The Great Lakes Mormon Pirate Sect That Still Exists

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When Joseph Smith died, the nascent Mormon sect was left in disarray. Several different people, at varying places on the true-believer-to-total-conman spectrum, tried to take the reins of the church. Brigham Young ended up winning in the long run, but we don't know if Smith would have approved of his leadership. He hadn't named a successor...or had he? Perhaps the most credible claim to being the next Joseph Smith didn't come from Young, but from the other guy who tried to succeed him, a former lawyer named James J. Strang, who proceeded to take his Mormon splinter sect, with thousands of followers, up into the Wisconsin woods, where he dug up - wouldn't ya know - a *new set* of metal plates with new Mormon testaments written on them. After skirmishes with locals, praise from the inventor of the Qwerty keyboard, and internal conflict over polygamy, they decamped to an island in Lake Michigan, where Strang ruled as King James I, with a robe, scepter, harem, and public floggings of dissidents. Rumors swirled that Strang, his followers, and his several wives (one of whom liked to cross-dress) were plundering ships on the lake. He got accused of every crime imaginable. And yet, the Strangites survive to this day.

Co-written by my friend Brandon, realbrandon05 on Instagram

How would you have convinced the early Mormons you were Joseph Smith's true successor?
Digging up some plates from really, really deep - https://torscabinet.com/stor [merch]
Secretly drinking coffee and astounding everyone with your superhuman energy - https://www.patreon.com/torscabinet/membership [Patreon]
Being visited by an angel who goes to another church in Canada - https://x.com/parsons_tor
Confusing the local Native Americans into corroborating your interpretation of the Book of Mormon - https://facebook.com/torscabinet
Marrying even more, and even younger, wives than your rivals - https://www.reddit.com/r/TorsCabinet
Slipping magic mushrooms into your acolytes'...water, I guess, since dirty sodas weren't invented yet so what else did Mormons drink? - https://www.instagram.com/tor.from.oregon/

Chapters (going for more Tim Robinson-esque titles this time around)
0:00 - Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jolibee the Durian?
8:00 - Intro
10:42 - Who'll be my role model, now that my role model is gone?
13:22 - He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy...actually, he might be that and also the Messiah
19:10 - I'm James J. Strang, I could have been a Rajah, but there are no golden plates around here, there's the rub...
26:25 - Are we the Illuminati now too? Fine, I guess we're the Illuminati.
31:30 - And it makes me feel so fine, I can't control my brain.
36:25 - I got flogged by a Michigan legislative backbencher and it wasn't even a sex thing.
42:31 - Thinger Strangs

Sources & Further Info
- Best single biographical article on Strang: https://web.archive.org/web/20070929122436/http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1970/4/1970_4_4.shtml
- The infamous Letter of Appointment: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/2025934
- Some things we know Joseph Smith wrote, to compare: https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/site/documents-in-joseph-smiths-handwriting
- Pirates ransack the west shore of Michigan (and they might *not* have actually been Strangites?): https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1855/10/10/77046722.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0
- Strangite missionaries: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1590&context=etd
- Strangite apologetics: https://www.mormonbeliefs.com/
- Elvira, Mistress of the Strang, and her tendency to cross-dress: https://juvenileinstructor.org/womens-history-month-at-ji-vickie-speek-on-elvira-fieldcharley-douglass-strangs-plural-wife/
- The assassination: https://www.beaverbeacon.com/2002-10-October/The_Man_who_shot_Strang.html?utm_source=copilot.com
- George Adams' quixotic Holy Land colony: https://newlinesmag.com/essays/revisiting-the-adams-colony-affair-in-palestine/

No AI was used at any step of the way in the making of this video, not even to summarize sources.