Joseph Smith's campaign for President of the United States

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Criticism

Critics charge that Joseph Smith's decision to run for President of the United States in 1844 shows him to be either a megalomaniac bent on amassing ever more power, or a fanatic with delusions of grandeur.

Source(s) of the Criticism

• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1945, 354.
• Thomas Ford, A History of Illinois from Its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847, 2 vols. (1854; reprint, Chicago: Lakeside, 1946), 2:157.
• Henry Mayhew, History of the Mormons; or, Latter-day Saints. With Memois of the Life and Death of Joseph Smith, the "American Mahomet" (Auburn, N.Y.: Derby and Miller, 1852), 163–167.
• Eduard Meyer, "The Origin and History of the Mormons: With Reflections on the Beginnings of Islam and Christianity," translated by Heinz F. Rahde and Eugene Seaich, 123–25, typescript, BYU Special Collections.
• Bruce Kinney, Mormonism: The Islam of America (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1912).
• I. Woodbridge Riley, The Founder of Mormonism: A Psychological Study of Joseph Smith, Jr. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1902).
• T.B.H. Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints (New York: D. Appleton, 1873), 147.

Response

The response should be brief and summary in nature.

Endnotes

1. [note]  Margaret C. Robertson, "The Campaign and the Kingdom: The Activities of the Electioneers in Joseph Smith's Presidential Campaign," BYU Studies 39 no. 3 (2000), 148.