“Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1839-48” at Southern Illinois University, is a collection of documents (most of which are on microfilm), which was assembled by Stanley B. Kimball, who also published an annotated catalog…
The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (here after referred to as the RLDS Church) was headquartered in the State of Illinois until 1882. To a greater degree than that of any…
Were a nineteenth-century Mormon to assess the current scholarly literature on the Mormons in Illinois, or on Mormon history in general for that matter, he would probably be perplexed. While compelled to admit that the…
Our understanding of the American past has been greatly enriched in recent years by studies which have made use of literary sources. Few works, for example, surpass the challenging insights and interpretations of Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land (1950), William R. Taylor’s Cavalier and Yankee (1961), Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore (1962), and Leo Marx’s The Machine in the Garden (1964). Such studies have proved to be so useful that some historians now concede that a review of the contemporary fiction is a fruitful, if not an indispensable, preliminary to the search for historical truth in any period.
The purpose of this paper is to re-examine, in a political frame of reference, the persistent question as to why the Mormons were so ferociously constrained from their attempt to establish at Nauvoo a society…
Approximately 250 miles southwest of Chicago and 150 miles north of St. Louis lies Nauvoo, Illinois. At this place the Mississippi River rather abruptly pushes itself into Iowa and then returns again to its generally…
The Illinois period of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commenced eight years after the founding of the Church in Fayette, New York on April 6, 1830, by Joseph Smith. From New York…
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a schizophrenic church. Its ultimate concern is with things beyond—life after death, justice-in-judgment, salvation, exaltation—and with their earthly preparation—baptism, repentance, endowment. But at the same time…
Many people have observed something unusual about my relationship with my wife and people in general. Often, I have been asked by individuals wondering what my secret is, “Kennedy, do you know what you’re doing?”…
A short time ago, in Brigham Young University Studies, I published an article about Japanese and English poetry; I ended it with the statement that poetry in both languages carries the hallmark “Made on Earth…