Hyrum Smith

Hyrum Smith is presented as both a close ally of Joseph Smith and an active participant in the effort to secure Emma Smith’s acceptance of plural marriage. His role in carrying the revelation to her, followed by his death beside Joseph in Carthage Jail, connects the private struggle over the doctrine to the violence that ended the brothers’ lives.

Identity and Place in the Narrative

Hyrum’s significance in these episodes comes through his actions rather than through an account of his life as a whole. He is Joseph’s brother and trusted advocate, willing to intervene in a conflict within the marriage and to help turn a secret doctrine into a written revelation. Later, as one of the prisoners held with Joseph in Carthage Jail, he is caught up in the public danger surrounding the brothers. The narrative thus places him at two intimate thresholds: first between Joseph and Emma, then between the imprisoned brothers and the armed men outside.

The material does not describe Hyrum’s private convictions about plural marriage in detail. It does, however, show him urging Joseph to make the doctrine persuasive to Emma, and it records his presence beside Joseph at the time of the attack. His portrait is therefore grounded in specific acts of loyalty and mediation rather than speculation about his motives or inner life.

The Revelation and Emma Smith

By 1844, some members of Joseph’s inner circle had learned that he was practicing plural marriage, and some had received or seen the revelation concerning celestial marriage. Emma, Joseph’s original wife, opposed the doctrine and made her objection known. In this conflict, Hyrum sought to help his brother by proposing that Joseph write the revelation down so he could take it to Emma and persuade her of its religious truth.

Joseph doubted that Hyrum understood how firmly Emma would resist. Hyrum persisted, maintaining that the doctrine could be explained convincingly. Joseph then dictated the revelation that became Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Its wording did not treat Emma as a distant subject: it named her and commanded her to remain faithful to Joseph, while threatening destruction if she refused. The revelation also set out the doctrine by which a man could have multiple wives while imposing a different rule on the women involved.

Hyrum delivered the ten-page document to Emma after Joseph had dictated it. His effort to mediate produced the opposite of the peace he had hoped for. Emma rejected the revelation and refused to accept Joseph’s marriages to other women. Joseph continued taking wives but made no further effort to obtain her consent. Hyrum’s intervention is therefore a consequential part of the episode: he helped bring the doctrine into written form and carried it into the household, but could not reconcile the people whose conflict it was meant to settle.

Imprisonment in Carthage

Later, Joseph and Hyrum were among the prisoners held in Carthage Jail after being charged with treason, a more serious charge than the other offenses brought against the men detained with them. The jail was a two-story limestone building with six rooms, including two locked cells. The brothers were first placed in the downstairs debtors’ cell, but the jailer, George Stigall, worried that its large ground-level windows left them exposed to the hostile crowd outside.

Stigall allowed the brothers to stay in his upstairs bedroom instead. Friendly visitors could reach them there, and two firearms were smuggled into the room: a six-shot pepperbox revolver and a single-shot pistol. On June 27, Joseph and Hyrum were being visited by John Taylor and Willard Richards when armed militiamen returned to Carthage and attacked the jail. The changed location and the smuggled weapons shaped the brothers’ final defense, but did not protect them from the assault.

Death and Narrative Significance

As the attackers forced their way toward the bedroom, Hyrum and Joseph displayed their weapons while John Taylor and Willard Richards tried to impede the guns being thrust through the partly opened door. Hyrum was struck by a bullet and died during the attack. Joseph fired his revolver, then attempted to escape through a window as the gunfire intensified; he too was killed. The account makes Hyrum’s death inseparable from Joseph’s: he is not merely a relative at the scene, but Joseph’s companion in imprisonment and in the final assault.

The contrast between Hyrum’s two major roles is stark. In the revelation episode, he acts as a religious intermediary, helping Joseph present a contested doctrine to Emma in the hope that written authority might persuade her. In Carthage, he stands with Joseph in a setting where authority and persuasion have given way to armed force. The narrative does not resolve the tension between those roles. Instead, it gives Hyrum a defined place in the story through the consequences of his interventions and his shared fate with his brother.