The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch by Miles Harvey

Author:Miles Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Biography, Culture and Society
Publisher: Little, Brown
Published: 2020-05-11T23:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

In which the King of Earth and Heaven runs for elective office

Beaver Island is a very handsome spot.…As it rises before you with its shores clad with green foliage, the cedar, the fir, the tamarack, you are reminded of the Island bowers of Calypso.

—Visitor to Beaver Island, 1852

Is it possible that man’s heart can harbor, amid such ravishing natural beauty, feelings of hatred, vengeance, or the desire to destroy his fellows?

—Leo Tolstoy, “The Raid,” 1852

THIS IS MY REVENGE.”

It was November of 1852, thirteen months after Strang wrote that sorrowful letter during his expedition to Canada, and once again the prophet was sitting down to update his brother on recent events. This time, however, his mood was euphoric. Strang had just been elected state representative for a sparsely populated district occupying a quarter of the landmass of Michigan. Instead of moving to Canada to flee the law, he had, through shrewd manipulation of the ballot box, put himself into a position to make the law. Even in a life full of dramatic reversals, this was a stunning twist, and one that had left the prophet—in despair while writing that letter the previous year—feeling invincible.

Strang had managed to pull off the victory by winning, suspiciously enough, all 165 votes on Beaver Island—enough to easily defeat the other four candidates, who split the remaining 200 ballots. This low turnout had been intentional on the part of the prophet, who ran a covert campaign, making no announcement of his candidacy until the day of the election. In an era before standardized ballots, few voters were even aware that Beaver Island was part of their legislative district, much less that the controversial Mormon leader had entered the race.

Yet despite the underhandedness of his victory, the election had given Strang a sense of “triumph” over those who had “sought and well-nigh accomplished my ruin,” he told his brother. In 1832, as a nineteen-year-old farm boy, Strang had vowed to become “a Priest, a Lawyer, a Conqueror and a Legislator.” Now, two decades later, he was on the verge of achieving all of those goals. “I have made my mark upon the times in which I live, which the wear and tear of time in the unborn ages shall not be able to obliterate,” he confided to his brother. “Like Moses of old my name will be revered, and men scarcely restrained from worshipping me as a God.”

It wasn’t just his election to the Michigan legislature that had him feeling ebullient. The year 1852 had already been a very good one for Strang, who in the wake of his acquittal had managed to consolidate control over Beaver Island. His followers had taken over all the posts in local government, with Strang elected as town supervisor and Dr. McCulloch serving as clerk and health officer. With these power bases in their hands, the Mormons made life miserable for the prophet’s foes, tormenting non-Mormons with petty lawsuits, many of which happened to fall under the jurisdiction of a certain James J.

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