a
pola
0
o,
He
LEER,
i ae
Vie
abe
3 *
z ¢ seob \
6
ES
ins
ee Sey
=
x
eS
uy Sts?
aie ey itn ae
Spatusiti dase aH
Bhai Rea
*
ns
tf _
waar
5c sepa eds
pe
=
=
eos
-.
a
‘, %
ae a
tS Rematetrea res
ESA,
mbes
ure
a
.
ie Dh
<-
my
Nig
wT
Pit CRUDE
ABOUT MORMONISM
JAMES H. SNOWDEN
BY
JAMES H. SNOWDEN
THE BASAL BELIEFS OF CHRISTIANITY
THE WORLD A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM
CAN WE BELIEVE IN IMMORTALITY ?
THE COMING OF THE LORD
IS THE WORLD GROWING BETTER ?
THE PERSONALITY OF GOD
A WONDERFUL NIGHT: A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION
A WONDERFUL MORNING: THE EASTER MESSAGE
SCENES AND SAYINGS IN THE LIFE OF CHRIST
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
A SUMMER ACROSS THE SEA
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
THE MEANING OF EDUCATION
THE ATTRACTIONS OF THE MINISTRY
THE CITY OF TWELVE GATES: A STUDY IN CATHOLICITY
JESUS AS JUDGED BY HIS ENEMIES
THE MAKING AND MEANING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
IMMORTALITY AND MODERN THOUGHT
SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSONS, SIX ANNUAL VOLS.
yee
id -
v
Aan
“a
A;
ee
At of
ao ©
ae LE
mA
ae
5
TABERNACLE SQUARE AND TEMPLE
ABOUT MORMONISM...._/
BY
JAMES H. SNOWDEN
NEW ei YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1926,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
@D
THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Sy ake
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFACE
Mormonism is closing the first century of its ex-
istence, as Joseph Smith its founder claimed to have
obtained the “gold plates’ of his Bible in September,
1827, and his Book of Mormon was published and
his church was organized in 1830. It has had a
varied and dramatic career, running through the
adventures of its early days, its hardships in the
Middle West ending in the tragedy of Smith’s as-
sassination at Nauvoo, IIl., in 1847, its flight through
incredible sufferings to the Rocky Mountains, and its
growth from six members of unpromising antece-
dents and prospects to its present organization of
half a million members and an efficient hierarchy.
Mormonism and Christian Science are the two
original religions America has contributed to the
world and they are strikingly alike at many points.
No other religion has been so hotly opposed and
hated by its opponents as Mormonism and it must
be admitted that it has not always received fair
treatment and has often been maligned. It has been
denounced as the greatest menace to our common
Christianity and to our American government.
What is the truth about it? Its approaching cen-
tennial makes this an opportune time to ask this
Vv
vi PREFACE
question anew and tell the truth on the subject.
What are the facts about “Joe” Smith and his “gold
plates” and his “revelations”? Who was respon-
sible for his murder by a mob ? Was Brigham
Young “a great American” or even “the greatest
American” as many Mormons affirm, and what is
the truth about his “empire”? Have the Mormons
really abandoned the practice of polygamy and has
the ‘‘menace” of Mormonism been abated? What
will be the future of this religion and may it be
modified and purified into a recognized branch of
our common Christianity? These and many related
questions are discussed in this book in the light of
history as it is recorded in the large literature of the
subject and of the latest developments of this faith.
The effort of the author has been to examine all
the relevant facts and judge them impartially and
tell the truth about them. While he cannot suppose
that he has wholly escaped the influence of his own
principles and unintended predilections, yet he has
honestly endeavored to see and say all things in the
light of reality. No other judgment ought to be
made or will stand.
President Heber J. Grant, of the Mormon church,
in answering a request from the author for a con-
tribution to this volume stating the present position
of his church, courteously declined on the ground
that he would not care to write anything to appear
in a book concerning whose contents he knew noth-
ing, and then he added: “I note that you are going
PREFACE vii
to try to be fair in what you write regarding the
truth about Mormonism. I certainly will be happy
to congratulate you if you succeed in being fair, as,
in case you are fair, it will be like an oasis in the
desert, as about ninety-nine out of every hundred
who write anything about Mormonism do so in a
biased and unfair manner.” I can hardly hope that
this volume will meet President Grant’s ideal of fair
' treatment at every point, but I have sincerely tried
to be fair according to my own light and conscience
and have kept in view the aim:
Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice.
James H. SNOWDEN.
Dae staid ae SN RR ei bi ae yi
Se yctee Ua OR ND eae om. ‘anh, He
iy ‘
THE LITERATURE OF MORMONISM
AND LIST OF BOOKS CONSULTED
The most complete body of literature on Mor-
monism is the “Berrian” collection in the New York
Public Library, which runs to about 500 titles and
contains books, pamphlets, newspapers and other
material that afford the student a large command
of the subject. The next largest collection of Mor-
mon literature is found in the National Library of
Congress at Washington, and it contains about 250
titles. The author is indebted to the librarians of
both the New York Public and the National Library
of Congress for special facilities and favors and for
the loan of some rare and valuable material. In
the following list of books consulted by the author
in the writing of this volume the more important
ones, besides the writings of the various members
of the Smith family, are those by E. D. Howe, W.
A. Linn, J. F. Gibbs, T. B. H. Stenhouse, E. W.
Tullidge, C. A. Shook, I. W. Riley, F. P. Spalding,
and Frank J. Cannon. Gibbs, Stenhouse and Can-
non were expelled or withdrew from the Utah
branch and Shook from the Reorganized branch of
Mormonism. Linn’s Story of Mormonism is a de-
tailed and thoroughly documented history up to
1x
x LITERATURE OF MORMONISM
1901 by a non-Mormon but impartial scientific his-
torian, but it is too large and elaborate a book for
popular readers and much has happened and some
new light, especially on the origin of the Book of
Mormon, has been discovered since it appeared.
Adams, John Quincy, The Birth of Mormonism.
1916.
Beadle, J. H. (with O. J. Hollister), Polygamy, or,
The Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism.
1902.
Bennett, John C., The History of the Saints, or an
Exposé of Joe Smith and Mormonism. 1842.
Bonsall, Miss Marian, The Tragedy of the Mormon
Woman. 1908.
Burton, Richard F., City of the Saints and Across
the Rocky Mountains to California. 1881.
Cannon, Frank J. (with H. J. O’Higgins), Under
the Prophet in Utah. IgI1I.
Cannon, Frank J. (with G. L. Knapp), Brigham
Young and His Mormon Empire. 1913.
Carvalho, S. N., Incidents of Travel in the Far
West. 1857.
Chamberlin, Ralph V., Life and Philosophy of
W. H. Chamberlin. 1925.
Combs, George R., Some Latter-Day Religions.
1899.
Dibble, R. F., “Brigham Young” in Strenuous
Americans. 1923.
Dougall, Lily, The Mormon Prophet. 1808.
LITERATURE OF MORMONISM xi
Erickson, Ephraim Edward, The Psychological and
Ethical Aspects of Mormon Group Life. 1922.
Evans, John H., One Hundred Years of Mormon-
ism. 1908.
Ferris, B. G., Utah Under the Mormons. 1854.
Fohlin, E. V., Salt Lake Past and Present. 1908.
Gibbs, J. F., Lights and Shadows of Mormonism.
1909.
Goodwin, S. H., Mormonism and Masonry, A Utah
Point of View. 1925.
Guernsey, Alice M., Under Our Flag. 10903.
Gunnison, J. W., The Mormons, or Latter-Day
Saints. 1856.
Howe, E. D., Mormonism Unveiled. 1834.
Hyde, John, Mormonism, Its Leaders and Designs.
1857.
Kelley, Wiliam H., Presidency and Priesthood.
1895.
Kennedy, James H., Early Days of Mormonism.
1888.
Kinney, Bruce, Mormonism, the Islam of America.
IQI2.
Death irtih T., The Mormons and Their Bible.
IQOI.
Lee, John Doyle, The Mormon Menace, Being the
Confession of John Doyle Lee, Danite and Off-
cial Assassin of the Mormon Church. 1905.
Linn, William A., The Story of the Mormons. 1901.
Mayhew, Henry, Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints.
1851.
xii LITERATURE OF MORMONISM
McClintok, James H., Mormon Settlement in
Arizona. 1921.
Meyer, Eduard, Ursprung und Geschichte der Mor-
monen mit Exkursen tiber Anfange des Islams
und des Christentum. 1912.
Patterson, Robert, Who Wrote the Book of Mor-
mon? 1882.
Pratt, Parley P., A Voice of Warning, an Introduc-
tion to the Faith and Doctrine of the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 1881.
Rae, W. F., Westward by Rail. 1874.
Riley, Isaac W., The Founder of Mormonism.
1908.
Roberts, Brigham H., Defense of the Faith of the
Saints. 1907. The Gospel: an Exposition of
First Principles. 1918. The Mormon Doc-
trine of Deity. 1908. Outlines of Ecclesias-
tical History. 1902. New Witnesses for
God, 4 IOnrT.
Shook, Charles A., The True Origin of the Book of
Mormon, 1912; Cumorah Revisited, the True
Origin of Mormon Polygamy.
Shroeder, Albert F., Origin of the Book of Mormon.
IQOI.
Siebel, George, Mormon Problem. 1899.
Smith, Joseph, The Book of Mormon, 1908; The
Book of Doctrine and of Covenants of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,
1880; The Pearl of Great Price, a Selection
from the Revelations, Translations and Narra-
LITERATURE OF MORMONISM xii
tives of Joseph Smith, First Prophet, Seer and
Revelator. 1913.
Smith, Joseph (eldest son of the Prophet and Presi-
dent of the Reorganized Church, with Apostle
Heman C. Smith), History of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 4 vols.
1897-1900.
Smith, Joseph F. (Apostle and Official Church His-
torian), Essentials of Church History.
Smith, Lucy (mother of the Prophet), Biographi-
cal Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and
His Progenitors for Many Generations. 1858
Smith, Mrs. M. E. V., Fifteen Years Among the
Mormons. 1858.
Spalding, Franklin P., Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Trans-
lator. 1912.
Stansbury, Howard, Expedition to the Valley of
the Great Salt Lake with an Authentic Account
of the Mormon Settlement. 1855.
Stenhouse, Thomas B., The Rocky Mountain Saints.
Belts 7 3,
Talmadge, James E., Articles of Faith, a Series of
Lectures on the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat-
ter-Day Saints. 1899.
Traum, Samuel W., Mormonism Against Itself.
IQIO.
Tullidge, Edward W., History of Salt Lake City.
1886.
U. S. Senate, Great Debates in American History,
IQI3.
xiv LITERATURE OF MORMONISM
U. S. Senate, Proceedings Against Reed Smoot.
1900.
Webb, Robert C., The Case Against Mormonism, a
Candid Examination of an Interesting but
Much Misunderstood Subject in History, Life
and Thought. 1816.
Williams, Samuel, Mormonism Exposed.
Willing, Mrs. Jenme F., On American Soil, or Mor-
monism the Mohammedanism of the West.
1900.
Wilson, Lycurgus A., Outlines of Mormon Philos-
ophy. 1905.
Wood, Ezra M., Schools for Spirits. 1903.
Young, Ann Eliza, Life in Mormon Bondage. 1908.
The Dictionary of Religion and Ethics.
The Encyclopedia Britannica.
Bulletin of the New York Public Library, March,
1909, with Catalogue of the Berrian collection
of books on Mormonism.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM
1. The Religious Nature of Man .
Human Credulity .
Self-Deception
Self-Interest .
Local Social and Religious eon
tions
II JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY, BOY-
HOOD AND YOUTH . ‘ ‘
WA wD
Ty PASICOSLLY A Wi Gk
2. Birth and Hositvcd
3. A Money-Digger and Beeston
Expert .
4. General Glee ter of ged Smith
Family . Pe ama eh hee
‘Ut THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN .
1. The Visions ;
2. Discovery of the etnies Plates :
3. Translating the Plates
ot
. The Printing and the Editions af the
Book Ht,
The Witnesses to fe Plates :
Joseph Smith as an Lai)
Translator .
7. Who Wrote the Boots of Motinod?
xV
nen
79
Xvi
CHAPTER
CONTENTS
IV THE BOOK OF MORMON: CON-
TENTS OF THE (BCR iia ae
i
2.
Kf
4.
Names in the Book .
General Contents and Sources of the
Book
Marks of Teendene in the Bose
Origin of the Ideas of the Book .
V THE FOUNDING AND ORGANIZA-
TION OF THE MORMON CHURCH
I.
2.
The Founding of the Church
The Organization of the Church .
VI THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON
CHURCH ;
1. The Mormon Doctrine of God .
The Mormon Doctrine of Christ and
the Holy Spirit . i
The Mormon Doctrine of ea ;
The Mormon Doctrine of Sin
The Mormon Doctrine of Atonement
and Blood Atonement .
Church Organization .
The Priesthood
Ordinances
Miracles ;
The Bible and Raunce Resslainee
. Liberty of Worship .
Relation to Civil Government
. Morality and Virtue .
Polygamy and Marriage .
PAGE
94
95
97
103
107
116
116
118
125
127
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
136
137
138
138
139
CHAPTER
Vil
Vill
IX
XI
XII
CONTENTS
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO ,
1. The Church at Kirtland .
2. Business Ventures and Failures .
3. Immoralities, Dissensions and Flight
4. Entrance of Brigham Young, Mas-
ter Mind of Mormonism .
REMOVAL TO MISSOURI .
I. In Jackson County
2. Further Troubles in and eration
from Missouri .
