[In the following excerpt, the authors describe the historical significance of the Mormon experiences in Nauvoo, Illinois, and suggest that Joseph Smith's religious and political activity there facilitated the Mormon migration to Utah.]

During the spring and summer of 1839 thousands of Mormon refugees (recently expelled from the hostile state of Missouri under a harsh gubernatorial "extermination" order accompanied by military force) swarmed into a partially swampy, somewhat fever-infested Mississippi River peninsula in Hancock County, Illinois, to take over the small hamlet of Commerce and establish in its place the City of Nauvoo—soon to become the largest city in the state. The history of the brief Mormon occupation there (1839-46) is one of the outstanding success stories of the mid-West, mid-century American frontier, even though the saints were finally expelled from their beautiful city after only seven years. When the Mormons first arrived there in the spring of 1839, approximately 100 persons occupied the whole peninsula. By 1845 the official Illinois census showed that the city had grown to nearly 12,000, although mòst contemporary accounts (both Mormon and non-Mormon) regularly over-estimated the population, sometimes stretching the figure up to more than 20,000. By 1846 hundreds of homes of various sizes and materials crowded the region; scores of shops and stores of all kinds were to be found there.

The citizens of Nauvoo developed as rich a social and cultural life as any frontier community of that time. In addition to various church functions, the saints enjoyed musical and theatrical productions as well as debating and public speaking contests. An occasional traveling circus performed in the city. Most able-bodied men were members of the Nauvoo Legion; many were active in the Masonic Lodge—both of which furnished social as well as other enrichment. Celebration of national and other holidays afforded opportunity for parades and private parties, all of which were enjoyed by the expanding populace. Adequate opportunities for education were supplied by elementary and grammar schools as well as a university.

Operating under a very liberal charter granted by the Illinois State Legislature, the Mormons of Nauvoo were able to establish a theocratic city government, the like of which was unknown elsewhere in the American frontier. Although the Nauvoo Charter was patterned primarily after similar charters granted earlier to other Illinois cities, the Mormon city was unique in that most of its citizens were members of the same church. This led quite naturally to a very close correlation between civil and ecclesiastical government; high-ranking church officials held most of the important civic positions as well.

The history of Nauvoo is very closely linked with the activities of Joseph Smith who (before his untimely death) had a hand in most of the city's developments. It was his decision, while still incarcerated in Missouri's Liberty jail—long before he had actually set foot upon Illinois soil—to negotiate with Isaac Galland for land purchases on and near the Commerce peninsula. It was his decree that designated the new location as a "gathering" place for his flock—a place for a new city of Zion. During the cruel expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri some church leaders, then assembling at Quincy, Illinois, had favored a program of scattering the saints throughout the land. Their reasoning seemed quite sound; they well remembered the church's unhappy experiences at Kirtland, Ohio, and the more recent bitter contest that had resulted in their forcible banishment from Missouri. Would it not be better to avoid such troubles in the future by not concentrating in any given area? Joseph Smith vetoed that notion and countered with a call for a mass-movement to the site of Commerce, which he soon renamed Nauvoo. His determination to "gather" rather than "scatter" almost certainly saved the church from fragmentation and very possibly from extinction. The prophet had made a most important decision for the future history of Mormonism.

After moving to the new site the prophet was, by any standard of measurement, Nauvoo's leading citizen. As founder and president of the church, he enjoyed the high esteem and loyalty of his followers, most of whom would eagerly bear testimony that Joseph, as a young man, had talked with God and other heavenly messengers and had, since that time, been in more or less constant communication with the Almighty. Most instructions to private individuals as well as directives to the church as a whole were proclaimed and accepted as direct revelations from God.

