3 From Carpenter to Apostle: Brigham Young and the Kingdom, 1832–1835

Although Brigham Young did not first visit Joseph Smith until nearly seven months after baptism, and then only for a few days, from their first meeting until Smith’s death nearly twelve years later, no man had greater impact on Young’s life and thought than the Mormon prophet. Young left his first visit with Smith confirmed in his belief that God had indeed authorized once again a spokesman on earth. He left the second meeting turned around in his priorities and contemplating the implications of a principle that would become a cornerstone of his sacral perspective. Smith’s teachings, along with the impact of events in which he was a participant, shaped during this period Young’s developing world view. These experiences, examined in this chapter, set the stage for the organization of the first Mormon Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in February 1835 and the selection of Brigham Young as one of that number.

The thousand-mile three-month trek from Kirtland, Ohio, to the Missouri River near Jackson County, Missouri, popularly known as Zion’s Camp, was for Young the single most important formative experience of this period. The expedition and its impact are dealt with here in some detail. With some two hundred men Young followed ^[90] Joseph Smith on the difficult overland journey and for him, as with some others, the extended association with their prophet was worth every hardship. Otherwise, the expedition was anything but an unqualified success. Armed and carrying provisions to beleaguered brethren in Missouri, members of the camp had anticipated acting in concert with the Missouri executive to restore to their homes Mormons who had the year before been forcibly removed. In the months of difficult travel they exhausted themselves and many of the resources of the Church only to find that the governor had withdrawn his offer of support and that they faced angry opposition at every hand. Recognizing that any attempt to carry out their original designs and accompany the refugees back into Missouri would result in bloodshed, Smith disbanded the small army and sent the men back to Ohio—but not before many of them were stricken with cholera and some died.¹

It is here, in reactions to Zion’s Camp, that we first see the emergence of opposing perspectives that three years later helped divide Mormon Kirtland. Whether one was disillusioned or strengthened by the experience was, in part, a reflection of fundamentally different conceptions and expectations. For some Zion’s Camp helped solidify an emerging sacral perspective, one that helped interpret problematical experiences in meaningful ways. The gap between what they had anticipated and what they experienced left others feeling betrayed and discouraged. Although the rift caused by the expedition was soon smoothed over, the different perspectives survived to influence perceptions of Joseph Smith’s involvements in the emerging Mormon kingdom. ^[91]

Brigham Young once recalled that before his conversion to Mormonism he would have walked across the continent to talk with a man who could teach him of God, heaven, and salvation.² After his baptism he naturally longed to meet Joseph Smith, whom he now believed to be a prophet of God. Only three weeks after Miriam’s death, therefore, he set out, along with Heber Kimball and Joseph Young, on the three-hundred-mile trip to Kirtland, Ohio. There they hoped to meet the Prophet, mingle with the Saints in their gathering place and learn more about the building of latter-day Zion.

Traveling in Heber’s wagon, they took several days and visited many people along the way. When they revealed the purpose of their trip, some people could not refrain from criticizing the Mormons and one minister, after feeding them, proceeded to lecture them on Joseph Smith’s true (i.e. negative) character. Young felt compelled to reply by forcefully declaring the basis for his own conviction and affirming his absolute faith in Joseph Smith. Even if the prophet he had never seen should prove to be a horse thief by day and a gambler by night, maintained Young, “I know that the doctrine he preaches is the power of God to my salvation, if I live for it.”³ Such episodes were but foreshadowings of something that became part of the lifestyle of this frontier artisan who would later follow Joseph as prophet.

But Young’s confrontations were not all with unbelievers. From within the Church, too, he would frequently face opposition, as he did on this early journey. Visiting various branches of the Church, the travelers preached to and prayed with them, and ^[92] Brigham Young spoke in tongues. Some Saints were impressed, but others pronounced the gift of tongues as coming from the devil. When Lyman Sherman declared that it was of the devil and that Joseph Smith would oppose it, Brigham replied simply that he had received all this because he believed in Joseph Smith and his message. There was no doubt in his mind as to the source of his gift.⁴

When the travelers arrived in Kirtland in early November, they found Joseph Smith in the woods with his brothers, chopping and hauling wood. There, in the woods, Young later declared, he received a spiritual confirmation that Joseph’s claims were true. The Mormon prophet stopped his work, greeted them and invited them to his house. Young’s “joy was full” at finally shaking the hand of a prophet of God.⁵

Joseph called a meeting in his home that night and there the Mendon trio conversed with a few Kirtland Saints on the things of the kingdom. Nothing could have been more satisfying to the eager Brigham until, at the end, Joseph asked him to pray. To the astonishment of everyone present, Young suddenly began to speak in an unknown tongue. This was now almost a common experience for him, but it was the first time that Joseph Smith had ever witnessed such a thing. If the confrontation with Lyman Sherman had given Brigham any concerns about Joseph’s possible reactions, they were immediately put to rest when Smith declared that the gift was from God. Furthermore, Joseph said, he knew that by the gift of God, “and the same spirit and gift is upon me, and I wish to speak in an unknown tongue,” which he proceeded to do. He also interpreted the message and then exhorted the men present to seek after both ^[93] the gift of tongues and the interpretation. When the meeting ended, scarcely a dry eye remained in the house.⁶ Already Young’s influence was felt.

This was just the beginning of the gift of tongues in Kirtland that fall. Smith appointed another meeting for the following evening, involving men who had not been present before. Once again Brigham spoke and sang in tongues. In still another meeting later in the week they “laid hands on Hyrum & he & many others spoke in tongues.” From this beginning, according to Kimball, “the gift of tongues became general in the church in Kirtland.”⁷

If the reminiscences are correct, Joseph Smith saw in Brigham Young a man of destiny. A brief but well-known entry in Young’s published history states that during this week, but not within Brigham’s hearing, Joseph stated that “the time will come when bro. Brigham will preside over this church.”⁸ According to another source, the statement was made in the context of discerning comments about each of the New York visitors. In general conversation he remarked,

Brother Joseph Young is a great man but Brigham is greater, and the time will Come when he will preside over the whole church: and God never put a better spirit in a man than that which is in brother Heber C. Kimball.⁹

How seriously can we take such an account, probably first written many years afterward? It might be natural to see it as a later invention to bolster Young’s claims to succeed Joseph Smith, although the supposed prediction played no known role in the succession discussions of 1844, nor was it used in that way later. Young, in fact, is probably not the source for the account. It ^[94] does not appear in earlier versions of his history, parts of which were dictated by him. Most likely Wilford Woodruff or George A. Smith inserted it in the final version of the history, probably on the authority of Heber Kimball and Joseph Young, both of whom told the story.¹⁰ Moreover, there are several independent reminiscent accounts by people who claim to have heard Joseph Smith make the prediction or one like it.¹¹

While the possibility that Joseph Smith made such a prediction in 1832 was neither used nor needed for succession, the possibility that Young had some foreshadowing of his future role is useful in assessing his motivations and subsequent performance. Perhaps a sense of destiny and special responsibility, partially related to such a prophecy, influenced the quality of Young’s discipleship. If the prophecy occurred, it could have been a force in focusing his attention and energies to learn at the feet of Joseph, as in fact he did. Whether the prophecy was made or not, it is clear that this was a momentous week for Brigham. He left Kirtland confirmed in his testimony of both Joseph and the Church and he and his companions, satisfied and refreshed, returned directly to Mendon and their families.¹²

Even though he knew that the Saints were gathering in Kirtland, Ohio, and in Jackson County, Missouri, Young’s urge was to preach, not to gather.

