Vigilant Minds
Story submitted by: Don McAreavy
June 23, 2026

Was the Nauvoo Expositor full of slanderous lies, or did it tell the truth? The Nauvoo Expositor is the spark that led to Mormonism's founding Prophet, Joseph Smith's, untimely death. Because of it purported slanders, Smith convinced the Nauvoo City Council to declare it a public nuisance and destroy the paper—after only a single edition.
Mormonism has, for years, stated that the Nauvoo Expositor was full of lies, slanders, and falsehoods about Joseph Smith. But is that really true? I argue that the paper was mostly correct in what it asserted. In accusing the Expositor of slander, Joseph Smith and Mormons have been slandering the Nauvoo Expositor.
In this video, I evaluate the claims of the Nauvoo Expositor line by line. What did it claim? How did Joseph Smith respond? What specific things did he say were slanderous or libel in the Nauvoo Expositor? And why should this matter for Latter-day Saints?
VIDEOS REFERENCED:
Thanks to Thoughts on Things and Stuff Blog for good research that was helpful to my investigation of the Expositor. This post in particular gave me a lot of leads to follow up: https://thoughtsonthingsandstuff.com/...
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