🥊 Vs. Emma Smith¶
Estimated time to read: 4 minutes
In the October session of General Conference 1866, Brigham Young made these comments:
…To my certain knowledge, Emma Smith is one of the damnedest liars I know of on this earth; yet there is no good thing I would refuse to do for her, if she would only be a righteous woman; but she will continue in her wickedness. Not six months before the death of Joseph, he called his wife Emma into a secret council, and there he told her the truth, and called upon her to deny it if she could. He told her that the judgments of God would come upon her forthwith if she did not repent. He told her of the time she undertook to poison him, and he told her that she was a child of hell, and literally the most wicked woman on this earth, that there was not one more wicked than she. He told here where she got the poison, and how she put it in a cup of coffee; said he ‘You got that poison from so and so, and I drank it, but you could not kill me.’ When it entered his stomach he went to the door and threw it off. he spoke to her in that council in a very severe manner, and she never said one word in reply. I have witnesses of this scene all around, who can testify that I am now telling the truth. Twice she undertook to kill him.
— (6-8 Oct 1866, 36th Semi-Annual Conference, Bowery, G. S. L. City. [Deseret News Weekly 15:36410/10/66, p 4-5 and 15:372, 10/17/66, p 4-5; MS 28:764, 774])
The above excerpt taken from FAIR's page, Why did Emma Smith and Brigham Young dislike one another? They cite Elden Watson as a source for the transcript of 1866's general conference. (I'll take this opportunity to observe that the LDS church's official website only shows Conference addresses after 1971. 🤔)
So, how should we react to this presumably legitimate claim that Brigham says Emma tried to kill her husband, one mighty and strong, the prophet of the restoration? Here are some possibilities:
- Brigham Young is lying in General Conference about the wife of the prophet of the restoration
- The Smiths, being mortal, imperfect people had a strained marriage, both people were under tremendous stress, escalating to civil disagreement; Brigham's exaggerated retelling then gets blown out of proportion
- Emma tried to fucking murder Joseph, sick of his shit
The only source for this is a prophet of God, in general conference, where the prophet prophesies, where the authorized Church of God disperses revelation to people… so… maybe it didn’t actually happen?
To date, I have never ingested poison that my wife slipped into my coffee. I feel pretty confident in the claim that she is not trying to murder me. I mention this to emphasize that I have no idea what the expected reaction would be. I think an important consideration is the possibility that Joseph was incredibly stressed, paranoid, perhaps fearful of other people trying to take his life. I speculate that this could have culminated in him tasting something just slightly off, and immediately jumping to the worst conclusion that his wife is trying to poison him. What is clear, though, is Brigham sharing this information at face value with the pretense that Emma is the damnedest liar, unrepentant, wicked, etc etc. I should hope he's not spreading misinformation at General Conference. That'd be a bad look.
Brigham didn't specify when this happened, so I'm passively curious to know where it stands in relation to the Word of Wisdom. I haven't yet found other contemporary sources, but wow if this one source isn’t about as legitimate as we can hope for.