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS
1. A Mormon Town Rises on the River
2. Smith Enters National Politics .
3. The Tragedy at Nauvoo .
4. Character of Joseph Smith .
5. Last Days at. Nauvoo.
BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYG-
BMS a vy
1. Early Riancn Teachie
2. Later Official Teaching .
THE REORGANIZED CHURCH OF
LATTER-DAY SAINTS ’
1. Early Divisions Among the Mor-
mons
2. The Doctrines aid Growin of he
Reorganized Church maa
THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS
1. Across the Plains of Iowa . i
2. From Iowa to the Great Salt Lake .
3. The Disastrous Hand-Cart Here
tion .
xvii
PAGE
143
143
146
I51
155
158
159
161
167
168
172
174
177
182
186
186
18g
195
195
197
199
td
201
203
xviii
CHAPTER
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
CONTENTS
MORMON MISSIONS
1. Early Mormon Missions .
2. Mormon Missions Abroad .
3. Later Mormon Missions .
THE) CUDY BY veTH EGR AG csr i
LAKE : Roly ane
1. The Valley and the habe. :
2. The Founding and het of the
City rae ene :
3. “Salt -Lake® City Today }
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH
I. Political Organization
2. First Clash with the Federal Corea
ment : ; , 2 4
3. The Mormon War
MORMONISM AND MURDER .
I. The Doctrine of Blood Atonement .
2. The Practice of the Doctrine .
3. The Mountain Meadows Massacre .
4. Explanation of this Doctrine and
Spirit
MORMONISM DURING THE CIVIL
WAR ,
1. Mormon gis seat es Utes
2. Federal Action
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF
MORMONISM .,
I. Gentile Irruption ‘ant Bigsiniees
Monopoly :
PAGE
209
209
213
217
221
221
223
227
232
232
234
236
24+
244
246
250
259
262
263
265
269
269
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER PAGE
2. Revolt Lifts Its Head SHER 273
3. The Prophet at the Height of FNS
OW er sary aaiee 278
4. The Wives of the Peebater mf eM) Al Mabe} 0.
Rovio weattvor tne brophetur: «ray sn 20d
MOC THE SURRENDER. OF POLYGAMY: 205
1. The Mormon System of Polygamy . 296
2. The Course of the Legislation
Against Polygamy. . . AuusOr
3. The Mormon Manifesto of fone tite
Ae Was the Manifesto Keptr 94,30 3m
Ree cunrWiGhT) FOR STATEHOOD: oi 7 310
Ty pari iWreams of Feminine 7) vai.) palo
POM EDSICO FALCHOOULS Veen e Cie a an ae
ara aS Av LA eatin Upset gh teh At uiceeraeat
Ae MORMONTISM TODAY oi. is 232
1. Mormonism Growing and Aggressive 333
2. Has the Mormon Practice of Polyg-
amy Ceased? . 342
3. The Testimony of Raden Prot!
estant Ministers . . 344
4. Concluding Ponda SO VMGIA sec ich
A. Mormonism is an errant form
of Gerson Oa Sine 355
B. The ‘menace’ of Monnonien
IS, abated (sores. 356
C. Mormonism has inner therks
and self-limitations . . 358
D. How to meet and deal with it 359
URE ies 2 a has TE Ata ins th GS RD ULM aL fa]
cent wit
iret
i y
uly Ye
Af AA ,
\
alan
hate eh ah
1H!
is OW Rit
re a
Se ida me id 4
Lye wht Me nn
it Pein This }
ih, BL
ie Hx
+ py vd
ee 4h) ah
‘ne
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
Tabernacle Square and Temple. . . . Frontispiece
POSE (Oo APOSTGT|A cep ed Bgl tone Ea Ma lr A AL Ageing ila 0
pe Tg aba yy Ga) bit cet eas A ee Pa Panes A MDE er (ies Hot
RR ADOTTIAC ION sy uta (el isc al gid oy alah Mine RUlUPSiN ena oD
Monument to Brigham Young and the Pioneers,
ROC OMICS IE Cay a tc nahh eye) SUM E Raatina ah Magen
aS YOR SR ae
‘i We Av EN ,
‘aan
i
4
= 4 ay
ee
ihe
Ms header
iy
%
Cte
!
a
Lad ge
\
AMT
Ai ;
J
THE TRUTH ABOUT
MORMONISM
CHAPTER [|
THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM
ELIGION is one of the most universal and im-
portant facts in our human world. Man
is constitutionally and inescapably religious. Car-
lyle says that a man’s religion is the deepest thing
in him, and even Herbert Spencer declares that
“religion expresses some eternal fact’ and “concerns
each and all of us more than any other matter what-
ever.” Any religion, then, is worthy of our interest
and study and may have valuable lessons to teach us.
Mormonism is a new religion which America has
produced and contributed to the world. Springing
from our American soil and common Christianity it
has yet sent out its lines to all the earth and aspires
to world dominion. It proclaims itself a new and
fuller and final revelation of Christianity which is to
supersede all existing religions. Such a notable am-
bitious and aggressive religious movement must
have some ground for its being, and however often
it has been examined it recurrently challenges our
25
26 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
attention and thorough investigation, that we may
discover the secret of its success, find out and utilize
any truth it may contain, intelligently and efficiently
oppose any errors it embodies and any evils it is
causing, and learn any lessons it may teach.
The writer proposes to examine this religious
product of our own soil in its origin and history
and practical working in as fair and impartial spirit
as possible, and while he cannot hope wholly to es-
cape from the influence of his own convictions and
unconscious preferences, yet he will endeavor to
treat it from an objective and dispassionate point of
view. There are always some grains of truth in the
largest heap of error, and it is this truth that gives
error its power to sprout and spread and multiply;
and it should be our endeavor to seize this grain
of truth and see that it is properly planted and cul-
tivated in our own field. There must be important
truth in Mormonism, and we should strive to do
justice to the followers of Joseph Smith.
Every founder of a system of religion is a child
of his age, and every form of human belief and
practice grows out of its environment. We shall
therefore first look at the roots of Mormonism.
I. THE RELIGIOUS NATURE OF MAN
Deeper than all religions is religion. The univer-
sal religious nature of man is the soil out of which
all religions, pagan and Christian, spring. This re-
THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 27
ligious nature is rooted in the intuitions and instincts
and emotions, and in the reason and will and con-
science of man and pervades his whole being. It
acts with the universality and spontaneity and force
of an instinct to turn man to his Maker as the flower
turns to the sun and the needle to the pole. Man
is not religious because he reasons and wills to be
so, but because he cannot help it. He is constitu-
tionally and inescapably religious and prays to or
yearns for God almost as instinctively as he
breathes. Even when he thinks he is denying re-
ligion he is trying to feed his spiritual nature with
some kind of religious bread, though it be a husk or
a stone. The absurdest creed and falsest faith and
vilest rite and most hideous idol afford some sort of
religious satisfaction. God has set eternity in the
heart of man, and therefore eternity comes out of
it and feels after the Father of spirits if haply it
may find him.
Mormonism is a religion and springs out of this
universal soil. It has a creed and Bible and church
and promises salvation for sin and eternal life. It
is not to be denied or doubted that it supplies its
adherents with some measure of spiritual satisfac-
tion. People do not build temples and carry on wor-
ship for nothing. All sincere worshipers derive some
benefit from their faith, however deep may be its
error and dark its practice. The falsest faith bears
witness to the reality of religion and catches some
28 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
gleams of that Light “which lighteth every man,
coming into the world.”
This is the deepest root of Mormonism, and it
grows out of the field of the religious nature of
man; but in this field there grow not only good grain
but also grain of inferior quality and also weeds.
2. HUMAN CREDULITY.
The human mind has an enormous capacity for
belief. On the slightest evidence and against all the
grounds of reason and right it can seize upon a be-
lief and hug it to its heart and cherish it as an in-
dubitable truth and kindle it into a passion and fierce
fanaticism. Hence all the world is a dust of sys-
tems and of creeds, and no creed is so grotesque and
no practice is so revolting that some religionist will
not profess and follow it.
Money, medicine and religion are three fields in
which credulity flourishes prolifically and runs riot.
Show people a quick scheme to get rich, or a sure
panacea for disease, or a smooth and plausible nov-
elty in religion and many of them will lose all sense
ot reason and reality and swallow the bait unques-
tioningly and become enthusiasts and fanatics in
its behalf.
False religious prophets are usually men or
women of unbounded credulity and gullibility, and
having deluded themselves they play upon the cre-
dulity of others and hypnotize them by the hundreds
THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 29
and thousands. Credulity is contagious. It mul-
tiplies like the germs of disease and may infect
whole communities and spread over states and con-
tinents.
The founders of Mormonism were among the
most gullible people of the nineteenth century. They
could profess to believe the most absurd things that
run squarely against all our tested knowledge and
contradict our very senses. Joseph Smith’s family
were notorious for their superstition, and he was
capable of believing anything. These victims of
their own credulity were masters in playing upon
the credulity of their followers, and the fact that
there are so many people that are capable of being
caught with religious novelties was and is one of the
reasons and roots of their success.
3. SELF-DECEPTION
Let us not think, however, that these prophets
were pure impostors. The human mind has great
ability and skill in deceiving itself. It can make
the worse appear the better reason and get itself
to believe anything it wants to believe. “The will
to believe” can set things in such a light and so select
and intensify certain motives to the exclusion of
others that it can turn the blackest falsehood into
the semblance of truth. The mind sees all things
through the medium of its own inherited instincts
and emotional temperament and of its preconcep-
80 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
tions and beliefs and desires, and these may beget
and color convictions and passions that are contrary
to all human knowledge and sanity and yet that may
never be disturbed with doubt. The human mind
often has unconscious causes of its beliefs that are
deeper than all its conscious reasons.
Joseph Smith was a strange compound of contra-
dictory elements, and the keenest psychoanalysis
would fail to draw any clear line between sincere
self-deception and conscious duplicity in his motives
and methods. He gives evidence of imposture in
some of his moments and means, but he was also a
believer in his message and mission.
4. SELF-INTEREST
Self-interest is one of the most pervasive and
powerful of human motives and enters deeply even
into religion. It may spring from three chief roots,
and we believe they were all present in the origin
of Mormonism. ‘These are money, power and sen-
sual gratification. The mercenary motive has ever
lurked around religion, and some religions are deeply
marked by it. Joseph Smith was a prophet who had
a keen scent for profit. He soon developed into an
autocrat and despot with an inordinate ambition
and greed for power, and ruled his church and fol-
lowers with an iron hand. Mormonism is deeply
stained with sensuality. The spirit and the flesh lie
close together in human nature, and it is only a step
THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 31
and a slip from one into the other. Sensuality has
ever been one of the most subtle temptations and
greatest dangers of religion and has often degraded
its light into darkness.
Joseph Smith by his own confession was in his
youth loose in his morals, and he introduced and
practiced a doctrine in his religion and church that
has excited the indignation of the Christian world.
5. LOCAL SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS
The roots of Mormonism so far mentioned are
general human capacities and motives, and a more
specific cause of its origin is to be found in the local
social and religious conditions out of which it arose.
The first half of the nineteenth century was a fer-
menting time in New England and the states lying
immediately to the west, when social and religious
conditions were in a transition stage. The older
extreme orthodoxy had encountered violent reac-
tion in which one extreme begot another, and all
manner of erratic movements and creeds emerged
out of the chaos, free thinking, scepticism, mesmer-
ism, spiritualism, occultism, faith healing, and many
other strange cults and ephemeral fads flourished,
some of them having a very brief day.
The Smith family lived in these conditions in Ver-
mont and must have absorbed some of their influ-
ences into their sensitive and highly receptive na-
tures. In 1814, in Joseph’s tenth year, the family
32 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
removed to Palmyra in Northern New York. The
region was then the “West” and was largely unre-
claimed from the wilderness, and primitive social
conditions prevailed and life was a burden and battle
of toil. Only a few log huts stood where now
stands the splendid city of Rochester. The Indians
in their feathers and paint still loitered around the
villages and infested the neighboring forests, and
their ominous presence was an ever-impending dan-
ger and anxiety. Indian history and lore, tradi-
tions and tragedies filled the cabins of the settlers
with marvelous tales of adventures and escapes and
exciting news of terrible happenings and whispered
fears of imminent attack as they sat around their
blazing log fires in the stillness and dread of the
night. Joseph Smith absorbed these stories and
they furnished him the Indian lore that forms so
large a portion of his book.
Northern New York was also in a state of reli-
gious unrest and upheaval at this time. Presbyte-
rianism and Methodism were the prevailing Prot-
estant denominations, but in spite of Calvinistic
orthodoxy and Methodist revivalistic exhortation
and fervency there was much scepticism abroad.
Tom Paine’s Age of Reason was copiously circu-
lated, and there were those who were interested in
seeing that a cheap edition of the book, printed in
France, was given freely away. This religious un-
rest was intensified by the fierce denominational ri-
valries and internal strifes, the Methodist body alone
THE ROOTS OF MORMONISM 33
undergoing four divisions between 1814 and 1830.
The Presbyterians were also having their internal
troubles, and rumors and charges of heresy were in
the air. In 1834 the Presbytery of Geneva was
charged with “sixteen gross errors in doctrine,” and
in 1837 the General Assembly adjudged that the
four Synods of Genesee, Geneva, Utica and Western
Reserve were “out of connection with the Presbyte-
rian Church,” thus dividing this body into the Old
and the New School branches.
