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Storming the Nation

The Unknown Contributions of Joseph Smith’s Political Missionaries

Derek R. Sainsbury
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Book $27.99
Ebook $14.99
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Table of Contents

This book has not been released for online reading.

  • Acknowledgments
  • Prologue: Joseph Ran for President?
  • Seeking “Power to Protect the Innocent”
  • Quest for the Presidency—and a Kingdom in the West
  • Called and Sent Forth: Electioneer Profiles
  • A Campaign to “Revolutionize the World”
  • Personal Stories of “Storming the Nation”
  • The Assassination and Aftermath
  • Contributions to the Succession and Exodus, 1844–1847
  • Deseret: Emerging Aristarchy of the Kingdom, 1848–1851
  • Religious Aristarchy of the Kingdom, 1851–1869
  • Political, Social, and Economic Aristarchy of the Kingdom, 1851–1869
  • Theodemocracy’s Twilight, 1869–1896
  • Epilogue
    A Lost but Lasting Legacy
  • Appendix
    List of Electioneers
  • Selected Bibliography
  • Index

About the Book

This volume uncovers the significant but previously unknown contributions of the electioneers who advocated for Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential campaign. The focus is the cadre of more than six hundred political missionaries—who they were before the campaign, their activities and experiences as electioneers, and who they became following the campaign’s untimely collapse. This book recounts their important and even crucial contributions they made in the succession crisis, the exodus from the United States, and the building of Zion in the Great Basin. Importantly, this narrative describes how their campaigning with the Quorum of Twelve Apostles using theodemocratic themes, coupled with the shock of Joseph Smith’s assassination, steeled and subsequently spurred many of them into effective religious, political, social, and economic leaders—leaders who shaped Latter-day Saint history.

ISBN 978-1-9443-9492-9

Published in 2020

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