Joseph Smith was jailed in Carthage on trumped up charges?
Now your mileage may vary but in my experience during seminary(and any other CES related class that I had) anytime Joseph Smith was jailed for anything it was based on 'trumped up charges by men seeking to frustrate the work of God.' I never heard a thing about any printing press.
Joseph Smith was jailed in Carthage because he smashed the printing press of the
Nauvoo Expositor. His main fear was that the newpaper would incite more mob violence. The newpaper had taken to printing dissenting views and Joseph Smith got permission from the town council(who had errantly determined that the charter gave them the authority to shut down the paper) to order the sheriff and his men to break into the newpaper. He was arrested and brought to Carthage. Something about freedom of the press.
Note: I took the following from this website:
http://www.lds-mormon.com/06.shtml
The website author claims to have gotten it off the BYU website but I couldn't find it there so I don't know for sure how authentic the below account is.
"The Expositor appeared on Friday afternoon, and the following morning and the Monday thereafter the city council met to consider its threat to the peace and security of the city. With the powers granted by the city charter, they declared the newspaper a nuisance, as they felt its declarations threatened the security of the city. They authorized the mayor (Joseph Smith) to see that the nuisance was abated. The Prophet instructed the city marshal to abate the nuisance which he and his men accomplished by breaking into the printing shop, throwing the press into street where it was smashed with a sledge hammer, dumping the type into the street, and burning the undistributed copies of the newspaper. Such an extralegal method of abating a newspaper was not without precedent in Illinois (though not in keeping with long established practices concerning abatement of a public press), but it was viewed as a violation to the federal Constitution which forbids destruction of property without due process of law. The city council had only the authority to abate the nuisance by suspending further publication of the paper pending a court hearing which would determine whether it was a public nuisance.
The proprietor of the paper went to Carthage and swore out a warrant for the 18 members of the city council, charging that they had violated the federal Constitution by destroying property with the resultant implication of "suppression of the freedom of the press." In response to the charge 15 members of the Nauvoo city council appeared before the justice of the peace in Carthage on Tuesday, June 25, and were bound over to the next term of the circuit court on bail of $500 each. Jointly they posted $7500 in bonds and some of them returned to Nauvoo that afternoon. Joseph and Hyrum, however, remained in Carthage to have an interview with Governor Ford. While awaiting audience with him, they were arrested on charges of treason and rioting for having used some of the Nauvoo Legion to assist the town marshal in the destruction of Expositor equipment. For this charge they were committed to the Carthage jail that afternoon. "
Kind of ironic don't you think? The part about the printing press getting smashed sounds remarkably familiar.
This one bugs me a little bit but probably isn't one of the main ones. Its the secretive nature of CES, when it comes to historical accuracy, that's really starting to get on my nerves.