I wanted to thunder and roar out the Gospel to the nations. It burned in my bones like fire pent up, so I turned my back upon Jackson County to preach the Gospel of life to the people. . . . nothing would satisfy me but to cry abroad in the world, what the Lord was doing in the latter days.^{13 [95]}

It was late fall, 1832, but Brigham, Heber, and Joseph Young could neither rest nor wait for mild weather before leaving again. In late December Brigham and his brother Joseph left for Kingston in upper Canada, traveling most of the way on foot, through snow and mud. They found themselves breaking path in the new snow for over one hundred miles.¹⁴ Apparently their aim was to take the gospel to those among whom Joseph had labored as a Methodist preacher only a year before. Brigham afterward declared that for six cold weeks the Young brothers traveled and preached, baptizing forty-five people and organizing several branches before departing for home in February 1833.¹⁵

This mission illustrates one of the weaknesses of reminiscences as sources: memory can easily condense several experiences into one, as may have occurred here. In spite of heroic efforts, their success “in the dead of winter” was probably less than Young remembered. A brief diary entry in Young’s missionary diary summarized the mission this way:

2 day of Janury Brother Joseph and I started for Canadia was gon till the firs[t] of March trveled 5 or 6.00 [hundred] miles held about 40 metings Baptized 14 in Canadia 9 of them myself.¹⁶

Only by adding to the number baptized on this first Canadian mission those baptized by Young when he returned to the area in the spring, along with some baptized between the two missions, do the diary figures equal the ones in Young’s memory. He left Mendon 30 April and spent most of May and June preaching and visiting members in this same area of Canada. His most successful day of this second mission was 22 June when he “Preached . . . had a good time ^[96] then went to the water and Baptized 10,” along with holding a blessing meeting for the children. His sparse diary entries for May reflect the spirit of this mission:

the Lord pord out his spiret apon the People and I had good liberty in speaking. . . . Baptized 2 . . . held a meting . . . had a good time. . . . preached . . . the presence of the Lord was with me.¹⁷

When Young left Canada this time, it was not to return to Mendon and his family. Instead, in early July 1833, he accompanied the James Lake family (and perhaps others)¹⁸ as they traveled to Kirtland to gather with the Saints. After a ten-day journey by lake steamer and wagon, Young and company arrived in Kirtland on Thursday morning, 11 July, where, according to his history, he tarried “sometime, enjoying the society of the prophet.” His diary makes clear that the stay was very brief, for he spent part of the weekend outside Kirtland and departed for home on Monday. But even though short, this visit to Kirtland, and a second opportunity to enjoy the company of his prophet had great significance in Brigham Young’s life.¹⁹

This week in Kirtland taught Brigham Young the purpose of the gathering and, because of a powerful charge given him and other elders by Joseph Smith, he left committed to return with his family and participate in building in Kirtland a new society. The Prophet had previously received several revelations dealing with the temporal foundations of Kirtland. There would be a temple, a printing establishment, a house or office for the Presidency, and a school where the priesthood could learn and discuss the things of God. The revelations also spoke of future solemn assemblies and ^[97] endowments of power from on high. These, along with the conversations of the brethren, would probably have provided Young his first notice of the prospective temple and school of the prophets. Already the building committee had prepared a circular calling on the entire Church to aid “temporally as well as spiritually” to construct these important edifices. Otherwise, stressed the circular, the Church could not obtain the great blessings promised to the faithful.²⁰ Young, anxious for both doctrine and ordinances, was no doubt captivated by the vision of a temple and a school as the focal points of a godly community.

In this atmosphere Joseph Smith delivered to Brigham Young and other elders visiting Kirtland that summer a moving plea to dedicate themselves to building a new Zion on earth.

Brother Joseph Smith gave us the word of the Lord; it was simply this: Never do another day’s work to build up a Gentile city; never lay out another dollar while you live, to advance the world in its present state. . . . it is the word and commandment of the Lord to his servants that they shall never do another day’s work, nor spend another dollar to build up a Gentile city or nation.

It was the elders’ responsibility, charged the Prophet, to “sustain the Kingdom of God to your uttermost.”²¹

In Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s words found fertile ground. They taught him a concept that influenced him throughout his life and became one of the cornerstones of his sacral perspective. If God’s work included building a temporal community—a literal kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom that must be sustained at all cost—then, in Young’s later words, it was the “kingdom of God or nothing.” His motto became “for God and His kingdom” and “for the good of the kingdom” became a standard against which he ^[98] measured his actions. As he told the Utah Saints in 1857, “With us, it is the kingdom of God, or nothing, and we will maintain it, or die in trying.”²²

Until Joseph Smith’s charge, Brigham Young had given no hint that he intended to curtail his preaching in New York and Canada and gather with the Saints in Kirtland, Ohio. Preaching he had seen as a way to combat the malaise he saw in the world around him, and as his one great responsibility. Now he accepted that he had another responsibility, and that if preaching and baptizing were necessary, so was the next step: creating a community where those committed to the principles he preached could learn together to live a new life. Joseph here asked him to assist in building the Kirtland kingdom. If that were necessary in order to build up a new society, a Zion on earth based on the socio-economic principles of God, he would gather enthusiastically.²³ If anyone cared to ask, Brigham stated rhetorically later, whether he ever again labored a day or even an hour to build up the Gentile world, he would state “most emphatically” that he had not.²⁴

After only parts of two weeks in association with Joseph Smith, already Brigham Young was finding in Joseph a model that brought into harmony the disparate elements of his own life. His pre-Mormon years saw toil and sweat as he struggled with temporal responsibilities and developed practical abilities. His first months as a Mormon were months of preaching, months of religious enthusiasm focusing on millennial expectations with worldly goods and considerations pushed aside. In the person of Joseph, the two aspects came together. Brigham had first gone to Kirtland to ^[99] meet a holy man of God; what he found was a prophet chopping wood for his family. He traveled to Kirtland the second time as a man who had left home and family and set material things aside to preach until the Lord saw fit to end this world and begin his own millennial reign. This time Brigham left Kirtland committed to return with his family to build home and city and Zion, to combine his practical skills with his zeal for the restored gospel in the labors of preparing for that future kingdom of God. Preaching and missions would be part of his future, but so would all of the practical and temporal labors he had once thought, in his zeal, that he had left behind.

The once despondent, earth-bound Brigham had suddenly soared to heaven and now Joseph Smith brought him back. For Young this was the beginning of the process of welding into one whole the temporal and spiritual, joining labors of muscle and hand with the emotions and faith of the heart and soul. “What is the nature and beauty of Joseph’s mission?” he later asked an audience.

