A New Synthesis | Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846

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Exiles in a Land of Liberty is part of the University of North Carolina’s “Studies in Religion” series. The author, Kenneth H. Winn, is a relative newcomer to Mormon studies and, if this book is any indication of his ability, we will likely hear more from him. While readers well versed in Mormon historiography will find little new material in Exiles in a Land of Liberty, they will meet a new synthesis of early Mormon history. 

Winn presents a weighty argument to bolster his thesis that mid-nineteenth century Mormonism and anti-Mormon ism were both reflections of republican thought. Early nineteenth-century “republican ideology” considered political life as a struggle between the forces of virtue and corruption, with the republic supported on the backs of a hard-working, honest citizenry which rightfully exercised free and independent judgment. The intriguing part of Winn’s study is how both those bitterly opposed to and those supportive of Joseph Smith and his new religion iden tified themselves with republican virtues.

Yet, Exiles in a Land of Liberty may lose some of its impact, at least with Mormon readers, because Winn never assigns any validity at all to the religion’s claim about its divine origins. This is not to imply that only so-called faith-promoting history is acceptable, simply that Joseph Smith and his believing followers must be taken at face value, and Winn sometimes fails to do so. For example, in discussing events surrounding the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, Winn focuses on the “trou bled financial condition” of Joseph Smith, Sr.’s family, suggesting that his son Joseph wrote the book for monetary gain (p. 15). Furthermore, Winn finds the Book of Mormon to be but a mirror of republicanism and disallows any possibility that it was what Smith claimed. Whether writ ten just for profit or as a skillful interpretation of republicanism, the book still comes off in Winn’s analysis as a clever fraud. In many ways Kenneth H. Winn’s work is reminiscent of Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History. That path breaking book, like Exiles in a Land of Liberty, provided solid, stimulating history but was marred, in places, by overt disbelief and cynicism. Yet, as scholars like Jan Shipps or Larry Foster have demonstrated, one need not be a believing Latter-day Saint to write Mormon history without appearing to imply culpability. I hope this shortcoming will not discourage potential readers from considering Winn’s book, for it contains much thought-provoking material. 

Winn casts Joseph Smith as the conservative defender of an older, crumbling America. Whether one treats Smith and his disciples as reacting to growing ante bellum American pluralism, as does Marvin Hill in his recent Quest for Refuge (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), or as defending republican virtues like Winn, both studies are indications that early Mormon history is being skillfully analyzed by today’s historians. 

Chapter 3 of Exiles in a Land of Liberty, “Social Disorder and the Resurrection of Communal Republicanism among the Mormons,” must be noted. Here Winn really draws together his understanding of Joseph Smith’s success —which was, after all, phenomenal. Finding strong roots for Mormonism in Christian primitivism, Winn contends that when converts accepted Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, “their religious confusion and dis tress ended” (p. 51). Joseph Smith’s revelations gave them a religious security, a self-confidence in being identified with God’s chosen people and an assurance that they now had true religious knowledge. The similar reactions of many late twentieth-century Mormon converts mag nify the importance of these insights. 

Readers of Exiles in a Land of Liberty will also increase their knowledge of Mormonism’s opponents. Like the Saints, these opponents were well-intentioned folk, but they simply disapproved of what they perceived as fakery and fraud. Those who could not, or would not, comprehend Mormon consecration and communalism saw Smith as the ultimate con man. They were convinced that more than one of his timely revelations smacked of deception. Perhaps Exiles in a Promised Land will serve as a reminder that all who opposed early Mormonism, or even the Church’s more recent adversaries, were not simply evil people. That alone would seem a mighty contribution. 

Winn’s synthesis of early Mormonism is worth reading. He has done yeoman duty in offering yet another way of looking at Mormon roots. The serious student of the first two decades of Mormonism will do well to note this book. 

Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 by Kenneth H. Winn (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 284 pp., $32.50.