Matthew J. Grow was director of publications at the Church History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a general editor of the Joseph Smith Papers when this was written. He has coedited two recent volumes from the Church Historian’s Press: The First Fifty Years of Relief Society and Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846. He has also authored or coauthored books with Oxford University Press and Yale University Press, including award-winning biographies of Parley P. Pratt and Thomas L. Kane. He has published in various scholarly journals, including Journal of the Early Republic, Church History, American Nineteenth-Century History, and Journal of Mormon History. He was previously an assistant professor of history and director of the Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana. He received his PhD in American history from the University of Notre Dame.