When I saw Joseph Smith, he took heaven, figuratively speaking, and brought it down to earth; and he took the earth, brought it up, and opened up in plainness and simplicity, the things of God.²⁵

Brigham Young’s diary opens a small window on what he felt important at this time. Essentially a missionary diary, entries normally have little detail beyond a bare outline of his travels and preaching. On a few occasions, however, he wrote longer entries or copied into his diary something of special importance. In the fall of 1833 he copied in a passage from a revelation written in December of 1832 but which he probably read for the ^[100] first time during his July visit to Kirtland. Known as the “Olive Leaf,” the revelation served as a charter for the elders, outlining their conduct and activities in relationship to the anticipated temple and school. Of all the passages of the long revelation that probably interested Young, the one he copied perhaps best suggests his desire for the Christian bonds of fellowship to replace the ethic he found operating in the world. He wrote in his diary the elders’ covenant and salutation:

Art thou a brother or brethren, I salute you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in token of the everlasting covenent; in which Covenant I receive you to fellowship in a determination that is fixed, immoveable and unchangeable to be your fri[e]nd and brother through the grace of God, in the bonds of love to walk in all the Commandments of God blameless, in thanksgiving forever and ever.²⁶

This, no doubt, expressed Young’s own hopes for a new society on earth.

In a hurry, Young did not preach along the way on this return to Mendon. Traveling by boat and stage, he arrived home by 20 July. Unlike Kimball, who had a household to move and business to close, Young’s preparations for leaving New York were minimal, permitting him to spend the next six weeks preaching in the neighborhood:

Preached to a large congregation had a good time and liberty in speaking. . . . held 2 metings and the power of god was manifes[t]. . . . wee had a precies [precious] time and the Power of God was manifest. . . . Preached in the [s]chool house to a large congregation. . . . Preached . . . to a large congre[ga]tion . . . and the presents of the Lord was with us. . . . I beleve that the word took affect. . . . the word of truth sunk in to their harts.²⁷

For now, this ended Young’s preaching and, consequently, his diary; he does not resume entries until his preaching mission in the spring ^[101] of 1835. The last entry indicated that on 17 September he went to the Mortons’ where his daughters had been staying while the Kimballs completed their preparations to move. Presumably the time for departing had come.

Heber Kimball arranged the transportation for both his family and Brigham’s. To lighten the load, Young sent a few goods ahead by water, then the two families set out by wagon. They arrived in Kirtland in late October or early November to begin a new life in a community of the Saints.²⁸

The fall and winter of 1833–1834 was not an easy time in Kirtland. Rather than a promising, bustling “new Zion,” the Youngs and Kimballs had come to a village of poverty and hard times, with little prosperity or opportunity for work.²⁹ If this was the city of promise, the promise lay in the future. According to Young, many of the men who arrived in Kirtland that fall could find no suitable work, and some who did had not received their pay. Many went to nearby communities seeking better prospects. Young, however, was there for more than employment:

I told them I had gathered to Kirtland, because I was so directed by the Prophet of God, and I was not going away . . . to build up the Gentiles, but I was going to stay here and seek the things that pertained to the kingdom of God by listening to the teachings of his servants.³⁰

Young still had to eat, of course, and to feed his small family. He and his daughters had arrived with very little—anyone who arrived with less had nothing, he later boasted. Young had apparently given away his fine beaver-skin coat and arrived in Kirtland with no winter clothing and only borrowed boots and pants.³¹ Longing to be near Joseph, full of the enthusiasm of a ^[102] new convert whose every act of faith had so far been rewarded, Brigham determined to stay in Kirtland and work through the winter as a carpenter and joiner even if he “never got a farthing” for his labors. In fact, trusting in both the Lord and in his own ability, he did not expect to starve and fully expected to be paid. “I went to work as soon as the word was that I could work and not preach,” he said. “I knew that I could get plenty; for I knew how; I always could gather around me and make property.”³²

Without promise of pay, Brigham Young commenced working on the house of temple-trustee William F. Cahoon. As the work progressed, Cahoon shared what he had with Brigham, obtaining the means to pay by the time the work was finished. Heber had enough resources to put up a small frame house and hired Brigham to do it. John Smith also hired him to lay a floor in his house. When one job was completed, another generally opened up, and when none did, he made furniture and traded it for oats or corn.³³

Settled in a new community, putting down roots near Joseph, working again with his hands, Brigham Young was ready that winter to find a new wife and re-establish his household. He would only select his companion from among the Saints. He knew that if he were to dedicate his labors to building up the kingdom, including months preaching away from home, he must have a wife who was both sturdy and as committed to the gospel as he was. He found such a woman in Mary Ann.

Mary Ann Angell was born in Seneca, New York, and raised in Providence, Rhode Island, of parents who loved the Bible and taught her strictly according to their own Puritan upbringing. She ^[103] obtained the Book of Mormon from Thomas B. Marsh in 1830, later testifying many times that she knew by the spirit, even as she held it in her hands, that it was of God. She introduced the gospel to her parents, and all three were baptized by Young’s brother-in-law John P. Greene. Mary Ann was determined to gather with the Saints in Kirtland even before her parents could join her, so she made the journey alone, arriving perhaps a year before Brigham and his two daughters. Hearing Brigham preach the gospel, she “instinctively felt drawn towards him.”³⁴

Judging her character, Brigham Young thought he saw a kindred spirit and was drawn toward Mary Ann. They were married 18 February 1834 with Sidney Rigdon officiating. Brigham had chosen well. Mary Ann proved steadfast, uncomplaining, and thoroughly loyal. From that time on, as Brigham later phrased it, Mary Ann—“an Angell indeed”—“took charge of my children, kept my house, and labored faithfully for the interest of my family and the kingdom.”³⁵

Besides his work and family, other activities engaged Brigham Young’s attention that first winter in Kirtland. In February Joseph Smith organized the first high council in the Church and instructed them in what he declared was the ancient order of councils. While Young was not named as a member of the council, he, with friend Heber and many others, was present at its organization.³⁶ Sundays and evenings the elders often met with Joseph; Brigham would have been there. In spite of the general poverty of the Church in Kirtland, there was also temple construction. Finally, Brigham probably assisted in protecting and ^[104] defending his mentor Joseph, whose enemies, led by two embittered former Mormons, mounted a series of “vexatious” lawsuits and were threatening his life. Although Young does not mention this in his history, both George A. Smith and Heber Kimball remembered time spent guarding Joseph. Said Kimball,

our enemies were raging and threatening destruction upon us, and we had to guard night after night, and for weeks were not permitted to take off our clothes, and were obliged to lay with our firelocks in our arms to preserve brother Joseph’s life.³⁷

Young not only survived the winter, he prospered. Comparing later his own situation with those who had left Kirtland for opportunities elsewhere, he felt confirmed in his faith. With a rented house, a new wife and two cows he felt

better off than any other man who came to Kirtland the fall before, according to the property that we came with, and I had enough to live with my family and leave them comfortable . . . and money enough to pay my expenses. . . . so the Lord opened the way most astonishingly.

No doubt that success confirmed him further in his decision to put building the kingdom ahead of all other concerns.³⁸

As the spring of 1834 approached, Brigham Young prepared to leave Kirtland for a summer of preaching. At one of the first meetings of the high council pairs of missionaries were assigned to answer specific calls for preaching. At his own request, it was agreed that Young would travel alone, and when spring came, probably after plowing and planting, Young planned to set out.³⁹ The mission was never performed.

