Review
Title: Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith’s Political Missionaries
Author: Derek R. Sainsbury
Publisher: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 320
Binding: Cloth
ISBN: 9781944394929
Price: $27.99
Reviewed by Cheryl Bruno for the Association for Mormon Letters
Storming the Nation: The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith’s Political Missionaries is a devotional history directed toward Latter-day Saints who may not have known that Joseph Smith ran for president of the United States in the 1844 election. Derek R. Sainsbury draws from a wide variety of historical sources to present the background of the campaign and tell the stories of the approximately 600 political missionaries who were sent throughout the United States to “electioneer” for the leader of their Church. In doing so, the author provides information and surprises that will interest even those familiar with the campaign. For example, I was not aware that a woman participated as one of Smith’s political missionaries [pp. 64, 84 n. 27, 288-290].
Sainsbury has done well in researching such a large number of people and distilling the information into a readable format. Over and over, he identifies aspects of the electioneers’ activities and illustrates them with a prodigious variety of sources. For example, the author writes “The electioneers undertook their campaign duties with fervor. They understood their call was to preach politics as well as religion” [p. 118]. In the rest of the paragraph, he seamlessly places together snippets of several words to a sentence or two from the “Life of Joseph Holbrook,” Jonathan Duke’s “Reminiscences and Diary,” Franklin D. Richards’ journal, Sudweeks’ “David and Mary Savage,” George Riser’s reminiscences, the “History and Travels of Elder Crandell Dunn, Alfred Cordon’s “Journal and Travels”, and James Burgess’s journal. The reader is treated to a wide view of how the electioneers combined religion and politics in their preaching, punctuated by the individuals’ stories. I admire the author’s ability to put together so many individual accounts in prose that doesn’t become choppy. I would only suggest that he remove the insertion “Electioneer Experience: [Name of Electioneer]” whenever he uses more than a paragraph of one person’s experience in the text. This is unnecessary and disrupts the flow of the narrative.
I enjoyed reading about the several political meetings which were held aboard steamboats as the electioneers traveled to their various fields of assignment. David Hollister found the passengers “very interested in ‘national matters’” [p. 129] and much of their journey was spent reading and discussing Joseph Smith’s platform as found in the pamphlet General Joseph Smith’s Views of the Powers and Policies of the Government of the United States. On another steamboat, the Osprey, a mock election was held among the passengers who were not Latter-day Saints with the encouraging results of Joseph Smith, 64 votes; Henry Clay, 46; and Martin Van Buren, 24 [p. 120]. Though electioneers sometimes met with success, they were more often derided and even persecuted. In Kentucky, John D. Lee was told he was not even human, but a “different being…one of the fish kind” [p. 132].
It was heartbreaking to read of the electioneers’ reactions when, after all their efforts to travel to distant states and preach to difficult crowds, they learned of Joseph Smith’s death. At the conclusion of one of young John Horner’s political lectures, a man in the audience announced, “I have one reason to give why Joseph Smith can never be president of the United States…he was murdered in Carthage Jail on June 27th” [p. 139]. Horner was shattered. The devotion of electioneers and their families shines clearly throughout the book, but especially here. At the viewing of the Smiths’ bodies, Christiana Riser vowed that she would name her future son after the martyrs. “Two years later she gave birth to Joseph Hyrum Riser, one of more than two hundred children of electioneers named for Joseph or Hyrum” [p. 154].
Sainsbury follows the electioneers through the challenge of succession in the Mormon presidency, the receiving of temple endowments, and the exodus to Utah. There is some mention of electioneers who contributed to other restoration groups, but they are labeled “dissidents” [e.g. p. 243], while the focus remains on the Great Basin Saints. We read stories of their contributions in early Utah though expansion, reformation, and continued missionary work. They are followed through the Utah War, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Transcontinental Railroad, and statehood. The history synopses in this section contain little critical examination and generally follow the mainstream LDS narrative.
Those well-versed in Mormon Studies will notice several small inaccuracies or flaws in the historical presentation of material in Storming the Nation. One occurs on page 72 where a table of the Electioneers’ Priesthood Leadership positions presents a leadership hierarchy which is not representative of 1844. Sainsbury instead shows a leadership hierarchy with “General Authority” positions at the top, including First Presidency, Quorum of Twelve, First Council of Seventy, and Presiding Bishopric. The next level is presented as “Regional,” consisting of Stake President, Conference/Mission President, and High Council.” Finally, “Local” level leadership consists of Bishop and Branch President. This chart seems more characteristic of the modern (Brighamite) LDS church and does not take into account the complexities of 1844 leadership. For example, before Joseph Smith’s death, the Apostles were a traveling quorum which did not have disciplinary authority in Nauvoo, which was presided over by the standing High Council. Additionally, the position of the First Council of Seventy in 1844 cannot be properly placed with “General Authority” status.
I also found it injudicious for Sainsbury to baldly state in two separate places in his text that “Missourians gang-raped Eliza R. Snow” [pp. 6, 77] without providing a source for this assertion. The statement provides background information on Eliza’s brother, electioneer Lorenzo Snow, and the Missouri troubles through which many of the electioneers passed. I am not aware of any other source for this material than the 1930’s autobiography of Alice Merrill Horne. As a child, Horne heard her grandmother, Bathsheba W. Smith, and other of the grande dames of Mormonism reminiscing about the tragedy. Many Mormon scholars would agree that such a provocative statement coming from a late secondary source should be well-supported. Sainsbury could have more skillfully delivered this material by citing Andrea Radke-Moss, who presented the intricacies of this controversial account at a 2016 church history symposium in a paper titled “Beyond Petticoats and Poultices: Finding a Women’s History of the Mormon-Missouri War of 1838.”
In a note to his Prologue, Sainsbury asserts that Margaret Robertson’s 2000 honors thesis “is the only attempt to study the activities of the electioneers.”[1] Robertson “found no serious intent to elect Joseph or to establish the political kingdom of God” on the part of these missionaries, Sainsbury writes. This note is surprising since the author later quotes Robert Wicks and Fred Foister’s “Junius and Joseph,” a 2005 book on Joseph Smith’s political candidacy which is also available online. It contains a comprehensive chapter on the electioneers and many of their activities, and absolutely takes seriously their attempts to elect Joseph Smith and to establish the political kingdom of God. However, Sainsbury’s point is well taken that in part due to B.H. Roberts’ editorializing in official Church history, Smith’s political campaign has been downplayed and much information about the electioneers omitted. The author cites appropriate primary sources, including the Council of Fifty minutes, that makes the importance of Smith’s presidential bid and the role of the electioneering missionaries more apparent.
Notwithstanding some small missteps, Sainsbury successfully tackles the question, “Why did Joseph Smith run for president of the United States?” His book provides a valuable and detailed investigation of the number, backgrounds, and diversity of the Mormon electioneers and of their activities and efforts throughout the United States in 1844. Sainsbury skillfully navigates the political climate of Nauvoo and guides the reader through Smith’s religio-political campaign, what early Mormon political missionaries hoped to accomplish, and their legacy in the American West. This is a fascinating subject, worthy of further study, and Sainsbury’s book contributes to the topic in a major way.
[1] Margaret C. Robertson, “The Campaign and the Kingdom: The Activities of the Electioneers in Joseph Smith’s Presidential Campaign,” Brigham Young University Studies 39 no. 3 (2000).