This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
In 1844, Joseph Smith's followers at Nauvoo, Illinois, convinced the Mormon leader to run for president of the United States by a foolproof argument: he couldn't lose. With all the bickering between the regular candidates, Martin Van Buren, James Polk, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun, there was a good chance Smith might become President. And if not, the hundreds of Mormon missionaries on the campaign trail would still bring in thousands of new converts. Smith accepted the nomination.
The presidency was not an impossible dream. After being hounded from state to state for many years, the Mormons had ended up at Nauvoo on the banks of the Mississippi. In a few short years, finally safe from mobs, they had prospered beyond belief. Nauvoo was the busiest city in Illinois in 1844, and larger than its only rival, Chicago. Industry was humming, with an iron foundry, two grist mills, stone quarries, and a powder factory. Nauvoo could boast two newspapers and a busy riverport hosting five riverboats a day, bringing new converts to the fastest growing religion in America. Nauvoo was powerful enough to have its own militia and its own law.
Smith's campaign platform was popular not only with Mormons, but with most of the United States as well. If elected, he promised to revoke the laws that permitted imprisonment for debt, he promised to turn prisons from places of punishment into "seminaries of learning." He proposed putting prisoners to work on the nation's roads, he proposed lowering taxes, and abolishing slavery by reimbursing slaveholders for their losses. He envisioned the City of God which had begun in Nauvoo, spreading out so far that the United States would soon need to annex Texas and California, and then Mexico, South American and possibly Canada. Fifty Smith campaign centers were set up across the country.
All this was too much success for fellow Illinoisans, already jealous of Nauvoo's power. The State of Illinois jailed Smith and his brother at nearby Carthage, where, on June 27th, 1844, a mob stormed the jail and killed the presidential candidate and his brother. The murders ended the campaign and Nauvoo together. Many of Smith's followers soon left Illinois for a more successful attempt at the City of God out in Utah.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by the Scott County Regional Authority, with additional funding from the Illinois Arts Council and Augustana College, Rock Island.