Four days later Joseph dictated a revelation directing “my young men and the middle aged . . . the strength of my house” to travel to Missouri to help the Mormon refugees from Jackson County ^[105] recover their lands. The revelation directed that several hundred men should accompany Lyman Wight and Parley Pratt back to Missouri for that purpose. Smith was to assist in raising the company but it was not certain that he would go himself; the Saints were admonished to “pray earnestly” that he may go with them, “and preside in the midst of my people, and organize my kingdom upon the consecrated land.”⁴⁰

The revelation authorized five hundred and forbade departing with less than a hundred. Although the responsible brethren began recruiting immediately it was only with difficulty, and only after it was announced that Smith would accompany the camp, that they reached the required minimum for a May departure. As late as 30 March, more than five weeks after the call for men, Smith was still not certain he would go.⁴¹

Although he had been married less than a week when he learned of the expedition, Brigham Young joined the camp without much hesitancy or delay. His brother Joseph Young was less eager and did not agree until Joseph Smith had concluded to go. When Brigham explained to Smith his brother’s reluctance, Joseph promised them in the name of the Lord that if they would follow his counsel he would lead them to Missouri and back “and not a hair of your heads shall be harmed.” The Youngs shook Joseph’s hand in agreement.⁴²

Joseph Smith had announced the expedition to Missouri several weeks before an intended 1 May departure. Brigham Young was on hand in Kirtland as the elders began to muster, and he joined the meetings where Smith instructed the new arrivals. Among ^[106] the late April arrivals was Wilford Woodruff, a man who became a lifelong associate of Young and Kimball. Here, for the first time, he met Young, Kimball and other elders, including the Prophet Joseph. His diary notes an important, and to him impressive, meeting that Smith held with the elders.⁴³

Woodruff and some other members of the expedition left Kirtland 1 May 1834. Young was among those who remained in Kirtland to hear Smith’s final address before they all departed for the pre-arranged rendezvous.⁴⁴ According to George A. Smith, the Prophet Joseph emphasized to the members of the camp the necessity of humility, faith, and patience during their journey—and above all, obedience. If they would obey, not murmuring “against the Lord and his servants” like the Children of Israel, they would safely return, he promised. If not, they would feel the displeasure of God.⁴⁵ All, it would seem, now had the promise that Smith had earlier extended personally to Brigham and Joseph Young.

At the New Portage rendezvous, 6 May, the encampment was organized. Each member put his money without restriction into a common fund. Smith named both Young and Kimball as captains of ten, minor officers of the camp. Midway in the journey, a contingent joined them from Michigan under Lyman Wight and Hyrum Smith, forcing a reorganization. En route to that portion of Missouri the Mormons called Zion, and charged with the mission of helping to “redeem Zion,” the organized expedition became known as Zion’s Camp.

Overland and on foot in the heat of summer, this journey proved tremendously taxing. The camp traveled with a sense of ^[107] urgency, and by pushing early and late they sometimes walked over forty miles a day. Joseph Young said that he never suffered more for anything in his life than he did for lack of sleep during that journey. And when he was awake it was doubletime in the heat loaded down with muskets and knapsacks, “traveling until the blood could be heard in our boots and shoes.” Blistered and bloody feet never had time to heal. Everyone remembered the feet. Getting enough food and water also proved a continual challenge. At one point George A. Smith’s company had to eat raw pork, at another he procured for them buttermilk in a horse bucket, a refreshment all enjoyed until one complained of the container. Even though George A. assured them that the churn was worse than the bucket, the camp drank it all and sent him for more. The water was so bad, said George A. later, that “here I learned to strain wriglers [through] my teeth.”⁴⁶

Although Brigham Young seldom mentioned the physical hardships of Zion’s Camp, the arduous labor of hand carting across the Plains prompted two reminiscences in 1857. To reinforce the idea that men and women could walk long distances without injury, he told about his longest sustained foot journey, the two-thousand-mile trek from Kirtland to Missouri and back. He remembered dragging loaded baggage wagons through mud holes and over hills, twenty or thirty men to a wagon. Seldom did they retire much before midnight, and then they had to sleep on the ground with stifling heat. Still the horn sometimes sounded by 3:00 a.m. so they could breakfast before an early start. In the day the heat was even more oppressive, along with mosquitoes “by the bushel.” Young was ^[108] certain that Zion’s Camp had been much more physically demanding than hand carting on the dry Plains.⁴⁷

Zion’s Camp was indeed a physical ordeal. What sustained participants was a sense of mission and divine approval, the friendship and fellowship of colleagues, and the companionship of Joseph Smith, who remained buoyant and uncomplaining. At a reunion of veterans many years later, Joseph Young remembered being encouraged frequently by the Prophet delivering the word of the Lord to the Camp. Others gratefully remembered that songs sung by Brigham and Joseph Young cheered and encouraged the weary men.⁴⁸

Though difficult and long remembered, the physical demands of the journey to Missouri were secondary to the religious significance. There is a distinctly Old Testament/Children of Israel flavor to the experiences of the Camp as they were remembered and later retold, a sense of being the Lord’s people on the Lord’s errand.⁴⁹ They were chosen servants to be blessed for faithfulness or chastised for disobedience. At times they felt a special protection, God intervening in their behalf with prophetic warnings or by preventing battles. At other times they felt the wrath of God. To the faithful these blessings and cursings proved anew the power and nearness of God.

The first dramatic experience in which they saw the hand of God involved misfortune. Although they had earlier discovered “refractory feelings” in Sylvester Smith, no serious problems occurred until they crossed into Indiana. There when differences arose between Sylvester Smith and others the camp asked Joseph Smith to intervene. In the process, he told them that the camp ^[109] would meet with “misfortunes, difficulties and hindrances as the certain results” of giving away to a spirit of rebelliousness. “You will know it before you leave this place,” he said, exhorting them to humble themselves and become united.⁵⁰ The following morning nearly every horse was so badly foundered it could hardly be led to water. When Joseph saw this he told them that all those who humbled themselves would know that the hand of God was in this misfortune, and their horses would be immediately restored to health. By noon all the horses were as nimble as ever except, pointedly, Sylvester Smith’s, which later died.⁵¹

Despite the clearness of the message, the spirit of discord and murmuring multiplied. Two weeks later, 3 June, Smith mounted a wagon wheel during the noon halt and further chastised the Camp. Their “murmuring & fault finding & want of humility had kindled the anger of the Lord,” he announced, and it was already too late to stay his hand: “a severe scourge would come upon the Camp & many would die like sheep with the rot.” Repentance, humility, and the prayer of faith might soften the chastisement, but “as the Lord lives this Camp must suffer a severe scourge for their wickedness & rebellion, I say it in the name of the Lord.”⁵²

The men of Zion’s Camp were neither disciplined soldiers nor frontiersmen inured to hardships. They were family men, farmers, craftsmen, and preachers in unfamiliar circumstances. No doubt any such group of men uprooted and thrown closely together to perform new tasks under conditions of physical hardship would have had a quota of complainers and something less than a spirit of perfect unity. But these men, supposedly all committed to Christian principles ^[110] and engaged in creating a new society on earth, were to be different. Having the same frailties as all men, yet they were on God’s errand, and He could not ignore their lapses. “I thought we should probably get into a battle with the mob & some of us get killed,” thought seventeen-year-old George A. after hearing Joseph’s prophecy.

This time there was no immediate chastisement but, for those who believed the prophecy, weeks of awaiting impending doom. In time they would see a dozen of their brethren felled by a plague and “laid in the ground without coffins,” reminding them ever after, said George A., “to heed the counsels of the Prophet & not murmur at the dispensations of providence.”⁵³ But that powerful lesson would come after what they took to be a manifestation of the power of God in their defense.

