Nauvoo Expositor

The Nauvoo Expositor was a newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois that published only one issue on June 7 1844. The Expositor was founded by several disaffected associates of Joseph Smith, Jr., a few of whom claimed that Smith had attempted to seduce their wives in the name of plural marriage (polygamy).

The bulk of the Expositor's single issue was devoted to criticism of Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Smith and the city council declared the paper a public nuisance, and ordered the paper's printing press destroyed. These actions generated considerable disturbance, and culminated in Smith's murder by a mob while he was in legal custody and awaiting a trial.

The criticism of Smith was focused on three main points: The opinon that Smith had once been a true prophet, but had fallen due to teaching plural marriage, exaltation and other controversial practices; The opinion that as church president and Nauvoo mayor, Smith held too much power; and the belief that Smith was corrupting young women by forcing, coercing or introducing them to the practice of plural marriage.

(Smith was in fact actively seeking multiple wives in secret, while publicly denying such rumors and accounts.)

Nauvoo's charter granted the city council powers equal to the Illinois legislature within the jurisdiction of Nauvoo. Power was granted to the city council to pass ordinances for the order and welfare of the city. For several days, Smith and the city council debated and discussed the matter. Ultimately, after considering William Blackstone's canon, Smith, as Nauvoo's mayor, declared the press a nuisance and ordered the city marshall to destroy the paper and the press.

Critics regarded the press's destruction as an affront to freedom of the press, and the press's destruction only escalated the continuing conflict between the Mormon community and their critics.

Legal Opinions and Analyses

Critics have questioned whether the city council's ordinance and the mayor's declaration and order were constitutional. One Mormon legal scholar Dallin H. Oaks has addressed the issue, and concluded that although the actions may not have been wise, they were in keeping with accepted legal practices of the time.

Some contend that critics are misjudging Nauvoo officials' actions of the mid nineteenth century by applying legal standards of the late twentieth century. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was twenty four years away from being enacted in 1868, and that amendment's incorporation of federal constitutional rights against state and local governments was not enforced until 1931. Thus, the issue falls primarily on the constitution of Illinois and the Nauvoo Charter, not the federal law of the United States such as the First Amendment.

Some argue that even if the actions of the mayor were not illegal under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (because it was not governing law), they were illegal under the 1818 Constitution of Illinois. Among other constitutional rights included in the Illinois constitution, it prohibits ex-post facto laws (VIII.16) and provides for freedom of the press (VIII.22). Smith's actions as mayor are not clearly illegal under either of those constitutional provisions. Freedom of speech is not absolute; there are in this case applicable limitations and restrictions on that right. The ex-post facto prohibition may apply because the city council passed an ordinance regarding nuisances and then the mayor declared the Expositor press a nuisance only after, rather than before, the first issue had already been printed. However, the decision to declare the press a nuisance also rested in part on the editor's stated and unretracted intentions going forward. The press was declared a nuisance in part because it was deemed that if it was not immediately checked, it would inflame Nauvoo's Mormon citizens and lead to public disorder or a public disturbance. Assuming that the mayor's declaration and order passed the ex-post facto legal hurdle, it also needed to meet the Nauvoo Charter's requirement that new ordinances must be published under certain criteria and could only become effective 30 days after the ordinance was passed. This requirement was not met.

Another consideration is whether the common law rule of nuisance was applicable without the need to pass a nuisance ordinance nor run up against any ex-post facto restriction. Finally, the destruction of the press rather than merely taking possession of it, constituted a taking of property requiring just compensation from the city.

The Nauvoo council and mayor considered that the most pertinent and inflammatory allegation presented by the paper was that Smith secretly practiced "spiritual wifery" or polygamy. Smith may have ordered the destruction of the press as mayor instead of suing for libel personally because he did not want the evidence of his polygamy presented before public in a court. (Although Church leaders at the time publicly condemned "spiritual wifery" and even excommunicated members for the practice, the doctrine of Plural Marriage was practiced discretely among them until a few years after they arrived in Utah in 1847. The revelation on this practice, attributed to Smith, was proclaimed at a General Conference in August 1852 and first published in the Deseret News a few weeks later, but not printed as Section 132 in the Doctrine and Covenants until 1876.)

Some apologists concede that the destruction of the press was at least procedurally illegal in some sense and even Oaks may have waffled later from his earlier defense. Irrespective of the legality, the actions of the city council and the mayor precipitated the imprisonment of Joseph Smith in Carthage, Illinois, where he was murdered by a mob.

External links

• Nauvoo Expositor (http://www.solomonspalding.com/docs/exposit1.htm) Scanned images of the only issue ever published of the Nauvoo Expositor available on the Solomon Spalding website.

• Nauvoo Charter (http://www.nauvoo.com/charter.html) The full text of the Nauvoo Charter

• Illinois Constitiution (http://tippecanoe.tripod.com/c1818.html) The full text of the 1818 Illinois Constitution