JOSEPH SMITH PAPERS PROJECT
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The goal of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, sponsored by the History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is to create a comprehensive collection of all documents associated with Joseph Smith, founder and first prophet of the Church.

Endorsed by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the project aims to “make available complete and reliable texts of all surviving Joseph Smith documents and present them with supporting context and other details that help make them as intelligible to modern readers as they would have been to participants in the history they document,” according to Ronald Esplin, a BYU professor and Executive Editor of the project.


Letter from Illinois Governor Thomas Ford to Joseph Smith, December 17, 1842.
The end result is projected to include more than twenty volumes of carefully transcribed documents, with DVDs containing images of additional documents accompanying many of the volumes. Each volume will be extensively annotated to provide historical context forrthe text of the documents. The volumes will contain glossaries, newly rendered maps, chronologies and other charts and aids.

The Papers Project will contain a series of the journals kept by Joseph Smith and his scribes, as well as all of the known correspondence, revelations, discourses, and the like produced by Smith. Also included will be a series covering legal matters involving Joseph Smith, and that is where I am involved. As explained by Ron Esplin:

“Unraveling obscure references, trying to understand unusual settings, and exploring long-forgotten history has taken us into many nooks and crannies, shedding light on things we didn't understand well before. Nowhere is this more true than with the legal series. There are several times more cases and other entanglements before the law than we knew about, and our legal experts are, perhaps for the first time in a hundred years, coming to really understand prevailing law in the jurisdictions where Smith functioned. Only now have we come to appreciate the extent of his legal entanglements--nearly two hundred times before a magistrate as plaintiff or defendant—and the time and resources these demanded. The extensive toll in terms of time and energy, not to mention finances, required to fend off legal challenges makes one wonder how he had resources enough for anything else.”

The legal team includes four volume editors—Gordon Madsen, Jeffrey Walker, Joseph Bentley and me. All of us have been practicing lawyers for most of our careers and all of us are fascinated by history—especially the legal history of Joseph Smith. A fifth member of the legal team is Jack Welch, law professor at Brigham Young University and editor-in-chief of Brigham Young University Studies, a journal covering a variety of issues relating to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

My sub-specialty is the Nauvoo period of Joseph Smith’s legal history—from 1839 to 1845. I have delivered lectures on the three attempts by the state of Missouri to extradite Smith from Nauvoo and on the trial of the accused murderers of Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum, which occurred in 1844.

I am honored to be able to work with the outstanding scholars who are associated with the Papers Project, many of whom have published extensively concerning Joseph Smith’s history and other matters. One of the highlights of the project was a tour that the editors took in October 2006, in which we visited almost every place Joseph visited during his life, from Sharon, Vermont, where he was born, to Carthage, Illinois, where he was murdered. The trip (which included spouses of the editors) was generously underwritten by Larry H. Miller, who is also underwriting the cost of producing the project. During the course of the trip the editors delivered short lectures on their areas of expertise at each stop along the way. I had the privilege of lecturing on the second extradition attempt in the Springfield state house, the venue where Joseph Smith and several of his apostles conducted a church service on New Year’s Day, 1843. Joseph Smith had come to


Springfield, Illinois state house.

Springfield to participate a hearing before United States District Judge Nathaniel Pope in connection with Missouri’s attempt to extradite him to stand trial for the assault on ex-governor Lilburn Boggs. The decision by Pope in Smith’s favor became a leading case on habeas corpus and extradition matters for decades to come.

I am currently working on an article for publication concerning the Missouri extradition cases.