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Hey y'all: today's the 176th anniversary of Joseph Smith's death at Carthage Jail. It's a pretty important date for members of the LDS Church, but allow me to argue, drawing from my #KingdomOfNauvoo book, why it's also an important part of America's history of democracy. /1 
By 1844, the Mormons had been settled in Nauvoo, Illinois, their own city-state on the Illinois banks of the Mississippi River, for five years. The city housed around 12,000 citizens, with thousands more in outlying communities. It was larger than even Chicago. /2
For Joseph Smith and his followers, Nauvoo was an outpost from a fallen world, the final refuge in a society that had become too wicked and anarchic. They had already been forcibly removed from New York, Ohio, and Missouri. They felt democracy failed them. /3
