Succession Crisis (Latter Day Saints) - Aftermath and Reorganization

Aftermath and Reorganization

The majority of Latter Day Saints in the Nauvoo area accepted the leadership of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, either immediately or within the following two decades. In 1846, this group was forced to leave their homes and the newly-built Mormon temple in Nauvoo because of mounting conflict and persecutions (the temple was soon destroyed). The saints began to migrate west, though slowly at first because of the harsh winters; the wagon trains halted at Winter Quarters, Nebraska before eventually leaving to settle in the Great Basin in what is now Utah.

In 1847, Brigham Young and the other Apostles formed a new First Presidency. Young, who had already been sustained as the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, thus became the President of what is now known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest sect of Mormonism by a factor of fifty (with 13,193,999 members worldwide, as of December 31, 2007). His two counselors were Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, the latter of whom was present when Joseph Smith was killed. Young's succession became a precedent without exception within the Utah sect; with the death of each President, the First Presidency is dissolved and the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles becomes the new President. Utah Latter-day Saints sustain the new prophet and his counselors at a solemn assembly during the next General Conference.

Sidney Rigdon's church dissolved a few years after its organization, but it was reorganized as The Church of Jesus Christ in 1862, which stll exists . They view Young's assumption of power as a violation of church law compromising the authority of Sidney Rigdon without a majority quorum vote.

James J. Strang's leadership was based predominantly on his own claim to be a prophet called by God. When he was mortally wounded by assassins in 1856, he refused to name a successor, leaving the matter in God's hands. When no prophet appeared, the bulk of his church dissolved, though a few loyal congregations remain today.

Many of the Latter Day Saints who remained in the Midwest, including Strang, believed that one or more of Joseph Smith's sons would eventually lead the church. The church had published a revelation in 1841 stating "I say unto my servant Joseph, In thee, and in thy seed, shall the kindred of the earth be blessed", and this was widely interpreted as endorsing the concept of Lineal Succession. Documentary evidence indicates also that Smith set apart his son as his successor at various private meetings and public gatherings, including Liberty and Nauvoo. Indeed, Brigham Young assured the bulk of Smith's followers as late as 1860 that young Joseph would eventually take his father's place. Young may have recognized the patrilineal right of succession for Smith’s sons as within the years following Smith’s murder he made apparently earnest entreaties to Smith’s sons, Joseph Smith III and David Hyrum Smith, to join his church's hierarchy in Utah. Both Smiths, however, were profoundly opposed to a number of practices, especially plural marriage, and refused to join the Utah church.

Eventually, many Latter Day Saints in the Midwest coalesced behind the leadership of Jason W. Briggs, Zenas H. Gurley, William Marks and others. In the late 1850s, they proposed a more solid church structure, sometimes referred to in contemporary sources as the New Organization, and like other Latter Day Saint groups asked Joseph Smith III to be their president. Smith III refused to lead any church unless he felt inspired to do so. By 1860, he reported that he had received such inspiration and became Prophet/President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on April 6. Smith III stated at that conference in Amboy, Illinois:

I would say to you, brethren, as I hope you may be, and in faith I trust you are, as a people that God has promised his blessings upon, I came not here of myself, but by the influence of the Spirit. For some time past I have received manifestations pointing to the position which I am about to assume. I wish to say that I have come here not to be dictated by any men or set of men. I have come in obedience to a power not my own, and shall be dictated by the power that sent me.

Joseph Smith's widow Emma, as well as Joseph III's two brothers, affiliated with this organization. A decade later the group added the word Reorganized to the official church name to distinguish it from the much larger group in Utah. For a time until the start of the twentieth century, leaders of both this group and the Utah group were Smith first cousins. The church is now referred to as the Community of Christ.

There were several other Latter Day Saint branches in Bloomington, Crow Creek, Half Moon Prairie, and Eagle Creek, Illinois, and Vermillion, Indiana, each left leaderless after the 1844 succession crisis. In 1863, these groups united under the leadership of Granville Hedrick. This group inherited the name "Church of Christ" and became known popularly as the Hedrickites. Today, this small church has ownership of a large portion of the temple site in Independence, Missouri, and its members are commonly known as the Temple Lot Mormons.