Kingdom of Nauvoo : the rise and fall of a religious empire on the American frontier
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-319) and index.

"An extraordinary story of faith and violence in nineteenth-century America, based on previously confidential documents from the Mormon Church. Compared to the Puritans, Mormons have rarely gotten their due, often treated as fringe cultists or marginalized polygamists unworthy of serious examination. In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park excavates the brief, tragic life of a lost Mormon city, demonstrating that the Mormons are essential to understanding American history writ large. Using newly accessiblesources, Park recreates the Mormons' 1839 flight from Missouri to Illinois. There, under the charismatic leadership of Joseph Smith, they founded Nauvoo, which shimmered briefly-but Smith's challenge to democratic traditions, as well as his new doctrineof polygamy, would bring about its fall. His wife Emma, rarely written about, opposed him, but the greater threat came from without: in 1844, a mob murdered Joseph, precipitating the Mormon trek to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows thatfar from being outsiders, the Mormons were representative of their era in their distrust of democracy and their attempt to forge a sovereign society of their own"--,Provided by publisher.