Coronation of James Strang

Summary

On 8 July 1850, in the still-uncompleted tabernacle at Saint James on Beaver Island, James Jesse Strang was crowned king before an assembled congregation of his Latter Day Saint followers — an act repeatedly described in later historiography as the only self-proclaimed monarchy on United States soil. George J. Adams, then Strang’s closest lieutenant, served as master of ceremonies. The date is independently confirmed by sworn testimony at Strang’s 1851 federal trial and by newspaper notices written years apart; the number of people present, and much of the ceremony’s inner meaning, rest on sources that were partisan on both sides. confidence: established for the date and outline; individual details below are marked where sources disagree.

History

The ceremony

Milo Quaife’s 1930 narrative, drawing on the manuscript “Apostolic Testimony” of Warren Post (one of Strang’s Twelve Apostles) and a decades-later eyewitness account by Mrs. Cecelia Hill, describes the event: “On July 8, in the uncompleted tabernacle, the coronation ceremony was carried out. A portion of the newly revealed Book of the Law of the Lord was read, and the four hundred spectators assembled to witness the setting up of the Kingdom of God on earth, with uplifted hands entered into a solemn covenant henceforth to be God’s people and live in accordance with His law.”¹ Strang, “clad in a robe of bright red, was escorted to a platform” surrounded by his apostles, the Quorum of Seventy and minor church officials, with the common people occupying the remaining space. George J. Adams, described by Quaife as one “who performed with equal facility in the pulpit and on the stage,” acted as master of ceremonies, and the rite concluded with “placing on the brow of Strang a crown of metal with a cluster of stars in front.”²

The same day, per Quaife, Strang received a revelation appointing “the Islands of the Great Lakes” as an inheritance for the Saints and vesting in the King the power to apportion the land among them; the anniversary of the day “James the Prophet was established King” was thereafter to be kept “with sacrifices and thank offerings.”³

Independent confirmation of the date

The 8 July 1850 date does not rest on Quaife’s narrative alone. Sworn testimony given at Strang’s 1851 federal treason trial in Detroit — reprinted in the New York Herald — states plainly: “Adams reached the coronation session July 8th, 1850, when ‘James’ was crowned king,” and separately that “the occasion on which Adams spoke highly of Strang’s holiness was on the 8th of July, (coronation day).”⁴ The same witness states that “the Privy Council did not exist before the coronation of Strang” — evidence that the coronation marked a real change in the movement’s internal governance, not merely a ceremony.⁴ More than six years later, a newspaper notice written around the time of Strang’s death independently anchors the same date from the other direction: “on the anniversary of his coronation day, the 8th of July of the present year, he was to have married a fourth” wife.⁵

How many were there, and what it meant

Sources disagree on attendance. Quaife’s figure of four hundred spectators is roughly double the number given in a hostile contemporary account, which cites an unnamed “document” stating “upon the occasion of Strang’s self-coronation, there were two hundred persons present” — offered by the source as evidence of the scheme’s scale, in an editorial otherwise calling Strang’s followers “outlaws” bent on plunder.⁶ Neither figure is independently verified against a primary attendance record.

Later hostile reminiscence in the national press ties the coronation directly to Strang’s public turn toward polygamy: “Prior to that time he had been ostensibly opposed to polygamy, but upon his coronation he came out in favor of a plurality of wives… Immediately following his coronation he took two wives.”⁷ This sequencing is consistent with Quaife’s independent account of Strang’s earlier, secret 1849 plural marriage to Elvira Field (see George J. Adams), which suggests the coronation marked the public unveiling of an arrangement that already existed privately, rather than its beginning. No source held here fully reconciles “public unveiling” against “the coronation caused the turn to polygamy” as competing readings of the same sequence.

Significance

The coronation is the defining act of Strang’s theocratic government of the Beaver Island archipelago and is often described in general historiography as the only instance of a monarchy proclaimed on United States soil — a characterization this project’s held sources do not themselves make in those words, but do not contradict either. It marks the formal beginning of the Kingdom of Saint James as a civil as well as religious institution (per the 1851 trial testimony, the Privy Council dates from this event) and the point at which Strang’s rule over his followers extended, by his own revelation, to a territorial claim over “the Islands of the Great Lakes.” George J. Adams’s prominent role as master of ceremonies is itself significant in hindsight: within months the two men had quarreled, and Adams became one of Strang’s most damaging outside accusers.

Open questions

• Attendance. Four hundred (Quaife, from Post’s manuscript) versus two hundred (a hostile 1851 newspaper citing an unnamed document) — not reconciled from sources held here.
• The order of public and private polygamy. Whether the coronation caused Strang’s turn to plural marriage, or merely made public an arrangement already a year old (per the Elvira Field marriage), is not settled by any source held here.
• The crown and robe themselves. No source held here states what became of the physical crown or robe, or whether either survives.
• A first-person Strangite account of the ceremony’s religious meaning, as opposed to accounts filtered through Quaife (writing 80 years later) or hostile contemporary newspapers, has not been located for this project.

See also

• James Jesse Strang
• George J. Adams
• Kingdom of Saint James
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite)
• The Diamond: Being the Law of Prophetic Succession (1848)

Sources