The abduction of William Morgan, the Mason,
in 1826, resulting in the formation of the Anti-
Masonic Party, created immense excitement, not
only in Western New York where it occurred, but
throughout the country. Later, spiritualism arose
in connection with the performances of the Fox
sisters near Rochester, and the wave of mesmerism
and other occult doctrines and practices that rolled
over New England reached the remote regions of
New York. |
Joseph Smith, highly excitable and impressionable
and absorbent, was immersed in this atmosphere
from his tenth to his twenty-sixth year, and these
were the formative years of his life when he gath-
ered his materials and shaped his ideas and dreamed
his dreams and produced his book. All these fer-
menting movements and exciting events left their
impress on his receptive mind and imagination and
marvelously tenacious memory and entered into the
34 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
contents of his revelations and his Bible, as will ap-
pear in the due course of this study.
It was out of this soil and of these roots of the
religious nature of man, human credulity, self-de-
ception, self-interest, and local social and religious
conditions that Mormonism grew.
CHAPTER II
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY, BOYHOOD
AND YOUTH
ORMONISM, like most historical religions,
had its origin in a founder and his book.
Joseph Smith is the name of the man that bears
this responsibility in the case of this religion. We
shall first sketch the family history and the early
years of the founder of this faith, and then proceed
to examine his book.
I. ANCESTRY,
The Smith family, from which “Joe” Smith, as he
was familiarly known, sprang, was of Scotch de-
scent and mixed Presbyterian and Methodist
proclivities, and we first meet with them in Vermont.
In this state at Turnbridge, on January 24, 1796,
Joseph Smith, Senior, and Lucy Mack were joined
in wedlock, and of this union there were born nine
children, of whom the fourth became the Mormon
prophet.
The father of Lucy Mack was Solomon Mack, of
whom considerable is known, as he was a celebrated
character among his neighbors in his day and was
35
36 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
long remembered as a feeble queer old man who rode
around the country selling his autobiography. This
Narrative of the Life of Solomon Mack, as the title
of the rare little book reads, consists of forty-eight
pages of ill-spelt English and gives an account of
his experiences as a farm boy, a soldier in Indian
campaigns and in the Revolutionary War, of his
varied occupations as teamster, sutler, privateer, of
his conversion at the age of seventy-six, when he
“saw a bright light in a dark night’? and when, as
he wrote, “I thought the Lord called and I had but
a moment to live.” These visions and voices indi-
cate a psychopathic susceptibility to abnormal ex-
periences which was the hereditary fountain from
which descended the same ill-balanced nervous na-
ture that marked the epileptic grandson who became
noted as the prophet of Mormonism.
Lucy Smith, the daughter of Solomon Mack and
the mother of Joe, inherited this psychopathic na-
ture in an intensified degree. She was of vigorous
and forceful personality and determined will, but
she received little schooling and was semi-illiterate,
and she was given to dreams and visions and was
extremely credulous and superstitious. She believed
in demons, as her husband believed in witchcraft,
and she was given to fortune telling as a gainful
occupation. She wrote Biographical Sketches of
Joseph Smith, though it is suspected with assistance,
a book which “teems with dreams, visions and mi-
raculous cures. These were, in truth, ‘events of in-
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 37
finite importance,’ to one who was not wont to dis-
tinguish between subjective illusions and objective
realities.’* She also heard a supernatural voice
and had a miraculous recovery. Though both a
‘Presbyterian and a Methodist minister made special
efforts to convert her, she had a strong aversion to
denominations and refused to join any church, de-
claring that “there was not on earth the religion she
sought”; yet she had a Presbyterian minister bap-
tize her. Her eldest brother belonged to the ‘“‘Seek-
ers,’ who held that miracles were necessary to faith,
and one of her sisters was also miraculously cured.
The mother of the prophet thus had psychic experi-
ences that were hereditary antecedents and predis-
positions culminating in her son’s dreams and
doings.
Joseph Smith, Senior, was a man of many trades
even for a New England Yankee. By turns he was
farmer, storekeeper, dealer in ginseng, well-digger,
hunter for Captain Kidd’s treasure, and even a
counterfeiter, as “he became implicated with one
Jack Downing in counterfeiting money, but turned
state’s evidence and escaped the penalty.” He kept
roving around in several New England states until
1815, when he removed with his family to Palmyra,
N. Y., where he displayed a sign, “Cake and Beer
Shop,” selling “gingerbread, pies, boiled eggs, root
beer, and other like notions,” and “‘he and his sons
*Riley, The Founder of Mormonism, p. 20.
® Historical Magazine, 1870.
38 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
did odd jobs, gardening, harvesting, and well-dig-
ging, when they could get them.”
Joseph Smith, Senior, also had “visions.” They
began in 1811 and continued until they had filled up
the sacred number of seven, and among them were
two that entered into the origin and make-up of
Mormonism; for “the vision of the Magic Box gives
the clue for the young prophet’s discovery of the
Golden Plates, and the vision of the Fruit Tree is
substantially reproduced in the Book of Mormon.”
The father of the prophet was associated with the
son in the development of his religion, the son
founding for him the office of “Patriarch” in ac-
cordance with one of his “revelations.”
This ancestry discloses strains of psychic abnor-
mality, susceptibility to and belief in dreams and
visions and supernatural revelations and miracles,
illiteracy and credulity, and religious excitability,
eccentricity and superstition that go far to explain
the erratic psychopathic and religious nature of the
founder of Mormonism. When we see the parents,
so sensitive to and absorbent of all the peculiar isms |
of their fermenting time, we are not surprised at
the son.
2. BIRTH AND BOYHOOD
Joseph Smith was one of those children born in
utmost obscurity and poverty who yet have been des-
tined to attain to worldwide fame, in some instances
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH = 39
of an honorable and in other instances of a discredit-
able nature. One of the strangest of these cases was
that of the boy born in Vermont and brought up in
primitive conditions in Western New York who be-
came the founder of a new religion that has since
carried his name to the ends of the earth. Joseph
Smith, Junior, was born at Sharon, Vermont, on De-
cember 23, 1805. He received less than a year of
schooling in his boyhood, and we learn little of his
life during the peripatetic wanderings of his father
through Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachu-
setts until the removal to Palmyra, N. Y., in 1815,
when Joe was ten years of age.
After living three and a half years at Palmyra the
Smiths moved two miles to the south near the vil-
lage of Manchester where they squatted on a piece
of unoccupied land and put up a log house consist-
ing of two rooms and an attic. Here they carried
on their various occupations of selling cordwood,
brooms, vegetables, maple sugar and cakes, and the
boys hunted and fished and loafed around the vil-
lage store. The father and several of the sons
could not read, and of Joseph, Junior, Orson Pratt,
a Mormon biographer of the prophet, wrote: “He
could read without much difficulty, and write an im-
perfect hand, and had a very limited understanding
of the elementary rules of arithmetic. These were
his highest and only attainments, while the rest of
those branches so universally taught in the com-
mon schools throughout the United States were en-
40 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
tirely unknown to him.” *? We also are told that
his favorite books were the Life of Stephen Bur-
roughs, “a scoundrel dressed in the garb of the
church,” and the autobiography of the pirate Kidd.
He afterward admitted that the pirate’s story made
a deep impression on him and that he was fascinated
by the lines that are found in it:
My name is Robert Kidd,
As I sailed, as I sailed;
And most wickedly I did,
God’s laws I did forbid,
As I sailed, as I sailed.*
This admission is in keeping with another con-
fession which he made, declaring that in his youth
he “frequently fell into many foolish errors, and
displayed the weakness of youth and the corruption
of human nature, which, I am sorry to say, led me
into diverse temptations, to the gratification of many
appetites offensive in the sight of God.” * These
“diverse temptations” were especially drunkenness
and immorality.
One who knew him intimately in his boyhood
writes of him:
He was lounging, idle (not to say vicious ), and possesed
of less than ordinary intelligence. He used to come into
the village of Palmyra with little jags of wood from his
backwoods home; sometimes patronizing a village grocery
too freely; sometimes finding an odd job to do about the
®* Remarkable Visions, quoted by Linn, Story, p. 12.
“Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism, p. 13.
° Pearl of Great Price, p. 88.
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 41
store of Seymour Scoville, and once a week he would stroll
into the office of the old Palmyra Register for his father’s
paper. How impious in us young dare-devils to once in a
while blacken the face of the then meddling, inquisitive
lounger with the old-fashioned balls, when he used to put
himself in the way of the old-fashioned Rammage
press. ... But Joseph had little ambition, and some
very laudable aspirations. ‘The mother’s intellect oc-
casionally shone out in him, especially when he used to
help us solve some portentous questions of moral or
political ethics.®
Another intimate personal acquaintance of Smith
when he was about thirteen years of age testifies
that he was “‘a dull-eyed, flaxen-haired, prevaricat-
ing boy, noted only for his indolent and vagabondish
character, and his habits of exaggeration and un-
truthfulness,” whom his father boasted of as the
“genus of the family.” And “it has been again and
again quoted that even Brigham Young declared
that ‘The Prophet was a man of mean birth; that he
was wild, intemperate, even dishonest and tricky in
his youth.’ ” 7
When a storm of revivalism swept over Western
New York in his boyhood, his susceptible nature was
caught and stirred by the excitement, he listened in-
tently to the religious controversy that attended it
and he was swept on a wave into the Methodist
church on probation. He now took to reading the
Bible and to expounding Scripture.
*Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism, pp. 13-14.
"Tbid., pp. 14, 16.
42 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
His mind was retentive ; he was possessed of a rude elo-
quence of speech, and had that rare power of expression
that to the stranger or the simple would seem the outward
form of a sincere belief within. The more mysterious
and complex the chapter of Scripture to which he gave
attention, the more open and bold his explanation and
application when surrounded by auditors who did not
surpass him in knowledge.®
However, this conversion had “‘no depth of earth”
and presently withered away, he severed his slight
connection with the church, and was soon heard
denouncing sectarianism and declaring that all
churches were built on a false foundation.
3. A MONEY-DIGGER AND PEEK-STONE EXPERT
Joseph Smith, Senior, was a well-digger who lo-
cated water by means of a divining rod or forked
hazel switch, and Joe even when a lad professed the
same skill. Presently he became acquainted with
the magic art, then much in vogue, of “seeing”
things by means of a “peek-stone.” Almost any
stone, especially if it had some peculiarity in its ap-
pearance, would serve for this purpose, and the
common mode of using it was to place it in a hat and
then thrust the face into the hat so as to shut out
the light, and when the seer thus looked at the mystic
stone all sorts of secrets, it was claimed, would be
revealed and visions would be seen. Stories of hid-
den treasures, concealed by Indians or robbers or
* Kennedy, Early Days of Mormonism, pp. 15-17.
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 43
pirates in caves and pits, weré rife in those days,
and the business of hunting them and locating them
by magic means was a favorite occupation.
Joe Smith became an expert at this business.
“Long before the idea of a golden Bible entered
their (the Smiths’) minds, in their excursions for
money-digging, . . . Joe used to be usually their
guide, putting into a hat a peculiar stone he had,
through which he looked to decide where they should
begin to dig.” °® He obtained his “peek-stone” in
the following manner: Willard Chase, of Man-
chester, employed Joe and his brother to assist him
in digging a well. “After digging about twenty
feet,” he says, “we discovered a singularly appear-
ing stone which excited my curiosity. I brought it
to the top of the well, and as we were examining
it, Joseph put it into his hat and then his face into
the top of the hat. . . . After obtaining the stone
he began to publish abroad what wonders he could
discover by looking into it.” *°
Mormon writers are reluctant to admit that their
prophet was a money-digger, but the fact is ad-
mitted by the prophet himself in his autobiography,
as published in the Millennial Star, as follows:
In the month of October, 1825, I hired with an old
gentleman by the name of Josiah Stoal, who lived in
Chenango County, State of New York. He had heard
something of a silver mine having been opened by the
*Rey. John A. Clark in Gleanings by the Way (1842), quoted by
Linn, Story, p. 20.
* Tbid., p. 20.
44, THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Spaniards at Harmony, Susquehanna County, State of
Pennsylvania, and had, previous to my being with him,
been digging in order, if possible, to discover the mine.
After I went to live with him he took me, among the rest
of his hands, to dig for the silver mine, at which I con-
tinued to work for nearly a month, without success in our
undertaking, and finally I prevailed with the old gentle-
man to cease digging for it. Hence arose the very preva-
lent story of my having been a money-digger.
His mother also in her Biographical Sketches of
him says that “Stoal came for Joseph on account of
having heard that he possessed certain keys by which
he could discern things invisible to the natural eye.”
J. B. Buck gives a circumstantial account of a stone
owned by one Jack Belcher and says: “Joe Smith,
conceiving the idea of making a fortune through
a similar process of ‘seeing,’ bought the stone of
Belcher, and then began his operations in directing
where hidden treasures could be found.” **
It was part of the art of finding hidden riches by
the “peek-stone” to require a black sheep to be sacri-
fied to overcome the evil spirit that guarded the
treasure. On one occasion a neighbor of the Smiths
furnished the sheep, but the sacrifice was in vain.
The Smiths, however, made off with the carcass
and ate the sheep. “This, I believe,” said the con-
tributor of the sheep, “is the only time they ever
made money-digging a profitable business.”
The evidence is abundant and conclusive that dur-
™ For these and other testimonies on this point, see Linn, Story,
pp. 15-22, and Hyde, Mormonism, 263-265.
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 465
ing the seven or eight years preceding his alleged
discovery of the Gold Plates Joe Smith used “‘peek-
stones” and was known as a professional money-
digger.
It was while on one of his money-digging trips
to Harmony (now Oakland), Susquehanna County,
Pa., that Joseph Smith met, eloped with and, on
January 18, 1827, married Emma, the daughter of
Isaac Hale, “a distinguished hunter, a zealous mem-
ber of the Methodist church, and a man of excellent
moral character and of undoubted integrity.” Joe
took his wife to his home near Palmyra, N. Y., and
in the following August hired a neighbor named
Peter Ingersol to go with him to Pennsylvania to
get his wife’s household goods. Of this trip Inger-
sol said, in an affidavit made in 1833:
When we arrived at Mr. Hale’s in Harmony, Pa., from
which place he had taken his wife, a scene presented itself
truly affecting. His father-in-law addressed Joseph in
a flood of tears: “You have stolen my daughter and mar-
ried her. I had much rather have followed her to her
grave. You spend your time in digging for money—
pretend to see in a stone, and thus try to deceive people.”
