Gordon A. Madsen discusses the impact of the litigation against Joseph and their effects upon the Kirltand Economy after the failure of the Kirtland Bank.
Gordon A. Madsen, “Tabulating the Impact of Litigation on the Kirtland Economy,” in Sustaining the Law: Joseph Smith’s Legal Encounters, ed. Gordon A. Madsen, Jeffrey N. Walker, and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2014), 227–246
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On April 13, 1837, Grandison Newell claimed Joseph Smith had threatened to kill him and initiated an action under the same criminal statute that was used by Joseph against Hurlbut discussed first above. After hearing eleven witnesses for the prosecution and ten for the defense, Justice of the Peace Flint (who was conducting a similar preliminary hearing) ruled in favor of Newell and put Joseph under recognizance (or bond) to appear at the next term of the Court of Common Pleas. The record of the proceedings before Justice Flint was transmitted to the Court of Common Pleas, and a trial was held on June 5, 1837. At the conclusion of the trial, the court held: “the Court having heard the evidence adduced, are of the opinion that the complainant had no cause to fear as set forth in his said complaint—it is therefore adjudged by the court, that the said Joseph Smith Junior be discharged, and go thereof without day—at the cost of the State taxed at [blank].” More about Grandison Newell will appear below.
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Conclusions
This truncated and still incomplete overview of Joseph’s and the Temple Committee’s legal experience in Ohio supports several tentative conclusions and reflections about both the legal and spiritual conditions in Kirtland. On the criminal front, Joseph and his friends came off unscathed as defendants, and won a couple of cases as complaining witnesses.
Of the $52,251.44 reduced by duplications noted above to $49,828.23 recorded debt of Joseph and the Committee, $43,225.91 was paid. There were no defrauded creditors, but rather paid creditors, 87 percent of whose claims were satisfied in a reasonably prompt time frame. And that payment came largely after the Saints had abandoned Kirtland and the symbol of their sacrifice, the temple. I see here shades of the similar loss in Nauvoo.
While the payment of debts in Kirtland is a part of the focus of this study, it is important to note that the payment of those debts as detailed above was not done in a vacuum. During the same time, the Saints incurred the cost of settlement in Kirtland, expulsion, and resettlement in Missouri; the cost of Zion’s Camp; the cost of building of the Kirtland Temple; the absorbing of immigrating poor converts; the printing enterprise which produced the second edition of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Commandments, the Doctrine and Covenants, a hymnbook, many tracts, and two newspapers; the destruction of a press; and more. Knowing of all these contemporary economic demands leaves one wondering how any economic viability was achieved at all.
Also not mentioned here is the sacrifice of those few somewhat well-off Saints who gave their all and left Kirtland essentially impoverished. One has to ask how in an eight-year-old church did Joseph persuade people to persist in what has to be viewed as a voluntary sharing and sacrificing of their temporal goods to the point of impoverishment. One could argue that they lived a near version of a law of consecration—if starting out at various levels of economic security and ending up in Missouri equally poor can be so called. And they did it in such numbers. One partial answer might be that they felt the spiritual rewards, particularly those tangibly experienced in the Kirtland Temple, were well worth the cost.
Joseph, in Nauvoo, looking back on those days and the additional crucibles of pain through which he and the Saints had thereafter passed, said, “These I have met in prosperity and they were my friends; and I now meet them in adversity, and they are still my warmer friends. These love the God that I serve; they love the truths that I promulge; they love those virtues, and those holy doctrines that I cherish in my bosom with the warmest feelings of my heart, and with that zeal which cannot be denied. I love friendship and truth; I love virtue and law.”