According to early Mormon convert Benjamin Winchester, Joseph Smith in the 1830s "received a revelation especially concerning Kirtland": "It was to be the great center of the world. Kings and Queens were to come there from foreign lands to pay homage to the Saints. It was to be the great commercial point of the universe." Joseph Young, brother of Brigham Young, predicted that the city would prosper and that no other in the United States "will for some years increase like Kirtland." Wilford Woodruff wrote in November 1836 that already Kirtland was a beehive of activity and enterprise: "The noise of the axe and the hammer, and their bank and market, and especially the House of God speak in language as loud as thunder that the Saints will have a city in spite of the false prophets of Baal."

The whole Mormon community was caught up in the boosterism shown by Young and Woodruff. Many of the poorer Saints began to flock into the city, and large scale borrowing, merchandising, land sales, and construction followed. In fact, some historians have seen this period as one of excessive speculation and spending, although new evidence suggests that land values rose naturally as the population increased and that Joseph Smith and his associates had acquired significant amounts of wealth in land against which they were able to borrow to expand the Kirtland community.

As Kirtland grew in population there was an increasing shortage of liquid capital. To meet the cash shortage Smith planned to secure a charter for a local bank. On 2 November 1836, a "constitution" was written for a bank called the Kirtland Safety Society. Apostle Orson Hyde was sent to Columbus to seek a corporate charter from the legislature. Smith was to be bank cashier and Sidney Rigdon president. Oliver Cowdery traveled to Philadelphia to purchase engraved plates for the bank notes, since the bank was expected to open shortly. But on 1 January Hyde returned to Kirtland with news that the charter would not be granted.

The Mormons, who voted Democratic and were sympathetic to the soft money faction of the party, found themselves thwarted by a new Whig administration which blocked Democratic-sponsored bank legislation. The Cleveland Daily Gazette, a forum for the soft money forces in the state, warned that if "the legislature refuses to grant the necessary bank charters, and thus refuses to do away with the monopoly that exists, they must expect the people will take care of their own interest." Apparently Mormons were thinking along similar lines, because when they learned of the legislature's negative response, they immediately met on 2 January, wrote new "Articles of Agreement" to establish the "Kirtland Safety Society Anti-banking Company," and issued their first notes on 5 January. Acting on what may have been bad legal counsel, they assumed that they could assign banking functions to a private business corporation. During January the bank's managers issued a total of over $15,000 in notes but only had enough cash on hand to redeem these notes during the first two weeks of operation. By 23 January they resorted to backing the notes with property. Newspapers in Cleveland and adjoining towns attacked the "Mormon bank" and warned that its notes were of dubious value. L. L. Rice of the Cleveland Daily Gazette said that the only security backing the notes was the word of the untrustworthy Mormon leaders. Nonetheless, during the next two months the new bank managers issued at least $70,000 more of the depreciating currency.

Smith himself began to invest heavily in the bank in an attempt to save it. As late as 6 April he apparently believed his banking project might work: "If the elders will remember the Kirtland Safety Society and do as they should Kirtland will become a great city." But three days later his mood changed for he warned the Saints that "severe judgments awaited those characters that professed to be his friends & friends to…the Kirtland Safety Society but had turned traitors and opposed the currency." Despite Smith's efforts, confidence in the bank waned and few Saints would take its notes. Certain elders, trying to cut their losses, rode into the countryside to exchange bank notes for whatever they could get. Smith had to denounce them in the press to stop the practice. By October he and Sidney Rigdon were brought to trial for violating an 1816 anti-banking law and were fined $1,000 each. Finally, in November, the bank closed its doors forever.

The failure of the banking firm convinced many Mormons, including some of its highest ranking leaders, that something was wrong at Kirtland. The festering discontent that had resided just beneath the surface since the days of Zion's Camp finally erupted, and a storm of denunciation was hurled against the prophet.

Among the leading dissenters in Kirtland in 1836 and 1837, nine had been members of Zion's Camp: Frederick G. Williams, Parley P. Pratt, Luke and Lyman Johnson, Martin Harris, Roger Orton, Warren Parrish, Leonard Rich, and Sylvester Smith. Another dissenter, Oliver Cowdery, had sent the circular letter urging that the elders enlist in the camp. When Warren Parrish published a critique of the prophet's policies in the newspaper in 1838, he began by denouncing the camp. Several dissenters agreed with his assessment.

