“Saints, Slaves and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People Within Mormonism”

Newell G. Bringhurst

“The most important Latter-Day Saint publications during the 1840s were the Times and Seasons, …and the Nauvoo Neighbor. …Through his role as editor of the Times and Seasons and Neighbor, Taylor became a leading defender of the Mormon faith. He vigorously publicized Mormonism’s antislavery position. Taylor denounced Missouri as a slave state whose “coffers” groaned “with the spoils of the oppressed.” Taylor, like Joseph Smith, assailed Henry Clay as a “slaveholder” who, if elected president, would make America the “slavest and vainest nation on earth.”

See also Samuel W. Taylor, The Kingdom of Nothing: The Life of John Taylor, Militant Mormon (New York: Macmillan, 1976) and Times and Seasons, July 1, 1843; Nauvoo Neighbor, April 17, 1844