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Mormons’ distinctive practices. That principle, more than all else, would irrevocably alienate the Mormons from their Protestant neighbors.
    Advocating theocratic rule for the entire nation, Smith announced his candidacy for the U.S. presidency in 1844. Prophesying the impending overthrow of the national government, he began acting with increasing recklessness, inspiring even more hostility toward him and what was now seen by many as his peculiar cult. Covertly married to nearly fifty wives, Smith faced rampant defections from his ranks on the issue of polygamy. In the summer of 1844 he declared martial law in his independent city-state, as well-armed anti-Mormon mobs gathered near Nauvoo. Smith would be arrested for destroying the offices of a newspaper that had published exposés on polygamy, and on the morning of June 27, 1844, he would be shot to death in a Carthage, Illinois, jail by vigilantes. Smith was the first American religious leader ever to be assassinated, and to his followers, his martyrdom was on a par with that of Jesus Christ.
    A chaotic succession crisis ensued, as more than a dozen cabals sought to take over Smith’s reign. Internal struggles briefly threatened the stability of the church. But by August 8, 1844, the blustering apostle Brigham Young had unofficially but unmistakably seized control. “Young arose and roared like a young lion,” recalled a devoted “Saint” (as followers now called themselves), who said Young not only imitated the style and voice of Smith but was enveloped in Smith’s unique illuminated aura as well. For the next thirty-three years Young would lead his growing congregation with a discipline and rigor of historic proportions.
    Born June 1, 1801, Young was raised in the same milieu as Smith—the period of religious revival sweeping the eastern states. The son of impoverished dirt farmers, Young learned the carpenter’s trade as an adolescent and crafted primitive furniture that he sold door to door. He noticed that many of his neighbors and relatives were influenced by the
Book of Mormon,
and by 1832 he had abandoned carpentry to begin proselytizing for Joseph Smith’s new church. Wholly uneducated but swift of mind, Young rose quickly in Smith’s capricious hierarchy as he threw himself into the missionary enterprise. A passionate convert from the start, Young had set out—“without purse or scrip,” as the missionaries were expected to do— with a zealous commitment to the doctrine of spiritual and physical gathering of Saints to Zion. “Every sentiment and feeling should be to cleanse the earth from wickedness, purify the people, sanctify the nations, gather the nations of Israel home, redeem and build up Zion, redeem Jerusalem and gather the Jews there, and establish the reign and kingdom of God on earth,” Young said of his calling as a Mormon evangelist.
    By the time of Smith’s death, Young had served ten missions, including stints in Canada, the eastern states, and Great Britain. He had reported seeing angels in 1835 and was acknowledged as a “Prophet and Seer” in 1836; he would not proclaim himself a “Revelator” until a few years later, when he claimed to have received a divine revelation that he should lead his people out of Nauvoo to the Great Salt Lake Valley.
    Independent, outspoken, stubborn, arrogant, vengeful, and hot-tempered, the unabashed polygamist antagonized his “Gentile” neighbors as thoroughly and dangerously as had Smith. Marrying forty times, in violation of Illinois law, he was forced into hiding by 1845 to avoid numerous legal writs. Young established “a police state in Nauvoo,” according to one of his biographers, Stanley P. Hirshson; he “strapped on a pair of six-shooters and vowed he would kill any man who handed him another summons or grabbed hold of him.”
    Young knew that the survival of his sect depended upon finding a homeland west of the Rocky Mountains and outside the boundaries of the United States. He