Mormon History Post: Special Edition
 

An excerpt of "Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government."

Written by W.W. Phelps according to Joseph Smith's direction (Joseph dictated points to Phelps in the last part of January, 1844, Phelps wrote the document, and it was printed in February, 1844 by John Taylor).

This document was eventually included in "The Voice of Truth," by General Joseph Smith (which is mostly comprised of documents dictated by Smith to Phelps). BYU has the 1845 printing that includes the King Follett Sermon in the appendix, but does not, to my knowledge, have the 1844 printing. I have a reprint of the 1844 printing.

The 1844 printing of "Views" was used as a tract by 300+ "missionaries," who were commissioned to Joseph's campaign.

Here is Joseph Smith's "plank" on imprisonment (Phelps is responsible for spelling and grammar):

"Petition your state legislatures to pardon every convict in their several penitentiaries: blessing them as they go, and saying to them in the name of the Lord, go thy way and sin no more. Advise your legislators when they make laws for larceny, burglary or any felony, to make the penalty applicable to work upon roads, public works, or any place where the culprit can be taught more wisdom and more virtue; and become more enlightened. Rigor and seclusion will never do as much to reform the propensities of man, as reason and friendship. Murder only can claim confinement or death. Let the penitentiaries be turned into seminaries of learning, where intelligence, like the angels of heaven, would banish such fragments of barbarism: imprisonment for debt is a meaner practice than the savage tolerates with all his ferocity. 'Amor vincit omnia.' Love conquers all."

An enlightened view for that time period, don't you think?

Where does torture fit in?

LOL.

And another quote from the same document:


“At the age, then, of sixty years our blooming republic began to decline under the withering touch of Martin Van Buren! Disappointed ambition, thirst for power, pride, corruption, party spirit, faction, patronage; perquisites, fame, tangling alliances; priest-craft and spiritual wickedness in high places, struck hands, and reveled in midnight splendor. Trouble, vexation, perplexity and contention mingled with hope, fear and murmuring, rumbled through the union and agitated the whole nation as would an earthquake at the center of the earth, the world, heaving the sea beyond its bounds, and shaking the everlasting hills: so, in hopes of better times, with jealousy, hypocritical pretensions, and pompous ambition, were luxuriating on the ill-gotten spoils of the people, they rose in their majesty like a tornado, and swept through the land, till Gen. Harrison appeared, as a star among the storm clouds, for better weather.”

define torture.

just kidding.