Joseph wept and acknowledged that he could not see in a
stone now nor never could, and that his former preten-
sions in that respect were false. He then promised to give
up his old habits of digging for money and looking into
stones.??
Mr. Hale issued a signed statement, under date
of March 20, 1834, in which he gives an account
of his meeting with young Smith, of his money-
* Howe, Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 234-235.
46 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
digging, marriage with his daughter, promise to go
to work for a living, and of his “silly fabrication of
falsehood and wickedness” in connection with the
Book of Mormon, to which we shall refer later.**
4. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE SMITH FAMILY
The character of the Smith family in general and
of Joe in particular is set forth in a number of
statements and affidavits made by those who per-
sonally knew them. The first one here presented was
made by Daniel Hendrix, who was an assistant in
setting type and reading the proof of the Mormon
Bible in Palmyra, N. Y., and is as follows:
Every one knew him as Joe Smith. Joe was the most
ragged, lazy fellow in the place, and that is saying a
good deal. . . . He was a good talker, and would have
made a fine stump speaker if he had had the training.
He was known among the young men I associated with
as a romancer of the first water. I never knew so igno-
rant a man as Joe was to have such a fertile imagination.
He never could tell a common occurrence in his daily life
without embellishing the story with his imagination; yet
I remember that he was grieved one day when old Parson
Reed told Joe that he was going to hell for his lying
habits.*4
Eleven of “the most prominent and respectable
citizens of Manchester,” under date of November
3, 1833, affixed their names to this emphatic
declaration:
* This statement will be found in Kennedy, Early Days, pp. 38-41.
“Linn, Story, p. 13.
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 47
We, the undersigned, being personally acquainted with
the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., with whom the Gold
Bible, so-called, originated, state: That they were not only
a lazy, indolent set of men, but also intemperate, and their
word was not to be depended upon; and that we are
truly glad to dispense with their society.
On December 4, 1833, sixty-two residents of
Palmyra signed the following declaration:
We, the undersigned, have been acquainted with the
Smith family for a number of years, while they resided
near this place, and we have no hesitation in saying that
we consider them destitute of that moral character which
ought to entitle them to the confidence of any community.
They were particularly famous for visionary projects;
spent much of their time in digging for money which they
pretended was hid in the earth, and to this day large exca-
vations may be seen in the earth, not far from their
residence, where they used to spend their time in digging
for hidden treasures. Joseph Smith, Sr., and his son
Joseph were, in particular, considered entirely destitute
of moral character, and addicted to vicious habits.
The following affidavit was made by Parley
Chase:
Manchester, New York, December 2, 1833. I was ac-
quainted with the family of Joseph Smith, Sr., both before
and since they became Mormons, and feel free to state
that not one of the male members of the Smith family
were entitled to any credit whatsoever. They were lazy,
intemperate, and worthless men, very much addicted to
lying. In this they frequently boasted their skill.
Digging for money was their principal employment. In
regard to their Gold Bible speculation, they scarcely ever
told two stories alike. The Mormon Bible is said to be
48 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
a revelation from God, through Joseph Smith, Jr., his
Prophet, and this same Joseph Smith, Jr., to my knowl-
edge, bore the reputation among his neighbors of being
ailiar,*”
One of the most reliable and interesting of the
early books on Mormonism is Gleanings by the Way,
by Rev. John A. Clark, D.D., who at one time lived
in Western New York and wrote as follows (p.
340) :
One thing, however, is distinctly to be noted in the his-
tory of this imposture. There are no Mormons in Manches-
ter or Palmyra, the place where this Book of Mormon was
pretended to be found. You might as well go down into
the crater of Vesuvius and attempt to build an ice-house
amid its molten and boiling lava, as to convince any in-
habitant in either of these towns, that Joe Smith’s pre-
tensions are not the most gross and egregious falsehood.
It was indeed a wise stroke of policy, for those who got
up this imposture, and who calculated to make their for-
tune by it, to emigrate to a place where they were wholly
unknown.
Finally we give in part the testimony of Mrs.
Horace Eaton, who was a resident of Palmyra for
thirty-two years and had this to say of the Smiths,
mother and son:
As far as Mormonism was connected with its reputed
founder, Joseph Smith, always called “Joe Smith,” it had
its origin in the brain and heart of an ignorant, deceitful
mother. Joe Smith’s mother moved in the lowest walks
of life, but she had a kind of mental power, which her
* These last three and other statements were obtained by E. D.
Howe and published in his Mormonism Unveiled in 1834.
JOSEPH SMITH: ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 49
son shared. With them both the imagination was the
commanding faculty. It was vain, but vivid. To it was
subsidized reason, conscience, truth. Both mother and
son were noted for a habit of extravagant assertion. They
would look a listener full in the eye, and, without confu-
sion or blanching, would fluently improvise startling
statements and exciting stories, the warp and woof of
which were alike sheer falsehood. ... The mother of
the high priest of Mormonism was superstitious to the
last degree. The very air she breathed was inhabited by
“familiar spirits that peeped and wizards that muttered.”
She turned many a penny by tracing in the lines of the
open palm the fortunes of the inquirer. All ominous
signs were heeded. No work was commenced on Friday.
The moon over the left shoulder portended calamity; the
breaking of a mirror, death. Even in the Old Green
Mountain State, before the family emigrated to the Gene-
see country (the then West), Mrs. Smith’s mind was
made up that one of her sons should be a prophet. The
weak father agreed with her that Joseph was the “genus”
of their nine children. So it was established that Joseph
should be the prophet. To such an extent did the mother
impress this idea upon the boy, that all the instincts of
childhood were restrained. He rarely smiled or laughed.
“His thoughts and looks were always downward bent.”
He never indulged in the demonstrations of fun, since!
they would not be in keeping with the profound dignity
of his allotted vocation. His mother inspired and aided
him in every scheme of duplicity and cunning. All ac-
quainted with the facts agree in saying that the evil
spirit of Mormonism dwelt first in Joe Smith’s mother.?®
Such were the family stock, hereditary constitu-
tion, inherited beliefs, social and religious environ-
ment, and personal moral character and practices of
the founder of Mormonism.
#* Shook, True Origin of Morgon Polygamy, pp. 19-20.
CHAPTER III
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN
HE stage is now set for ringing up the curtain
on one of the boldest projects in the history
of religion. This was nothing less than producing
outright a new religion with its initial outfit of
prophet and Bible, the ‘““Mormonism” which its |
founder declared “would some day rule the world.”
The ill-balanced, imaginative peek-stone user and
money-digger, dreamer and deceiver who originated
the idea probably did not conceive it all at once. It
started as a germ in his fertile mind and grew apace
as the prospect opened out before him and lured
him on.
I. THE VISIONS
We have already seen that Joseph Smith, Jr., at
the age of fifteen experienced a degree of conver-
sion amidst the excitement of a Methodist revival.
This was the occasion of the first “vision” which
he experienced and which prepared the way for the
second one in which was made to him, according to
his own statement, the “revelation” as to the Golden
50
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 51
Plates. The first one was occasioned by the “war
of words and tumult of opinions” in connection with
the Methodist revival when much denominational
controversy was going on and he said to himself,
“Who of all these parties are right? Or, are they
all wrong together ?”’
On a bright spring morning (we are simply fol-
lowing his own story), he went out into the woods
to settle this question. As he prayed “immediately
I was seized upon by some power which entirely
overcame me,” and “thick darkness gathered around
me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were
doomed to sudden destruction.” “Just at this mo-
ment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly
over my head,” when “I saw two personages, whose
brightness and glory defy all description, standing
above me in their air. One of them spake unto me,
calling me by name, and said (pointing to the other),
‘This is my Beloved Son, hear Him.’” He then in-
quired ‘which of all the sects was right,” and was
told that “they were all wrong”’ and that he “must
join none of them.” ”
The narrative of this “vision” is followed with
Smith’s reflections upon the fact that “an obscure
boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age,”
should have been vouchsafed such a vision, which he
compares to that of Paul and with an account of the
* His own account of these and other “visions” is found in “Ex-
tracts from the History of Joseph Smith,” which is included in his
Pearl of Great Price, pp. 81-101.
* Pearl of Great Price, pp. 84-85.
52 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
persecutions that it brought upon him. He also
confesses that during the three years that elapsed
between the first and the second vision that “I was
left to all kinds of temptations, and mingling with all
kinds of society, I frequently fell into many foolish
errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and
the corruption of human nature, which I am sorry
to say led me into divers temptations, to the grati-
fication of many appetites offensive in the sight of
God.”
It is impossible to determine just what experiences
Smith had in these alleged visions. His veracity
has already been so seriously shaken and shattered
that we cannot trust his narrative, especially as his
History of Himself was written in 1838, eighteen
years after the first vision, during which intetval
he had plenty of both time and reasons for letting
his imagination elaborate and embellish if not invent
his story. Professor I. W. Riley, who examines
Smith’s account with a psychologist’s technical
knowledge, thinks he had some kind of epileptoid
fits, but that the degree cannot be determined.?
2. DISCOVERY OF THE GOLDEN PLATES
Smith’s second “vision” came in 1823, three years
after the first one. This one occurred at night as
he was in bed and in prayer, when he discovered a
*The Founder of Mormonism, Appendix II, “Epilepsy and the
Visions.”
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 53
light and “immediately a personage appeared at my
bedside,” and then the following revelation was
made:
He called me by name and said unto me that he was
a messenger sent from the presence of God to me, and
that his name was Moroni. That God had a work for me
to do, and that my name should be had for good and evil
among all nations, kindreds, and tongues; or that it should
be both good and evil spoken of among all people. He
said there was a book deposited, written upon gold
plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of
this continent, and the source from which they sprang.
He also said that the fulness of the everlasting Gospel was
contained in it, as delivered by the Saviour to the ancient
inhabitants. Also, that there were two stones in silver
bows (and these stones, fastened to a breastplate, con-
stituted what is called the Urim and Thummim) deposited
with the plates, and the possession and use of these stones
was what constituted Seers in ancient or former times,
and that God had prepared them for the purpose of trans-
lating the book. . . . Again, he told me that when I got
those plates of which he had spoken (for the time that
they should be obtained was not yet fulfilled) I should
not show them to any person, neither the breastplate with
the Urim and Thummim, only to those to whom I should
be commanded to show them; if I did, I should be de-
stroyed. While he was conversing with me about the
plates, the vision was opened to my mind that I could
see the place where the plates were deposited, and that
so clearly and distinctly, that I knew the place again when
I visited it. . . . By this time, so deep were the impres-
sions made on my mind, that sleep had fled from my eyes,
and I lay overwhelmed in astonishment at what I had
both seen and heard; but what was my surprise when
again I beheld the same messenger at my bedside, and
heard him rehearse or repeat over again to me the same
things as before, and added a caution to me, telling me
54 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
that Satan would try to tempt me (in consequence of
the indigent circumstances of my father’s family) to get
the plates for the purpose of getting rich. This he forbid
me, saying that I must have no other object in view in
getting the plates but to glorify God, and must not be
influenced by any other motive but that of building his
kingdom, otherwise I could not get them.‘
Smith in his narrative goes on to tell that he
arose the next morning after this vision so ex-
hausted that he was unable to do his work and that
his father, noticing his weakness, told him to go
home; that on the way home in attempting to cross
a fence he fell helpless to the ground and for a time
was quite unconscious; that he then heard a voice
and saw the same messenger and was commanded
to go back to his father and tell him of the vision;
and that on doing this his father told him that it was
of God and to go and do as the messenger had com-
manded. ‘The narrative then proceeds:
I left the field and went to the place where the messenger
had told me the plates were deposited, and owing to the
distinctness of the vision which I had concerning it, I
knew the place the instant that I arrived there. Conven-
ient to the village of Manchester, Ontario County, New
York, stands a hill of considerable size, and the most
elevated of any in the neighborhood. On the west side of
this hill, not far from the top, under a stone of consider-
able size, lay the plates, deposited in a stone box; this stone
was thick and rounding in the middle on the upper side,
and thinner towards the edges, so that the middle part of
it was visible above the ground, but the edge all round was
*Pearl of Great Price, pp. 89-02.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 55
covered with earth. Having removed the earth and ob-
tained a lever which I got fixed under the edge of the
stone, and with a little exertion raised it up, I looked in,
and there indeed did I behold the plates, the Urim and
Thummim, and the breastplate as stated by the messenger.
The box in which they lay was formed by laying stones to-
gether in some kind of cement. In the bottom of the box
were laid two stones crossways of the box, and on these
stones lay the plates and the other things with them. I
made an attempt to take them out, but was forbidden by
the messenger, and was again informed that the time for
bringing them forth had not yet arrived, neither would
arrive until four years from that time, and that he would
there meet me, and that I should continue to do so until
the time should come for obtaining the plates.