It was at Fishing River that the small band witnessed what Young and others interpreted to be divine power in the heavens, a chastising plague and the comforting word of revelation. By 15 June the camp learned that Missouri Governor Daniel Dunklin would not assist them as he had earlier promised. Abandoned by civil authority, as they moved into the heart of Missouri, the danger of armed confrontation and even extinction became real.⁵⁴ By the seventeenth, concrete information indicated a body of men preparing to attack. The night of the eighteenth the encampment felt some security only because Smith, alone in prayer, obtained an assurance that they would be safe until morning. At daybreak they moved on, determined to reach safer ground.

On the nineteenth they intended to reach the Saints in Clay County. Instead, “one wagon broke down, & the wheels ran off ^[111] from others & there seemed to be many things to hinder our progress.” After every exertion they made only twenty-five miles for the day and, amidst enemies, were forced to camp alone on elevated land between the branches of the Fishing River. As they made camp, five armed men rode up and brazenly taunted them with perhaps exaggerated reports of the forces gathered from each county to oppose them. All the Mormons would “see hell before morning,” they swore. Aware that the whole country was in a rage against them, Kimball felt that only the power of God could save them.⁵⁵ Wrote another veteran of the camp, the scene was enough “to make any man quail,” yet “brother Joseph the Prophet said, ‘Stand still and see the salvation of God.’”⁵⁶

Winds and thunder announced the approaching storm even before the rains began to fall about sundown. Then began a dramatic display of the powers of nature: hailstones as large as hens’ eggs, floods of drenching rain, winds of raging fury. “The thunder and lightning exceeded all description that I am capable of giving,” wrote George A. Smith. Kimball tried to describe it: “The thunders rolled with awful majesty, and the red lightnings flashed through the horizon” until throughout the night he could see to pick up a pin. The earth quaked and trembled without cessation until it seemed to him “as though the Almighty had issued forth his mandate of vengeance.” The small stream that they had earlier waded had become a wild torrent. Trees were twisted or blown over. Though the Mormon men were thoroughly soaked (except for a few who found shelter in a small church), their encampment escaped relatively ^[112] unscathed. To them wind and hail seemed to have been more destructive on every side of them than it had been on their knoll.⁵⁷

Some of those who had gathered to attack them, they learned, had crossed the river and come within two miles of them before swollen waters stopped their advance. The Mormon men saw it as a singular sign when nearly all of their own guns fired in a resounding volley the next morning while the mob, disheartened, scattered, without dry powder, provided no danger. To Heber Kimball, George A. Smith, and others who shared their view, the Almighty had clearly defended them, for only the storm had prevented a bloody conflict.⁵⁸

Before the Mormon encampment left Fishing River, Joseph Smith delivered to them the word of the Lord—an important revelation that served as still another reminder of God’s interest in their labors. Brigham Young entertained no doubts about Joseph’s revelation or God’s concern for them, for the substance of the revelation as it applied to Zion’s Camp had already been revealed to him. When Smith announced the revelation, Young felt remorse that he had not been wise and patient enough to keep his personal inspiration to himself and let Joseph speak for the Lord:

I got a revelation that God excepted [accepted] our offering. I had the same things revealed to me twice & that we should not go into Jackson County. I named this to some of the Brethren a day or two before Joseph got a Revelation upon the same subject. I felt ashamed that I named it first.⁵⁹

Brigham Young had never seen Jackson County, and now he knew that after traveling a thousand miles he would not this time either: “in consequence of the transgressions of my people, it is expedient in me that mine elders should wait for a little season ^[113] for the redemption of Zion.” Zion could only be built by the obedient and righteous. In time, they could prepare themselves, but in the meantime, the word of the Lord to the Camp of Zion was: “I have heard their prayers, and will accept their offering,” it is enough.⁶⁰

Both the Zion’s Camp experience, and now the new revelation, must have confirmed for Young that establishing the new society he dreamed of would be a slow and lengthy process. He was imperfect, the men of his camp were impatient and “slow to harken,” the Missouri Saints did not yet merit God’s intervention; even prophets must learn by experience before they were prepared to lead a Zion’s people. Specifically, he and other elders must “be taught more perfectly, and have experience, and know more perfectly concerning their duty, and the things which I require at their hands” before Zion could be built. This gave Young and others like him a way of understanding the problems of the camp, including its failure to accomplish what it had set out to do, without concluding that they had mistaken their God or followed a false prophet. Instead, it moved them to renewed commitment to duty, and it led them to contemplate a future endowment of power from on high which the revelation identified as an essential part of their preparation.⁶¹

The day following the revelation, 23 June, a meeting was held to choose, agreeable to the revelation, “some of the first elders to receive their endowments,” the promised future endowment of power. Neither Brigham Young nor Heber Kimball were among those selected.⁶² Perhaps Young understood that the endowment was an ^[114] ordinance associated with the still unfinished temple, and that finishing the temple was also a part of the preparation.

This trek to the border of Jackson County and this revelation telling the Camp that they would not go into the Center Place also brought Brigham Young face to face, perhaps for the first time, with the importance of Jackson County as the Center Stake, the New Jerusalem. He later told of Joseph taking him aside to tell him that he, Brigham, might “live to see the land of Zion redeemed, and then you will see the day of God’s power and every person will be of one heart and of one mind.” Ever after Young worked and hoped for that day.⁶³

Several days later, with the camp beyond Fishing River and once again facing agitated opponents, cholera, a “greater terror to the mob than powder and ball,” broke out throughout the camp—ending any immediate danger of attack.⁶⁴ The first cases had occurred before they left Fishing River, but it was the night of 24–25 June that, in Young’s words, the “brethren began to be stricken down by the destroyer, which was according to the word of the Lord through the prophet Joseph a few days previous.” That evening the first man died. Eventually nearly seventy of the camp fell prey to the disease and fourteen died. Both faithful and murmuring received the blow alike. Young witnessed Joseph, “filled with deep sympathy for his brethren” and blessing them, fall ill.⁶⁵ Apparently not stricken, Young was free to care for some who recovered and help to bury those who did not.

According to Brigham Young, the Lord did allow Joseph to stay the disease once His purposes were fulfilled.⁶⁶ After nearly ^[115] seventy of the camp had been attacked, Joseph called the camp together

and told them if they would humble themselves before the Lord, and covenant that they would from this time forth obey his council that the plague should be stayed from that very hour and there would not be another case in Camp. whereupon the brethren with uplifted hands covenanted . . . and the plague was stayed according the words of the Lord, through his servant.⁶⁷

Soon after this Smith disbanded the Camp of Zion as the Fishing River Revelation had authorized. They had succeeded only in bringing some supplies to their brethren. After two months of military organization, neither victorious nor defeated, the small army was dismissed. “I do not require at their hands to fight the battles of Zion,” said the revelation.⁶⁸ While some, like Nathan Baldwin, found that the most acceptable thing they had heard, others, said George A. Smith, apostatized because they were not going to have the privilege of fighting.⁶⁹ For some the greatest challenge of Zion’s Camp was not the physical hardship, but that the trek should end without one Missouri Saint back on his land and without a shot fired at an enemy.

