During the 1844 Campaign, Joseph Smith ran for President

In 1844, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints First Presidency first counselor Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, ran for president and vice president, respectively. Smith was assassinated in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, a month before the November 1–December 4 presidential election that year. Smith was both the first American presidential candidate to be assassinated and the first Latter Day Saint to run for office.

Smith served as mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois, which had 12,000 residents and was the second-most populous city in Illinois in 1844. Leaders of the Latter Day Saints pleaded with followers to support candidates who had received the backing of the church. As a result, in state elections, the Latter Day Saint population of the city maintained the balance of power between the Democrats and Whigs. The Nauvoo Legion, a quasi-public military force under Smith's command, had 2,500 members, making it almost one-third the size of the American Army. In Junius and Joseph, Wicks and Foister make the case that political operatives with ties to Henry Clay, a Whig who opposed Smith, were present at activities surrounding the raid on the jail where Smith was detained while awaiting trial for treason, among other offenses.

In his platform for the election, Smith called for the gradual abolition of slavery, the shrinking of Congress, the re-establishment of a national bank, the annexation of Texas, California, and Oregon, the reform of prisons, and the federal government's protection of the rights of minorities like the Latter Day Saints.