Joseph's activities and offices were not limited to religious matters; he was Nauvoo's leading civic and social leader as well as its prophet. In the first election authorized by Nauvoo's city charter he gained a seat on the city council where he assumed the leading role in framing major legislation. When Mayor John C. Bennett "defected" and resigned in 1842, Joseph was elevated to the mayor's chair—a position he held the rest of his life. In addition to being mayor he was also chief justice of the municipal court which was given extensive power by the city council over which he presided. With the founding of the Nauvoo university he took his place as a member of its board of regents. When the city council created the Nauvoo Legion (as an arm of the state's militia), Joseph became its top officer—Lieutenant General—and was duly commissioned by the governor of Illinois. When the Nauvoo Lodge of the Masonic Order was founded, Joseph was honored by an "on sight" elevation to the degree of Master Mason. As trustee-in-trust for the church, President Smith was custodian of all its land and other physical property. In this capacity the prophet became Nauvoo's leading real estate broker. His general retail store became the city's foremost business of its kind; there a person could purchase almost anything: food, clothing, a city lot or a subscription to a local newspaper. Persons considered good credit risks could also borrow money from the proprietor. On the upper floor of the store was the prophet's office where he often met with various church and civic councils. The room also served at times as a Masonic Hall, a theater and a school. The store and its owner were indeed the hub of Nauvoo's civic activity.

In view of all this, it is not surprising that, after the prophet's murder, Brigham Young renamed the Mormon city in honor of its founder and leading citizen: The City of Joseph.

Yet in spite of his popularity and numerous offices, the prophet's life was often a tortured one. Financial obligations were a constant worry. His enemies periodically sought (and sometimes succeeded) to arrest him on one charge or another. He found it necessary to spend many weeks in hiding as a hunted man evading posses sent to apprehend him. By 1844 some of his once-closest friends had become his bitterest enemies. Finally, with an expressed premonition of an imminent violent death at the hands of his enemies, the prophet voluntarily submitted to arrest for his participation in a city council action that had led to the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor. A few days later his body, riddled by gunfire from a mob at Carthage, was brought back to Nauvoo for a secret burial.

The Nauvoo years constitute a major chapter in Mormon church history and provided an immediate background for the great migration of the saints to the Salt Lake Valley. It was in Nauvoo that many of the major doctrines of the church were first proclaimed and/or put into practice. It was at Nauvoo that Joseph Smith first committed to writing his own account of the "first vision" and other incidents associated with the restoration of the gospel and the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was there that he formulated thirteen statements of religious belief, later to become known as the church's Articles of Faith. It was in Nauvoo where the "Book of Abraham" was first published, later to be cannonized as part of the Pearl of Great Price—one of the church's sacred scriptures. It was there that Joseph began to dictate his own History of the Church which contains many teachings and activities of the prophet not found elsewhere in print.

Among the important doctrines of the church which were destined to become most significant in later church history was the initiation of various sacred temple ordinances for the living and for the dead. The construction of the magnificent Nauvoo Temple where these rites could be performed foreshadowed the extensive temple-building and genealogical research which became very important aspects of the church program after the Mormon migration to the Great Basin. Of special importance for the Nauvoo period and later decades was the initiation of a new Mormon concept of marriage for time and all eternity. Closely related was the accompanying practice of plural marriages, commonly called polygamy. Some leading Mormons may have been involved in this practice prior to the Nauvoo era, but it was in Nauvoo where the revelation authorizing the doctrine was first committed to writing and where the practice gained considerable notoriety, eventually becoming a major factor leading to a significant schism within church ranks.

Gentile opposition to Mormonism became as bitter in Illinois as it had been in Missouri. Non-Mormons generally considered Mormonism the most radical religion of its time and denounced some of the church's teachings, such as the prophet's claims of visitations from heavenly beings, plural marriage and the plurality of Gods. Yet gentile opposition on strictly "religious" grounds did not go far beyond verbal attacks and tirades during the early part of the Nauvoo era. Much more disturbing was the apparent political unity of the saints. Equally alarming to non-Mormons (and also to some members of the church hierarchy) was the doctrine of the political Kingdom of God, a doctrine that gained considerable credence during the spring of 1844 with the prophet's candidacy for the presidency of the United States and the accompanying formation of the secret Council of Fifty to direct this campaign. At that time Mormons held the balance of power in Hancock County; if they were permitted to remain and expand, might they not soon gain control of the whole state? Was there danger that General Smith might employ the expertly drilled Nauvoo Legion to help achieve his objectives? Those were expressed fears of some non-Mormon editors and other leaders living in western Illinois. But in spite of growing opposition from without, it is very doubtful that anti-Mormon sentiment would have precipitated a major physical attack on Mormondom or its leaders had not a schism within the church itself opened the door for such action.

