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Contemporary Mormons often affirm that their scriptures teach about “the divinely Inspired constitution” of the United States. However, the revelations of Joseph Smith do not contain this phrase. The constitution makes its first appearance in those revelations in August 1833. Earlier, Joseph Smith had received revelations commanding the Saints to gather in Jackson County, Missouri, and promising that they would receive the law of the Lord. In 1831 that promised law had been received in a revelation that set forth communal property arrangements and claimed at least quasi-sovereign authority for Mormon revelations.

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Even as late as 1836, Joseph Smith pleaded in the Kirtland Temple dedication with the Lord, “have mercy upon the rulers of our land; may those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever” (D&C 109:54). These revelations represent the appearance of the US Constitution in the revelations of Joseph Smith, which had previously spoken only of God’s law.

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From a constitutional perspective, the most striking thing about these passages is how ordinary they are by the standards of the time. The idea that the US Constitution in part embodied general principles of freedom and justice were widely accepted. Likewise, the providential role of God in the founding of America was commonplace. Furthermore, the passages presented a conservative and even anachronistic vision of politics.

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By 1840, Mormon faith in this constitutional model had been shattered. Events in Missouri had played themselves out to their bitter conclusion, with the expulsion first from Jackson County and then from the entire state. Mormon property had been seized, Mormons had been massacred by mobs, Mormon women had been raped, and Governor Lilburn Boggs had issued his extermination order. Efforts at relief before the courts of Missouri were futile. Finally, in obedience to an 1834 revelation commanding him to seek redress, Joseph Smith traveled to Washington, DC, to petition the nation’s statesmen for relief. There he ran up against the realties of antebellum federalism and the electoral needs of Martin Van Buren’s embattled Democratic Party.

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