Joseph Smith — "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their…"
Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
This quote expresses a belief that Black Americans should be legally confined to racial separation from white society, prevented from intermingling, and placed under a government-recognized but separate status called 'national equalization.' Smith is advocating strict legal racial barriers rather than integration, a position that distinguished between ending slavery and accepting racial mixing — a distinction many antebellum moderates held simultaneously.
Relevance to Joseph Smith
Smith ran for U.S. President in 1844 with a platform directly addressing slavery, proposing gradual emancipation funded by public land sales. Though he opposed slavery economically, he held racial separation views reflected here. As LDS founder, his racial theology had lasting institutional consequences — the church denied Black men the priesthood until 1978, a policy rooted in doctrines formulated under his leadership.
The era
Antebellum America (1830s–1844) was fracturing over slavery, with the Missouri Compromise and abolitionist agitation intensifying. The American Colonization Society's plan to resettle freed Black Americans in Liberia was considered a mainstream moderate position. Many reformers who opposed slavery still advocated racial separation over integration, making Smith's framing of 'national equalization' representative of a broad middle position in the era's increasingly volatile national debate.
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