It didn’t take long for the enemies of the Church to realize that they had not destroyed the work after all. Nauvoo did not disintegrate with Joseph’s death. Instead, converts to the Church from all across America and Europe continued to flock to it. Over five hundred missionaries were sent into the world in 1844 alone! By the time of the exodus in early 1846, there was an estimated eleven to twelve thousand people in Nauvoo alone. There were more than a dozen other surrounding communities with another four or five thousand Latter-day Saints. That could hardly be defined as a collapse.
Soon the enemies were raging again. The Nauvoo Charter was revoked. Editorial writers fumed and foamed and once again began to use words like expulsion and extermination. Committees met, politicians lobbied, “law-abiding citizens” began to talk about law not being enough. Brigham Young and the Twelve became the target of frivolous lawsuits and criminal indictments. And when none of that stopped the work, once again they turned to other means—the torch, the night rider, powder and ball, murder.
In this seventh volume of The Work and the Glory, the days and months and years following the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith are depicted. The Steeds are part of the tumultuous events which unfold as the Church moves forward on its destined course. Two things become clearly evident during this time period. First, that this work is not the work of man, not even a man of Joseph Smith’s greatness. Therefore, while his death is a great tragedy, it is not a termination. The second lesson is that just as before, when the enemies of the Church thought they had “solved the Mormon problem” once and for all, the Church comes through the smoke and haze of battle more majestic, more solid, and stronger than ever before. In Liberty Jail, Joseph was told: “As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty” (D&C 121:33). So it was here. As well might the mobs and the politicians and the lawless try to stop the mighty Mississippi as to halt the work of God. No Unhallowed Hand describes this time of great tragedy and ultimate triumph. The Saints’ experience from 1844 to 1846 is a powerful testimony, after all else is said and done, of the declaration of God himself that it is his work and his glory, and no mere mortal shall ever stop it.
In each of the preceding volumes, acknowledgments of all of those who have made important contributions to this work have been given. They are not repeated here in print, but the feelings of gratitude and appreciation have only deepened all the more.
Gerald N. Lund
Bountiful, Utah
September 1996
Characters of Note in This Book
The Steed Family
•Benjamin, father and grandfather; fifty-nine as the book begins.
•Mary Ann Morgan, wife of Benjamin, and mother and grandmother; almost fifty-eight as the story opens.
•Joshua, the oldest son (thirty-seven), and his wife, Caroline Mendenhall (almost thirty-eight).
William (“Will”), from Caroline’s first marriage; twenty.
Savannah; seven.
Charles Benjamin; four.
Livvy Caroline; two weeks old as the book opens.
•Jessica Roundy Garrett (forty), Joshua’s first wife, widow of John Griffith, and her husband, Solomon Garrett (thirty-nine).
Rachel, from marriage to Joshua; twelve.
Luke and Mark, sons from John Griffith’s first marriage; almost twelve and ten, respectively.
John Benjamin, from marriage to John; six.
Miriam Jessica, from marriage to Solomon; almost one.
•Nathan, the second son (thirty-five), and his wife, Lydia McBride (not quite thirty-five).
Joshua Benjamin (“Young Joshua”); thirteen.
Emily; not quite twelve.
Elizabeth Mary; six.
Josiah Nathan; three.
Nathan Joseph; one.
•Melissa, the older daughter (thirty-three), and her husband, Carlton (“Carl”) Rogers (almost thirty-five).
Carlton Hezekiah; twelve.
David Benjamin; not quite ten.
Caleb John; almost eight.
Sarah; almost six.
•Rebecca, the younger daughter (twenty-six), and her husband, Derek Ingalls (almost twenty-seven).
Christopher Joseph; five.
Benjamin Derek; two.
•Matthew, the youngest son (not quite twenty-four), and his wife, Jennifer Jo McIntire (twenty-two).
Betsy Jo; two.
•Peter Ingalls, Derek’s younger brother; twenty.
•Kathryn Marie McIntire, Jennifer Jo’s sister; four years younger than Jennifer.
Note: Deceased children are not included in the above listing.
The Smiths
* Lucy Mack, the mother.
* Hyrum, Joseph’s elder brother (almost six years older than Joseph), martyred at age forty-four.
* Mary Fielding, Hyrum’s wife.
* Joseph, the Prophet, martyred at age thirty-eight and a half.
* Emma Hale, Joseph’s wife; a year and a half older than Joseph.
* Joseph and Emma’s children: Julia Murdock, Joseph III, Frederick Granger Williams, and Alexander Hale.
* Samuel, Joseph’s younger brother; age thirty-six.
* William, Joseph’s youngest living brother; age thirty-three.
Note: There are sisters to Joseph, but they do not play major roles in the novel.
*Designates actual people from Church history.
Others
* John C. Bennett, converted to the Church in 1840; elected mayor of Nauvoo in 1841; turned against the Church in 1842.
Jean Claude Dubuque (“Frenchie”), Joshua’s lumber foreman in Wisconsin.
* Thomas Ford, governor of the state of Illinois.
