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Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Spencer W. McBride, "Joseph Smith for President: The Prophet, the Assassins, and the Fight for American Religious Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Description: By the election year of 1844, Joseph Smith, the controversial founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had amassed a national following of some 25,000 believers. Nearly half of them lived in the city of Nauvoo, Illinois, where Smith was not only their religious leader but also the mayor and the commander-in-chief of a militia of some 2,500 men. In less than twenty years, Smith had helped transform the American religious landscape and grown his own political power substantially. Yet the standing of the Mormon people in American society remained unstable. Unable to garner federal protection, and having failed to wi...