Joseph Smith and the “Happiness Letter”: A Scholarly Response
Examining the authorship dispute, historical context, and critical methodology failures of the LDS Discussions presentation
Overview: Two Letters, One Conflation
The LDS Discussions treatment of the “Happiness Letter” presents what appears to be a straightforward case of Joseph Smith using religious coercion to pressure a nineteen-year-old woman into plural marriage. On close examination, however, the argument suffers from three foundational problems that, taken together, demolish its evidentiary weight: (1) the authorship of the letter attributed to the Nancy Rigdon episode is genuinely disputed at the scholarly level, as established in a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Mormon History by a trained Church historian; (2) the letter to the Whitney family — a completely separate document — is misread by stripping away critical context; and (3) the rhetorical device of comparing Joseph Smith to convicted child predators substitutes emotional shock for historical argument. This response addresses each problem in turn.
It is important to note at the outset that LDS Discussions conflates two separate letters written in 1842 under entirely different circumstances. The “Happiness Letter” — the document containing the famous “Happiness is the object and design of our existence” passage — was allegedly written to Nancy Rigdon in April 1842. The Whitney letter was written to the Whitney family in August 1842 while Joseph Smith was in hiding. The LDS Discussions essay treats both as though they are part of the same continuous indictment. Scholarly rigor requires distinguishing them carefully.
Part I: The Authorship Problem — The Letter to Nancy Rigdon
The Sole Source: John C. Bennett
Every claim that Joseph Smith authored the letter begins and ends with a single source: John C. Bennett. Bennett forwarded the text of the alleged letter to the Sangamo Journal on August 3, 1842 — weeks after being excommunicated for his own well-documented pattern of sexual predation in Nauvoo. Before arriving in Nauvoo, Bennett had a documented history of marital abandonment and deception. He later publicly admitted that his entire involvement with the LDS Church was “a premeditated attempt to expose” it. He demonstrably forged at least one other Joseph Smith document after Smith’s death. The Sangamo Journal itself was a partisan Whig newspaper with a declared anti-Mormon editorial stance.
This is not a peripheral detail. The entire LDS Discussions analysis of the letter’s content — its rhetorical structure, its alleged coercive intent, its comparison to cult leaders — rests entirely on the assumption that Joseph Smith wrote the document. If Bennett fabricated or substantially altered the text, the entire edifice collapses. And the evidence for fabrication is serious.
Gerrit Dirkmaat and the Journal of Mormon History
In 2016, Gerrit Dirkmaat — a trained historian with the Church History Department and a senior member of the Joseph Smith Papers team — published a peer-reviewed article directly addressing this question: “Searching for ‘Happiness’: Joseph Smith’s Alleged Authorship of the 1842 Letter to Nancy Rigdon,” Journal of Mormon History 42, No. 3 (July 2016): 94–119. This is not an anonymous online response; it is a scholarly, footnoted, peer-reviewed historical argument published in the field’s leading academic journal. Dirkmaat’s conclusion was unambiguous: the letter’s attribution to Joseph Smith does not meet standard evidentiary thresholds of historical scholarship.
“It is simply not responsible to assert that the ‘Happiness Letter’ was definitively authored by Smith when no original letter exists nor do any contemporary Mormons attribute it to him. Historical inertia has caused the document to be regarded as definitively Joseph Smith’s rather than careful evaluation.”— Gerrit Dirkmaat, Journal of Mormon History 42:3 (2016), p. 94–119
Dirkmaat identified several critical provenance failures. No original manuscript of the letter exists. The text entered the Manuscript History of the Church not from a primary source but from Bennett’s anti-Mormon book, inserted by clerks without attribution or explanation — a highly anomalous procedure for a document collection that ordinarily tracks provenance meticulously. Bennett’s own timeline is suspicious: he claimed on July 2, 1842, that he did not have the letter, yet produced it within a month while traveling extensively — making ordinary mail delivery implausible as an explanation. Additionally, Dirkmaat notes that the “happiness” teaching may in fact have originated with Bennett himself, not with Joseph Smith, and that the entire document may represent Bennett’s own composition.
