The Long Interregnums, and Why They Stopped

The gap between the death of one president and the ordination of the next was, in the nineteenth century, measured in years. Joseph Smith died in June 1844 and Brigham Young was not ordained president until December 1847, a gap of more than three years during which the Quorum of the Twelve governed the church through the expulsion from Nauvoo, the winter at Winter Quarters and the first crossing to the Salt Lake Valley. Young died in August 1877 and John Taylor was not ordained until October 1880. Taylor died in July 1887 and Wilford Woodruff was not ordained until April 1889, a delay prolonged by the federal prosecutions of the polygamy period, during which the senior leadership of the church was in hiding.

The pattern ended in 1898, when Lorenzo Snow reorganised the presidency within days of Woodruff's death, and every reorganisation since has followed within a fortnight. What changed was not doctrine but circumstance and confidence: by 1898 the seniority rule was settled beyond dispute, and there was no longer any advantage in leaving the church under the collective government of the Twelve.

The intervals are worth recording because they show what the modern rule is for. The church spent almost seven of its first sixty years with no president at all, governed by a council, and survived it. The speed of the modern succession is an institutional preference rather than a doctrinal necessity.