During the spring of 1844 a significant cleavage within the church precipitated a chain of events that led directly to the prophet's death. Earlier rumblings of dissatisfaction with the prophet and some of his teachings mushroomed into a full-fledged opposition movement led by several high-ranking church officials. As has already been suggested, major opposition centered around the doctrine and practice of polygamy and the political activities of their once revered prophet-leader. The defectors now denounced Joseph as a "fallen prophet" and attempted a reorganization of the church, naming members from their own ranks as its top officers. After failing to gain a substantial following in this endeavor, some of the disgruntled apostates hit upon the idea of establishing an opposition newspaper in Nauvoo for the avowed purpose of exposing the "misdeeds" and "evil teachings" of the church. Thus, the Nauvoo Expositor was born. Its first and only issue came off the press on June 7, 1844.

Outraged at the "infamous" sheet and fearful of the influence it might have if allowed to continue, Mayor Smith and the city council declared the Expositor to be a public nuisance and ordered the chief of police to destroy the press and pi the type. The order was carried out at once; the date was June 10, 1844. Owners of the destroyed press now joined with anti-Mormon groups inside and outside of Nauvoo, denounced the whole affair as a ruthless violation of the freedom of the press and called for the immediate arrest of the prophet-mayor as the chief instigator of the action. Within a few days Joseph Smith submitted to arrest and was escorted to Carthage for trial. Upon arrival at the county seat the prophet was also charged with treason against the state for having declared martial law in Nauvoo. Meanwhile Hyrum Smith had been similarly charged. It was the treason charge that led to the incarceration of the Smith brothers in Carthage jail to await trial. That was late in the evening of June 25. Two days later, shortly after 5 o'clock in the afternoon an emotionally charged mob bent on assassination took the law into its own hands, stormed the weakly guarded prison and murdered both men in cold blood.

Anti-Mormon feeling did not die with the murder of the church's two top leaders. Rather, demands for the complete Mormon explusion from the state gained momentum during the following year. Under continuous pressure, Brigham Young (who as president of the quorum of apostles had won out over Sidney Rigdon in a power struggle for church leadership) agreed in September 1845 that the Mormons would evacuate Nauvoo and leave the state during the following year.

Mormon leaders had learned from bitter practical experience that protection of property and personal liberties could not be expected from the federal government which (under the American constitutional system) could not intercede inside state boundaries. (Not until the 1868 adoption of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution did the government gain that right.) In Nauvoo, Mormon leaders came to realize that their only hope for security lay in a state of their own making, a state in which they would have a commanding majority of votes, where they could draft a constitution and enact laws for their own protection. With this in mind, Joseph Smith had petitioned Congress in December 1843 to have the Nauvoo area separated from the state of Illinois to become a Mormon-controlled territory. This petition was rejected, as it rightfully should have been; the Nauvoo area was much too small for territorial status. Meanwhile church leaders turned their attention to other possible locations.

Fragmentary plans for a major migration to the far West had been in the making since 1842. Numerous council meetings had devoted a great deal of time to discussions of various sites—Texas, the Oregon Country, Vancouver Island. There was much talk of sending out exploring parties to find proper locations; volunteers were called for, and many leading Mormons eagerly stepped forward for that service. But no exploring parties were sent.

During the fall of 1845, after church leaders had obtained all available information about the far West, the valley of the Great Salt Lake in the Great Basin was positively named as the future Mormon mecca. There the saints would not likely be overrun by a gentile population; there they could establish a state which would insure their own protection and hopefully be admitted into the union of American states; there they could continue to build up the Kingdom of God.

Thus the Mormon migration to Utah grew directly out of the Nauvoo experiences and planning. The church simply transplanted itself en masse to the new site, taking people, records, doctrine, practices and leadership to the new Zion where the desert would be made to blossom as the rose. But the Zion they left behind, Mormon Nauvoo, retains its importance as a proving ground for examining the limitations of American freedom and for exploring the growth of Mormonism under its founder, Joseph Smith.