| 727 Whether these ends justified the means is doubtful; yet we must not forget that this subject, like all others, has two sides.
From one standpoint it seems a thing incongruous that a high church official-a prophet of God should aspire to political honors, and seek to fill such a position. It savors too much of the doctrine of church and state to be acceptable in a republic. On the other hand, when the church in a body had been deprived of citizenship in a sovereign State, their lives imperiled, at the mercy of a lawless mob sustained by an inhuman Executive, and they robbed of thousands of dollars, where no redress could be obtained because of the false application of a political doctrine, it seems at least a plausible excuse for a leading, church official to enter the political arena and contend for the suppression of that particular fallacy.
Such was the situation at the time, and that the doctrine of State sovereignty was largely responsible, none can deny. If not responsible for the overt and unlawful acts in the first place, it was responsible for preventing redress of wrongs inflicted. Opposition to the doctrine of State sovereignty was the keynote of Joseph's political doctrine. Had his recommendations been adopted then and that doctrine suppressed, this nation might have been spared the horrors of a bloody civil conflict from the effect of which we have not yet recovered.
Politically, Joseph Smith was comparatively unknown, and his candidacy from a political standpoint was a hopeless one, yet we should not forget that when sixteen years later this same doctrine of "State sovereignty" had plunged our nation into the throes of civil war, there arose, from this same State of Illinois, an obscure backwoodsman, who saved the nation by his determined opposition to this political fallacy.
Which would have been the better for the nation, to have accepted the political views of Joseph Smith in 1844, and by heroic measures to have settled this question peaceably, or having waited sixteen years, to be forced, as it was, to settle it by the arbitrament of the sword?
(page 727) |
