Joseph Smith — "I am a Lover of the Constitution of the United States."
I am a Lover of the Constitution of the United States.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The speaker declares deep personal loyalty to the U.S. Constitution as a foundational document of freedom. This expresses commitment to constitutional principles—liberty of conscience, limited government, and protected individual rights—as ideals worth defending passionately. It is a declaration that the American legal framework, especially its protections for religious freedom and due process, deserves active allegiance rather than passive acceptance from every citizen, including those society marginalizes.
Relevance to Joseph Smith
Smith and his followers were expelled from Missouri under a literal government extermination order in 1838, then driven from Illinois, where Smith was jailed without adequate legal recourse and killed by a mob in 1844. He ran for U.S. President that same year on a platform of constitutional rights. LDS theology holds the Constitution was divinely inspired. Smith repeatedly invoked its protections as his community faced state-sanctioned violence federal law refused to stop.
The era
In the 1840s, the Bill of Rights bound only the federal government—states could legally ignore constitutional protections, leaving religious minorities entirely exposed to mob violence and official persecution. The Mormon expulsion from Missouri and Illinois proved this gap catastrophically. Simultaneously, the slavery crisis was fracturing the nation along competing constitutional interpretations. Smith's declaration came precisely when the gap between constitutional ideals and lived American reality was sharpest and most deadly for minority communities.
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