The Joseph Smith Papers: Official Scholarly Caution
The editors of the Joseph Smith Papers — the most authoritative scholarly documentary edition of Joseph Smith’s historical record, published by the Church Historian’s Press — took an appropriately cautious position. Rather than including the letter as a confirmed Joseph Smith document, the Papers placed it in an appendix, explicitly because authorship is uncertain. This is a decisive editorial judgment that LDS Discussions does not acknowledge anywhere in its essay. The Papers’ editorial decision reflects the same conclusion Dirkmaat reached: the evidentiary foundation for Joseph Smith’s authorship is insufficient by scholarly standards.
LDS Discussions argues that because later Church leaders quoted the “happiness” passage approvingly, this confirms Smith’s authorship. This argument is logically invalid. Quoting a teaching does not establish the provenance of the document it was drawn from. Leaders quoted the uplifting opening line precisely because it is uplifting — a sentiment consistent with Restoration theology regardless of who first committed it to paper. Attribution through usage is not documentary authentication, and no responsible historian treats it as such.
Sidney Rigdon’s Statement — A Denial, Not a “Cover-Up”
LDS Discussions characterizes Sidney Rigdon’s published statement as a “carefully worded denial,” implying it was designed to obscure the truth while technically not lying. But reading Rigdon’s statement plainly, he asserted: (a) the letter was not written by Joseph Smith; (b) it was not in his handwriting; (c) Nancy Rigdon never told Bennett that it was written by Smith. These are direct, falsifiable claims on the public record, not carefully coded evasions. The LDS Discussions framing treats any denial as evidence of guilt, which is epistemically closed — no denial could ever count as evidence of innocence. That is not a standard a historian can accept.
Furthermore, the fact that Joseph Smith dictated his documents through scribes is not evidence of concealment. This was his universal and well-documented practice for virtually every letter and revelation he produced. LDS Discussions inverts this: because the letter is not in Joseph’s handwriting (as Rigdon noted), and because Joseph dictated through scribes, the argument requires that Joseph’s denial of authorship must be false. But this reasoning treats the lack of original manuscript as confirmation of authorship by the person denying it — a logical reversal that no court of law and no scholarly journal would accept.
Part II: The Whitney Letter — Context Stripped, Meaning Inverted
Who Was the Letter Actually Written To?
The August 18, 1842 letter was addressed to “Brother and Sister Whitney, and &c.” — that is, to Newel K. Whitney (Bishop of Nauvoo and one of Joseph Smith’s most trusted ecclesiastical associates) and his wife Elizabeth, with Sarah Ann included as a member of the household. This is not a private romantic letter from a man to a woman. It is a pastoral communication from a church leader to a family unit. LDS Discussions presents it as the former; the documentary evidence establishes the latter beyond reasonable dispute.
Joseph Smith explicitly stated his purpose in requesting the family’s visit: “one thing I want to see you for is <to> git the fulness of my blessings sealed upon our heads.” As Richard L. Bushman — Joseph Smith’s most comprehensive and universally respected modern biographer — and Todd Compton — a careful, non-apologetic historian of plural marriage — both acknowledge, this language almost certainly refers to sealing ordinances. Critically, three days after this letter was written, Newel K. Whitney and his wife Elizabeth were sealed in eternal marriage. This is a direct, contemporaneous corroboration that the letter’s stated religious purpose was carried out as promised.
The “Burn This Letter” Instruction: Operational Security, Not Romantic Concealment
LDS Discussions treats the instruction to burn the letter as the signature of illicit intent — something a man with nothing to hide would never request. The historical context makes this reading extremely difficult to sustain. Joseph Smith wrote the letter on August 18, 1842, while actively hiding from law enforcement. He had been accused of complicity in the attempted assassination of Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs, and Missouri authorities were pressing for his extradition. His enemies had both political and financial motivation to locate him.
Joseph himself made the reason explicit: “my life depends upon it.” This is not rhetorical flourish. Two days before the letter was written, Emma Smith recorded that the volume of visitors to Joseph’s hiding place endangered his safety because he could be traced through them. The instruction to destroy the letter was standard operational security for a man under genuine legal threat — not the fingerprint of a secret lover. When a man in hiding writes “burn this letter,” the most parsimonious explanation is that he did not want his location discovered, not that he was concealing an affair.
