Carthage, Illinois, is presented as a place where the murder of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith met the limits of legal redress. The trial held there in 1845 ended in acquittals that deepened the conflict between Mormons and their opponents, while the town’s associations with the Carthage Greys and the jail’s guard connected it to the violence that followed.

The Trial of Joseph and Hyrum Smith

In May 1845, nine men were indicted for the murders of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith. Seven were brought to trial in Carthage in the case named People v. Levi Williams. The defendants included prominent local figures: officers in the Carthage Greys, an Illinois state senator, and the editor of the Warsaw newspaper. Hostility toward Mormons throughout Hancock County made the prospect of a fair reckoning uncertain.

Two witnesses to the murders, John Taylor and Willard Richards, refused to appear in court. They feared that coming near Carthage would put their lives in danger. The trial went ahead without their testimony, a circumstance that underscored how the surrounding violence constrained the pursuit of justice.

On May 30, the defendants were found not guilty. The account describes the outcome as an acquittal of all nine men, after noting that seven had been brought to trial. Mormons had expected the verdict, but that expectation did not blunt their anger. The town’s significance in the narrative rests not only on the proceedings themselves, but on the way the acquittal made legal justice appear unavailable.

The Acquittal and the Oath of Vengeance

A month later, on the first anniversary of Joseph Smith’s death, Brigham Young spoke bitterly about the verdict and declared that vengeance belonged to God and his people. He directed church authorities to establish a formal Oath of Vengeance, which became part of the temple endowment ceremony. Participants pledged to pray for vengeance for the blood of the prophets and to teach that commitment to their descendants.

The oath remained in the ceremony until 1927. Its removal followed its disclosure in the non-Mormon press and the ensuing public and political outcry, including accusations that the pledge was treasonous. In this way, the Carthage verdict acquired a long afterlife: the failed prosecution was not simply a local legal outcome but part of a remembered grievance carried into a sacred ritual.

Violence Beyond the Courthouse

The acquittal came amid a wider campaign of anti-Mormon violence in Hancock County. During the summer of 1845, vigilantes led by Levi Williams burned Mormon homes and farms; by September 15, forty-four residences had been destroyed. These attacks occurred across the county, not solely in Carthage, but they frame the town’s role as the setting of a trial whose outcome was followed by further escalation.

On September 16, Porter Rockwell encountered Frank Worrell, a lieutenant in the Carthage Greys who had guarded the jail on the night Joseph Smith was killed. Worrell had commanded militiamen who fired blank cartridges as a mob approached and then stepped aside, allowing the attack to proceed. Rockwell shot him while Worrell was pursuing a sheriff sympathetic to the Mormons. The shooting further worsened relations between the two communities.

A few days later, Mormons seized a young Gentile man suspected of burning Mormon homes and killed him. The account connects this retaliatory violence to teachings about blood atonement. As arson and plunder spread on both sides and more than two hundred homes were burned, Governor Thomas Ford sent four hundred troops to Nauvoo and dispatched a committee of dignitaries to negotiate. Carthage thus sits within a larger sequence in which an acquittal, remembered as a denial of justice, fed reprisals and helped bring Hancock County close to civil war.