actively, as I am not 'in funds'. Moral support is a good thing in its place, but cannot often be coined into ducats".

Joseph Smith III (1832-1914) was the eldest son of Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805-1844), the charismatic Vermont-born mystic who founded the Church of Latter Day Saints in 1830. After Joseph Smith, Jr. was slain in a Carthage, Illinois jail cell, a power struggle ensued within the church. Prior to his death, Smith Jr. had publically appointed his eleven-year-old son Joseph Smith III as his successor, yet church member Brigham Young (1801-1877) assumed the presidency instead. The Church of Latter Day saints was thus divided among Young's followers, called "Brighamites", most of whom relocated en masse to Utah, and the Smith family championed by James J. Strang (1813-1856). Strang served as a sort of interim Prophet-President for Midwestern church followers until his assassination in 1856. Joseph Smith III became Prophet-President of the reorganized church, or RLDS, in 1860, a position he would technically hold for over fifty years.

In the beginning of his letter, Smith III refers to "the dispute with Braden". Clark Braden (1831-1915) was a Church of Christ minister who less than three months later would engage in a public debate with E.L. Kelley (1844-1930), a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Braden and Kelley would discuss several beliefs and practices, of which polygamy was the most controversial, affecting contemporary Mormon congregations. During the sensational 1884 debate, Braden maintained that founder Joseph Smith Jr. was a polygamist. Leader of the RLDS Joseph Smith III, as well as his spokesman Kelley, argued that their church founder never practiced plural marriage, and that polygamy was in fact a later practice introduced by Brigham Young. Joseph Smith III excoriated the practice of polygamy during his lifetime. He was thus in 1883 "identified ... in this present anti-polygamic political raid".

William W. Blair (1828-1896), referred to as "W. Blair" in our letter, was a Mormon missionary who served on the Council of the Twelve Apostles and then acted as first counselor to Joseph Smith III from 1873-1896. Blair's missionizing territory encompassed mostly Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois, yet we also know from this letter that he sometimes trekked out west to Utah and California to act on behalf of RLDS leadership. Smith III seems to relish the fact that many of Brigham Young's congregants had become alienated from his old rival.

An exceptional document relating to the history of polygamy in the nineteenth-century Mormon church!

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