The “Avoid Emma” Instruction: Safety, Not Deception
LDS Discussions presents the instruction to come without Emma as proof that Joseph was hiding a romantic rendezvous from his wife. FAIR Latter-day Saints’ analysis of the letter identifies two historically adequate alternative explanations. First, Emma was a known public figure whose movements could be and were monitored by Joseph’s enemies; if Emma were followed to his hiding place, anyone there would be endangered. Second, Emma had not yet been sealed in plural marriage and had not fully consented to the practice — her presence during ordinances involving the sealed relationship with Sarah Ann would have been pastorally and practically complicated. Neither of these explanations requires deception as the animating motive.
Todd Compton, writing without apologetic agenda, acknowledged that the Whitney visit had “a religious aspect” involving “a meeting with Sarah’s family.” This is the assessment of a scholar who has written critically and carefully about Joseph Smith’s plural marriages — and even he recognizes that reducing this letter to clandestine romance distorts its character.
Part III: The Methodological Failures of the LDS Discussions Essay
Relying on a Compromised Adversarial Witness
John C. Bennett is the linchpin of the LDS Discussions narrative. Without Bennett, there is no documented text of the letter, no account of the locked-room proposal, and no chain of evidence linking the letter to Joseph Smith. Yet Bennett’s credibility is, by any standard of historical evaluation, severely compromised. LDS Discussions itself acknowledges that “Bennett very likely embellishes this account” — then proceeds to build its entire argument on Bennett’s testimony.
Standard historical criticism requires that when a sole witness is demonstrated to be (a) a declared adversary seeking revenge, (b) a proven fabricator of documents, (c) a documented sexual predator himself, and (d) operating through a partisan media outlet with a stated anti-Mormon agenda — their uncorroborated testimony cannot serve as the primary evidentiary foundation for a serious historical argument. The essay acknowledges Bennett’s unreliability in one sentence, then treats his account as fact in every subsequent paragraph. This is not historical methodology; it is motivated reading.
It is also worth noting what LDS Discussions omits entirely: according to research published on the Mormon Polygamy Documents website, there is evidence that John C. Bennett himself was practicing sexual predation in Nauvoo, that he had been expelled from the Church specifically for this conduct, and that women in Nauvoo testified he claimed to have learned the “spiritual wifery” doctrines from Joseph Smith. LDS Discussions presents these women’s testimonies as evidence against Joseph. But the same testimonies, properly contextualized, may reflect Bennett’s own fabrications designed to give his predatory behavior a prophetic cover — precisely the strategy a man of Bennett’s documented character would employ.
The Association Fallacy: Comparing Joseph Smith to Convicted Predators
LDS Discussions quotes at length Jonathan Streeter’s comparison of Joseph Smith to David Koresh, Warren Jeffs, David Berg, Wayne Bent, and Tony Alamo — all convicted criminals guilty of rape, child abuse, and in some cases murder. This rhetorical move is a textbook association fallacy (also known as guilt by association). The logical structure is: these criminals used religious language to coerce sexual compliance; Joseph Smith also used religious language; therefore Joseph Smith is equivalent to these criminals.
By this identical logic, any religious figure who has ever taught that God commands specific behavior and that obedience brings blessings is equivalent to a convicted child predator. The argument proves nothing specifically about Joseph Smith. It is designed to generate emotional revulsion that forecloses rational evaluation. A scholarly apologetic cannot be refuted by this kind of argument because the argument itself is not scholarly.
There is a profound and morally serious difference between a religious community organized around covenantal marriage — however unconventional its forms — and criminal organizations defined by predation on minors, deception, and violence. The wives of Joseph Smith were adult women. Many of them testified decades later, voluntarily and at personal cost, to their conviction that they had entered into a divine covenant. Conflating their testimonies with the experiences of children coerced by convicted felons is not only logically invalid; it is a grave disrespect to the women themselves.
