In his editing for the 1837 edition, Joseph Smith frequently changed the historically past-tense (or subjunctive) modal verbs might, would, and should to their historically present-tense (or indicative) forms may, will, and shall. Joseph’s apparent motivation was to avoid the modern-day tendency to interpret the past-tense modals as conditional, hypothetical, or subjective. Such editing, however, has been sporadically applied. In virtually every case the original past-tense modal will work, or at least there are examples still in the text of its use in similar contexts. For instance, the following passage does not really claim that Christ’s coming is hypothetical (“Christ should come”) or that the effects of his atonement are only a possibility (“the same might receive remission of their sins”):
In this passage, there has been no attempt to edit the text by replacing the two modals that could be misinterpreted.
In general such past-tense modals should be restored. Here in 1 Nephi 3:19 we have the first example where might should be restored. For a complete discussion of these historically past-tense modals, see modal verbs in volume 3.
Summary: Restore the original past-tense modal forms might, would, and should whenever the earliest textual sources support their use.