By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

---

The Mormon Apostle John A. Widtsoe made this statement concerning Joseph Smith:

No reliable evidence of dishonesty has yet been uncovered. There is no evidence that he at any time attempted to escape his financial obligations. Instead, the evidence is that he sought to meet every honest obligation. For example, after leaving Kirtland where his life was in jeopardy, he made a list of his creditors and the amount the owed each. That was the method of an honest man. There was no subterfuge. . . . Sooner or later, his honest debts were paid. (Gospel Interpretations, page 141)

[Bold added for emphasis in quotations and does not appear in originals.]

Now, while it is true that Joseph Smith made a list of his creditors, he apparently did not intend to pay them, for in 1842 he tried to take out bankruptcy. The Mormon writer John A. Stewart states:

In summer of 1842 he had reluctantly availed himself of the bankruptcy law passed by Congress, to dispose of a staggering debt load, . . . (Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, page 183)

Shortly after Joseph Smith petitioned to be declared a bankrupt, John C. Bennett published his book, History of the Saints. In this book he charged that Joseph Smith fraudulently transferred some of his property to others to avoid losing it. J. Butterfield, United States Attorney for the District of Illinois, saw John C. Bennett’s charges printed in the Sangamo Journal on July 15, 1842. He felt that an investigation should be made to see if Bennett’s accusations were true. Joseph Smith and four others had signed a promissory note to the United States Government for $4,866.38 in 1840 which they had not paid off. Therefore, Butterfield proceeded to Nauvoo to make his investigation. After making the investigation, he wrote a letter to C. B. Penrose, Solicitor of the Treasury, in which he stated:

Upon my arrival at Nauvoo I made a very full examination into the transfers of property made by Joseph Smith upon the eve of his application for the benefit of the said act, and I succeeded beyond my expectations; I found that after the passage of the Bankrupt Act, and after he had contracted the debt upon which the judg’t. in favor of the United States was rendered against him, he made voluntary conveyances of real estate of an amount much more than sufficient to satisfy the judgement to his wife and to his infant children and friends, without any consideration whatever: I found that all the statement made by Gen’l. Bennett in relation to Joseph Smith’s fraudulent transfers of his property were true; and that there were several other fraudulent conveyances not mentioned by him. . . . I shall be ready to establish such fraudulent acts on the part of Joseph Smith as will prevent his discharge.
(Letter by J. Butterfield, U.S. Attorney for the District of Illinois to C. B. Penrose, Solicitor of the Treasury, dated October 13, 1842, found in the National Archives of the United States, Records of the Solicitor of the Treasury, Record Group 206, microfilm copy)

The attempt to stop Joseph Smith was successful, for on August 6, 1844, Butterfield wrote Penrose a letter in which he stated: “I defeated Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet from obtaining the benefit of the Bankrupt Act.” Since Smith died in 1844, the matter was not settled until after his death. In a “Reference Service Report” from the National Archives, dated September 23, 1963, we find that a judgment “was rendered against the widow of Joseph Smith and 104 other defendants . . . in which the decree of the court was satisfied by sale of the defendant’s lands.”

For many years anti-Mormon writers have accused the early Mormon leaders of fraud, treason, stealing, counterfeiting, murder and many other crimes. We have made a very thorough study of these charges, and, like Butterfield, we have succeeded beyond our expectations. In our work, The Mormon Kingdom (volume 1 and volume 2) we will deal with all of these subjects.

---

---