Circular Reasoning: A Framework That Cannot Be Falsified
LDS Discussions presents every piece of evidence — denials, counter-testimony, Sidney Rigdon’s public statement, Joseph Smith calling off attacks on Nancy Rigdon — as confirmation of its initial conclusion. This is the defining characteristic of circular reasoning: a framework that treats all evidence as confirming and no evidence as potentially disconfirming. Rigdon’s denial becomes “carefully worded cover-up.” Joseph stopping the attacks becomes “evidence of a deal to silence the family.” There is no conceivable evidence the essay would accept as challenging its thesis — which is precisely what disqualifies the argument as genuine historical inquiry. In legitimate historical scholarship, a thesis must be falsifiable. A narrative that absorbs all counterevidence as further proof of itself is not history; it is ideology.
Part IV: What Is Actually Known — Honest Historical Assessment
Honest historians acknowledge the complexity of Joseph Smith’s practice of plural marriage. It was practiced secretly in Nauvoo before it was publicly acknowledged. It involved real people, real families, and genuine tensions — including tensions with Emma Smith. The Church’s own Gospel Topics Essays acknowledge these complexities plainly and without evasion. None of this requires accepting the LDS Discussions construction of events, which depends on a disputed document, a sole hostile witness, and a methodology that forecloses falsification.
What is historically established about the Nancy Rigdon episode is modest: some form of meeting occurred between Joseph Smith and Nancy Rigdon in April 1842, arranged by Nancy Marinda Hyde; there was subsequent friction between Joseph Smith and the Rigdon family; Sidney Rigdon publicly denied that a letter in circulation was written by Joseph Smith; and some form of proposal was acknowledged. The precise details of what was said, what was written, and who wrote it remain genuinely and seriously contested by credentialed scholars.
What is historically established about the Whitney letter is the following: it was written by Joseph Smith to the Whitney family during a period of acute legal crisis; its stated purpose was religious and covenantal; the sealing it referenced was performed three days later; and its instructions for secrecy are fully and adequately explained by his dangerous circumstances. None of the letter’s unusual features require romantic or deceptive explanation when the historical context is properly applied.
The honest seeker of historical truth deserves these distinctions. Complexity is not the same as guilt, and contested provenance is not the same as proven authorship.
Conclusion
The LDS Discussions essay on the “Happiness Letter” fails on its own evidentiary terms. It relies on a sole adversarial witness of demonstrated dishonesty. It ignores a peer-reviewed scholarly article in the Journal of Mormon History challenging the letter’s attribution. It omits the Joseph Smith Papers’ editorial decision to treat the letter as having uncertain authorship. It strips the Whitney letter of the historical context that explains its content. It employs a comparative framework designed to produce emotional revulsion rather than historical understanding. And it constructs an interpretive circle in which no evidence could, even in principle, challenge its conclusion.
The Nauvoo period of Church history is complex, and its complexity deserves honest engagement — not a prosecutorial presentation built on a forger’s testimony and sustained by logical fallacy. Joseph Smith’s character and prophetic ministry can and should be evaluated on well-documented evidence, of which there is substantial quantity across a long historical record. The “Happiness Letter” does not meet the evidentiary standard required to serve as the centerpiece of a serious historical indictment.
The famous words quoted from this document — “Happiness is the object and design of our existence, and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it” — remain a genuine and scripturally coherent expression of Restoration theology. They have been quoted by prophets and educators across generations because they are true, regardless of who first committed them to paper in April 1842. That truth endures. The critical case built upon a disputed document, sourced to a convicted predator’s partisan press release, does not.
Key Sources and Further Reading
Gerrit Dirkmaat, “Searching for ‘Happiness’: Joseph Smith’s Alleged Authorship of the 1842 Letter to Nancy Rigdon,” Journal of Mormon History 42, No. 3 (July 2016): 94–119. Available via Internet Archive.
Joseph Smith Papers, Appendix: Letter to Nancy Rigdon, circa Mid-April 1842. josephsmithpapers.org — Editorial decision to place in appendix reflects scholarly uncertainty over authorship.
FAIR Latter-day Saints, “Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Whitney Letter,” fairlatterdaysaints.org — Full analysis of the August 1842 Whitney letter with primary source citations and context.
Richard L. Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling: A Cultural Biography of Mormonism’s Founder (New York: Knopf, 2005). The standard scholarly biography; covers the Nauvoo plural marriage period with full documentary engagement.
Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997). A careful, non-apologetic history that contextualizes the Whitney letter within the broader pattern of plural marriage in Nauvoo.