Harvey, “The King of Confidence” (Reviewed by Kyle Beshears)

The King of Confidence' Review: Visionary or Opportunist? - WSJ

Review

Title: The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch
Author: Miles Harvey
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, New York City
Genre: Religious Non-Fiction
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 416
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 9780316463591
Price: $29.00

Reviewed by Kyle Beshears for the Association For Mormon Letters

There is a certain magnetism to James J. Strang. The atheist lawyer converted to Mormonism mere months before the assassination of its founder, but Strang refused to let his neophyte status prevent him from launching an unlikely campaign to succeed Joseph Smith as the second Mormon prophet. Strang produced a contested “letter of appointment” from Smith, circulated stories of revelatory visions and angelic ordination, and excavated ancient plates for translation by Urim and Thummim. A fierce opponent of polygamy, Strang drew away hundreds of Saints from among the westward-bound Brighamites to establish a theocratic commune on an archipelago in Lake Michigan. By the time of his own assassination, Strang had married five women, authored new scripture, weathered accusations of piracy, secured governmental power in Michigan, and crowned himself the king of the kingdom of God on earth. In the end, hundreds of Mormons recognized Strang as the second latter-day prophet (some for only a season), including prominent figures like Martin Harris, William E. McLellin, William E. Marks, John E. Page, and notorious characters like John C. Bennett and George J. Adams. Even Smith’s brother, William, recognized Strang over the Twelve and Brigham Young.

How did Strang convince so many to accept his leadership and follow him to an untamed island in the middle of Lake Michigan? Strang’s most popular biographers—Milo Quaife (The Kingdom of Saint James), Roger Van Noord (King of Beaver Island), and Vickie Cleverley Speek (God Has Made Us a Kingdom)—have all answered this question by drawing on the social and religious influences in which the Saints lived, framing Strang’s story within the regional and religious narratives of the Great Lakes and Mormonism. But, for his newest biographer, Miles Harvey, it was Strang’s charismatic magnetism and the American cultural milieu that provided the right conditions for the Mormon monarch to rise to power. “I was more interested in seeing Strang in the American story rather than simply the Michigan story or the Mormon story,” he explained recently. And so, Harvey panned out further than any biographer before him, offering readers an unparalleled wide-angle view of the cultural scenery in which Strang’s movement appeared.

In King of Confidence, Harvey argues that Strang’s magnetic power was due to, well, the king’s confidence, which could only have flourished in a cultural context that awarded bravado with trust and loyalty. (Contemporary parallels abound, says Harvey. Let the reader understand.) In antebellum America, when “reality was porous” (31) and the impossible felt probable, confidence men (conmen) were king. Americans opened themselves to new possibilities, ushering in an era of culture-shapers who spun a social imaginary of fantastic optimism. It was in this environment that a Mormon kingdom was established by the most unlikely conman, whose patchwork personality combined bits of entertainer Phineas T. Barnum, inventor Samuel Morse, and industrialist John Deere. In asking how the wider culture affected Strang, Harvey also wonders if Strang affected the wider culture. Does Strang’s ghost haunt the island in Melville’s The Confidence-Man (297)? Regardless, Harvey’s wide-angle approach to Strang’s culture is an immensely valuable contribution to our understanding of Strang and the early Strangite movement.

Harvey, an English professor at DePaul University, is new to Mormon history, but it hardly shows. He offers readers new historical insights that were excavated after years of research. Frustratingly, however, the reader is left to sort out when to check the endnotes for sourcing; the text lacks any indication. But, when the endnotes are consulted, Harvey’s research is nothing short of impressive. Perhaps Harvey (or his publisher) chose to forgo notes in the text because King is not a typical historical biography. It is creative non-fiction, a fitting style for the author’s literature background. King reads like a good novel, the kind where each chapter end won’t let your set down the book until you read just one more. It wasn’t just interesting to read; it was fun.

It’s perhaps best for readers hoping for a measured engagement with Strang’s character and motivations to look elsewhere. Harvey does not attempt to conceal his opinion that Strang was the charlatan dictator of a “theocratic kleptocracy” (130). He portrays Strang’s kingdom-building as a means to control people and to establish a piracy empire on the Great Lakes. Strang’s religious convictions, whether sincere or not, are rarely called upon to explain his motivations. Harvey writes that Strang knew how to “game the system” of media (39) and associated with “cronies” (51). He pokes fun at Strang’s use of “seventeenth-century English” (65) when crafting revelation, a common practice in early Mormonism. It’s unsurprising, then, that Amazon classifies King under “Hoaxes & Deceptions” and “Crime & Criminal Biographies,” signaling the author’s opinion to the reader before she has had the chance to click ‘purchase.’

In short, King of Confidence is an excellent, albeit unsubtle, narration of a prophet whose confidence made him king. It is a welcomed addition to the growing corpus of works on Strang and his movement.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.