Kirtland Safety Society - Response in The LDS Community

Response in The LDS Community

Many LDS members (including Church leaders) became disillusioned with Smith and disaffected with the Church in the wake of KSSABC's failure and left the Church or were disfellowshipped or excommunicated. In May 1837, disgruntled LDS members (including Church leaders) and non-members alike began to publicly blame Smith for their losses. Some LDS, like Parley P. Pratt and Cowdery, were later reconciled to Smith and the Church.

Smith warned the community against speculation and counterfeiting. Shortly after his resignation from the KSSABC in July he stated in the August 1837 Messenger and Advocate:

"I am disposed to say a word relative to the bills of the Kirtland Safety Society Bank. I hereby warn them to beware of speculators, renegades and gamblers, who are duping the unsuspecting and the unwary, by palming upon them, those bills, which are of no worth, here. I discountenance and disapprove of any and all such practices. I know them to be detrimental to the best interests of society, as well as to the principles of religion."

Shortly before his resignation, Smith also took out a $1,225 loan from a separate bank to help keep KSSABC solvent. Smith publicly denied claims that the KSSABC was created for the purpose of surreptitiously enriching the LDS leadership, but many disaffected members felt otherwise even though Smith risked losing as much or perhaps more than anyone else due to KSSABC's failure.

Regardless of the reasons for the KSSABC's failure, much of the blame was laid upon Smith. Half of The Quorum of Twelve Apostles accused Smith of improprieties in the banking scandal, and LDS Apostle Heber C. Kimball later said that the bank's failure was so shattering that afterwards "there were not twenty persons on earth that would declare that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God." Warren Parrish, a KSSABC officer who later left the LDS church, claimed that Smith had prophesied that KSSABC "shall become the greatest of all institutions on EARTH." 1837.) Wilford Woodruff's diary sheds light on this detail. Woodruff records that Smith had a revelation on the topic, but declined to share it, saying only that "if we would give heed to the commandments the Lord had given this morning all would be well." Then Woodruff expresses his own hopes that the KSSABC will "become the greatest of all institutions on EARTH."

On January 12, 1838, faced with a warrant for his arrest on a charge of illegal banking, Smith fled with Rigdon to Clay County, Missouri just ahead of an armed group out to capture and hold Smith for trial. Smith and Rigdon were both acquainted with not only conflict and violent mobbing they experienced together in Pennsylvania and New York, but with fleeing from the law. According to Smith, they left "to escape mob violence, which was about to burst upon us under the color of legal process to cover the hellish designs of our enemies." Brigham Young left Kirtland for Missouri weeks earlier on December 22 to avoid the dissidents who were angry with Young and threatened him because of his persistent public defense of Smith's innocence. Most of those who remained committed to the church moved to join the main body of the LDS in Missouri.