Bagley upsets Richard Bushman.
Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2024 9:30 pm
On the Road with Joseph Smith Richard Bushman:
“Will Bagley, the old gadfly, asked about a book he called Joseph Jackson’s Tales of Old Nauvoo (turned out he had the title wrong, it’s A narrative of the Experiences of Joseph H. Jackson in Nauvoo: Disclosing the Depths of Mormon Villainy (1844). . . To Bagley I had to admit I had not seen the Jackson book and did not even know about it. Embarrassingly, and said no. Bagley said that Jackson presented a persuasive psychology of Joseph going from one sexual exploit to another in crescendo, culminating in plural marriage. . . I said that I was suspicious of many charges against Joseph especially if written much later. Bagley retorted that it was published in 1844. I was a little ruffled, though I recovered well enough after. . . I am writing now at 1:30am after awakening with a troubled heart. I don’t like to be caught off base like that. . . I looked at the book the next day and found it to be in the category of John Bennett’s The History of the Saints. Possibly some truth there but lots of exaggeration” pp58-59.
Jackson’s writing and Wil Bagley’s response can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UFo ... av_K5/edit
Bagley in an email to me wrote:
Let me know what you make of the commentary. I'm proud I wrote this: See pages 1-22.
"Jackson’s account of Smith’s sexual adventures and ambitions merits comment. If true, Jackson described what could be termed a “sexual predator,” who boasted of sleeping with twenty score women, treated the dozens of women devoted to him as chattel through whom he “could get any stranger’s money,” who promised his wife a spiritual husband to stifle her complaints about his dozens of mistresses and then reneged on his promise, and finally targeted his niece and sister as his next conquests. The justifications Smith used to explain such behavior to his closest followers seem to fall into the class of his “secret teachings”: how else to explain his successors’ devotion to the notion of marrying their own sisters?"
“Will Bagley, the old gadfly, asked about a book he called Joseph Jackson’s Tales of Old Nauvoo (turned out he had the title wrong, it’s A narrative of the Experiences of Joseph H. Jackson in Nauvoo: Disclosing the Depths of Mormon Villainy (1844). . . To Bagley I had to admit I had not seen the Jackson book and did not even know about it. Embarrassingly, and said no. Bagley said that Jackson presented a persuasive psychology of Joseph going from one sexual exploit to another in crescendo, culminating in plural marriage. . . I said that I was suspicious of many charges against Joseph especially if written much later. Bagley retorted that it was published in 1844. I was a little ruffled, though I recovered well enough after. . . I am writing now at 1:30am after awakening with a troubled heart. I don’t like to be caught off base like that. . . I looked at the book the next day and found it to be in the category of John Bennett’s The History of the Saints. Possibly some truth there but lots of exaggeration” pp58-59.
Jackson’s writing and Wil Bagley’s response can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UFo ... av_K5/edit
Bagley in an email to me wrote:
Let me know what you make of the commentary. I'm proud I wrote this: See pages 1-22.
"Jackson’s account of Smith’s sexual adventures and ambitions merits comment. If true, Jackson described what could be termed a “sexual predator,” who boasted of sleeping with twenty score women, treated the dozens of women devoted to him as chattel through whom he “could get any stranger’s money,” who promised his wife a spiritual husband to stifle her complaints about his dozens of mistresses and then reneged on his promise, and finally targeted his niece and sister as his next conquests. The justifications Smith used to explain such behavior to his closest followers seem to fall into the class of his “secret teachings”: how else to explain his successors’ devotion to the notion of marrying their own sisters?"