In the True Blue’s Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation

Abstract

“worthy” independent producer. In succeeding chapters, as Smith’s power in Nauvoo solidified and the Mormons came to be considered a particularist group that voted and consolidated power in the interests of their community at the expense of their neighbors, Simeone argues that the old settlers of Hancock County considered the Saints a threat to their individualist societal culture and utilized their own informal state when the governor would not use state resources to check them. The greatest strength of this book is Simeone’s encyclopedic knowledge of the political landscape of Illinois in the 1830s–1840s. Set against the backdrop of the larger national political story of Jacksonian America, Simeone’s detailing of the political machinations at the state and local level demonstrates a depth of research in the state archives that brings to life those engaged in debates over the freedom of the press, town charters, religious tolerance, and abolition. Governor Thomas Ford, Stephen A. Douglas, Thomas Sharp, and many other minor characters in this drama appear with nuanced analysis. Even as Simeone connects Illinois state politics to national issues, he makes clear that each political party shaped their platforms in accordance with local concerns in recognition of how much power really rested at the local level in the young state. For all of its analytical punch, the narrative arc of The Saints and the State can be a bit daunting for readers unfamiliar with the Mormon troubles in Missouri and Illinois. With a thematic structure focused on highlighting different aspects of the competing societal cultures that created tensions, events are describedmultiple times throughout the text, and not always in chronological order. While this approach is often effective in demonstrating how the actions or statements of one character had competing meanings and uses for the multiple groups involved, it can give the less-informed reader a bit of whiplash as the narrative jumps from 1839 to 1844 and back again. It is also important to note that Simeone considers this a story of “institutional breakdown and concomitant group polarization, not religious intolerance” (p. 268). Put another way, Simeone is not attempting to write a history of religion. Thus, his engagement with the current historiography concerning Mormon religious history is limited. While there has been a lot of recent work on the history of Nauvoo and the early Mormon religion, the chapter on “Joseph Smith and the New Politics of Belief” draws largely from older biographies of the prophet and tends to sketch him as something of a conman. James Simeone’s The Saints and the State offers a thought-provoking analysis of state formation in the antebellum United States. While the analysis of Mormonism is limited, this text offers an incredibly rich depiction of those who considered the Latter-Day Saints a threat and how they utilized power in the emerging democracy of antebellum Illinois.