I am Ryan McKnight. I'm Kara Santa Maria. I am Christopher Smith. Hi, I'm Andrew Torres. This is

Naked Mormonism. The Serial Mormon History podcast. It's the morning of June 27, 1844.

Emma Smith awoke to the sound of kids running through the house and doing children things.

She's five months pregnant and she needs

her rest, but it was a night of tossing and turning. There are too many unknowns. Her husband

and brother-in-law are interred in Carthage jail. Intelligence is constantly working its way into

Navu about the nearby cities gearing up for war.

The Navu Legion has been disbanded and disarmed, but that's officially.

Unofficially, the Legion is ready to go at a moment's notice, whether to defend the city,

to break their supreme leader out of jail, or to loot and pillage local non-Mormon villages.

Joseph had wanted Emma to leave town with the kids.

He wanted them to either head to Washington, D.C., where Emma would meet with President

John Tyler and tell him the plight of her husband and the Mormons at large, or to begin

the journey west, where the

saints would follow close behind. Emma knew that she was a target as Joe's publicly known wife,

and being pregnant only complicated matters further. Plans were rushing in and out of her mind.

If everything blew up, she'd need an escape plan to keep her and the kids safe

while her husband, you know, worked out his escape plan. It had happened in Missouri. It happened in

Dixon, Illinois last year, and the time seemed to be approaching that Emma would have to handle

her family and the church in her husband's absence until he could

extricate himself from his present difficulties.

Her words to the prophet ring deep, and they provide a window into Emma's headspace

...