Smith tells us that he visited the place each year
according to the direction of the messenger until the
event happened:
At length the time arrived for obtaining the plates,
the Urim and Thummim, and the Breastplate. On the
22d day of September, 1827, having gone, as usual, at the
end of another year, to the place where they were de-
posited, the same heavenly messenger delivered them up
to me with this charge, that I should be responsible for
them; that if I should Jet them go carelessly or through
any neglect of mine, I should be cut off; but that if I
would use all my endeavors to preserve them, until he,
the messenger, should call for them, they should be pro-
tected. I soon found out the reason why I had received
such strict charges to keep them safe, and why it was that
the messenger had said, that when I had done what was re-
quired at my hand, he would call for them; for no sooner
was it known that I had them, than the most strenuous
exertions were used to get them from me; every stratagem
that could be invented was resorted to for that purpose;
56 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
the persecution became more bitter and severe than be-
fore, and multitudes were on the alert continually to get
them from me if possible; but, by the wisdom of God,
they remained safe in my hands, until I had accomplished
by them what was required at my hand; when, according
to arrangements, the messenger called for them, I de-
livered them up to him, and he has them in his charge
until this day, being the 2d day of May, 1838.°
This story on the face of it is incredible and bears
the marks of an invention, especially when read
in the light of the reputation of its author as “very
much addicted to lying” and as “a romancer of the
first water.” However, we need not rest the case
on the reputation of the author, for the story itself
is all shot to pieces by contradictory evidence. Joe’s
father told his story of the finding of the gold plates
which was very different from Joe’s own story.
The father said that the son, after his vision, got
a horse and wagon with a chest and pillow-case and
proceeded with his wife to the place indicated, that
as he approached the place devils began to screech
and scream, that he secured the uppermost article
out of the box and put it in the pillow-case, but when
he attempted to secure remaining articles, consisting
of a gold hilt and chain and a gold ball, an old man
dressed in bloody clothes appeared and said the time
had not come to exhibit them, that the devils fol-
lowed him and knocked him down, leaving “a black
and blue spot” which “‘remained three or four days,”
“but Joseph persevered and brought the article
° Pearl of Great Price, pp. 95-060.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 57
safely home.” “I weighed it, and it weighed thirty
pounds.” ® Mother Smith also tells a similar story
to the effect that Joseph went with his wife for the
plates and makes this addition to the tale: “As he
was taking them, the unhappy thought darted
through his mind that probably there was something
else in the box besides the plates, which would be of
pecuniary advantage to him. . . . Joseph was over-
come by the power of darkness, and forgot the in-
junction that was laid upon him.” *
We have already referred to the trip Joe made to
Pennsylvania for his wife’s household goods when
he took Peter Ingersol with him. Ingersol made
an affidavit in 1833,-in which he said:
One day he came and greeted me with joyful counte-
nance. Upon asking the cause of his unusual happiness,
he replied in the following language: “As I was passing
yesterday across the woods, after a heavy shower of rain,
I found in a hollow some beautiful white sand that had
been washed up by the water. I took off my frock and
tied up several quarts of it, and then went home. On en-
tering the house I found the family at the table eating
dinner. They were all anxious to know the contents of
my frock. At that moment I happened to think about a
history found in Canada, called the Golden Bible; so I
very gravely told them it was the Golden Bible. To my
surprise they were credulous enough to believe what I
said. Accordingly I told them I had received a command-
ment to let no one see it, for, says I, no man can see it with
the natural eye and live. However, I offered to take out
*Joseph Smith, Sr., told his story to Fayette Lapham, Esq., who
records it in an article in the Historical Magazine for May, 1870.
Ibid.
58 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
the book and show it to them, but they refused to see it
and left the room. Now,” said Joe, “I have got the
d—d fools fixed and will carry out the fun.” Notwith-
standing he told me he had no such book and believed
there never was such a book, he told me he actually went
to Willard Chase, to get him to make a chest in which he
might deposit the Golden Bible. But as Chase would
not do it, he made the box himself of clapboards, and put
it into a pollow case, and allowed people only to lift it and
feel of it through the case.®
To Willard Chase, who had employed Joe in dig-
ging the well in which the “peek-stone’”’ was found,
he gave the following account of finding the plates:
On the 22d of September he arose early in the morn-
ing and took a one-horse wagon of some one that had
stayed overnight at their house, without leave or license,
and together with his wife, repaired to the hill which
contained the book. He left his wife in the wagon by
the road, and went alone to the hill, a distance of thirty
or forty rods from the road. He said he then took the
book out of the ground and hid it in a tree-top, and
returned home. He then went to the town of Macedon
to work. (Ten days later he went back and found the book
safe.) On his return home he said he was attacked by
two men in the woods, and knocked them both down and
made his escape. Arrived safe and secured his treasure.
A few days afterward he told one of my neighbors that
he had not got any such book, and never had, but that
he told the story to deceive the d d fool (meaning
me), to get him to make the chest.®
Joe also told his brother-in-law, Alva Hale, that
“this ‘peeking’ was all d d nonsense,”’ and Joe’s
*This affidavit is given by Howe in Mormonism Unveiled, pp.
235-36.
* Kennedy, Early Days, pp. 32-33.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 59
father-in-law, Isaac Hale, in his statement declared
that ‘the whole Book of Mormon (so-called) is a
silly fabrication of falsehood and wickedness, got
up for speculation, and with a design to dupe the
credulous and unwary, and in order that its fabri-
cators might live upon the spoils of those who swal-
lowed the deception.” *°
Abigail Harris, a relative of Martin Harris, of
whom we shall hear presently, made an affirmation
at Palmyra on November 28, 1833, in which she
said she was at Martin Harris’s in 1828 when Jo-
seph Smith, Sr., and his wife were present and
there was talk about the Gold-Bible business, and
“the old lady said that after the book was translated
the plates were to be publicly exhibited at twenty-
five cents admission,” and “she calculated it would
bring in annually an enormous sum of money.” She
then wanted to borrow five dollars of the visitor for
Joseph, ‘to which I replied he might look in his
stone, and save his time and money.”
Joseph Capron, a neighbor of good character, also
throws light on this money-making scheme as
follows:
At length Joseph pretended to find the gold plates. This
scheme, he believed, would relieve the family from all
pecuniary embarrassment. His father told me that when
the book was published they would be enabled, from the
profits of the work, to carry into successful operation the
money-digging business. He gave me no intimation, at that
time, that the book was to be of a religious character. . . .
* Ibid., p. 41.
60 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
He declared it to be a speculation, and, said he, ““When it
is completed my family will be placed on a level above the
generality of mankind!”
“This testimony,” adds J. H. Kennedy, who re-
cords Capron’s statement, “strengthens the belief
that the later developments of Smith’s ‘speculations’
were undreamed of in the beginning.” *
Pomeroy Tucker, who was acquainted with the
Smiths and read a good deal of the proof of the
original edition of the book, relates that two inti-
mate friends of Smith, William T. Hussey and Azel
Vandruver, on being refused a sight of the plates
by Joe on the ground that they could not see them
and live, declared their readiness to run the risk.
Tucker continues the story:
They were permitted to go to the chest with its owner,
and see where the thing was, and observe its shape and
size, concealed under a thick piece of canvas. Smith, with
his accustomed solemnity of demeanor, positively persist-
ing in his refusal to uncover it, Hussey became impetuous,
and (suiting his action to his word) ejaculated, “Egad,
I'll see the critter, live or die,” and stripping off the can-
vas, a large tile brick was exhibited. But Smith’s fertile
imagination was equal to the emergency. He claimed
that his friends had been sold by a trick of his.?*
At a trial in court brought by the wife of Martin
Harris to protect her husband’s property from
Smith, one witness testified that Joe told him that
* Kennedy, Early Days, p. 46.
“Origin, Rise, and Progress of Mormonism, p. 31, quoted by
Linn, Story, pp. 26-27.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 61
“the box which he had contained nothing but sand,”
another witness swore that Joe told him that “it
was nothing but a box of lead,” and a third witness
declared that Joe told him that “there was nothing
at all in the box.” Daniel Hendrix, one of the
proof-readers of the book, also said: “I distinctly
remember his sitting on some boxes in the store
and telling a knot of men, who did not believe a word
they heard, all about his vision and his find. But
Joe went into such minute and careful details about
the size, weight, and beauty of the carvings on the
golden tablets, that I confess he made some of the
smartest men in Palmyra rub their eyes in
wonder.” **
We reserve for later consideration the testimony
of the official witnesses to the plates. But the evi-
dence already adduced conclusively proves that the
story of the finding of the golden plates is untrue
and was wholly invented. It is not only wildly im-
probable and utterly incredible on its face, but it was
told by the Smiths in general and by Joe in particu-
lar in various contradictory versions, and it is abso-
lutely riddled and destroyed by the testimony of a
number of trustworthy acquaintances of Joe to
whom he confessed that by his story he had “fixed”
“the fools,” and that ‘“‘there never was such a book.”
Isaac Hale, the honest father-in-law of this “ro-
mancer of the first water,” who had inside and in-
timate knowledge of his crooked ways, told the sim-
* Linn, Story, p. 27.
62 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ple truth when he declared, ‘“The whole Book of
Mormon is a silly fabrication of falsehood and wick-
edness, got up for speculation.”
3. TRANSLATING THE PLATES
Smith, having’ conceived the idea of making
money out of a book, now set about carrying it out,
and to do this he had to make a pretence of trans-
lating the alleged plates and to get money to pay
for printing the book. He found a financial pro-
moter in the person of Martin Harris, a farmer
of the neighborhood, whom he induced to believe
in the supernatural discovery. Harris placed a
mortgage on his farm to finance the enterprise, hav-
ing been fooled into believing that there were “mil-
lions in it,” although he was stoutly opposed in this
move by his wife, who brought suit to prevent the
transaction and finally separated from him on ac-
count of his being seduced, as she believed, into the
swindle.
To escape persecution, as he alleged, in New York,
taking Harris and his wife Emma with him, Smith
went to Harmony, Pa., to begin the work of trans-
lation. “Immediately after my arrival,” he says, “I
commenced copying the characters off the plates. I
copied a considerable number of them, and by means
of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of
them, which I did between the time I arrived at my
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 63
wife’s father’s house in the month of December
(1827) and the February following.”
Smith pretended that the plates were written in
strange characters which he said were mostly “re-
formed Egyptian” and his manner of translating
was to sit behind a curtain and read off the trans-
lation of the characters by means of the “peek-
stone,” or, as he sometimes said, by the “Urim and
Thummim” which he found with the plates.
Isaac Hale, in his statement from which we have
already quoted, gives his account of how the busi-
ness was carried on, as follows:
About this time Martin Harris made his appearance
upon the stage, and Smith began to interpret the charac-
ters, or hieroglyphics, which he said were engraven upon
the plates, while Harris wrote down the interpretation.
It was said that Harris wrote down 116 pages and lost’
them.
We interrupt Hale’s statement at this point to
say that after 116 pages had been translated, Harris
insisted on being allowed to take them to New York
State to show them to his friends and that Smith,
after much protestation and solemnly binding Har-
ris to return them, permitted him to do so. But
Harris’s wife made way with them, one tradition
saying that she burnt them. For fear that if he
were to reproduce these pages a discrepancy from
his first translation would be discovered and used
against him, Smith received a convenient “revela-
tion” not to retranslate these plates, and so ended
64 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
this episode. We resume the statement of Hale,
Smith’s father-in-law:
Soon after this happened, Martin Harris informed me
that he must have a greater witness, and said that he had
talked with Joseph about it. Joseph informed him that
he could not, or durst not, show him the plates, but that
he (Joseph) would go into the woods where the book of
plates was, and that after he came back Harris should
follow his track in the snow, and find the book and ex-
amine it for himself. Harris informed me that he fol-
lowed Smith’s directions, and could not find the plates and
was still dissatisfied. The next day after this happened
I went to the house where Joseph Smith, Jr., lived, and
where he and Harris were engaged in their translation of
the book. Each of them had a written piece of paper
which they were comparing, and some of the words were,
“my servant seeketh a greater witness, but no greater wit-
ness shall be given him.” ... I inquired whose words
they were, and was informed by Joseph or Emma (I
rather think it was the former), that they were the words
of Jesus Christ. I told them that I considered the whole
of it a delusion, and advised them to abandon it. The
manner in which he pretended to read and interpret was
the same as when he looked for the money-diggers, with
the stone in his hat and his hat over his face, while the
book of plates was at the same time hid in the woods.**
{
Harris continued to pester Smith for some surer
witness as to the reality and genuineness of the
plates and at last persuaded Smith to furnish him
with a facsimile copy of some of the characters and
let him take them to Professor Charles Anthon, a
noted Greek scholar in New York City. The scrap
* Kennedy, Early Days, pp. 40-41.
JOSEPH SMITH, JR.
ie 7 / \ A rs : ae
at z —_— = ;
: or . po Ose es riya ep ©
re ae
J | , rs 7 we 7 ’ »
' iJ , - 9 7 = — ~ ant
4) oD i ‘ ’
f a0 ey, on ‘au Py re
\ : > oy is eas - oe
Pl af &.. ¢“s > e - :
—- “ ° - s~ .—
a é " TA he Nope ~ re
a ie ae | ted on
- | »® a i :
ig .
e : i
n ck. ei, bd
7 a Soe A) aio 4
t ¥ ew / iat ‘ es
¢ a ae |
ne A aq ats Te ‘ Pe '
“ p
F » es | » \-
é y i. é r & a He
{ 7 7 Z
4 ~~)
é an ry = - 6
, A Sek Mot
: + 7 loo 4 aaa
+ De ‘a ’
; 7 1) ' e.
> F y n 7 iP) Py . 1
; +s ; 7
: a + “rt a". : ¢ a ,
3 q § ¢
: a , a oe ;
a ae
a ts ‘ ea te i’
‘ a or ny
~ q z is : |
‘ . { ‘
+ - - 7 «
. ’ * - a tC
P =< i :
7 S :. 7 = LN J ’
‘ fi 9 ioc
j ,§ ‘ +) g 6 aa
* "*. j
Vv Pv e = . ee » aa :
role + "© ren >
- o> +t egy ta [oe
. » « rim. ’ -
J = *' «
a 7-2 | @
4
* Files ois Er 1 .
of = .