* Heber C. Kimball, friend of Brigham Young’s and a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Jane Manning, a free black who has joined the Church and lives in Nauvoo.
* Orson Pratt, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Parley P. Pratt, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Willard Richards, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Sidney Rigdon, member of the First Presidency; age fifty-one.
* Orrin Porter Rockwell, close friend and bodyguard of the martyred prophet Joseph Smith.
Alice Samuelson, daughter of Walter; age seventeen and a half as the story begins.
Walter Samuelson and his wife, Judith, from St. Louis; Joshua’s business partner.
* George A. Smith, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Mercy Fielding Thompson Smith, sister to Mary, widowed plural wife of Hyrum Smith.
* John Taylor, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Wilford Woodruff, member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
* Brigham Young, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; age forty-three as the novel opens.
*Designates actual people from Church history.
Though too numerous to list here, there are many other actual people from the pages of history who are mentioned by name in the novel. Thomas Sharp, Frank Worrell, Isaac Morley, Edmund Durfee, and many others mentioned in the book were real people who lived and participated in the events described in this work.
Key to Abbreviations Used in Chapter Notes
Throughout the chapter notes, abbreviated references are given. The following key gives the full bibliographic data for those references.
American Moses Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985.)
CHFT Church History in the Fulness of Times (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1989.)
Edmund Durfee William G. Hartley, The Murder of Edmund Durfee (Provo, Utah: Albert and Tamma Durfee Miner Family Organization, 1995.)
HC Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. B. H. Roberts, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
1932–51.)
“Journal of Gregory R. Knight, ed., “Journal of Thomas Bullock,” BYU Studies 31 (Winter 1991): 15–75.
Mack Hist. Lucy Mack Smith, History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, ed. Preston Nibley (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954.)
Women of Nauvoo Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Jeni Broberg Holzapfel, Women of Nauvoo (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1992.)
The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.
—Joseph Smith, 1842
Chapter 1
To Nathan’s surprise, the temple block was deserted.
He looked around carefully. The Nauvoo Cemetery was east of the city a short distance, set amid a grove of scattered trees, but sometime before his death Joseph had designated a site near the temple as his place of burial. It was still early, but it was the Sabbath. He had assumed that people might come out early, before the worship services. When he came yesterday afternoon, to no great wonder he found more than a hundred people milling around the two freshly dug graves. He had turned on his heel and walked back to town. He didn’t begrudge the people’s being there, he just didn’t want to be there with them. But now there was no one. Grateful, he walked through the opening in the rail fence, moving slowly now.
The grass was heavy with dew and he could feel its wetness quickly soaking through his pant legs as he walked toward the spot where the rich color of green was cut into two freshly spaded plots of black earth. His step slowed and he reached up and took off his hat. A sudden forlornness swept over him, as sharp as if it were actual physical pain. There were no grave markers on either end of the burial plots. Nothing said who was buried here beneath the Illinois sod. It was a bitter and ironic final footnote to the lives of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Even with the brothers’ deaths their enemies were not satisfied. Word had reached Nauvoo that some might try to get the head of the Mormon prophet for the reward promised for it in Missouri. Hoping that it was rumor, not daring to believe that it was only that, the Saints had not marked the graves.
He bent down at the one end of the nearest plot. It had rained last night and the soil was smooth and damp. He reached out with a finger and began to write.
Joseph Smith December 23, 1805—June 27, 1844
Hyrum Smith February 9, 1800—June 27, 1844
He looked at what he had written, absently rubbing the mud from his finger, then leaned forward again and wrote one additional line.
Prophets, Servants, Friends
He straightened slowly. That was it. Prophets, yes. Servants of the Lord, without question. But for Nathan Steed, it was all of that and so much more. They had been his friends.
Most of the twenty-some thousand people now in the Church knew Joseph only as their prophet. They knew only the public Joseph, the man who preached the powerful sermons in the East or West Grove, the man who was responsible for the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. Their grief was a public grief and was shared jointly by all the Saints. During the last two days, Nathan had joined in the public mourning during the viewing of the bodies and the subsequent funerals. Now he wished to spend some moments with his own private loss.
Nathan’s relationship with Joseph and Hyrum Smith spanned seventeen years. In the spring of 1827, on the recommendation of their neighbor Martin Harris, Benjamin Steed hired the two Smith boys as day labor to help him clear his land. That was before there was a Book of Mormon, before the priesthood had been restored, before the Church had been organized. Nathan had wrestled stumps from the earth, plowed virgin fields, and pulled sticks together with Joseph and Hyrum. They had eaten together at the Steed table. They had become friends.
He looked away now. In his mind was the vivid image of a meadow, just off the road a mile or two south of the Steed farm. Nathan had been walking Joseph and Hyrum partway home. They stopped to rest. And then Joseph had begun, with Hyrum nodding solemn witness. He told of that morning seven years earlier when he had gone into a grove of trees to ask a simple question: Which of the churches is right? Nathan could remember, as clearly as though it had happened this very morning, his utter astonishment, his mind wanting to reject the enormity of what he was hearing but his heart telling him it was true.
