you have no way to "look inside the mind of JS, to know that he was making a target of himself".  I believe he was simply running to the window to get the Freemason "call of distress" out. thinking maybe the people outside are calmer than the people shooting through the door.

If I have no way to look inside the mind of Joseph Smith, neither do you.  Or maybe we're both attempting to figure out what he was thinking when he ran to the window.  You find the "call of distress" argument persuasive.  I don't.  Here's why:

1. Joseph Smith had been a 33rd-degree Freemason and Master of the Nauvoo Lodge.  However, when Joseph Smith said he was going to "out-mason Solomon, himself," it so offended Freemasons that they essentially excommunicated him from their order and stripped the Nauvoo Lodge of its charter.  Joseph Smith had no reason the Freemasons would come to his aid.

2. The black-faced mob pouring into the compound and charging up the stairs were not his friends.  Making a Freemason's "call of distress" would have done nothing for him.  If anything, it alerted the men on the ground that Joseph Smith was at the window.  

3. Joseph Smith had had that weapon more than long enough to use it on the guard and make his escape, but instead kept it handy.  He never used the weapon until after his brother had been shot dead in front of him and after Willard Richards had been hit by balls being shot into the cell, which was more like an upper room.

4. Joseph Smith's action, in emptying the gun by firing into the mob coming up the stairs, would have been futile in stopping the mob for more than a moment, but it was certainly helpful for giving him a moment to think.

5. Contrary to sloppy dramatizations of the shooting, Joseph Smith didn't just drop from that window.  The window was high up.  He had to leap or climb his way up to reach it.  It took serious effort on his part to present himself at the window.  This, along with the yelling he did right before they shot him down, presented him as a target.  Everybody was aiming up, including those men who burst through the door.  This naturally protected his friends, who were hiding under a bed, from stray shots.

do you believe he ordered his military to attack trying to rescue him?

No.

I didn't take his life, and would have done whatever possible to save him.  I disagree that the line between martyr and non-martyr is that fine, but we'll just have to agree to disagree about that one, since it's really off-topic.

Nobody is saying you are somehow linked to the crowd that shot and killed Joseph Smith - at least not myself.  I'm not cut from the same stone as those Mormons who demonize everyone with whom they disagree.

You're missing my point, and attributing to me a point of view I do not hold.  It is NOT to rub salt into the wounds of Mormons that I deny that JS was a martyr, it's because I prefer accuracy to myth.

I'm not saying that you, personally, are making the "no martyr, here" argument to rub salt into Mormon wounds, but I think we've both seen plenty of it, which is why I addressed that point.  While Mormons are hardly right about everything, they're also not wrong about everything.  I think it's rather obvious that they have the right to say, "They shot and killed our guy in jail.  They made a martyr out of him."

I also believe that it's insensitive to Mormons to tell them that their prophet is no martyr.  It's like telling Jews that some of the Holocaust victims were there, not because they were Jews, but because many of the soviets in the Munich rebellion were Jews and that, to many Germans, there was no clear distinction between Marxists and Zionists.  Understand, I'm not making this reference to imply anything about you, nor am I equating Mormon sufferings with the six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust (Nothing comes close).  I'm just saying that groups have their tender spots.  If there was more to the shooting of Joseph Smith than black hats snuffing white hats, there's also an invisible boundary line between "accuracy" and "insensitivity."  I would never diminish the Holocaust, even if it was more complex than the five minutes it gets the same time every year.  I've always thought there was something seductive about the nazi rise to power that gets filtered out by the compulsory and perfunctory need to distance ourselves from the most evil regime in the history of the world.  We can't depict the roots of its rise without the fear that we're giving it some kind of apology, but unless people can see the allure of evil, it's hard for them to draw any meaningful lessons from what happened.  After all, we just survived eight years of Bush and his savaging of the Constitution - all the while using the shadow of 9/11 to whip up support for a series of sweeping and scary changes - with relatively few Americans seeing the handwriting on the wall.

As for preferring accuracy to myth, there's plenty of myth-making all around.  When I first joined the Church, my sister's co-worker took it upon himself to send me several anti-Mormon books, one of which characterized Joseph Smith's death as a shoot-out.  To me, that kind of characterization is equally myth-ridden.  Smith shot off a handgun, but he was in jail when he did it and the gun he shot off was against an armed mob who were already shooting up the jail and (I believe) after they'd shot and killed his brother and had wounded Willard Richards, who was hiding on the floor.

As Joseph Smith hadn't wanted to turn himself in but came back, believing by doing so, he would be killed, I believe he was a martyr.  Understand, I have many criticisms of Joseph Smith, not the least of which was his marriage to teenagers and the wives of other men.  But giving him the status of a martyr is really not something I'd begrudge.  If I can do that for suicide bombers, I can do that for Joseph Smith.