Apostle William E. McLellin was an articulate leader for the discontented who saw the camp and the bank as part of a general pattern. McLellin said that Zion's Camp was an expensive failure and that it produced "a different spirit [which]…seized almost the whole ranks of the church." He maintained that "their practice was in 1834 to proclaim war and gather up a troop, and travel to Clay Co. Mo., with arms and munitions of war." He lamented the massive merchandizing in Kirtland, the heavy indebtedness, land speculation, and the pretense of a bank. He said that the leaders were enamored of worldly riches, thereby bringing "ruin, inevitable ruin upon thousands." They became obsessed with power, "grasping like the Popes of Rome both the spiritual and temporal powers of the church." In their financial speculations and establishment of an unlawful bank, he concluded, "they seemed to think that everything must bow at their nod."

The bank failure was a deep disappointment and imposed economic hardship on some. Oliver Cowdery invested and lost $197, a substantial portion of his annual income. Parley Pratt lost $102, Leonard Rich $50, and Luke Johnson $46.29 There is no way to tell how much Mormons lost when they took the depreciating currency of the bank. But financial losses alone do not account for the degree of discontent. More significant was the fact that many of the Saints believed that the bank was established by divine revelation and that it could not fail. Apostle John F. Boynton spoke for these Saints when he remembered Joseph Smith declaring that "the audible voice of God instructed him to establish a Banking-Anti-banking institution, which like Aaron's rod should swallow up all other banks…and grow and flourish and spread…and survive when all others should be laid in ruins."

Actually, Smith qualified his prophecy regarding the bank. Wilford Woodruff recorded his statement the day it was made and reported Smith saying he had received the word of the Lord on the bank that morning, 6 January: "if we would give heed to the commandments of the Lord…all would be well." It is unclear which commandments were here being referred to or whether they were being observed, but for Mormons like Apostle Boynton who expected literal fulfillment for every aspiration spoken by the prophet, the bank failure was shattering.

Apostle Parley Pratt, one of the more ardent defenders of the Mormon faith, was, like McLellin, more concerned with the expanding powers the prophet seemed to be assuming. He wrote an angry letter on 23 May 1837, telling Smith that he had wronged him in turning his personal notes for debt over to a bank. Pratt said Smith was "taking advantage of your brother by undue religious influence" and thus attacked the theocratic concept. Pratt said he was certain that "the whole scheme of speculation in which we have been engaged, is of the devil." He insisted it had given rise to "lying, deceiving, and taking advantage of one's neighbor." Thus Smith and Rigdon "have been the principle means in leading this people astray…by false prophesying and preaching." Pratt threatened to bring church charges against Smith, but six days later it was his brother, Orson, and Apostle Lyman Johnson who brought charges before a bishop's court condemning Smith for "lying and misrepresentation—also for extortion—and for speaking disrespectfully against his brethren behind their backs."

According to Mary Fielding in a letter written 15 June 1837, two successive Sundays were consumed by internal dissension. Warren Parrish and others denounced Smith in these meetings. Their initial attack was so devastating that Smith took sick and was "near death" and could not defend himself. Parley Pratt presided on the second Sunday and continued the attack. He charged that virtually the entire church had departed from the ways of the Lord and that the prophet had committed "great sins." Alluding in his address to an apology made by Smith, Pratt said this was not sufficient because the prophet must confess to those who were aware of his wrong doing Pratt said he would retract none of the charges he had made in his letters to Smith regarding financial transactions. The plural marriage issue then was raised, and Pratt said he had not broken the "matrimonial covenant." Sidney Rigdon followed and said that he shared the reproach heaped upon the prophet and if there was any more fault finding, he would leave the meeting. Shortly thereafter he and several others marched out.

Brigham Young later recalled that at this time the discontented gathered in a room of the temple to voice their protests and to propose that Smith be removed as prophet and that David Whitmer be named his successor. Vigorous opposition to this by Brigham Young Heber C. Kimball, and John Smith (the prophet's uncle) prevented immediate action, but many left the meeting determined that Smith must be replaced. Young said that shortly after this an attempt was made on the prophet's life.

