The legacy of Joseph Smith includes the immediate aftermath of Smith's killing, among various competing denominations, the status of his family and the church he founded, and a scholarly assessment of his life and religion. Although Smith was killed in 1844, he attracted thousands of devoted followers before his death, and millions in the century that followed. Among Mormons, he is generally regarded as a prophet on par with Moses and Elijah. In a 2015 compilation of the 100 Most Significant Americans of All Time, Smithsonian magazine ranked Smith first in the category of religious figures.
Immediate aftermath
After a public funeral and viewing of the deceased brothers, Smith's widow – who feared hostile non-Mormons might try to desecrate the bodies – had their remains buried at night in a secret location, with substitute coffins filled with sandbags interred in the publicly attested grave. The bodies were later moved and reburied under an outbuilding on the Smith property off the Mississippi River. Members of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church), under the direction of then-RLDS Church president Frederick M. Smith (Smith's grandson) searched for, located, and disinterred the Smith brothers' remains in 1928 and reinterred them, along with Smith's wife, in Nauvoo at the Smith Family Cemetery.
Following Smith's death, non-Mormon newspapers were nearly unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic. Conversely, within the Latter Day Saint community, Smith was viewed as a prophet, martyred to seal the testimony of his faith.
Five men were tried for Smith's murder, but all were acquitted.
Successors and denominations
Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis within the Latter Day Saint movement. He had proposed several ways to choose his successor, but never clarified his preference. Smith's brother Hyrum, had he survived, would have had the strongest claim, followed by Smith's brother Samuel, who died abruptly a month after Joseph and Hyrum. Another brother, William, was unable to attract a sufficient following. Smith's sons Joseph III and David were too young: Joseph was aged 11, and David was born after Smith's death. The Council of Fifty had a theoretical claim to succession, but it was a secret organization. Two of Smith's chosen successors, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, had already left the church. Emma Smith and some members of the Anointed Quorum supported appointing Nauvoo stake president William Marks as church president, but Marks ultimately supported Rigdon's claim to succession.
The two strongest succession candidates were Young, senior member and president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Rigdon, the senior remaining member of the First Presidency. In a church-wide conference on August 8, most of the Latter Day Saints present elected Young. They eventually left Nauvoo and settled the Salt Lake Valley, Utah Territory. Nominal membership in Young's denomination, which became the LDS Church, surpassed 16 million in 2018. Smaller groups followed Rigdon and James J. Strang, who had based his claim on a letter of appointment ostensibly written by Smith but which some scholars believe was forged. Some hundreds followed Lyman Wight to establish a community in Texas. Others followed Alpheus Cutler. Many members of these smaller groups, including most of Smith's family, eventually coalesced in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III and formed the RLDS Church, which now has about 250,000 members.
Assessment
Assessments of Smith in the nineteenth century were typically dismissive, such as that of Philip Schaff, whose 1855 appraisal called him an "uneducated but cunning Yankee." Naturalistic biographers in the early twentieth century suggested that Smith suffered from epileptic seizures or from psychological disorders, such as migraines, hallucinations, and "melancholic depression" that might explain his visions and revelations. Fawn Brodie's 1945 biography No Man Knows My History rejected delusive experience as an explanation for Smith's behavior and instead cast him as an intentional charlatan, albeit a talented and accomplished one. After academic Mormon studies developed in the latter half of the twentieth century, two conflicting characterizations of Smith emerged: a fraud preying on the ignorance and credulity of his followers on the one hand (a view associated with detractors of Smith), and a man of God and of great character on the other (the view advanced typically by believers). Historian Jan Shipps called this "the prophet puzzle".