There were so many memories. The night in the Smith home when Joseph returned from retrieving the plates from where he had hidden them in an old birch log, having a dislocated thumb from fighting off would-be attackers. There was that sunlit day when Oliver Cowdery and Nathan sat on the banks of the Susquehanna River in Harmony, Pennsylvania, and Oliver told him about the coming of John the Baptist. There was the Peter Whitmer cabin and the small group there to witness the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ on the earth. He remembered sham trials in Colesville, mobs in Jackson County, the betrayal and arrest in Far West. The images, the voices, the memories marched like rank upon rank of soldiers in his mind. So much. So long. So treasured. And now they were dead.
He half turned, using the wet grass to wash the mud from his finger. In that first summer here in Nauvoo, during that terrible time when the ague was cutting through the Saints like the scythe of death itself, Joseph had risen from his sickbed and come to the home of Nathan and Lydia Steed. If he had not, their little Elizabeth Mary, whimpering and near death, would be gone too. Benjamin Steed would twice have been dead had it not been for Joseph’s commanding power. What would the Steeds be, where would they have gone, had it not been for the lives of Joseph and Hyrum Smith? How many threads had been woven into the fabric of their friendship? How many bonds had forged what lay between them? This was his personal loss. A prophet, yes. But a friend like few men ever had.
He turned back, looking down at the crude letters in the damp earth. Three days! Can it really be only three days now? He shook his head. Now the memories were like the lash, tearing into flesh and leaving raw wounds. If only he had stayed. If only he and Stephen Markham had not left the jail for medicine, they would have been there. Perhaps two more in the bedroom would have been enough to stave off the mob. But they had not been there. They had come to Nauvoo for help, driven out of Carthage at the point of forty or more bayonets, their boots filling with blood from the stab wounds they had suffered.
And now he was here. And they were gone.
He reached out and gently tamped the earth with the toe of his boot, erasing the lines of tribute and leaving the two graves unmarked once again.
“Can you just leave them here by my bed, Matthew?”
Matthew Steed stopped. The crutches he held in his hand swung gently back and forth. He looked at his wife, not quite able to conceal the sudden look of dismay that flashed across his face. Jenny gave a slight shake of her head.
Kathryn McIntire’s Irish temper flared. She turned on her sister. “Jenny, I just want them here where I can see them. I know that I’m not ready for them yet.”
Jenny’s face pulled into a disapproving frown. “Like last week, right?”
Just a week ago, Jenny had been out in the main room of the house playing with little Betsy Jo. Matthew was away at the cabinet shop. There had been a tremendous crash from Kathryn’s bedroom. When Jenny came running in, she found Kathryn on the floor beside her bed, holding one wrist and wincing in pain. Just behind her, the wheelchair was on its side, one wheel still spinning slowly. In spite of repeated warnings not to try and get out of bed by herself, she had gone ahead and nearly broken her arm.
Kathryn concentrated on Matthew, giving him a look of childlike innocence as she pointed to the chair near the head of her bed. “Come on, Matthew.”
“Kathryn,” Jenny started, her voice heavy with warning. “You are making progress, but you have to learn to be p
atient.”
Kathryn’s head jerked up. “Don’t use that word.”
Jenny blinked. “What?”
“Don’t tell me to be patient, Jenny.” There were sudden, hot tears. “I hate that word. I hate it.”
“I’m sorry, Kathryn,” Jenny said, instantly seeing her mistake.
There was not a flicker of response. Kathryn turned to Matthew as if he were alone in the room with her. She reached out and patted the chair. “I know I can’t use them yet, but I want to be able to touch them. It will inspire me to heal more quickly.”
Jenny McIntire Steed felt a stab of guilt. Two years ago last April, while out on a picnic with Jessica and the children, a bolt of lightning struck within a few feet of where Kathryn was standing. When she recovered consciousness three days later, she was paralyzed from the neck down. The paralysis was tragedy enough for someone who loved life as Kathryn did, but the humiliation of suddenly being totally dependent on others—for eating, bathing, even something as simple as turning over in bed—was a far greater tragedy in her eyes. She fought back fiercely. She simply refused to accept the idea that her condition might be permanent.
And miraculously, her situation did improve. Gradually, control over her hands and arms returned. Soon her upper body was back to nearly what it had been before. A few weeks after the tragedy, Matthew crafted a wheelchair for her in the cabinet shop. Thrilled with her new freedom, at first she had to be pushed everywhere. But that was not good enough. Soon she was strong enough to propel herself around, covering everything but the roughest ground without help. But that was as far as it had gone. She spent hours every day massaging her legs, lifting and bending them over and over, but there was no further lessening of the paralysis. Two years of waiting, and nothing more. No wonder she hated the word patience.
The crutches had been Kathryn’s idea. They had all tried to talk her out of it. Even Joshua, who had been the most supportive in her battle against her handicap, saw that crutches required at least some control in the legs and feet. But she wouldn’t listen to him either. And now, watching Kathryn’s eyes, full of silent pleadings and proud determination, Jenny understood the need for hope, the importance of having something to challenge her further.
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