The Diamond: Being the Law of Prophetic Succession (1848)

Summary

The Diamond is James Jesse Strang’s 1848 doctrinal tract arguing his own right to succeed Joseph Smith as head of the Latter Day Saint movement. Issued from Strang’s press at Voree, Wisconsin as the fourth in a numbered “Gospel Tract” series, it is not a narrative history but a scriptural argument: it builds its case for a “law of prophetic succession” chiefly by quoting the Book of Doctrine and Covenants on the presidency of the high priesthood, then applying that law to Strang’s own ordination. It predates the Beaver Island settlement (1848 is also the year Strang’s followers began moving there) and belongs to the Voree period of his career, alongside his newspaper the Gospel Herald (Voree, 1847-1850).

History

The pamphlet’s title page states its purpose in full: a defense of “the calling of James J. Strang as successor to Joseph Smith,” combined with “a full exposition of the law of God touching the succession of prophets holding the presidency of the true church, and the proof that this succession has been kept up.”¹ Chapter I, “The Institution of the First Presidency and the Law of Succession,” is built almost entirely from quoted and cited sections of the Doctrine and Covenants, establishing the office of “President of the high priesthood” as one held “by revelation” and comparing its holder to Moses.² The tract is dated at Voree, 1 May 1848, and signed “JAMES J. STRANG.”³

It was published while Strang’s church was still centered at Voree, Wisconsin, before his own move to the Beaver Islands, and it argues the same succession claim that structures his entire subsequent career as prophet — and, from 1850, as “king” — of the Beaver Island settlement (see Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)).

Significance

This is the foundational text of Strang’s claim to leadership, predating and underpinning everything that followed on Beaver Island: without an accepted claim to succeed Joseph Smith, there is no Strangite church to gather, no Book of the Law of the Lord, and no Kingdom of Saint James. It documents the doctrinal register in which Strang wrote — dense citation of LDS scripture — as distinct from the more narrative, apologetic register of his later Ancient and Modern Michilimackinac (1854).

Open questions

• None outstanding regarding what this project holds and its content; it has not been checked here against other 1848 Strangite tracts (a numbered “Gospel Tract” series implies at least three others) for how the succession argument was developed across the series.

See also

• Gospel Herald (Voree, 1847-1850)
• Ancient and Modern Michilimackinac (1854)
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)

Sources