William Law

William Law was a longtime member of Joseph Smith’s church, a trusted second counselor, and a friend who tried to persuade the prophet to abandon plural marriage. When personal appeals failed, Law pursued reform through a rival church and a newspaper. The destruction of that paper, ordered by Joseph as mayor and carried out by the Nauvoo Legion, turned Law’s religious dissent into a public confrontation over who held power in Nauvoo—and whether that power could be challenged.

Position in Nauvoo

Law had served for more than two years as Joseph Smith’s second counselor and was regarded as a trusted associate. His opposition to plural marriage did not begin as a campaign against the church: he remained committed to it, and his concern for Emma Smith connected his objection to the consequences of Joseph’s private conduct as well as to doctrine. Emma, rejecting Joseph’s revelation on plural marriage, sought solace from Law, who sympathized with her.

The setting sharpened the significance of Law’s challenge. Nauvoo’s unusual charter gave the city sovereign powers, and Joseph held authority across its religious and civic life. He was mayor and the head of a well-armed Nauvoo Legion. Law’s dispute with him therefore unfolded in a place where opposition to the prophet could also become a confrontation with the political order he controlled.

Attempts to Change Joseph’s Course

In January 1844, Law encountered Joseph on the streets of Nauvoo and pleaded with him to renounce the revelation. Joseph’s answer, as Law’s son later recounted it, was that he could not withdraw a doctrine he believed God had commanded him to teach. The exchange revealed the limit of personal influence: Law could appeal to their friendship and to the harm he believed plural marriage caused, but Joseph presented the teaching as a divine obligation beyond negotiation.

Their relationship deteriorated further after Joseph made proposals to Law’s wife, Jane. Law demanded that Joseph acknowledge his conduct publicly and stop it. Joseph instead had Law excommunicated. Law responded by calling Joseph a fallen prophet and, on May 12, 1844, establishing the Reformed Mormon Church, which did not sanction polygamy. The break was both personal and institutional: Law rejected Joseph’s authority while trying to preserve what he understood as the church’s proper course.

A Rival Church and Newspaper

The account presents Law as a reformer rather than simply an enemy of Joseph. He hoped to change the church and organized his new institution along the lines of the main body, with himself as president. That aim made him a more consequential opponent than someone who merely sought to condemn Joseph: Law was trying to offer members an alternative religious organization while remaining attached to the possibility of reform.

Law’s wealth enabled him to buy a printing press. On June 7, the Nauvoo Expositor issued its first and only edition, printing one thousand copies as a four-page broadsheet. Its lead editorial attacked Joseph’s teachings and practices. The paper also criticized Joseph’s disregard for the separation of church and state, his accumulation of political power, and his financial dealings. Its central purpose, however, was to expose the secret doctrine of plural marriage; the editors announced that they intended to publish affidavits supporting their claims.

The paper gave Law’s challenge a public reach that private appeals and a small rival church could not match. It set out to make information about plural marriage available beyond the circle governed by Joseph, while questioning the authority that allowed him to govern both church and city. Most Nauvoo residents reacted angrily to the publication, but their anger was directed at the paper and its owners, not at Joseph, to whom they remained devoted.

Destruction and Exile

Joseph called an emergency meeting of the city council, warning that the Nauvoo Expositor threatened the peace and was a public nuisance. Acting as mayor, he ordered the city marshal to destroy the press and burn the papers and handbills. On the evening of June 10, more than two hundred armed members of the Nauvoo Legion, led by Hyrum Smith and John Taylor under Joseph’s orders, entered the newspaper’s offices. They broke down the door, smashed the press, scattered its type, and burned the wreckage.

The publishers sought redress in local courts, but Joseph controlled those courts along with the other branches of Nauvoo’s government. Everyone involved in destroying the press, including Joseph, was acquitted. Law had already fled Nauvoo, fearing for his life. His Reformed Mormon Church dwindled and eventually disappeared, while the newspaper’s destruction left his reform effort without its principal means of public expression.

Narrative Significance

Law’s trajectory links a dispute about marriage to a wider contest over religious authority and civic power. He began as a trusted insider who tried to persuade Joseph to reverse course; after excommunication, he built institutions to challenge the prophet’s teaching and make that challenge public. The response—destruction of the press followed by acquittal in courts under Joseph’s control—shows how difficult it was for dissenters to seek remedies within Nauvoo’s own political system.

His failure does not erase the distinction between reform and simple opposition. Law’s effort arose from a desire to change the church, and the account treats that desire as precisely what made him formidable. Once his appeal to Joseph failed, the rival church and newspaper carried the conflict beyond a private disagreement. Their short-lived challenge exposed the vulnerability of dissent where the same leader’s authority reached across religious leadership, municipal government, militia, and courts.