Secondly, although the, er, religious climate is somewhat different today, if Mormons don't pay attention to what really happened and why, they may face similar troubles later.  Monson won't be murdered, but legal actions can be just as destructive to a denomination as can the murder of a leader.

I don't think what happened to Joseph Smith is all that important or instructive in helping Mormons avoid future violence.  To say that is to imply that Mormons brought this upon themselves.  If they did, it's not in how Joseph Smith drew his last breath.  It's in how they conducted themselves in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois.  Still, I agree with you this much: Mormons haven't learned ANYTHING.  They simply go simple, get maudlin about the death of the prophet and turn the whole thing into "us versus them."  The Mormons wore the white hats, everybody else wore black.  On the other hand, that tends to happen when you shoot somebody's prophet after locking them up in your jail.

What reasons do you think Joseph Smith was killed, if not for his weird religious beliefs and his influence over all these Mormons?

LDS have a right to an opinion. if they want to believe JS is a martyr...then there's no value to be had by trying to take that away from them.  it is "only my opinion" that the word martyr means "someone who could have walked away scott free if they recanted their specific belief in God, but freely chose death over the sacrifice of their beliefs".

I don't take the term that narrowly.  I don't see martyrdom as formally as perhaps you do.  If, for example, someone shot the Pope (as happened with John Paul II) and the Pope died, I would call the Pope a martyr, even without a whole "recant your belief or die" narrative.  Someone who is killed for their beliefs deserves to be called a martyr.  That's how I see it.  

But maybe you're right, at least with respect to the definition of martyr.  I looked up Merriam-Webster online and got this: 

"a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion"

I probably can't get away with calling Joseph Smith a martyr just because somebody shot him, even if a whole group of people shot him over his beliefs.

As I mentioned before, Joseph Smith saw himself as going to his death.  He had no illusions about what was going to happen to him and spoke openly about it, even when his friends tried to reassure him that everything would work out.  He turned himself in (as did his brother) to respond to the warrant so that there would not be a legitimate reason for Nauvoo to be raided in an effort to bring him in.  

But this is semantics.  I don't care if you consider him a bona fide martyr or not.  We both agree that Joseph Smith should not have been shot to death while in custody, that if there were legitimate charges on him, he should have stood trial for them.  We both also agree that the situation was complicated by a lot of issues that get left out of the simple story line told by Mormons and their anti-Mormon rivals.

as to the holocaust... if a Jewish person purchased fake documents with a new non-Jewish name, and denounced Jeudaism, could they have avoided the roundup?

My point was not about whether anybody killed in the Holocaust was anything less than a martyr.  My point was that you can't easily talk about such issues without offending somebody.  It's delicate ground.  

Ironically, that's another situation where the stricter, textbook, definition of a martyr would probably come up short.  Many "Jews" killed in the Holocaust weren't even practicing Jews.  They spoke German.  They thought of themselves as German.  Somebody either found a Jewish link in their background or a neighbor turned them in and the mere accusation was enough to sink them.  People were killed on suspicion of being Jewish.  Offering to convert to something else was not an option.  By your stricter definition, these Holocaust victims would not be considered martyrs.  And yet, at least with respect to the emotional overtones of the term, "martyr," many of us would consider them Jewish martyrs.  Nor would fighting back make any difference in a lot of people's views toward what happened.  But maybe that's the difference between a textbook answer and real life.

as to Jesus... it's been too long since I saw Passion of the Christ, didn't the Jewish authorities hold a private secret trial before taking the matter to the Romans for final implementation?

Christians view Jesus as a martyr because he held to the belief that he was the Son of God.  The Gospels present three different hearings on the status of Jesus.  There's the Jewish arrest and appearance before the Sanhedrin.  There's the Roman appearance before Pilate.  In some of the Gospels, there's a third appearance, in-between these two, before Herod.

In none of these is Jesus given a choice to either recant or suffer - and these are the most favorable sources you've got.  When Jesus appears before Caiaphas and the Jewish Sanhedrin, he's asked if he's the Son of God.  Jesus says nothing.  He gets slapped around.  Jesus eventually offers up a confession of sorts.  That's the closest and it still doesn't fit your definition.  There's no "recant or else."  When brought to Herod, Jesus refuses to speak, much to Herod's dissatisfaction, so Herod mocks him.  When Jesus is brought to Pilate, Jesus makes no effort to defend himself.  When it comes out that Jesus thinks he's something special, Pilate doesn't seem to really care.  He's depicted as trying to get rid of this case, that he remains unconvinced that Jesus is guilty of anything and only, in the end, agrees to his crucifixion when Caiaphas threatens to complain against him.  

