Did Joseph Smith endorse a pro-polygamy pamphlet called “The Peacemaker”??? Ep. 163

The show “Under the Banner of Heaven” mentions an “essential LDS tract, printed by Joseph Smith himself,” called “The Peacemaker.” In this episode, Dave dives into the history of this pamphlet to discover just how involved with it Joseph Smith actually was.

Video transcript and notes: https://bit.ly/3OI6EI4

Read “The Peacemaker” on BYU’s digital collections website: https://bit.ly/3PMDMQm
“A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church, Volume 1,” by Peter Crawley (see entry #165): https://bit.ly/38Dd5ww
“A New Look at the Alleged Little Known Discourse by Joseph Smith” via BYU Studies (1969): https://bit.ly/3NAg47Y
“Question: Did Joseph Smith write a pro-polygamy pamphlet called The Peace Maker in 1842?” via FAIR: https://bit.ly/3MTKaDj
“A Little-known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842” via Dialogue Journal: https://bit.ly/3PZY9JD
“Printing office, Nauvoo, Illinois,” via the Joseph Smith Papers: https://bit.ly/3LN0DYA
Mini-biography of Udney Hay Jacob with sources (JSPP): https://bit.ly/3xgrW9L
Mini-biography of John D. Lee with sources (JSPP): https://bit.ly/38msEbW
1844 (January 6) letter from Udney Jacob to Joseph Smith, via The Joseph Smith Papers Project: https://bit.ly/3x46PWK
1857 (March 5) letter from Udney Jacob to Brigham Young, via the Church History Catalog: https://bit.ly/3mvrQFf
“The John Taylor Nauvoo Journal,” Dean Jessee (editor), BYU Studies (quoted in video): https://bit.ly/3GVoGE4
There is a book called “The Life of Norton Jacob” (Udney’s son) at the BYU Library that I have not read yet, but here’s a link to the item information nonetheless, if interested: https://bit.ly/3Ml7Org

Notes:

— Also, here’s another letter from Udney (1840) in which he attempts to refute Latter-day Saint teachings about baptism and the reception of the Holy Ghost: https://bit.ly/3MNSSTv

— If Joseph Smith was not aware of the publication of the pamphlet, who was? During most of 1842, John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff had been managing the press (see “A Descriptive Bibliography”), until Joseph eventually gave them full responsibility over the press on November 12, 1842 (likely after the pamphlet was printed that same November). It is probably more likely that John or Wilford were aware of the content of the pamphlet, and had likely been taught the principle of plural marriage by then (after returning home from their mission to England). That does not, however, mean they supported all of the ideas put forth by the pamphlet. John Taylor didn’t marry his first plural wife until December of 1843 (Elizabeth Kaighin). Wilford Woodruff did not marry additional wives until August 2, 1846 (Mary Ann Jackson, Sarah Elinor Brown, & Mary Caroline Barton). It’s worth noting that (as noted in the video) John Taylor called the pamphlet “a corrupt book” in 1845.

— In Under the Banner of Heaven, Lafferty claims he wasn’t able to find the Church’s “original teachings” at the BYU library, and discovered The Peacemaker at an antiques shop. The implication is that the Church was actively burying information they didn’t want the public to know about. I did a substantial amount of digging to discover whether or not The Peacemaker would have been available for research in the early 1980s.

Greg Seppi, Curator of the 19th and 20th Century Americana Collection at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, after consulting with his colleague Elizabeth Brimley, stated that as far as the Harold B. Lee Library’s records show, the original 1842 edition of The Peace Maker would have been available to researchers as early as 1974, and other editions would have been available by 1978. The Lee Library’s special collections unit, where the book was located, does not have any evidence that the book was restricted during the early 1980s, and such a restriction would have been highly unusual at any point in the institution’s history. While BYU does maintain a policy restricting non-endowed individuals from accessing books that quote directly and at length from the endowment ceremony, such a restriction would not apply to The Peace Maker since it obviously does not do so.

There was also a BYU Studies article published in 1969 called, “A New Look at the Alleged Little Known Discourse by Joseph Smith” (see link above) that quotes from The Peacemaker. Udney’s work is also referenced in “The John Taylor Nauvoo Journal,” Dean Jessee (editor), BYU Studies 23:84 (summer, 1983). It’s likely that other references existed in other works found at the library as well.

In summary, it seems clear to me that this pamphlet was not being hidden from the public.

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