Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith

Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were brothers bound together in the public crises surrounding Joseph’s religious leadership. The evidence shows Hyrum not only sharing his brother’s imprisonment and final danger, but also intervening in a private conflict over plural marriage: he urged Joseph to put the teaching into writing and offered to explain it to Emma Smith. Their relationship thus appears at the intersection of family, religious authority, and institutional upheaval, ending with both brothers dead and the church facing a succession crisis.

A brother in Joseph’s religious affairs

In 1843, Hyrum took an active role in Joseph’s attempt to secure Emma’s acceptance of plural marriage. Emma opposed Joseph’s plural relationships, and Hyrum proposed that Joseph write down a revelation on celestial marriage so he could read it to her and persuade her of its truth. Joseph doubted that his brother understood Emma’s opposition, but Hyrum persisted. Joseph then agreed to record the revelation that became Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

The episode places Hyrum between his brother and Emma at a moment when a religious claim was also being used to address a marital dispute. The revelation repeatedly names Emma and commands her to remain with Joseph, while warning of consequences if she does not obey. Hyrum’s part was not simply to witness Joseph’s teaching: he urged its formalization and volunteered to make the case to Emma. The account therefore presents their brotherhood as a channel through which Joseph’s authority was advanced within his own household, even as Emma’s resistance remained central to the conflict.

Shared custody in Missouri

The brothers’ association also took public and political form during the crisis in Missouri. On November 1, Joseph, Hyrum, and five other Mormon leaders surrendered to the Missouri Militia. The men were taken into custody, hastily court-martialed, and found guilty of treason, a capital crime. An order called for Joseph and the other prisoners to be shot the next morning in the public square at Far West.

The execution was not carried out. General Alexander Doniphan refused the order, describing it as unlawful and threatening to hold his commanding officer responsible if the prisoners were killed. Joseph and Hyrum were spared at that time, but the reprieve did not restore their freedom or protect the wider community. The Saints were disarmed, their property was plundered, and they were ordered to leave Missouri by the spring of 1839. In this episode the brothers appear together among the leaders whose capture became part of a forced surrender and expulsion.

The brothers at Carthage Jail

At Carthage Jail, the shared danger became fatal. When attackers forced their way into the jail, Joseph and Hyrum tried to defend themselves with weapons they had smuggled into the room. Hyrum was shot and died there. Joseph fired his revolver in response, then attempted to escape through a window as the attack continued. He, too, was killed.

The account makes the brothers’ deaths closely consecutive within the same assault, but distinguishes their actions in the room: Hyrum died first, and Joseph’s effort to resist and flee did not save him. Their deaths were not merely two losses within one family. Because Joseph was the founding prophet and had left no clear mechanism for choosing a successor, Hyrum’s death accompanied the removal of another senior figure at the moment the church most urgently needed leadership.

Grief and the succession crisis

News of Joseph’s death reached Nauvoo the following morning. The Saints mourned and spoke of revenge, but the immediate institutional problem was how Mormonism could survive without its founding prophet. Thousands filed past Joseph’s body, while followers faced uncertainty about who could lead them through the danger ahead. Joseph had offered conflicting indications about succession and had not established a definitive process.

The brothers’ deaths therefore form both a family tragedy and a political rupture in the narrative. Their repeated proximity—to the plural-marriage revelation, to imprisonment in Far West, and finally to the attack at Carthage—shows Hyrum beside Joseph at moments when religious authority was being contested or violently threatened. Yet the aftermath reveals the limit of that personal bond: once both brothers were gone, their shared standing could not resolve the question of succession, and competing claimants moved to fill the resulting vacuum.