; rr a
ra > © e ©
* By < cr ey »"<
. i ‘ ~~ ;
A ial ‘ f
ea
fr < ii, 7
5 1 if :
° Ky,
. ' ¢ I
@ 5 he
i a —« R
; =_= E «
4 , ‘ rent es dk) i
; 4: +
i 2 iA < “a, s
' 7 ~ > Lae : aid
we oe f Wi
; ' 3
; = . a”
7 *, a) , ,
< ~ 2 bp P -
cee J] ‘ « a _
a > :
va aa
* S Ser
i i ae
; % ae oe >)!
’ é
4% 7 ‘vv _ J
i ' ;
% ¢
i
: 2
a ? j -“y
- ~ ’ a
i ‘ Ss -
- a? ie r CPt "
, J : ‘ e a a ae 7 Ls
’ i > , > 1 - ;
* i
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 65
of paper with Smith’s alleged ‘““Caractors” on it were
shown to Professor Anthon and there are two ac-
counts of what he said. Smith’s account is that he
said “that they were Egyptian, Chaldaic, Assyriac,
and Arabic,” and that he gave Harris a certificate
“certifying to the people of Palmyra that they were
true characters, and that the translation of such of
them as had been translated was also correct.” Un-
fortunately, however, according to Smith, when the
professor learned from Harris how the place of
the plates had been revealed by an angel, “he took it
(his certificate) and tore it to pieces, saying that
there was no such thing as ministering angels.”
Professor Anthon himself in a letter to E. D.
Howe, author of Mormonism Unveiled, under date
of February 17, 1834, declared that “the whole
story about my pronouncing the Mormon inscription
to be ‘reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics’ is perfectly
false,”’ and proceeded to tell how he had been visited
by “a plain, apparently simple-minded farmer” with
a paper which “was in fact a singular scrawl,” and
how he had warned him of the ‘“‘roguery” that had
been practiced upon him.”®
*Facsimiles of this “scrawl” containing Smith’s “Caractors” are
given by Riley and Linn. In 1843 announcement was made of the
discovery in a mound near Kinderhook, IIl., of six plates “completely
covered with characters that none as yet have been able to read,”
and this find was exploited by the Mormons as supporting Smith’s
discovery. But in 1879 one of the three men that perpetrated the
hoax made an affidavit that the find was “a humbug,” and the “Kin-
derhook Plates” went into a museum of curiosities along with the
“Cardiff Giant.”
66 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Harris’s own account of how the translating was
done was as follows:
By aid of the seer stone (no mention of the magic
spectacles) sentences would appear and were read by the
prophet and written by Martin, and, when finished, he
would say ‘“‘written’”; and if correctly written, that sen-
tence would disappear, and another appear in its place;
but if not written correctly, it remained until corrected,
so that the translation was just as it was engraven on the
plates, precisely in the language then used.*®
Harris’s misfortune in losing the first 116 pages
caused much trouble. When Smith heard of the loss
he was thrown into as great consternation as was
Carlyle when he learned that a servant girl had
burnt the manuscript of the first volume of his
French Revolution. Smith cried out, “O my God,
all is lost,” Harris lost his job and, according to
Mother Smith, “a dense fog spread itself over his
fields and blighted his wheat.” ** The work of
translating was suspended for ten months, and a
preface was published in the first edition of the
book in which Smith explained that some person or
persons had stolen these pages and he was “com-
manded of the Lord that I should not translate them
over again, for Satan had put it into their hearts to
tempt the Lord their God, by altering the words.”
The translation was suspended in July, 1828, and
resumed on April 15, 1829. Smith’s wife Emma
*Linn, Story, p
a Biographical Sor of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, p. 145.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 67
acted as scribe for a short time, and then Oliver
Cowdery appears upon the scene and henceforth
plays an important part in this story. He was a
blacksmith, who gave up his trade to teach school
in the district in which the Smiths lived, and boarded
with them. Cowdery was caught in the coils of the
superstitious Smiths, and became Joe’s scribe, first
in Pennsylvania, and then at the home of Peter
Whitmer at Fayette, Seneca County, N. Y., where
the work was carried on until the work was ready
for the printer in June, 1829.
4. THE PRINTING AND THE EDITIONS OF THE BOOK
Much trouble was experienced in finding a pub-
_lisher for the strange book. FE. B. Grandin, pub-
lisher of the Wayne Sentinel at Palmyra, was asked
by Harris to give an estimate on 3,000 copies, but
answered that he did not want the job and tried to
persuade Harris, who, now that his money was
needed, had been restored to grace with the Smiths,
not to invest his money in the scheme, assuring him
that it was fraudulent. Application was next made
to Thurlow Weed, publisher of the Anti-Masonic
Inquirer at Rochester, N. Y., who said: “After
reading a few chapters, it seemed such a jumble of
unintelligent absurdities that we refused the work,
advising Harris not to mortgage his farm and beg-
gar his family.”” A definite bid was finally obtained
from a Rochester publisher, and then Smith and his
68 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
associates went to Grandin and said to him that as
the book would be published anyway it would be
better for him to do the work. He agreed to
print 5,000 copies for $3,000, and Harris gave a
mortgage on his farm as security. It was then
that Harris’s wife brought a charge against Smith
on the ground of securing money from her husband
on fraudulent representation, and Harris denied at
the hearing that he had ever contributed a dollar to
Smith at the latter’s persuasion. His wife, how-
ever, secured a separation from Harris, with a divi-
sion of the property.*®
We have interesting light upon the book as it was
passing through the printing office. Daniel Hen-
drix says:
I helped to read proof on many pages of the book, and
at odd times set some type. ... The penmanship of
the copy furnished was good, but the grammar, spelling
and punctuation were done by John H. Gilbert, who was
chief compositor in the office. I have heard him swear
many a time at the syntax and orthography of Cowdery,
and declare that he would not set another line of the type.
There were no paragraphs, no punctuation and no capitals.
All that was done in the printing office, and what a time
there used to be in straightening sentences out. During
the printing of the book I remember that Joe Smith kept
in the background.}®
As the work of typesetting progressed the printer
demanded partial payments, and when Harris was
* Linn, Story, p. 47.
* Quoted by Linn, who gives similar testimony from Albert Chan-
dler, who was an apprentice in the same printing office at the time.
Story, pp. 48-49.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 69
slow in furnishing the money Smith produced a
special “revelation,” which declared, “I command
thee that thou shalt not covet thine own property,
but impart it freely to the printing of the Book of
Mormon.’ ‘This brought Harris’s share of the
farm into the market, and the money was paid. The
book appeared in 1830 and was sold at first at $1.25
a volume. This price for the whole edition would
yield, it was calculated, a profit of over three thou-
sand dollars, but paper profits are not always
realized, and as the book fell flat on the market the
price went down until Smith, Sr., offered seven vol-
umes in payment of a debt of $5.63, and the creditor
was glad to get even that much.
It was soon discovered that the book was full of
errors. Smith’s ignorance cropped out on almost
every page. David Whitmer in an interview in his
later years declared: ‘So illiterate was Joseph at
that time that he didn’t know that Jerusalem was a
walled city, and he was utterly unable to pronounce
many of the names that the magic power of the
Urim and Thummim revealed.” The book passed
into a fluid condition and assumed a different form
with every edition. In 1842 an edition appeared
bearing on its title page the announcement, “Care-
fully revised by the translator,” and such corrections
have continued and accumulated so that ‘a compari-
son of the latest Salt Lake edition with the first has
shown more than three thousand changes.”
70 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
5. THE WITNESSES TO THE PLATES
When the Book of Mormon appeared it bore on
its title page, as it contains to this day, the following
The Testimony of Three Witnesses
Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and
people unto whom this work shall come, that we through
the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,
have seen the plates which contain this record, which is
a record of the people of Nephi, and also the Lamanites,
their brethren, and also the people of Jared, who came
from the tower of which hath been spoken; and we also
know that they have been translated by the gift and power
of God, and not of man. And we declare with words
of soberness, that an angel of God came down from
heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we
beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon;
and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father,
and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and record that
these things are true; and it is marvelous in our eyes,
nevertheless the voice of the Lord commanded us that
we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto
the commandments of God, we bear testimony to these
things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, |
we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and
be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and
shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the
honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy
Ghost, which is one God. Amen.
Oliver Cowdery.
David Whitmer.
Martin Harris.
This testimony may look impressive, until we
scrutinize it more closely and look through it and
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 71
behind it. It is not an affidavit and is not dated.
It reads just like one of Smith’s “revelations” and is
only another version of the “Revelation given
through Joseph, the Seer, to Oliver Cowdery, David
Whitmer, and Martin Harris, in Fayette, Seneca
County, New York, June, 1829, given previous to
their viewing the plates containing the Book of Mor-
mon.’ *° It plainly came from the same hand;
Smith wrote this “Testimony” himself. This ‘“Reve-
lation” tells these three “witnesses” that “after you
have obtained faith, and have seen them with your
eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of
God,” and then “ye shall testify that you have seen
them”: the jury has been coached and told just what
they shall say before they hear the case; Joe put the
very words into the mouths of these witnesses and
copartners in the swindle a year before they signed
the “testimony.” And why was it necessary to have
“faith” in order to see plates with their eyes? And
if they saw them, why was it necessary to testify to
them “by the power of God’?
Smith’s own account of how these men saw the
plates when he took them out into the woods and the
plates were supernaturally manifested to them ”* is
another wild and utterly improbable story of this
“romancer of the first water.” Besides, all these
witnesses, Cowdery, Whitmer and Harris, as well
as Smith himself, have been proved by abundant
™” Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 17.
“Linn, Story, pp. 79-80, ‘quoted from Millennial Star, Vol, XIV.
72 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
testimony to be a set of swindlers and liars, out to
make money. The Mormons themselves offer this
proof. Out in Missouri two of these precious wit-
nesses, Cowdery and Whitmer, were warned to leave
in a paper signed by eighty Mormons, in which they
were charged with being thieves.
Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Lyman E.
Johnson united with a gang of counterfeiters, thieves,
liars and blacklegs of the deepest dye, to deceive, cheat
and defraud the Saints out of their property, by every
art and stratagem which wickedness could invent; using
the influence of the vilest persecutions to bring vexatious
lawsuits, villainous prosecutions, and even stealing not
excepted.?”
After thus destroying the character of these men,
an attempt was made to save some shred of the
value of their testimony by adding, with brazen ef-
frontery, the following claim:
We wish to remind you that Oliver Cowdery and
David Whitmer were among the principal of those who
were the means of gathering us to this place by their
testimony which they gave concerning the plates of the
Book of Mormon that they were shown to them by an
angel; which testimony we believe now as much as before
you had so scandalously disgraced us!
As for Harris, he confessed, when pressed by a
lawyer in Palmyra as to whether he had seen the
plates with his natural eyes: ‘“Why, I did not see
them as I do that pencil case, yet I saw them with
™Linn, Story, p. 81.
*
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 73
the eye of faith. I saw them just as distinctly as I
see anything around me—though at the time they
were covered over witha cloth.” And Smith himself
blackened the character of Harris in one of his own
publications, the Elders’ Journal, July, 1837, by ap-
plying to him the following elegant language:
There are negroes who have white skins as well as
black ones, granny Parish, and others who acted as
lackeys, such as Martin Harris. But they are so far
beneath my contempt, that to notice any of them would
be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make.
And now, to cap the climax, every one of these
three witnesses became an apostate to the Mormon
faith and church. Cowdery, after he was driven
_ out by the Mormons, went to Tiffin, Ohio, where he
practiced law, renounced his Mormon views, joined
the Methodist church and became superintendent
of the Sunday school. Afterwards, however, he
returned to the Mormons and asked to be rebaptized
into the church as a member. Whitmer continued
to affirm his belief in the Mormon Bible, but he re-
nounced the Mormon church after its adoption of
polygamy and started a church of his own, which
he called “The Church of Christ.” Harris, after
he was driven out from the Mormons, first joined
the Shakers and then went to England as a mis-
sionary of a sect of Mormons that split off from the
main body; while there he was branded by the
Millennial Star, the official organ of the Mormon
74 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
church, as that “wicked man” who is referred to on
“the 178th page of the Book of Doctrine and Cove-
nants.’ He, also, returned to the Mormon church
and was rebaptized.
By this time Joe’s Bible business is plainly in a
very bad way. It is thoroughly discredited. He
has discredited his own witnesses, and his own wit-
nesses have discredited themselves. They tell con-
tradictory stories about the plates, and the Mormons
themselves brand them as swindlers and liars. To
crown all, the three witnesses all became apostates
and renegades from the faith which they helped to
foist upon the world; and it matters not that they re-
turned and were rebaptized into it; their trust-
worthiness has been destroyed.
The same fly-leaf that bears “The Testimony of
the Three Witnesses” also carries this: “And also
the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses.” This is a
briefer statement reaffirming the first testimony and
containing this additional item that “we have seen
and hefted, and know of a surety, that the said
Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken.”
But what was it that they “hefted’? Very likely
Joe showed them a box or something, but possibly
it was “‘covered over with a cloth,” as Martin Harris
said it was when he saw the plates ‘“‘with the eye
of faith,” or it may have contained some of that
“beautiful white sand” which Joe told the family
he had found and with which he said he had “got
the fools fixed,” or that brick—not a ‘gold brick”
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 75
but just “a large tile brick” —which the two young
men saw when they jerked the cover off ‘‘the critter.”
