Review
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Title: America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation
Author: John Bicknell
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Genre: American history
Year Published: 2014
Number of Pages: 305
Binding: Hardback
ISBN10: 1613730101
ISBN13: 978-1613730102
Price: $26.95
Reviewed by Greg Seppi for the Association for Mormon Letters
1844 was a busy year for the United States. A new state, at the time its own recently established republic, with over 12 million dollars in debt, was almost brought into the country (Texas). A presidential candidate and his brother were assassinated (Joseph and Hyrum Smith). The secretary of state was killed when a test-firing cannon exploded during a party on a ship (Abel Upshur on the newly commissioned Princeton). The son-in-law of a senator stole a cannon from the U.S. government for his expedition to the Pacific coast (John C. Frémont). The world’s end was declared and re-determined several times by a prominent preacher who organized a massive effort to distribute tracts and Bibles in Washington, D.C. (William Miller).
In short, like Bernard DeVoto’s “The Year of Decision: 1846” (1943), which this book has much in common with, Bicknell’s gloss of American history is quite busy. A journalist by trade, he uses a highly readable narrative style to describe the events and background of pivotal events in American history during 1843 and 1844.
Bicknell spends a good deal of time discussing the Mormons and the events leading up to Joseph Smith’s death. He includes material drawn from the Times and Seasons (the Church News of 1839-1844) and other first-hand sources, though he seems to rely heavily on Richard Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith for much of the details and perspective. The view of Joseph Smith seemed quite positive to me. While Bicknell wisely sidesteps the issue of Joseph Smith’s sealings to married women, he describes the alienation that occurred due to polygamy in summary fashion. He also remarks on how accounts of polygamy in Nauvoo were picked up by political factions in Illinois fearful of Mormon political and social power (p. 34). Bicknell is quite blunt on his opinion of the political anti-Mormons—he calls them “suspicious and bigoted”—and he credits Joseph Smith for trying to preserve the “constitutional rights” of the Saints in the face of persecution (p. 34). While he acknowledges the discomfort that the Saints caused the people around them, he seems to strongly take Smith’s side, at least as far as the political situation of Illinois goes. This book is, of course, not a monograph about the politics of western Illinois, so it is not surprising that the author does not dwell particularly long on contrasting viewpoints (he does acknowledge that such differences in opinion exist).
I was most interested in Bicknell’s account of Smith’s presidential campaign. My great-great-great grandfather, William R. R. Stowell, was an early convert to the Church from England. He served a mission in early 1844 in support of Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign. Missionaries in 1844 were both political and religious; they would preach on Sunday, then hold a meeting and pass out tracts such as “General Smith’s views of the powers and policy of the government of the United States” (p. 34-35, 165). As Bicknell notes, “… [Smith’s] entire presidential campaign represented a convergence of the prophet’s theological and political opinions” (p. 36).
Bicknell describes Smith’s political campaign in detail, and this portion of the book should be interesting to Latter-day Saints less familiar with the nitty-gritty details of the campaign. He addresses Smith’s platform and the way its planks responded to the concerns of the country. He bases much of his analysis of Smith’s campaign on General Smith’s views, but does not note the influence of W. W. Phelps on the writing of that and other campaign pieces—the ideas being Joseph Smith’s own, but the actual production carried out by Phelps, either as scribe or partial author.
The cast of characters is quite extensive for a mere 304 page book. The lack of detailed discussions of others involved in the story — volatile Irish immigrants, slaves, etc. — was puzzling, although his treatment of the Millerites supplies some interesting details. This aspect of the text troubled me—not to say that there aren’t any non-great-white-men involved at all, just that their overall contributions to the U.S. in 1844 are invisible within the text. Perhaps the most confusing example of this, given its relative importance or even immensity in American history, is the lack of references to the issue of slavery. While Bicknell references the issue of slavery in the west, and the opinions of various presidential platforms (including Joseph Smith’s) regarding it, it would have been highly appropriate to include a strong black American voice. The same could be said of Native Americans, who figure in the text only to be fought, feared, or traded with.
There are some pleasing exceptions, of course. John C. Frémont’s wife Jessie Benton Frémont has a strong voice, though her life is framed by her husband’s, her words reported by Bicknell to portray a loving, loyal wife whose first concern was her husband’s career. When the U.S. Government attempted to reclaim a howitzer from Frémont just prior to his late 1843 expedition to Oregon, it was Jessie Frémont who held up the letter demanding its return, and her role in planning the expedition itself is also mentioned, though how she actually assisted in the planning of the expedition is not explained (p. 114).
The text contains an exhaustive number of names; there is an index at the rear, thankfully, for those who do not remember their pre-Civil War history very well.
I want to mention one point about the layout of the book that I think could have been done better. The book’s references could have been more helpfully designed. Instead of footnotes or numbered endnotes, the reader is given a list of quotations and their references—fortunately in the order they appear in the text, but it struck me as a rather inefficient and troublesome way to record source material. I found one example of a quotation without citation (though the source was probably obvious enough to forgive).
Overall, the book will definitely appeal to more conservative readers and those who are intrigued by the social and political environment that surrounded the final year of Joseph Smith’s life. An interest in politics and Manifest Destiny are also recommended. This book would be absolutely perfect for a plane trip or to read over the upcoming winter break. It’s short and uncomplicated, and is a reasonable entry point into one of the least well-known periods of American history.
“America 1844” is not aimed as a text for advanced study of the period (unless it is used in a class on historiography, or how histories are written). However, I can certainly recommend the book as an introduction to the complexities of the 1840s for a Mormon audience interested in the historical context of Joseph Smith’s murder outside of the immediate scene in Nauvoo.