Under
the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, 2003, Excerpts
Ten of the Mormons in
custody posted bail and were allowed to go free, but Joseph and Hyrum, who had
been charged with treason in addition to the less serious crimes charged to the
other defendants, were incarcerated in the Carthage jail, a two-story structure
with yard-thick walls built from red limestone cut from a local quarry.
Late on the afternoon
of June 27, 1844, while Joseph and Hyrum were being visited in their quarters
by Apostles John Taylor and Willard Richards, approximately 125 militiamen from
the virulently anti-Mormon town of Warsaw assembled outside the jail in the
damp summer heat. The militiamen swarmed upstairs and tried to force their way
into the bedroom where the prisoners were quartered. The attackers had
succeeded in forcing the door open and a lethal rain of bullets now sprayed
into the room.
Seeing no
alternative, Joseph tried to spring from the window, but as he crouched above
the sill in silhouette, two shots from inside the room pierced his back and a
third bullet, fired from a musket on the ground outside, exploded into his
chest. The prophet dropped twenty feet, slammed into the earth with a dull
thud, and lay motionless, twisted on his left side.
Then Richards noticed
John Taylor lying on the floor, awash in his own blood but still breathing.
Taylor’s watch, struck by the bullet that would otherwise have ended his life,
had stopped at sixteen minutes and twenty-six seconds past five o’clock on June
27, 1844. Mormons the world over have committed this time and date to memory,
marking the death of their great and beloved prophet. Joseph Smith was
thirty-eight years old.
Tribute to Joseph and Hyrum, Carthage Jail, IL
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