For his part, Young later maintained that he knew by the spirit that the Lord had appointed the mission, and whatever the outcome, he was willing to accept it—although in his own feelings, “I did not wish to fight.”⁷⁰ What was important to men like Brigham Young and Heber Kimball, what sustained them during the journey and what they remembered long afterwards, was the confidence they felt in Joseph and their conviction that the Lord would oversee all for their good. Had the Lord commanded battle, Young insisted he would have fought with confidence, believing that “If ^[116] the Lord Almighty called us to contend, he would give us the power to accomplish the work.” Reminiscing about Zion’s Camp with veterans, Young insisted that he had felt no fear, always traveled “cheerful,” and was “always ready, perfectly cool”—because it was God’s errand. Added Levi Hancock, one of the veterans, of Brigham’s cheerful confidence: “he was filled with the Holy Ghost.”⁷¹

Some of the brethren who traveled in Zion’s Camp remained in Missouri. The others found their own way back to Ohio. Brigham Young, like the rest of the camp, received an honorable discharge from General Lyman Wight: “This may certify that [Brigham Young], the bearer of this, is honorably discharged from the army of Zion and may return to his native land.”⁷² He also received the $1.16 paid to each participant when the common purse was divided—or at least the dollar, for only limited change was available. At the outset each man had contributed what he could, some substantially and some nothing. No doubt Young, who had earlier rebelled against the world’s selfishness, was pleased that all shared alike during the journey and at its end.⁷³ During the later Mormon expulsion from Missouri, and again during the Nauvoo Exodus, Brigham led in getting covenants adopted so that those with means would assist those without.

Soon after Brigham Young left for Kirtland, Joseph Smith organized a high council in Missouri as he had done in Kirtland the February before. With others, Parley Pratt, William McLellen,⁷⁴ Orson Pratt, Lyman Wight, and Thomas Marsh, later of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, received appointments as councillors; ^[117] David Whitmer, W. W. Phelps, and John Whitmer were named the presidency in Zion. In instructing the council, Joseph told them that if he were to be taken, he had now accomplished what he had desired to do and what the Lord had required him to do, that the Church was now organized in a way that through the councils the will of the Lord could be known. Before Joseph departed for Kirtland he also ordained David Whitmer to be his successor if he should not live to the Lord himself.⁷⁵

The return trip, though without baggage and military organization, was by no means easy. A thousand miles from home and with only a dollar in pocket, the returnees set out walking. Kimball traveled with one small group, Brigham and his brother Joseph in another. In August they were safely back in Kirtland. When next they met Joseph Smith, he asked the brothers: “‘There Brother Joseph and Brother Brigham, have I not redeemed my word?’ We replied ‘yes.’ He then said ‘May God bless you.’”⁷⁶

Predictably, the experience of Zion’s Camp proved profoundly disturbing to some. While many shared the positive interpretations of Young and retained full confidence in Smith, some could not reconcile the outcome with an expedition appointed by revelation and headed by a prophet leader. Among those who did not go, it seemed even more obvious that the entire effort was pointless. “O my soul think of hundreds of men traveling more than a thousand miles and accomplish a solemn nothing!!” wrote one non-participant critic many years later.⁷⁷ The reaction did not take years to develop, however, but was immediate. Sylvester Smith and other ^[118] critics who preceded Joseph Smith back to Kirtland had so stirred things up that the Prophet returned home to face accusers crying: “Tyrant,! Pope!! King!!! Usurper!!!! Abuser of men!!!!! Ange [Angel?]!!!!!! False prophet—Prophecying lies in the name of the Lord!!!! taking consecrated monies!!!!!!”⁷⁸

If the experience provoked in some strongly negative responses, for others it was, in a positive sense, “one of the most extraordinary events of my life.”⁷⁹ Such strikingly different interpretations suggest that perhaps the reactions had as much to do with basic perspectives and expectations as with the shared experiences themselves. Some of the criticism might be explained by the embarrassment, anger or hurt pride of those whom Smith reprimanded during the trek; Sylvester Smith is a case in point. Perhaps Young and others who remained firmly behind Smith in spite of all setbacks were unthinkingly obedient or more adept at rationalizing; certainly they did seek meaning in the experience. Neither explanation, however, explains adequately why some saw God’s hand where others did not. Different perspectives about God, man, and the role of a prophet were involved.

Seeing the explanations of Young and those like him as merely rationalizations or as wholly later, defensive interpretations is to lose sight of the social world within which these events unfolded. There is no evidence that Young, Kimball, and Woodruff viewed the events in 1834 from a different perspective than the one developed here through reminiscences. On the contrary, the one contemporary account available confirms the tone and the interpretation of the reminiscences. ^[119]

According to the brief contemporary summary written by Wilford Woodruff, the march of the camp, led by a prophet, “was similar to the ancient Israelites.”

Joseph often addressed us in the name of the Lord while on our journey and often while addressing the camp he was clothed upon with much of the spirit of God his precepts were very instructive and interesting.

Writing of the Fishing River experience, when only the storm prevented a bloody battle with enemies, Woodruff noted simply, “the God of Israel frustrated their designs.” When many non-Mormons turned more friendly and sympathetic to the plight of Mormon homeless, Woodruff was certain that “the Lord granted us favour in the eyes of the people.” Perhaps most importantly, Woodruff described the cholera “scourge” in the same terms that he, Young, Kimball, and George A. Smith later used throughout their lives:

I witnessed a solem scene previous to this time while on our journey there were disobedience and murmurings in the camp and Brother Joseph prophecied that in consequence of these things there was a scourge awaited the camp and as it was prophesied of so it was fulfilled . . . we were visited by the destroying angel.⁸⁰

By this time the sacral world view that came to characterize the thinking of Brigham Young was clearly emerging. Available evidence suggests that Young viewed the Zion’s Camp experience through that perspective, resulting in a positive and, for him, meaningful interpretation. These men expected to see God’s hand and they thought they did see God’s hand. The Old Testament pattern led them to expect instances of murmuring and rebellion and they saw both. If things turned out differently than they had anticipated or would have preferred, they would trust God that it was for His purpose and would be turned to their good. ^[120]

Although Joseph Smith faced a certain amount of opposition when he returned to Kirtland, he was able to still the dissent quickly. “I have succeeded in putting all gainsayers and enemies to flight,” he wrote soon after, and “I now swim in good clean water with my head out!”⁸¹ The doubts and questions raised could not, however, be swept away as easily. A few left the Church over the affair, and others later came to mark it as beginning their disillusionment. For those who did not share Young’s perspective, every departure from “the plan,” every difficulty, suggested that God was not pleased with Smith or his labors. They could not feel about Zion’s Camp as Young did. They had expected far different results and they could not easily accept or understand the experience or its outcome.

In Kirtland, Brigham Young was personally challenged by friends who asked him what profit he saw in calling men from their labors to go up to Missouri and back, apparently without accomplishing anything. If the Lord commanded it, what object did He have in mind? Who has it benefited? Young did not have all the answers, but he knew one who had benefited: himself.

I told those brethren that I was well paid—paid with heavy interest—yea that my measure was filled to overflowing with the knowledge that I had received by traveling with the Prophet.

Associating with Joseph Smith, learning more from him about the kingdom and experiencing important events with him, Young felt amply repaid for his efforts. His response to questioners: “I would not exchange the knowledge I have received this season for the whole of Geauga county.”^{82 [121]}

Young was not the only one to count his association with Smith as worth the trip. If some came away from Zion’s Camp disillusioned, many came away impressed with Smith’s performance and even more committed to follow his leadership. The widow of one veteran later reported that his dying words were, “I know that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God, my journey with him up to Missouri is more to me than all the world beside.”⁸³ Brigham’s brother Joseph was also deeply impressed by Smith’s leadership:

Joseph the prophet led us to Zion, not as a houghty chieftain, not as an arrogant man, but a man filled with the Holy Ghost; and O, how kind and modest he was when he lead us, but how determined and resolute in carrying out the will of the Lord.

