The following is an article entitled, "The Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Passes to Brigham Young: A Collective Spiritual Witness" by Lynne Watkins Jorgensen.
It would be later republished in John W. Welch and Erick B. Carlson, eds. Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820–1844 (Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press and Deseret Book), 2005, pp. 373-480. Commenting on this paper, Kevin Barney wrote:
Does it really matter whether numerous Saints saw something of Joseph in Brigham that day? What truly matters is that the keys were passed from Joseph to Brigham, not whether Brigham was perceived as Joseph.
This article is, however, a very useful corrective to simplistic understandings of this event. I recall that, at the MHA meetings in Kirtland a few years ago, in a session on Joseph Smith biography, this topic of the passing of the mantle of the Prophet from Joseph to Brigham came up, and the discussion that ensued was a sort of microcosm of the different approaches taken to this issue. Someone in the audience mentioned that the Saints all perceived Joseph in Brigham that day. This is probably a common, if simplistic, view of the event. The assumption is that everyone had this experience and that we must have good contemporaneous evidence of that fact. Then someone raised his hand and challenged the original comment, with the perspective that there is no evidence that the event occurred at all, that it is a sort of Mormon urban legend. Finally, a number of people, referencing the Jorgensen article from BYU Studies, gave a more realistic recounting of the experience. Most people present at that event did not make a written record of the day’s events at all, and the accounts of the transformation of Brigham that we do have are later recollections, not contemporaneous accounts. But, with those limitations understood, we actually do have a substantial number of accounts by individuals who did in some way perceive Joseph in Brigham. The more cautious approach to the event suggested by the documentation collected by Jorgensen takes us on a course between the naive simplicity of youthful assumptions and the nihilistic cynicism of one who has been burned by such expectations one too many times. I myself traveled over time from the naive, simplistic position to the more cynical, nihilistic position, and finally to a more balanced understanding of this event, thanks to Jorgensen’s research. So I appreciate this contribution to the volume very much, as it had a profound influence on my own perception of the events of that day.
For a good book-length discussion, see:
Robert G. Mouritsen, Mantle: Windy Day in August, at Nauvoo, When the Mantle of the Prophet Joseph Smith Fell on Brigham Young (2004)
