The Letter That Named a Successor

When the Latter Day Saint movement's founder, Joseph Smith, was killed by a mob in Illinois in June 1844, the resulting succession crisis produced several rival claimants to lead the church he had founded. James Jesse Strang, a recent convert who had joined the movement only months before Smith's death, put himself forward as one of the major contenders by producing a letter, purportedly written and signed by Smith shortly before his death, that named Strang as his chosen successor, and by reporting that he had separately received a vision appointing him seer, revelator, and prophet of the church. Critics have long pointed to the letter's postmark and internal dating, which situate its writing in the days immediately before Smith's death, as grounds for suspecting a forgery, while Strang and his followers maintained its authenticity throughout his lifetime; the dispute has never been conclusively settled by handwriting analysis alone and remains a live question among historians of the movement. Strang's claim nonetheless drew a genuine following, and the movement organized around him took the name the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, insisting on its own status as the sole legitimate continuation of the church Smith had founded in 1830, in direct competition with the much larger body that reorganized under Brigham Young's leadership and relocated to the Salt Lake Valley.