Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index The Nauvoo Expositor was a local newspaper in Nauvoo, Illinois that issued only one publication in June 1844 before the paper and its press were declared a nuisance under an ordinance passed by the city council, and the second mayor of Nauvoo, Joseph Smith, Jr, ordered the city marshall to destroy it. Opponents of Smith published this paper which was criticial of him and other leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and which Mormon leaders viewed as incendiary to the mobs that they had become familiar with in New York, Ohio, and Missouri. Under Nauvoo's city-state charter (granting Nauvoo's city council powers equal to the Illinois legislature within the jurisdiction of Nauvoo), power was granted to the city council to pass ordinances for the order and welfare of the city. After turning to William Blackstone's legal canon that, among other things, included a libellous press as a nuisance, the council passed an ordinance with respect to nuisances after discussion that lasted [3?] days. Under the council's new ordinance and the powers granted to Smith as mayor, he declared the press a nuisance and ordered the city marshall to destroy the paper and the press. Critics of the Church have questioned whether the city council's ordinance and the mayor's declaration and order were constitutional. One Mormon legal scholar Dallin H. Oaks has addressed the issue and concluded that although the actions may not have been wise they were in keeping with accepted legal practices of the time. Some apologists claim that the critics' own centristic view have led them to misjudge Nauvoo officials actions of the mid 19th century by legal standards of the late 20th century. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution was twenty four years away from being enacted in 1868, and that amendment's incorporation of federal constitional rights against state and local governments was not enforced until 1931. Thus, the issue falls primarily on the constitution of Illinois and the Nauvoo Charter, not the federal law of the United States such as the First Amendment. Some argue that even if the actions of the mayor were not illegal under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (because it was not governing law), they were illegal under the 1818 Constitution of Illinois. Among other constitutional rights included in the Illinois constitution, it prohibits ex-post facto laws (VIII.16) and provides for freedom of the press (VIII.22). The mayor's action are not clearly illegal under either of those constitutional provisions. Freedom of speech is not absolute; there are in this case applicable limitations and restrictions on that right. The ex-post facto prohibition may apply because the city council passed an ordinance regarding nuisances and then the mayor declared the Expositor press a nuisance only after, rather than before, the first issue had already been printed. However, the decision to declare the press a nuisance also rested in part on the editor's stated and unretracted intentions going forward. The press was declared a nuisance in part because it was deemed that if it was not immediately unchecked, it would inflame Nauvoo's Mormon citizens and lead to public disorder or a public disturbance. Assuming that the mayor's declaration and order passed the ex-post facto legal hurdle, it also needed to meet the Nauvoo Charter's requirement that new ordinances must be published under certain criteria and could only become effective 30 days after the ordinance was passed. This requirement was not met. Another consideration is whether the common law rule of nuisance was applicable without the need to pass a nuisance ordinance nor run up against any ex-post facto restriction. Finally, the destruction of the press rather than merely taking the press into custody would have incurred a taking requiring just compensation from the city. The Nauvoo council and mayor considered that the most pertinent and inflammatory allegation presented by the paper was that Smith secretly practiced "spiritual wifery" or polygamy. Although Church leaders condemned "spiritual wifery" and even excommunicated members for the practice, the doctrine of Plural Marriage was practiced, but not openly among members of the Church until a few years after they arrived in Utah in 1856. The revelation on this practice dictated by Smith has been canonized in Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Smith may have ordered the destruction of the press as mayor instead of suing for libel personally because he did not want the evidence of his polygamy presented before public in a court in a part of the country that condemned Plural Marriage. Some apologists concede that the destruction of the press was at least procedurally illegal in some sense and even Oaks may have waffled later from his earlier defense. Regardless of the legality, the actions of the city council and the mayor precipitated the imprisonment of Joseph Smith in Carthage, Illinois, where he was murdered by a mob. (See Martydom of Joseph Smith.) External Links The full text of the Nauvoo Charter can be found here The full text of the 1818 Illinois Constitution can be found here This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.