Nauvoo: Kingdom On the Mississippi

by Robert Bruce Flanders

     
      A history of what became a romantic
      legend about a martyred prophet, a lost city, and religious persecution,
      this volume tells the story of Nauvoo, the early Mormon Church, and the
      temporal life of Joseph Smith. Nauvoo (1839-46) was a critical period in
      Mormon history. The climax of Smith's career and the start of Brigham Young's,
      it was here that Utah really had it's beginnings and that the pattern of
      Mormon society in the West was laid.
       "...the quality and quantity of research is commendable... an excellent
        contribution to American mid-western history and to Mormoniana in general."
       
        -- Journal of American History
 

Genres: Mormonism, Religion, History, Nonfiction, Lds

Paperback

First published July 1, 1975

Reviews

[Rhuff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The First “Zionists” - or North Korea on the prairie, take your pick. Robert Flanders’ take on Nauvoo remains one of the best histories of Joseph Smith’s corporate-community cult. The pushback from the American majority was inevitable: feeling themselves as so many “Philistines” under attack from the aggressive expansion of an alien culture and people (many of the Saints being English immigrants.) The Mormons in turn suffered an ersatz “anti-Semitism.” They were perhaps the first group to invoke minority rights under Constitutional protection. Yet this era of states’ rights did not encompass states within states. Smith’s hope to use the economy and politics of the World to build his Kingdom was a financial disaster, ending in said Prophet’s martyrdom at the hands of Jacksonian Democracy: a mob lynching after Governor Ford of Illinois left Smith to the hands of sworn enemies, washing his own in Pilate’s basin.

Were “Gentile” fears justified? Reading Flanders’ recounting of Nauvoo’s rapid rise and fall we see the violent internal schisms over polygamy and other increasingly bizarre “revelations”; Smith’s corporate monopoly and CEO privileges; the self-entitlement of some Mormons over gentile property and loans; the Saints’ bloc-voting (before the rise of Chicago); Smith’s tendency to take law and God in his own hands, suppressing the liberties of critics while fiercely demanding his own; the Kingdom’s military structure, claiming armed independence from outside authority; and creating an early totalitarian “state-party-leader” society in the heart of the United States. Smith’s evolving attitudes and expanding ambitions seemed consciously designed to provoke the worst bigotries in his neighbors, who finally turned on him with all the zeal their descendants would invest in the assassination of bin-Ladn.

It was Brigham Young who turned this disaster into triumph, by pulling up the Stake and heading to Utah Territory: a Stalin creating a “celestial kingdom in one country” outside the reach of American empire. But the bad blood of Nauvoo couldn’t be washed as easily as Governor Ford’s hands; resulting in the Mountain Meadows Massacre that, for many Gentiles, nullified the moral claims of Smith’s murder. Many ghosts yet haunt the City of Zion on the Lake.

Overall, this is an excellent study on America’s limited tolerance of diversity, invariably judged as “deviancy” by self-righteous majorities of race, religion, or sex. Yet also a warning that the persecuted and oppressed can, at times, invite their own fate.

[Erneilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written primarily from the perspective of someone affiliated with the Reorganized LDS (now Church of Christ) it seems to have an underlying sense of mocking the the early church leaders and prominent men. Definitely a different side of the picture. Former church members, dissidents and apostates are frequently cited. It reinforces in my mind that history is always biased, no matter who writes it.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Flanders put great effort into this book about Nauvoo from 1839-1846. If you are into Mormon history, this book is worth owning. It is excellent.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glanced through this one. Interesting last chapter about most Mormons leaving Nauvoo.

[Andre · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author, Robert Flanders, is a member of what is now called the Community of Christ (formerly - the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints). This history of Nauvoo during the Mormon years is well written, factual and heart-warming. It also almost cost Flanders his membership in the Reorganized Church as his detailed research proved to him and so he wrote that polygamy was practiced in Nauvoo, including by its Prophet/President Joseph Smith, Jr., something the Reorganized Church (led by Smith's sons and descendants until fairly recently) had always denied. Flanders at the time of writing was an Associate Professor of History at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa. Graceland was and still is the only college supported by the Community of Christ.

[Tyler Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A perfectly solid history of the LDS church in its Nauvoo period. Informative and useful, a good selection for general background on pre-Utah Mormonism. Had some good pictures, too, as I recall.

[Kent Hayden · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK. I was hoping for some real in-depth information of how the society was organized with both shortcomings and good points emphasized. This was a bit shallow