|
The life of Joseph Smith from 1839 to 1844 covers the period of Smith's life when he lived in Nauvoo, an eventful and highly controversial period of the Latter Day Saint movement. ==Life in Nauvoo, Illinois, 1839 to 1842== In April 1839, Smith rejoined his followers who, having fled east from Missouri, had spread out along the banks of the Mississippi, near Quincy, Illinois. There, for both humanitarian and political reasons, the refugees had been welcomed.〔"There was chronic border friction between Missouri and Illinois, and the 'Suckers' welcomed the chance to demonstrate a nobility of character foreign to the despised 'Pukes.' More important, a presidential election was in the offing, and the Democratic Association, which controlled the votes in the quincy area, was eager to make friends with this huge new voting bloc. Fearful lest the Mormons turn Whig in bitterness against the Democratic government in Missouri they solicited funds for relieving the Mormons' distress and did their best to provide housing." Fawn Brodie, 248-49.〕 Purchasing waterlogged wilderness land on credit from two Connecticut speculators (who drove a hard bargain during this period of economic recession), Smith established a new gathering place for the Saints along the Mississippi in Hancock County.〔Bushman, 383-84. Smith also purchased land across the river in Iowa from a dishonest recent convert, Isaac Galland. Galland sold his land cheaply enough, but when courts finally straightened out the titles, Gallands' proved worthless. The 250 Mormon families who had settled had to return "penniless to Nauvoo." Brodie, 262.〕 He renamed the area "Nauvoo", which he said meant "beautiful" in Hebrew.〔A similar Hebrew word appears in Isaiah 52: 7. Latter Day Saints often referred to Nauvoo as "the city beautiful", or "the city of Joseph"—which was actually the name of the city for a short time after the city charter was revoked—or other similar nicknames) after being granted a charter by the state of Illinois.〕 The soggy low land and river eddies were exceptional breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and the Saints suffered plagues of malaria in the summers of 1839, 1840, and 1841. (In 1841 malaria killed Joseph's brother Don Carlos and his namesake, Joseph's son Don Carlos, within a few days of one another.)〔Bushman, 384, 425.〕 Late in 1839, Smith went to Washington to seek redress from the federal government for the Saints' losses in Missouri. He met briefly with President Martin Van Buren, but neither man seems to have thought much of the other, and the trip produced no reparations. Whatever sympathy Van Buren or Congress might have had for Mormon victims was canceled out by the importance of Missouri in the upcoming presidential election.〔Bushman, 392-93.〕 Nevertheless, Smith shrewdly made Missouri a "byword for oppression" and "saw to it that the sufferings of his people received national publicity."〔Brodie, 259. The editor of the ''Chicago Democrat'' wrote, "We will not go so far as to call the Mormons martyr-mongers, but we believe they are men of sufficient sagacity to profit by anything in the shape of persecution....The Mormons have greatly profited by their persecution in Missouri...let Illinois repeat that bloody tragedies of Missouri and one or two other states follow, and the Mormon religion will not only be known throughout our land, but will be very extensively embraced. March 25, 1840 in Brodie, 259.〕 In a bold stroke, Smith sent off the Twelve Apostles to Great Britain to serve as missionaries for the new faith. All left families in desperate circumstances struggling to establish themselves in Iowa or Illinois. While Smith had been imprisoned, Brigham Young, the senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had with indefatigable skill, brought the believers out of Missouri, and the Saints "had obeyed him implicitly."〔Brodie, 258.〕 But with Young and the others in Europe, Smith recovered his earlier prestige and authority. Meanwhile, the missionaries found many willing converts in Great Britain, often factory workers, poor even by the standards of American saints.〔Bushman (2005), 409; Brodie, 258, 264-65. Many converts came from dissatisfied members of English sects "along the margins of conventional church life." On the previous religious beliefs of these Mormon converts, see Grant Underwood, ''The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism'' (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1993). The Mormon missionaries were shocked by the poverty they witnessed, and as Fawn Brodie has written, they "began to preach the glory of America along with the glory of the gospel." The Mormon ''Millennial Star'' published in Liverpool "frequently had the ring of a real estate pamphlet." Brodie, 264.〕 These first trickled, then flooded, into Nauvoo, raising Smith's spirits.〔Bushman (2005), 410.〕 In February 1841, Nauvoo received a charter from the state of Illinois, which granted the Latter Day Saints a considerable degree of autonomy. Smith threw himself enthusiastically into the work of building a new city. The charter authorized independent municipal courts, the establishment of a university, and the creation of a militia unit known as the "Nauvoo Legion." Smith dreamed of industrial projects, and even received a revelation commanding the building of a hotel, "that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein."〔Bushman (2005), 410-13; ''D&C'', 124: 23. The revelation (still included in the Mormon canon) specifically provided the amount of stock to be owned by any individual and granted a suite of rooms to Joseph Smith and his posterity "from generation to generation, for ever and ever." ''D&C'', 124: 59.〕 Work on a temple in Nauvoo began in the autumn of 1840. The cornerstones were laid during a conference on April 6, 1841. Construction took five years and it was dedicated on May 1, 1846; about four months after Nauvoo was abandoned by the majority of the citizens. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Life of Joseph Smith from 1839 to 1844」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|