George A. Smith observed the same spirit in Joseph. Though he had the care of providing for the camp and presiding over it, wrote George A., and “had a full proport[io]n of blistered, bloody & sore feet. . . . during the entire trip he never uttered a murmur or complaint while most of the men in the Camp complained” to him repeatedly of all their miseries. When minor irritations nearly caused rebellion, remembered George A., “Joseph had to bear with us and tutor us, like children.”⁸⁴

In both quiet and dramatic ways the faith of Brigham and some of his associates in Joseph as a prophet of the Lord deepened during Zion’s Camp. In Young’s view, once again he had obeyed and come away confirmed in this faith, blessed and strengthened.

I have travelled with Joseph a thousand miles, he has led the Camp of Israel. I have watched him and observed every thing he said or did . . . for the town of Kirtland I would not give the knowledge I got from Joseph on this Journey; and then you may take the State of Ohio and the United States, and I would not give that knowledge for them. It has done me good . . . and this was the starting point of my knowing how to lead Israel.^{85 [122]}

Perhaps this was the beginning of Young’s leading Israel in still another sense, for if some gained confidence in Joseph through the Zion’s Camp experience, the Prophet also gained confidence in those who proved their steadfastness and loyalty.⁸⁶

Aside from association with Joseph, Zion’s Camp was, for Young, almost a dress rehearsal for some of his later responsibilities. “This was the first time we [the Church] had ever travelled in the capacity of a large company, and it was my first experience in that mode of travelling,” he later noted. It was also Young’s own first leadership experience. Although a captain of ten was a minor leader, his duties were demanding and it served as an important beginning.⁸⁷ It seems likely, also, that his careful observation of the strengths and weaknesses of others taught him many lessons of leadership and gave him growing confidence in his own abilities. Many things that he learned on Zion’s Camp later served him as he directed even larger movements of the Saints. Perhaps it was an indispensable training camp for his assisting the removal of the Missouri Saints in the midst of poverty and winter just over four years later. A dozen years later during his leadership of the exodus from Nauvoo and migration to the Mountains, Young remembered the experiences and lessons of Zion’s Camp and made them a part of that new movement.⁸⁸

Zion’s Camp also influenced the way men related to each other. Shared experiences forged lasting bonds of friendship and mutual confidence. Wrote Woodruff later about several of his camp companions, “we had great cause to be united in heart,” for they had together “offered to lay down our lives & our offering ^[123] was accepted as was Abrams.”⁸⁹ Here men who would spend their lives as Mormon leaders with Young had the opportunity, for the first time, to fully take the measure of one another. Zion’s Camp, and a common interpretation of what it meant, was part of the lasting bond between them. And if those participating looked at one another in a different light, apparently the Church, too, in the complaining words of a non-veteran “raised [them] above those who did not go.” It was a fact that some had faced severe tests of their commitment; others, though perhaps equally committed, remained untested. In the months and years ahead, to be counted among “the old camp Brethren (for as such they were denominated),” was a mark of distinction.⁹⁰

By the time Brigham Young returned to Kirtland in early August, his family had exhausted the few resources he had accumulated the winter before. No doubt he, like his friend Heber who worked as a potter before cold weather forced him to other tasks, sought immediate employment in his trade. For much of the winter, however, he labored on “public” construction “quarrying rock, working on the temple and finishing off the printing office and school room”—employment that paid very little cash.⁹¹ Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon urged the Kirtland Saints to exert themselves to finish the temple, for “on it depends the salvation of the church and the world.”⁹² That winter, once again, commitment to the kingdom came before personal and family comforts.

The winter was not all spent laboring, either for the kingdom or for the family. One disillusioned brother sued Joseph for breach of contract in relationship to Zion’s Camp. Young ^[124] spent some time in court as a witness for the defense. “Thirty witnesses were summoned to attend this trial . . . for the purpose of impeaching the testimony of Joseph Smith, at which they made a signal failure,” was how Young remembered it later.⁹³ There were also church meetings and social activities, and for a few weeks a grammar school that Young probably attended with other elders. Above all, he lost no opportunity to meet with Joseph:

such moments were more precious to me than all the wealth of the world. No matter how great my poverty—if I had to borrow meal to feed my wife and children, I never let an opportunity pass of hearing what Joseph had to impart.⁹⁴

From the first Joseph had fascinated him. The Zion’s Camp experience served to further whet his appetite for sitting at the feet of his prophet. Following Zion’s Camp, Young’s sense of discipleship apparently intensified and from this point he took every opportunity to be in his company.

On Sunday, 8 February 1835, after listening to Brigham and Joseph Young sing and preach in meeting, Joseph Smith invited them to sing for him as they had done during Zion’s Camp. During the visit in Smith’s home, the three men expressed their deep feelings for camp brethren lost to cholera. The two brothers listened intently as the Prophet shared with them a vision that had set his own mind at rest about them. “Brethren, I have seen those men who died of cholera in our camp,” he said with great emotion, “and the Lord knows, if I get a mansion as bright as theirs, I ask no more.” After a pause he went on to ask Brigham to spread the word to all nearby veterans of the camp to meet the next Saturday for a special conference to appoint twelve Special Witnesses to open ^[125] the door of the gospel in foreign lands. “You,” he said, speaking to Brigham Young, “will be one of them.”⁹⁵

In his nearly three years as a Mormon, Young had no intimations about the calling of a quorum of apostles. Suddenly, in one breath, he learned not only that there would be one, but that he would be among the number.⁹⁶ Joseph Smith talked about the apostles “until he had exhausted much of his feelings,” and then he turned to Joseph Young and earnestly announced that seventies would also be called, and that “The Lord has made you President of the Seventies.” According to Brigham Young, even while Joseph talked to them about these new officers, the spirit of revelation was upon him.⁹⁷

Saturday, 14 February, Zion’s Camp veterans, along with many others, assembled in conference.⁹⁸ To set the tone for the meeting, Joseph Smith read from John 15 Christ’s instructions to his apostles. After “an appropriate and affecting prayer,” he then separated out the Zion’s Camp brethren. They were meeting, he explained, “because God had commanded it.” He had seen in vision the calling and order of the Twelve and the seventy and he knew by the Spirit that the time had finally come to fill those offices. He knew also, he said, that it was the will of God that those who had sacrificed and gone to Zion at the risk of their lives would be the ones to fulfill that vision. Theirs would be a ministry not for a season or a year or a decade, but until the end time. Following the June 1829 revelation, the Witnesses to the Book of Mormon selected the Twelve. After each of the witnesses prayed in preparation, the Presidency blessed them, and they then ^[126] “proceeded to call forth those whom the Lord had manifested by his spirit.” Young was selected second, Heber Kimball third. According to Kimball, the nine of the twelve called then present each spoke in turn.