Hoping to free himself from some of his apostolic critics, Smith announced in the later part of June that the twelve would be sent to England to open the church's first European mission. Heber Kimball and Orson Hyde were called to head the first overseas outpost.36 But other apostles like Parley Pratt, Boynton, and Luke and Lyman Johnson were not so easily reconciled.

For many Saints at Kirtland there was more at stake than the failures of Zion's Camp and the bank. The church was undergoing substantial growth and change, and power was concentrating at the top. At Kirtland, for the first time, Smith was sustained as head of the entire church, including Missouri. Besides assuming management of the Kirtland economy, Smith also attempted to martial a unified Mormon vote to give the church power in local politics. And it was at Kirtland that he first moved beyond the bounds of civil law in performing a marriage under divine authority without being duly authorized by the state. When he married Lydia and Newell Knight on 23 November 1835, he told the congregation that it was done "by the authority of the priesthood which he had received from God and not from man and further Said he the gentile law shall not have power to hurt me for it as I have done as God hath required at my hand and he will bear me out and eventually bring me off conquorer over all my adversaries for his kingdom shall prevail." When John Whitmer and Benjamin Winchester complained of Smith's intimacy with a lady in the congregation, the prophet again appealed to higher law: "He was authorized by God Almighty to establish His Kingdom—that he was God's prophet and God's agent and that he could do whatever he should choose to do, therefore the Church had NO RIGHT TO CALL INTO QUESTION anything he did, or to censure him for the reason that he was responsible to God Almighty alone." Winchester said this "created a great sensation" and some of the best talent in the church left.

It seemed to critics like David Whitmer, who eventually left the church, that Smith had fallen from grace, no longer exemplifying the humility of earlier years, now claiming infallibility, changing revelations to suit his mood and attempting to redeem Zion before the proper time. John Whitmer found fault with Smith and Rigdon, saying that they had become "lifted up in pride, and lusted after forbidden things of God, such as covetousness…secret combinations, [and] spiritual wife doctrine." He said this brought division and distrust. It also brought bitterness and violence.

Lucy Mack Smith relates a confrontation in the temple at this time. She says that the prophet's father went to the stand and publicly criticized Warren Parrish, an outspoken dissenter. Parrish, however, pushed his way to the stand and tried to remove the old patriarch bodily. The senior Smith appealed to Cowdery for help but to no avail. Then William Smith, his youngest son, moved in only to have John Boynton menace William with a drawn sword.

Lucy also indicates that David Whitmer, Frederick G. Williams, Jared Carter, and others began holding secret meetings at Whitmer's home. At one such meeting a young woman with a black seer stone prophesied that one third of the church would turn against the prophet. Some were beginning to revert to other sources of authority as their confidence in Joseph Smith waned.

But it was the Cowdery brothers, Oliver and Warren, who best described what most troubled many Saints in Kirtland. Oliver had written to another of his brothers, Lyman, in January 1834, that there was a "certain sect in our land" which was moving toward a union of church and state. Oliver said that if this happened then "adieu to our hard won liberty." He wanted to be "uncontrolled and unshackled" in his politics, since "pure republicanism" was the foundation of his political beliefs. In July 1837 Warren Cowdery, editor of the LDS Messenger and Advocate, made his similar objection clear when he attacked the idea that one man should dictate in religious and secular affairs. Warren feared the church was becoming despotic:

If we give all our privileges to one man, we virtually give him our money and our liberties, and make him a monarch, absolute and despotic, and ourselves abject slaves or fawning sycophants.…Whenever a people have unlimited confidence in a civil or ecclesiastical ruler or rulers, who are but men like themselves, and begin to think they can do no wrong, they increase their tyranny and oppression and establish a principle that man, poor frail lump of mortality like themselves, is infallible. Who does not see a principle of popery and religious tyranny involved in such an order of things?…Intelligence of the people is the only guarantee against encroachments upon their liberties, whether those encroachments are from the civil or ecclesiastical power.

