The City of the Mormons; Or, Three Days at Nauvoo, in 1842

In the summer of 1842, an Anglican clergyman named Henry Caswall traveled to the banks of the Mississippi to witness something that perplexed and troubled the American religious establishment: Nauvoo, Illinois, the thriving headquarters of a young movement led by a prophet-turned-presidential-candidate called Joseph Smith. This is his account of three days behind the walls of a city that mainstream America regarded with suspicion and fascination in equal measure. Caswall observes English converts embarking for the promise of Zion, wanders the construction site of a temple rising from the Illinois mud, and sits through a Mormon service, recording every detail with the keen, suspicious eye of a man who cannot decide whether he has witnessed genuine faith or elaborate deception. The result is neither simple polemic nor neutral anthropology. It is something more valuable: a window into how a 19th-century Protestant clergyman made sense of a religious phenomenon that seemed to defy everything he believed. For readers interested in American religious history, the early Latter-day Saint movement, or the art of observing the unfamiliar, Caswall's account offers an unfiltered glimpse into a pivotal moment in American sectarian history.