After having expressed our feelings on this occasion, we were severally called into the Stand, and there received our ordinations, under the hands of Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris. These brethren ordained us to the apostleship, and predicted many things which should come to pass. . . . After we had been thus ordained by these brethren, the first presidency laid their hands on us, and likewise predicted many things.⁹⁹

In Young’s blessing he was promised strength and long life “that he might go forth and gather the elect, preparatory to the great day of the coming of the Lord.” He was blessed to grow in his office and to play a role in establishing Zion. According to his blessing, he would travel abroad, “behold heavenly messengers going forth,” and “do wonders in the name of Jesus.” Finally, apparently in reference to a special mission among the American Indians, reference was made to his influence among “heathen nations” and “declaring the tidings to nations that know not God.”¹⁰⁰

Two weeks later, 29 February 1835, the first seventy were called and ordained—also largely from the ranks of Zion’s Camp veterans.¹⁰¹ As promised, Joseph Young was among them.

The calling of the Twelve and the Seventy provided still another answer to the persistent question: why Zion’s Camp? The Fishing River revelation had hinted that the trial of faith had special significance, but perhaps the passage had not come home with force until now: “I . . . will accept their offering; and it is expedient in me that they should be brought thus far for a ^[127] trial of their faith.”¹⁰² In his remarks preliminary to the selection, Smith stated explicitly that it was God’s will that the new officers be chosen from among those “who went to Zion, with a determination to lay down their lives, if necessary.”¹⁰³ Zion’s Camp had been a testing ground and a school; the two went hand in hand. Zion’s Camp was, as Joseph Young expressed it, “our first experience in the school of the prophets.”¹⁰⁴

Brigham Young came to understand trials as a necessary preparation for leadership—and not just for leaders, but an important school for all. Suffering and opposition was part of the refiner’s fire that prepared men and women for glory. Pain, sorrow, suffering is both natural and necessary, he told a group in 1847, and “[yo]u ma[y] as well suffer now as any o[the]r [time] as [yo]u [h]av[e] got it to do.”¹⁰⁵ To those who “admit this is the Ch[urch] of God, but the path is too rugged & they swear theyl be damed if they can go it,” Young had this advice, based on his experiences in Zion’s Camp and elsewhere: “now if they wo[ul]d rise up & say I will go it—till I die—the L[or]d will then strength[en] them, his grace is suff[icien]t for all.”¹⁰⁶

How effective, specifically, was Zion’s Camp as a preparation for leadership? In the case of the Twelve, nine of the original Twelve made the march to Missouri in 1831, and of that number only William Smith, Joseph’s younger brother, and the Johnson brothers permanently lost their places in the Quorum, and Luke Johnson eventually returned to the Church.¹⁰⁷ So, of the nine apostles originally selected who had been in Zion’s Camp, only two died outside the Church. This figure seems striking when compared ^[128] to the three original apostles who had not been on Zion’s Camp, all of whom left the Church. Thomas B. Marsh, John F. Boynton, and William McLellen, the non-veterans, all broke with Joseph Smith during the difficulties of 1837–1839, although Marsh later returned to the Church. Many who performed faithfully in Zion’s Camp but were not called in the original selection of Twelve and Seventy later gained prominence as leaders, including Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Jedediah M. Grant, Amasa Lyman, and Charles C. Rich of the Presidency and Twelve. Zion’s Camp, it might be argued, was part of each one’s preparation for leadership, just as it was for Brigham and Joseph Young, Heber C. Kimball, the Pratt brothers, and others selected in February 1835.¹⁰⁸

Called, ordained, and blessed, Brigham Young was now an apostle. This must have caused him deep reflections. Although the thirty-four months since his baptism had been rich in new experience, experiences that changed him dramatically from the itinerant craftsman of Mendon, Young did not yet think of himself as a powerful leader. He had confidence in himself and in some of his abilities, but a certain timidity, a certain reluctance to lead out, lingered. For one thing, it had been less than three years since his first public speech and, while he had demonstrated the grit to boldly declare his beliefs, he still felt “bashful” before an audience.¹⁰⁹ Even though his rough upbringing had not made of him a polished messenger, he was now commissioned to take the message to the world.

His feelings of inadequacy went beyond speaking ability, however, to a basic lack of confidence in some situations. Although ^[129] certain of the truth of the gospel he preached, he was not yet sure that he could convincingly meet the learning and sophistication of the world. If his later recollection was correct, it would be several years before he left behind these self-doubts. “I used to think, until I was forty-five years of age,” he explained, “that I had not knowledge, sense, or ability enough to enable me to associate with the men of the world.” Only after years of experience with, as he termed it, the superiority of revelation over the wisdom of the world, and only after he had fully convinced himself that the knowledge of the world contained but few correct principles, was he able to meet all men with confidence.¹¹⁰

By example and precept, Joseph Smith provided the keys that unlocked Brigham Young’s confidence and abilities as a leader. In Smith, Young saw an untutored youth who yet had the confidence to face the world squarely. Moreover, Joseph alone could teach him the knowledge he wanted most, knowledge of God. In later years Young acknowledged this debt:

I know how I received the knowledge that I have got. I have seen the time, when I first saw Joseph [i.e., these early years], that I had but one prayer, and I offered it all the time, and that was that I might be permited to hear Joseph speak on doctrine, and see his mind reach out untramelled to grasp the deep things of God.

“An angel never watched him closer,” Young maintained. “I would constantly watch him and if possible learn doctrine and principle beyond that which he expressed.” It required several years of this close application to Joseph, he said later in exaggeration, “before I pretended to open my mouth to speak at all.”^{111 [130]}

Young also learned from Joseph Smith that the Lord could rely on men just like himself—men of simple faith, courage, and integrity—and bless them with all that was necessary to succeed. He must have been familiar with the biblical teaching that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise”; and he may have been aware of similar teachings in Smith’s still unpublished revelations.¹¹²

No doubt it was a comfort to Young when Joseph applied the concept to those about to be called as apostles, promising that “weak things, even the smallest and weakest among us, shall be powerful and mighty, and great things shall be accomplished by you from this hour.” As noted, he received a specific blessing that he would grow in his calling, “that he might be strong and mighty . . . that he may add ten talents.”¹¹³ Although he did multiply his talents, according to the promise, Young always remembered his humble beginnings—“that in and of myself I am nothing”—and gave the credit to God:

I have learned that of myself I have no power, but my system is organized to increase in wisdom, knowledge, and power getting a little here and a little there. But when I am left to myself, I have no power, and my wisdom is foolishness, then I cling close to the Lord and I have power in His name.¹¹⁴

Once Brigham Young had overcome his own doubts, he came to see his experience as an appropriate model for other church leaders. Years later when the Twelve discussed the kind of man to fill a vacancy in their ranks, Brigham Young stated:

If a man was suggested to me of good natural judgment, possessing no higher qualifications than faithfulness and humility enough to seek the Lord for all his knowledge and who would trust in him for his strength I would prefere him . . . to the learned and talented.^{115 [131]}

Perhaps Young said this as a reflection of his own call and that of Heber Kimball as apostles.

Young and Kimball were the two least polished of those appointed as apostles in February 1835 and many in Kirtland could not discern their potential. Some of the educated and polished “marvelled” when they were called, Young remembered, and when these would meet Kimball and Young, their looks expressed, “What a pity!”¹¹⁶ A man of simple preparation but considerable natural ability, Brigham Young had the humility to learn and “the grit” to try. He knew his own deficiencies. He also knew his strengths, including his great determination to do right regardless of the cost. “When I think of myself, I think just this—I have the grit in me, and I will do my duty any how.”^{117 [132]}