Despite growing discontent, not all Kirtland Saints were dissatisfied with Joseph Smith. Mary Fielding was among a diminishing number who still believed him to be a prophet of God. She pondered in her letter of 25 June "what the Lord will have to do with his church before it will submit to be governed by the Head but I fully believe we shall have no prosperity till this is the case." Smith said little in his published history about developments in Kirtland during the next month, but a sister of Elias Smith, "M.J.," wrote in August that she believed "times are growing better here. There is some prospect of peace being restored." She said that the prophet's brother had returned from Far West, Missouri, with David Patten and Thomas B. Marsh and had made confession of his own opposition to Joseph. She said Orson Pratt was now "in fellowship with the Church" and that Parley Pratt had "made a partial confession for what he had spoken against Joseph." She noted, however, that Smith and Rigdon had left, probably for Canada.

In September, Smith and Rigdon hurried to Missouri to forestall a possible rebellion. They found leaders in Zion sharply divided over the administration of town plots in the growing community at Far West. Two assistant presidents, John Whitmer and W. W. Phelps, had held exclusive control of land sales and had stirred opposition from the high council and the two apostles who resided there. To smooth over these differences, Smith announced that the proceeds from the sale of lots would be shared by "poor and bleeding zion." He said that it was now the Lord's will that all the Saints should gather to Far West and organize new stakes there. The time was short, for the Lord had said in revelation, "peace shall soon be taken from the earth…for a lying spirit has gone out upon all the face of the earth and shall perplex the nations and stir them to anger against one another: for behold saith the Lord, very fierce and very terrible war is near at hand, even at your doors."

Smith said that he would bring his family as soon as circumstances would allow, thus indicating that Far West was now to become the central gathering place and headquarters for the church. The announcement pleased most Saints at Far West, but some leaders were not so delighted. Oliver Cowdery, who had learned of a plural marriage relationship between the prophet and Fanny Alger, believed the church leader guilty of adultery and had fled to Far West. He began to doubt the imminence of the Millennium, to which Smith had repeatedly alluded in justifying his actions, and was dissatisfied with the Law of Consecration. He was not certain that the Saints should have to make sacrifices to uphold the practice. John and David Whitmer also had expressed discontent. But when Smith arrived he patched up differences with Cowdery, the two men shaking hands and agreeing to forget past differences. Smith quickly solidified his leadership and was named head of the church in Missouri as well as in Kirtland. He left Missouri confident that he had full support of the Missouri Saints.

While Smith was away, Warren Parrish and others in Kirtland had organized a new Church of Christ. They said they adhered to the "Old Standard," protesting the current name of the church, the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and its enlarged role in economic affairs. George A. Smith remembered that Parrish had thirty followers in Kirtland, but they were probably stronger than this because they soon gained control over considerable church property, including the temple and printing office.

In Missouri, it was not long before Oliver Cowdery and others had begun corresponding with leaders of the "Old Standard." On 30 January Cowdery met with David, John, and Jacob Whitmer, Frederick G. Williams, Lyman Johnson, and W. W. Phelps "to take into consideration the state of the Church." They said they were opposed to the manner in which "some of the Authorities of the . . . [church] have for the time past, and are still, endeavoring to unite ecclesiastical and civil authority, and force men under the pretense of incurring the displeasure of heaven to use their earthly substance contrary to their interest and privilege." Cowdery said local authorities were "endeavoring to make it a rule of faith for said church to uphold a certain man or men right or wrong." He and his friends were determined to separate themselves from such a society and find a new place to gather where they could "live in peace."

Meanwhile, after returning to Kirtland, Smith and Rigdon sought to rally support among the remaining faithful, fearing that they may have lost complete control of their Kirtland stronghold. But by 12 January 1838, Smith received a revelation to abandon Kirtland and head west:

Let the presidency of my church take their families as soon as it is practical and a door is open for them and move to the West as fast as the way is made plain…Verily I say unto you the time has come that your labors are finished in this place for a season. Therefore rise and get yourselves into a land which I shall show you, even a land flowing with milk and honey. You are clean before the Lord of this people, and wo unto them who have become your enemies who have professed my name, saith the Lord for their judgement lingereth not and their damnation slumbereth not.

On the same day Smith received another revelation warning church leaders in Kirtland that no court action could be taken against the presidency there. Charges leading to their removal, he was told, would have to be made in Missouri by three unimpeachable witnesses, and a verdict would have to be sustained by a majority vote in both states. Thus the Saints in Kirtland had no voice in the matter, and if Smith and Rigdon could rally a majority in Zion, their position would remain secure.

