James B. Allen, retired professor of history at BYU, will give a lecture tomorrow in the Library Auditorium on the topic, “Joseph Smith vs. John C. Calhoun: Presidential Politics and the States’ Right Controversy.” Allen’s lecture is the third in a series of monthly lectures given at BYU on aspects of Joseph Smith’s life (comments on earlier lectures can be found here and here).

The press release sheds some light on Allen’s thesis:

In broader terms, the lecture will discuss Joseph Smith’s political views as well as his decision to run for President of the United States in 1844. “I will discuss the various possible reasons Joseph Smith decided to run for President but, more importantly, focus on the Constitutional issue of states’ rights,” says Allen. South Carolina Senator Calhoun was one of the government officials Smith met with during his 1840 visit to Washington, D.C. After explaining the plight of the Mormons who had lost so many rights and possessions in Missouri, Calhoun and others told him the federal government could not intervene in an issue involving states’ rights, and thus help the saints.

In his lecture, Professor Allen will describe Joseph Smith’s platform as presidential candidate and how his proposals resided within the mainstream of the period’s political debates. The professor asserts that Smith’s campaign anticipated the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868.

Correspondence between Calhoun and Joseph Smith in late 1843 and early 1844 discussing these issues, as well as Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential platform (penned by W.W. Phelps), can be read here. Joseph noted in his opening letter to Calhoun that the Latter-day Saints had been robbed “and endured nameless sufferings by the State of Missouri, and from her borders have been driven by force of arms, contrary to our national covenants.” He also noted that his people had been unsuccessful in obtaining any type of redress for their suffering.

Joseph wrote similar letters to presidential candidates Henry Clay, Lewis Cass, Richard M. Johnson, and Martin Van Buren, each letter asking, “‘What will be your rule of action relative to us as a people,‘ should fortune favor your ascension to the chief magistracy?” (The letter to Van Buren contained this postscript: “Also whether your views or feelings have changed since the subject matter of this communication was presented you in your then official capacity at Washington, in the year 1841, and by you treated with a coldness, indifference, and neglect, bordering on contempt.”)

Calhoun, Clay, and Cass replied. B.H. Roberts characterized Joseph’s subsequent replies to Calhoun and Clay as “scathing.” Roberts commented:

Viewing these replies in the absence of the intensity of feeling which produced them, they seem unnecessarily harsh. The harshness, however, is rather the fault of the times than of the writer. Those were days when moderation in language was certainly not characteristic of current political literature. In it personal abuse seems often to have been mistaken for argument; and severity of expression rather than force of reason seemed to be the purpose both of political speaking and writing. The letters written to these leading candidates were also marred by senseless and pedantic quotations from foreign and ancient languages—the work probably of W. W. Phelps.

(Comprehensive History of the Church, 2:204-205)