There's no definitional martyrdom here, and yet Jesus is regarded by many as a great martyr.  He volunteered to be crucified, but not for his beliefs.  He volunteered to be crucified because he believed that by being crucified he'd save the world from its sins.

if Jesus had recanted, He would have been able to walk away a free man.

that becomes "dieing for beliefs"

Not at all.  Jesus was asked if he was the Son of God.  He said nothing.  They roughed him up.  He finally confessed.  When he did, the High Priest rent his garments and sent him off.  That's not a recant-or-die situation.  He was never asked to recant.  He was asked to testify against himself.  Once he made the statement they considered blasphemy, they were determined to have him killed.  That's if you believe the Gospels, which I don't.

as opposed "actions" of: evading capture, destroying a printing press, operating an illegal bank, and violation of state marriage laws against polygamy.

He wasn't shot for evading arrest.  He wasn't shot for destroying a printing press.  He wasn't shot for operating an illegal bank.  He wasn't shot for violating the state's bigamy laws.  

When Hitler, with popular support, took over Germany, the German people by and large saw it as a good thing.  By the time things really got rolling, it was too late to take a stand against Hitler and his policies.  The fact is, a Hitler could have risen to power in just about any nation on Earth at the time.  People were desperate all around the world.  Germans just happened to be a bit more desperate at the time.  And antisemitism was certainly NOT confined to Germany.  There was plenty to go around, including right here in the U.S.

We (Americans) let our leaders pretty much shred the Constitution and the Bill of Rights following the 9/11 attacks.  Now that the hysteria is over, the documents still lie in tatters.  And someday a leader will rise, use the powers invented during the Bush years, and completely obliterate the Land of the Free.  I can only hope I and my offspring are long dead when it happens.

Agreed.

I, too, take issue with calling the Smith brothers martyrs.  My reasoning being that the mob's motivation was not Smith's religious beliefs, or even his spiritual practices.  It was that they did not trust the state to fulfill its responsiblity in bringing them to justice.  Time and time again, non-Mormons had sought redress against what they saw as pro-Mormon bias in law enforcement, banking practices, civil disputes, and commerce issues.  Non-Mormons could not get a fair hearing in front of a Navoo judge, they could not get favorable or even equitable loan rates from Mormon bankers, they could not compete with what they saw as exclusionary Mormon market practices.  And a non-Mormon had less than a snowball's chance in Hell of getting elected in Navoo.  Not because there were more Mormons than non-Mormons, but because Mormons would simply not even consider it, and they voted as a block, having selected their candidates behind closed doors.

You may have pegged as accurately as anyone could the motivations behind what was essentially a lynching.  Whether those feelings were accurate is another story.  I don't doubt the clannishness of Mormons, in addition to their unusual beliefs and the fact that they were descending upon the country in record numbers, created huge rifts between them and their neighbors.  I'm also sure, the Church's issues in Ohio and Missouri played a role in defining who they were to the good people of Illinois, which was pretty woodsy a frontier as late as the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  It wasn't until I read those debates for myself that I realized why we refer to them rather than do much reading from them.  Who'd have thought Lincoln was that acquainted with the infamous "N" word as to bring it up in a debate for the Senate of the United States?

Add to that, the fact that the Navoo Legion, comprised exclusively of Mormons, was the largest standing army in the U.S., second only to the U.S. Army at the time.  And in the last few months, rumors of outrageous adulterous behavior, some involving underage girls, swept throught the community.  Finally, it all came to a head when some folks decided to blow the lid off of the secret polygamy being practiced in the highest Mormon circles, and they published what they knew.  Even many of the Mormon faithful were not aware of what their leaders were up to behind temple doors.  The Mormon leadership decided to they would not tolerate such public dissent, in or out of the church, and they moved against the press that published the account.  This set the wheels in motion that eventually led to the demise of the Smith brothers.

To be sure, this would have been the thinking of the people coming forth to join in the lynching at Carthage.  While some of these problems were simply failures of management and effective public relations, the secret polygamy issue must have been a total bombshell.  As happened in Missouri, the disastrous relations between Mormons and their neighbors were precipitated by a civil war between Mormons.  William Law, who published the Nauvoo Expositor, had been a major player at the top of the Mormon food chain before breaking violently with Smith over this very issue.  If you've ever read the text of the Expositor, it wasn't just a news item the Mormons didn't like.  It was like sicking 60 Minutes and Geraldo on the Mormons.  The destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor was viewed, by city officials, as a "public nuisance," that generation's version of a "clear and present danger."  They feared immediate reprisals if the paper were allowed to continue circulation.

I see it as irony for a historically small church that has experienced such oppression to then 150 years later to heap and encourage as much oppression as they can muster upon another small minority (gays) and call it their civic duty to "protect" the sanctity of marriage.  This is where "Those who fail to remember their history are doomed to repeat it" comes in.

We can at least agree on this much.  I was against Prop 8.  As lived in Florida, all I could do was vote against Prop 2 (Florida's version of Prop 8).  I believe that marriage is a fundamental right, older than the United States of America, and that it cannot be denied any person on the basis of sexual orientation.  I find it surreal that we find ourselves living in the 21st Century and this is somehow so new a concept that people are still battling against it as if it were polio.

Svetlana, you make me want to read a little more.