Shortly afterwards, Smith and Rigdon with their families headed west, dodging angry dissenters and creditors as they went. They contemplated the lessons of Kirtland and determined not to tolerate dissent at Far West. In Missouri they would adopt more drastic measures to assure the unity of the Saints.

It is ironic that Mormon leaders were compelled to leave Ohio by internal critics rather than by outsiders, although lawsuits filed by non-Mormons added to the pressures on Smith and Rigdon. Hepsebah Richards noted in February 1838 that the elect had been "driven out of this place…by persecution, chiefly from the dissenters." For much of the time, compared with Missouri or Illinois afterward, Mormon relations with Gentile neighbors in Ohio had been relatively tolerable. There was little violence, although once the prophet was mobbed and on occasion one or two members threatened. This usually peaceful antipathy can be explained to some extent by the fact that only limited aspects of the kingdom developed at Kirtland.

There was sectarian antagonism at Kirtland initially. E. D. Howe gave generous space in his newspaper to Mormon matters, insisting that it was "the business of an Editor to collect and lay before his readers, whatever seems to agitate the public mind." In December he ran a piece from the Milan Free Press warning northern Ohioans to "BEWARE OF IMPOSTORS." On 15 February 1831, he printed a submission from "M.S.C." of Mentor, who recounted how after the "four pretended prophets" left Kirtland, the Mormons broke into a rash of spiritual excesses. The same issue reproduced Thomas Campbell's open letter to Sidney Rigdon, challenging him to a public debate. Howe justified his continued departure from neutrality by maintaining that the subject of Mormonism had "become a matter of general inquiry and conversation through the whole community." His newspaper was now open, he said, to the "investigation of the divine pretentions of the Book of Mormon and its 'Author and Proprietor,' Joseph Smith." Howe noted at this time that the Mormons numbered several hundred in the area.

A barrage of criticism appeared in the Telegraph from 1831 through January 1835, but the amount of space Howe devoted to Mormon issues diminished after 1831. Sectarian opposition declined as Mormon missionary successes among the Campbellites and other denominations slowed.

Sectarian antagonism may have dwindled, but politically oriented antipathy increased. As early as March 1831, Howe took occasion to disagree with those who held that Mormonism was the "Anti-Masonic religion." He pointed out that there were also many "republican jacks" among them. As yet he made no complaints about their bloc voting.

Mormons believed that they had destiny manifest to govern themselves and ultimately the nation and the world. But these ambitions were tied to their millennial expectations and may not have demanded immediate involvement in politics in Ohio. But after the expulsion of the Saints from Jackson County the prophet came out publicly for the Jacksonian political party. He urged the elders in Missouri to "print a paper in favor of the government as you know we are all friends to the Constitution yea true friends to that Country." In December 1833 he wrote to Bishop Partridge that the Saints would undertake a similar course in Kirtland:

The inhabitants of this country threaten our destruction, and we know not how soon they may be permitted to follow the example of the Missourians; . . . We are now distributing the type, and calculate to commence setting today, and issue a paper the last of this week, or beginning of next . . . We expect shortly to publish a political paper, weekly, in favor of the present administration; the influential men of that party have offered a liberal patronage to us, and we hope to succeed, for thereby we can show the public the purity of our intention in supporting the government under which we live.

But Mormon activity in local politics could bring quick repercussions. The Anti-Masonic Telegraph, published at Norwich, New York, maintained in 1833 that the Masonic candidate for the assembly had been making overtures toward the Mormons. The paper charged that the aspirant's favorable comments regarding the Saints and his willingness to have a missionary preach in the town were politically motivated. The allegation precipitated a sharp argument with the Chenango Journal. The Mormons were of no importance politically in Chenango County during these years, but the flare-up at Norwich was a portent of what was to come in Ohio.

Mormons did not become objects of political diatribe in Ohio until the following year, when they became involved in a local political issue, the removal of the county seat from Chardon to Painesville, a move which they initially advocated. When the issue was lost the editor of the Chardon Spectator and Geauga Gazette exulted that the "Removealists," Mormons included, had come in a poor third in the election.