And who are the ‘eight witnesses” to this second
“testimony” that is brought forth to bolster up the
first? Four of them are Whitmers, of the same
family with David who signed the first testimony,
three of them are Smiths, Joseph Smith, Sr., and
Hyrum and Samuel, father and brothers of Joe,
and all the Smiths are tarred with the same stick,
“particularly famous for visionary projects” and
“destitute of that moral character which ought to
entitle them to the confidence of the community” ;
and the other member of this group of witnesses
was Hiram Page, a root doctor and son-in-law of
Peter Whitmer, who used a “‘peek-stone” to receive
“revelations” of his own, a rivalry which the
Prophet Joe could not tolerate and therefore he
branded Page as one deceived by the devil: “Tell him
that those things which he hath written from the
stone are not of me, and that Satan deceiveth
rma t
And so the second group of “witnesses” goes into
.the same class of “liars” along with the first and
only adds another burden which the unfortunate
“plates” must carry.
Did all or any of these ‘“‘witnesses” really see any-
thing? There is no positive answer to this question,
for Joe may have showed them something; but very
likely he did not and did not need to show them any-
* Doctrine and Covenants, Sec. 28.
76 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
thing, for all the Smiths and nearly all if not all
of these witnesses knew that the whole business was
a money-making scheme and fake. And did Joe
have any ‘plates’? There is no probability that he
had; he may have had some “white sand” or a “‘tile
brick” in a box, but he had no plates “curiously en-
graved” in “reformed Egyptian” or any other kind
of “Egyptian,” “Hebrew,” “Greek,” “Mexican,” or
any other language. The “singular scrawl” on the
piece of paper which Joe gave to Martin Harris to
take to Professor Anthon contained “all kinds of
crooked characters” which Joe or some one else may
have copied in part from “a book containing various
alphabets,” as the professor said, but they were
meaningless and simply the production of “these
wretched fanatics,” to use again the professor’s lan-
guage. The plates are an invention and deception,
the witnesses are untrustworthy and not to be be-
lieved, and the “Golden Bible’ is a myth and a
fraud.
6. JOSEPH SMITH AS AN “EGYPTIAN” TRANSLATOR
There is one crucial instance which occurred sev-
eral years later, in which the trustworthiness of
Joseph Smith in his “claim to be an inspired trans-
lator” has been subjected to a decisive test and he
has been proved to be a brazen pretender. In 1833
one Michael H. Chandler, a traveling showman, ap-
peared in Kirtland, Ohio, with some Egyptian mum-
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 77
mies and other curiosities. Smith was interested,
as his “gold plates” were alleged to be written in
“reformed Egyptian,’ and when he was shown
some rolls of papyri he at once announced, ‘““We have
found that one of these rolls contained the writings
of Abraham, another the writings of Joseph.” The
showman found in Smith a ready purchaser of the
papyri, and he proceeded to translate the “Book of
Abraham,” entitling it ‘““A translation of some an-
cient records, that have fallen into our hands, from
the catacombs of Egypt; the writings of Abraham
while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham,
written by his own hand, upon papyrus.” This was
published in 1842 in Times and Seasons and later
was incorporated in the Pearl of Great Price,**
where it remains to this day as one of the inspired
books of Mormonism. ‘The translation, extending
to twenty-three pages, is a meaningless confusion
of words and ideas and should have deceived no one
of ordinary intelligence.
The Egyptian hieroglyphics had not been fully
deciphered in 1833 and Smith was safe from detec-
tion in his imposture at that time. This unlocking
of the Egyptian language was accomplished later
and then pitiless exposure and doom swiftly fell
upon Smith. In 1861 Smith’s translation was
shown to Theodule Deveria, a scholar connected
“The Pearl of Great Price, A Selection from the Revelations,
Translations, and Narrations of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City:
The Deseret News, 1913.
78 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
with the Museum of the Louvre in Paris, and was
declared by him “‘to be entirely incorrect.”
The complete exposure of the fraud, however,
was effected in 1912 by the Rt. Rev. F. S. Spalding,
the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Utah. He sub-
mitted the “Book of Abraham’ to eight distin-
guished scholars learned in Egyptian lore and
published their answers, a few brief extracts from
which are here given.?> Dr. A. H. Sayce, Oxford,
England: “It is difficult to deal seriously with Joseph
Smith’s impudent fraud. ... The hieroglyphics
have been transformed into unintelligible lines.
Hardly one of them has been copied correctly.”
Smith published with his “translation” crude re-
productions of the drawings and hieroglyphics of
the papyri. James H. Breasted, University of Chi-
cago: “Joseph Smith’s interpretation of them as
part of a unique revelation through Abraham very
clearly demonstrates that he was totally un-
acquainted with the significance of these documents
and absolutely ignorant of the simplest facts of
Egyptian writing and civilization.’ W. M. Flin-
ders Petrie, London University : “None but the igno-
rant could possibly be imposed on by such ludicrous
blunders.” Dr. John Peters, University of Penn-
sylvania: “The text of this chapter, as also the in-
terpretation of the plates, displays an amusing ig-
“Joseph Smith, Jr., as a Translator. An Inquiry Conducted by
Rt. Rev. F. S. Spalding, D.D., with the Kind Assistance of Capable
Scholars. Salt Lake City, Arrow Press, 1912.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 79
norance.” Dr. Edward Meyer, University of
Berlin: “The Egyptian papyrus, which Smith de-
clared to be the ‘Book of Abraham,’ and ‘translated’
or explained in his fantastical way, and of which
three specimens are published in the Pearl of Great
Price, are parts of the well- known ‘Book of the
Dead.’” Dr. Friedrich von Bissing, University of
Munich: “I hope this will suffice to show that Joseph
Smith certainly never got a divine revelation in the
meaning of the ancient Egyptian script, and that he
never deciphered hieroglyphic texts at all.”
Professor Orson Pratt, a Mormon authority, de-
clared of the Book of Mormon that “if false, it is
one of the most cunning, wicked, bold, deep-laid
impositions ever palmed upon the world, calculated
to deceive and ruin millions who would sincerely
receive it as the word of God.” *° In the light of
the above exposure, which has never been refuted
or denied by Mormons, and in the light of the fact
that they still publish the “Book of Abraham” as
part of their Prophet’s writings, Orson Pratt’s char-
acterization of the Book of Mormon is correct.
7. WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF MORMON?
Did Joseph Smith, whom even his father called
“Glliterate,” write this book unaided? Much con-
troversy has raged around this question. Some
*Quoted from Pratt’s Divine Authenticity of the Book of Mor-
mon by Spalding, p. Io.
80 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
competent students of the book, such as Professor
I. W. Riley,?” do not think it is beyond the capacity
of Smith to produce. He undoubtedly had consid-
erable mental ability, especially an absorbent mind,
retentive memory and fertile imagination, and the
contents of the book are made up of the general
ideas that were floating around in his day. This
point will come up in the next chapter.
Nevertheless, it is surprising that this man should
have produced this book without some assistance,
_and at this point arises the Spaulding-Rigdon theory
of its origin. The facts in the case are very com-
plicated, and we must condense the story into brief
space.”®
Solomon Spaulding was born in Connecticut in
1701, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1785,
entered the Congregational ministry and after sev-
eral years relinquished it and engaged in mercantile
business in Cherry Valley, N. Y., and in 1809 re-
moved to Conneaut, Ohio, where he was a partner in
building an iron forge, a venture which proved un-
successful. While residing in Conneaut he became
interested in the Indian mounds in the vicinity and
" The Founder of Mormonism, pp. 369-305.
*E. D. Howe in his Mormonism Unveiled (1834) first investi-
gated this question and collected the testimony of many witnesses
establishing the practical identity of the story of the Book of Mor-
mon with Spaulding’s romance. Robert Patterson in his Who Wrote
the Book of Mormon? (1882) strengthened the case by connecting
Rigdon with the Spaulding manuscript in Pittsburgh; and Charles
A. Shook in his True Origin of the Book of Mormon (1914) still
further strengthened the case by connecting Rigdon with Smith
before 1830. '
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 81
wrote a romance purporting to give an account of
early Indian history, calling the story the “Manu-
script Found,” as it had been unearthed, according
to the fiction he invented, in one of the Indian
mounds. He was in the habit of reading this manu-
script to his neighbors until it became a well-known
story, “familiar as household words.” In 1812 he
removed to Pittsburgh to see if he could get his book
published. Failing in this he moved in 1814 to
Amity, Washington County, Pa., where he died in
1816 and was buried in the village graveyard. The -
author has visited his grave and seen the broken
fragments of his tombstone.”®
When the Book of Mormon appeared in 1830,
many people at once recognized it as being largely
the same as Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found.” Mr.
Howe *° in 1833 collected the testimonies of eight
witnesses on this point, to which Mr. Patterson
adds the testimonies of nine more. We can here
transcribe only two or three of these testimonies.
John Spaulding, a brother of Solomon, who vis-
ited the latter at Conneaut just before his removal,
stated:
He then told me he had been writing a book, which
he intended to have printed, the avails of which he thought
would enable him to pay all his debts. The book was
*In August, 1906, the fragments were replaced by a granite mon-
ument which was paid for by popular local subscription. It bears
the original inscription: “In Memory of Solomon Spaulding Who
Departed This Life October 20, A. D. 1816. Aged 55 Years,” and
also a stanza of a hymn.
*° Mormonism Unveiled, pp. 278-287.
82 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
entitled the “Manuscript Found,” of which he read to me
many passages. It was an historical romance of the first
settlers of America, endeavoring to show that the Ameri-
can Indians are the descendants of the Jews, or the lost
tribes. It gave a detailed account of their journey from
Jerusaleni, by land and sea, until they arrived in America,
under the command of Nephi and Lehi. They after-
ward had quarrels and contentions, and separated into
two distinct nations, one of which he denominated Ne-
phites and the other Lamanites. Cruel and bloody wars
ensued, in which great multitudes were slain. They
buried their dead in large heaps, which caused the mounds
so common in this country. ... I have recently read
the Book of Mormon, and, to my great surprise, I find
nearly the same historical matter, names, etc., as they
were in my brother’s writings. I well remember that he
wrote in the old style, and commenced about every sen-
tence with “And it came to pass,” or, “Now it came to
pass,” the same as in the Book of Mormon, and according
to the best of my recollection and belief, it is the same as —
my brother Solomon wrote, with the exception of the
religious matter.
Henry Lake, the partner of Spaulding in building
the forge, testified:
He very frequently read to me from a manuscript which
he was writing, which he entitled the ‘Manuscript
Found,” and which he represented as being found in this
town. I spent many hours in hearing him read said writ-
ings, and became well acquainted with their contents... .
One time when he was reading to me a tragic account of
Laban I pointed out to him what I considered an in-
consistency, which he promised to correct; but by refer-
ring to the Book of Mormon I find, to my surprise, that it
stands there just as he read it to me then. . . . Since that
I have more fully examined the said Golden Bible, and
have no hesitation in saying that the historical part of
THE. GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 83
it is principally if not wholly taken from the “Manuscript
Found.” I well recollect telling Mr. Spaulding that the
so frequent use of the words, ‘And it came to pass,”
“Now it came to pass,” rendered it ridiculous.
Similar testimony is given by Mrs. Martha Spaul-
ding, wife of John Spaulding, Mrs. Matilda Spaul-
ding Davison, widow of Solomon Spaulding who
was married to Mr. Davison in 1820, Mrs. S. M.
McKinstry, daughter of Solomon Spaulding, and by
John N. Miller, Aaron Wright, Oliver Smith, Na-
hum Howard, neighbors of Solomon Spaulding,
and a number of others, all of whom were familiar
with the “Manuscript Found” and declared that in
its story of the American Indians as the descendants
of the Jews who left Jerusalem and landed in Amer-
ica and in its style it corresponds very closely with
the historical narrative found in the Book of Mor-
mon. Accumulative testimony makes it practically
certain that the writer of the Book of Mormon had
some kind of access to the “Manuscript Found.”
The problem is to connect the two writings, and
Sidney Rigdon is proved to be the link between them.
He was born in the village of Library, Allegheny
County, Pa., in 1793, had a country school educa-
tion, became a Baptist preacher in 1819, became
pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh in
January, 1822, and was excluded from the Baptist
denomination for doctrinal errors in 1823; later he
removed to the Western Reserve, Ohio, and became
connected with the followers of Alexander Camp-
84 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
bell or Disciples, and was converted to Mormonism
in 1830.
The theory at this point is that Spaulding left
either his manuscript or a copy of it in the Pitts-
burgh printing office of Robert Patterson, father
of the author of Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?
that Sidney Rigdon by some means obtained this
copy and subsequently visited Joseph Smith in Pal-
myra and assisted him in producing the Book of
Mormon, incorporating into it Spaulding’s story
of Indian history.
The evidence for this is cumulative and reaches
practical certainty. Let it be recorded, however, at
once that Rigdon himself, in a letter addressed to the
Boston Journal, dated at Commerce, afterwards
known as Nauvoo, Ill., where he was a leader among
the Mormons, under date of May 27, 1839, made
the following positive denial:
It is only necessary to say, in relation to the whole story
about Spaulding’s writings being in the hands of Mr.
Patterson, who was in Pittsburgh, and who is said to
have kept a printing-office, and my saying that I was con-
cerned in said office, etc., is the most base of lies, without
even a shadow of truth. ... If I were to say that I
ever heard of the Rev. Spaulding and his hopeful wife
I should be a liar like unto themselves.
Nevertheless Robert Patterson, in his book, pro-
duces half a dozen or more witnesses who were able
to connect Rigdon with the Spaulding manuscript.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 85
One of these was Joseph Miller, who lived at Amity
and was a ruling elder in the Cumberland Presby-
terian Church and was intimate with Rev. Solomon
Spaulding when he lived in the same village. Mr.
Miller testified as follows:
My recollection is that Mr. Spaulding had left a tran-
script of the manuscript with Mr. Patterson, of Pitts-
burgh, Pa., for publication; that its publication was de-
layed until Mr. Spaulding could write a preface, and in
the meantime the manuscript was spirited away, and could
not be found. Mr. Spaulding told me that Sidney Rigdon
had taken it, or that he was suspicioned for it. Recollect
distinctly that Rigdon’s name was used in connection with
it.
