Joseph Smith and William Law

Joseph Smith and William Law were once close associates within the church: Law served for more than two years as Joseph’s trusted second counselor. Their relationship broke apart as Joseph defended plural marriage and Law, moved by his concern for Emma Smith, tried first to persuade Joseph to abandon the practice and then to establish a church that rejected it. The personal breach became an institutional and political confrontation in Nauvoo, where Joseph’s authority extended beyond the pulpit into city government.

Counselor, friend, and advocate for Emma

Law was a longtime church member whose integrity had earned him a position of trust beside Joseph. His relationship with the prophet was also entangled with the crisis in Joseph’s marriage. After Emma rejected Joseph’s revelation on plural marriage, she sought comfort from Law, who was sympathetic to her distress.

In January 1844, Law encountered Joseph on the streets of Nauvoo and pleaded with him to renounce the doctrine. Their exchange, as recounted by Law’s son, was emotionally charged: Law appealed to Joseph with tears, and Joseph also wept. But Joseph said he could not withdraw the teaching because he believed God had commanded him to teach it and that he would be condemned if he disobeyed. The scene captures the terms of their conflict: Law’s appeal rested on moral and personal concern, while Joseph presented his course as obedience to divine command.

The personal rupture

Their disagreement over plural marriage intensified when Joseph made proposals to Law’s wife, Jane. Law regarded the proposals as a grave violation of trust. In April 1844, he demanded that Joseph publicly acknowledge his conduct and cease it. By then, Law’s opposition was no longer only a plea to reconsider a doctrine; it was a direct demand that the church’s leader answer for his behavior.

Joseph had Law excommunicated. Law responded by declaring Joseph a fallen prophet. The break thus recast a former counselor’s dissent as a challenge to Joseph’s prophetic legitimacy. Their conflict was especially consequential because Law did not simply withdraw from the church: on May 12, he founded the Reformed Mormon Church, which did not sanction polygamy.

Reform becomes public opposition

Law’s new church followed the main body’s organization, but his purpose was to reform it rather than merely set up another rival prophetic following. The distinction made his opposition difficult for Joseph to dismiss. Law remained attached to the hope that the church could be changed, and that reforming aim made him a more formidable opponent than someone intent only on denouncing Joseph.

Law’s wealth gave him the means to take the dispute into print. On June 7, 1844, the first and only edition of the Nauvoo Expositor appeared, with a thousand copies printed. It attacked Joseph’s plural marriage teaching, his concentration of political power, his disregard for the separation of church and state, and his financial dealings. The editors also promised further affidavits. The paper turned Law’s break with Joseph into a public challenge to both his religious authority and his civic conduct.

Nauvoo’s authority and the relationship’s significance

The confrontation unfolded in a city whose unusual charter gave Nauvoo sovereign rights and powers not enjoyed by other Illinois cities. Joseph stood at the head of this theocratic principality, held the office of mayor, and commanded the Nauvoo Legion. When he judged the Expositor a threat to the city’s peace, he used his mayoral authority to order the marshal to destroy the printing press and copies of the paper. The order made the dispute between former counselor and prophet inseparable from the question of how far Joseph’s religious authority could reach into civic life.

The relationship’s arc is therefore also a study in the narrowing space for dissent around Joseph. Law began as a trusted insider and sought to change the church without abandoning its structure; after excommunication, he built an alternative institution and used a newspaper to contest Joseph in public. Joseph, in turn, treated the paper as a threat serious enough to invoke municipal power. Their rupture joined intimate grievance, disagreement over plural marriage, competing claims to religious legitimacy, and the political authority concentrated in Nauvoo.