In February 1835, Oliver Cowdery began editing at Kirtland The Northern Times, a champion of Jacksonian causes, which he published weekly for a year. In one of the few issues extant, Cowdery warned that the election in Geauga County in 1835 would be one of the "most important…ever held. The opposition wishes to control all offices, credit, money to flatter their own ambition." He feared the people would be "subjected to live in the society of men who ride over us in gilded coaches."

Although Mormons were politically weak in Geauga County, the strident claims of Rigdon that the Saints would soon control all of the county offices caused some alarm. In Kirtland township, where the Saints held a near majority, there was a mass political alert. A non-Mormon in Kirtland wrote in April 1835 that the Saints had "entered pell mell into the arena of political controvercies." The Mormons, he reported, are ready to harness in with any party that is willing to degrade themselves by asking their assistance. They now carry nearly a majority of this township, and every man votes as directed by the prophet and his elder. Previous to the recent township election here, it was generally understood that the Mormons and Jacksonians had agreed to share the spoils equally, in consequence of which the other citizens thought it useless to attend the polls. This brought out an entire Mormon ticket which they calculated to smuggle in, independent of the Democrats not under orders of the prophet. This caused the citizens to rally and make an effort, which by a small majority, saved the township from being governed by revelation for the year to come.

The reaction to Mormon bloc voting in Geauga County typified the response of other Americans afterward in states to the west.

Some negative comments about Mormon politicking continued to appear in northern Ohio newspapers through 1836 and 183780 and were a source of concern to non-members. The dissatisfaction was minimized by the fact that the Saints were too few in number to make much difference outside their own township.

The most hostile press coverage in Ohio since 1831 came six years later when their banking experiment was launched. Most Cleveland newspapers viewed the circulation of the Kirtland Safety Society's notes with alarm, charging that it was an attempt by Mormons to defraud the public. In addition, the passing of the notes outside Kirtland placed the Saints in the middle of a political conflict between the Whig party and the Jacksonians on the banking issue. This becomes clear in the criticism of L. L. Rice, a Whig, who wrote:

It is not possible for us to be neutral. If it is fraud on the community, a duty rests upon us to expose it.… With the religion we have nothing to do, except as connected with this pecuniary matter and illustrative of their character and honesty . . . Here is [Kirtland Anti-Banking] paper finding its way into the pockets of our citizens, of whose credit the majority not only do not know any thing, but have the public statutes of the country open before them…that is a legal nullity, and its circulation prohibited by penalty.

The bank's failure brought embittered resentment toward Mormon leaders. One reader of the Cleveland Herald recommended vigilante actions against Smith and Rigdon. Most outsiders lumped all Mormons together and held them all equally responsible for the bank's failure, which they tended to view as a moral issue.

Despite the criticism of Mormon doctrines and practices in the Ohio press, there was surprisingly minimal name calling or demand for Mormon blood, especially compared to what would later come in Missouri and Illinois. An additional reason for the difference may be that most Ohioans, like many Mormons, were from New England. In Missouri the Mormons would come up against Southern tradition, which would not yield to Mormon experimentalism.

It should also be remembered that in Ohio Mormons were a distinct minority and offered little threat to the social and political status quo. They were considered a nuisance, not dangerous political upstarts. In western Missouri, where population was sparse and Indians menacing, and in Illinois, where the Saints grew to be a sizeable political bloc, the situation would be different. There was no fear of land monopolization in Ohio; as late as August 1836 the Saints' holdings were small, and this was well known. The Kingdom of God was not as well organized or as powerful in Ohio as it would be later.

The Saints fled westward, convinced that they had failed due to lack of church unity and Gentile wickedness. They never perceived that their quest for social and political control might have influenced others negatively. In their minds the strife and contention that pluralism had engendered imperiled not only Kirtland but the nation as well. According to one of the departing Saints, the consequence of their failure would be that Roman Catholics would soon seize political control. Then "there will be a chance for the Lamanites [i.e., American Indians] to finish it." Kirtland, once sanctified as a gathering place and great metropolis, would be the first city destroyed by the Lord, according to the departing Mormons. The Mormon mind was a millennial mind, longing for peace and tranquility but convinced that war and destruction would come first. The Latter-day Saints would seek their place of refuge westward, where their prophet would tell them what the Lord would have them do to prepare for the tribulations ahead.