Rev. Cephas Dodd, M.D., who was the Presby-
terian minister in Amity at the time Mr. Spaulding
lived there, and was his physician, also testified that
it was his positive belief that Rigdon was an agent
in transforming Spaulding’s manuscript into the
Book of Mormon. After the death of Spaulding he
purchased a copy of the Book of Mormon and in-
scribed on one of the fly-leaves the following:
This work, I am convinced by facts related to me by
my deceased patient, Solomon Spaulding, has been made
from writings of Spaulding, probably by Sidney
Rigdon, who was suspicioned by Spaulding with pur-
loining his manuscript from the publishing house to which
he had taken it; and I am prepared to testify that
Spaulding told me that his work was entitled, “The
Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon; or Unearthed
Records of the Nephites.” From his description of its
86 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
contents, I fully believe that this Book of Mormon is
mainly and wickedly copied from it.
Cephas Dodd.*?
June 6, 1831.
Rev. John Winter, M.D., was an early minister
of the Baptist church in Western Pennsylvania and
was teaching a school in Pittsburgh at the time
Sidney Rigdon was pastor of the First Baptist
Church in that city. He testified that on one occa-
sion when he was in Rigdon’s study the latter took
from his desk a large manuscript and said in sub-
stance: “A Presbyterian minister, Spaulding, whose
health had failed, brought this to the printer to see
if it would pay to publish it. It is a romance of
the Bible.”
Mrs. Mary Winter Irvine, a daughter of Rev. Dr.
Winter, of Sharon, Pa., where she was a member of
the First Presbyterian Church of that place when
the present writer was pastor of it and knew her
intimately, wrote under the date of April 5, 1881,
as follows:
I have frequently heard my father speak of Rigdon
having Spaulding’s manuscript, and that he had gotten it
from the printers to read it as a curiosity; as such he
showed it to father; and that at that time Rigdon had no
intention of making the use of it that he afterwards did;
for father always said Rigdon helped Smith in his
scheme by revising and making the Mormon Bible out of
Rev. Mr. Spaulding’s manuscript.
* Shook, True Origin of the Book of Mormon, p. 120.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 87
The Rev. A. J. Bonsall, D.D., who is now (1925)
the pastor of the Sandusky Street Baptist Church in
Pittsburgh, and a step-son of Dr. Winter, author-
izes the present writer to make the following state-
ment:
I have repeatedly heard my stepfather, Rev. Dr. John
Winter, say that Sidney Rigdon had shown him the
Spaulding manuscript romance, which purported to be
the history of the American Indians, which manuscript
Rigdon had received from the printers.
Sufficient evidence has been adduced to connect
Rigdon with the Spaulding manuscript in Pitts-
burgh. Can Rigdon now be connected with Joseph
Smith in the making of the Book of Mormon at
Palmyra? The threads of connection at this point
are also definite and strong.
In the fall of 1830, after the appearance of the
Book of Mormon, Rigdon was living at Mentor,
Ohio, where he was engaged in farming. In No-
vember of that year, four Mormon missionaries
stopped at Mentor on their way to the West. “We
called upon Elder S. Rigdon,” says Parley P. Pratt,
one of the missionaries, “and then for the first time
his eyes beheld the Book of Mormon. I, myself, had
the happiness to present it to him in person. He was
much surprised, and it was with much persuasion
and argument that he was prevailed on to read it,
and after he had read it, he had a great struggle of
mind, before he fully believed and embraced it.”
88 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Forthwith he called together a congregation of his
friends and professed the new religion and was bap-
tized by Cowdery the next morning. Much is made
by Mormon writers of this alleged conversion of
Rigdon after the appearance of the Book of Mor-
mon to prove that he could have had no connection
with the making of that book; and they also contend
that it can be shown by the records of his preaching
engagements and weddings and funerals that his
continuous presence in Ohio is proved, so that he
could not have visited Smith at Palmyra in New
York.
Strong as this evidence looks, it is completely over-
thrown by facts in the case. In the first place, there
is conclusive testimony that Rigdon foretold the
coming of just such a book at least three years be-
fore the appearance of the Book of Mormon. Rev.
Adamson Bentley, Rigdon’s brother-in-law, in a let-
ter dated January 22, 1841, wrote: ‘I know that Sid-
ney Rigdon told me that there was a book coming out
(the manuscript of which had been engraved on
gold plates) as much as two years before the Mor-
mon book made its appearance in this country or
had been heard of by me.” Darwin Atwater, an
elder of the Disciples’ Church, in describing Rig-
don’s preaching wrote: “Sidney Rigdon preached
for us, and notwithstanding his extravagantly wild
freaks, he was held in high repute by many... .
That he knew before of the coming of the Book of
Mormon is to me certain, from what he said during
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 89
the first of his visits at my father’s some years be-
fore. He gave a wonderful description of the
mounds and other antiquities found in some parts of
America, and said that they must have been made by
the Aborigines. He said there was to be a book
published containing an account of those things.”
Dr. S. Rosa, a leading physician of Ohio, also testi-
fies that Rigdon told him before the appearance of
the Book of Mormon that “it was time for a new
religion to spring up,” and that “it would not be long
before something would make its appearance.” *”
There is even a hint in the Doctrine and Covenants
(“Behold, thou wast sent forth even as John, to
prepare the way before me,” Sec. 35) that Rigdon
had some connection with Mormonism earlier than
his professed conversion.
In the next place, several neighbors of the Smiths
in Palmyra testify that they had personal knowledge
of visits of Rigdon with Smith before 1830. Mrs.
Horace Eaton, for thirty-two years a resident of
Palmyra, heard from the lips of acquaintances of
the Smiths of the presence of a “mysterious
stranger” with Joe Smith in the summer of 1827,
who “was Sidney Rigdon, a back-sliding clergyman,
at this time a Campbellite preacher in Mentor,
Ohio.” Pomeroy Tucker, one of the proof-readers
of Smith’s book, says that ‘“‘the reappearance of this
™ These testimonies are given in detail by Shook, True Origin,
pp. I2I-125.
90 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
mysterious stranger at Smith’s at this juncture was
again the subject of inquiry and conjecture by ob-
servers,’ and that Rigdon’s “occasional visits to
Smith’s had been observed by the inhabitants as
those of the mysterious stranger.”’ Abel D. Chase,
a neighbor of the Smiths, testified: “I was well ac-
quainted with the Smith family. . . . During some
of my visits at the Smiths, I saw a stranger there
who they said was Mr. Rigdon. He was at Smith’s
several times, and it was in the year 1827 when I
first saw him there, as near as I can recollect.”
Lorenzo Saunders, another “intimate acquaintance
of the Smiths,” “saw Sidney Rigdon in the spring
of 1827,” and again “in the fall of 1827,” and still
again “in the summer of 1828.” °°
Finally, the famous Mormon water-tight alibi for
Rigdon, showing that he could not have been with
Smith prior to 1830, is thoroughly riddled by Shook
in a neat and masterly manner. He has tabulated
all the records produced by Mormons showing the
dates and engagements of Rigdon in Ohio and then
pointed out that there are nine wide gaps of over a
month each and that “three of these gaps occur in
the year 1827, two in 1828, one in 1829 and three
in 1830.” “By the facts that I have just given,” he
concludes, “I believe that it is positively proved that
Sidney Rigdon was in Palmyra, New York, at least
four times before he openly became a Mormon: in
* For full details see Shook, True Origin, pp. 129-132.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 91
March, 1827; in September, 1827; in June, 1828,
and in the winter of 1830.” *4 :
There are other complications in this story, but
they do not touch the main point. One of these is
the fact that a manuscript was found in 1897 in the
Sandwich Islands where it had been taken by L. L.
Rice, the successor of E. D. Howe, to whom Mr.
Howe sold his printing establishment at Painesville,
Ohio. Mr. Howe had obtained the manuscript sev-
eral years before from the widow of Solomon Spaul-
ding. This manuscript, which was hailed by Mor-
mons as disproving the Spaulding theory, is now
in the Library of Oberlin College and is a genuine
manuscript of Mr. Spaulding’s, but it is not the
“Manuscript Found” and its discovery only shows
that he wrote more than one story. Mr. Howe de-
scribes this manuscript *° and never supposed it was
the basis of the Book of Mormon.*®
The essential facts have now been stated and they
are sufficient to make it practically certain that the
Rev. Solomon Spaulding’s manuscript of an Indian
romance fell into the hands of Sidney Rigdon and
by him was utilized in company with Joseph Smith
in concocting the Bible of Mormonism. It stands
proved that the Book of Mormon and Science and
Health,** the two “Bibles” produced in America in
* True Origin, pp. 136-151.
* Mormonism Unveiled, p. 288.
* For the facts of this case see Linn, Story, pp. 56-58.
** See the author’s The Truth About Christian Science, Chapter V.
92 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
the nineteenth century, were conceived in plagia-
rism and brought forth in falsity.
Mr. Linn sums up this complicated case in the
following judicious conclusion:
In a historical inquiry of this kind, it is more important
to establish the fact that a certain thing was done than to
prove just how or when it was done. The entire narra-
tive of the steps leading up to the announcement of a
new Bible, including Smith’s first introduction to the use
of a “peek-stone” and his original employment of it, the
changes made in the original version of the announcement
to him of buried plates, and the final production of a
book, partly historical and partly theological, shows that
there was behind Smith some directing mind, and the only
one of his associates in the first few years of the church’s
history who could have done the work required was Sid-
ney Rigdon.*®
How little did Solomon Spaulding dream of the
unhappy fate that would befall his innocent romance
and of the unholy use to which it would be perverted
and of the strange altar at which it would be made
to serve! This is surely one of the bitterest ironies
of history. The author was vividly impressed by
this thought as he stood by his lonely grave. “The
unconscious prophet of a new Islam,” says Mr. Pat-
terson in concluding his book, “‘in all his imaginings
* Story, p. 67. This proof was strengthened after the publication
of Linn’s Haale by Shook who, as we have seen, discovered additional
Rick connecting Rigdon with Smith. True Origin, pp. 136-151.
R. Werner, in his recent book Brigham Young (1825), gives an
pein and unsatisfactory account of the Spauldifig theory (pp.
57-60) and says, “It was based on the testimony of neighbors and
relatives of Solomon Spaulding given more than twenty years after
the events of which they were said to be witnesses.” In the light
of facts given above it is seen that this statement is incorrect.
THE GOLDEN BIBLE: ITS ORIGIN 93
he did not dream that his hand was outlining the
Koran, of a dark delusion, that the fables which be-
guiled his restless hours would be accepted by hun-
dreds of thousands of his fellowmen as the oracles
of God, and that in inglorious yet heroic martyr-
dom some of them would even seal with their blood
their faith in the inspiration of his phantasies. . . .
Struggling to escape the burden of his debts, he little
imagined how vast the burden he was unwittingly
to lay upon his country.”
CHAPTER LV
THE BOOK OF MORMON: CONTENTS OF THE
BOOK
NY book speaks for itself. It is open to be
read and known of all men and is its own best
witness for or most damaging witness against itself.
Higher criticism is the process by which we test a
book as to its form and contents, consistency with
itself and with its historical environment, truth and
trustworthiness. It is hard for a book to conceal
its real authorship and age, genuineness and authen-
ticity; and if it is spurious in its alleged authorship
and is a literary fraud, its sin is sure to find it out.
If we were to read in a book that purported to have
been written in the year 1400 A. D., that in that
year a daring adventurer flew in an airship from
England to America, we would know that the claim
of the book as to the age of its authorship was false,
for at that time there was no airship and the con-
tinent of America was not known. The application
of this principle plays havoc with the claims of many
a book. This process of criticism has been applied
to the Book of Mormon with destructive effect. The
first writer to do this was the ex-Mormon John
Hyde in his Mormonism (1857), and his two chap-
94
THE BOOK OF MORMON 95
ters, IX-X, on the “Internal Evidences” and the
“External Evidences” of the book are a masterly
piece of critical work. Hyde is followed by Sten-
house, another ex-Mormon, in his Rocky Mountain
Saints (1873), Chapter XLVIII, who goes over the
same ground with the same results.
I. NAMES IN THE BOOK
The book contains over five hundred names, such
as Lehi, Nephi, Maroni and Mormon, and we in-
quire as to their origin. They are in a way modeled
after the general type of Biblical names, but they
are also different. Who invented them? Solomon
Spaulding. We have already seen that the prac-
tical identity in their historical matter of Spaul-
ding’s “Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon”’
and Smith’s Book of Mormon has been established
by many witnesses. This identity specially applies
to the names in the two writings. John Spaulding,
the brother of Solomon, in his statement says: “I
find nearly the same names, etc.” Joe Smith ap-
propriated Solomon Spaulding’s names out of his
Indian romance.
We have Smith’s own account, in the Times and
Seasons, of the origin and meaning of the word
“Mormon,” which is as follows:
Before I give a definition of the word, let me say that
the Bible, in its widest sense, means good; for the Saviour
says, according to the Gospel of St. John, “I am the Good
96 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Shepherd” ; and it will not be beyond the common use of
terms to say that good is amongst the most important
in use, and, though known by various names in different
languages, still its meaning is the same, and is ever in
opposition to bad. We say from the Saxon, good; the
Dane, god; the Goth, goda; the German, gut; the Dutch,
goed; the Latin, bonus; the Greek, kalos; the Hebrew,
tob; the Egyptian, mo. Hence, with the addition of more,
or the contraction mor, we have the word Mormon, which
literally means more good.
The word “mormon” as given in the Century
Dictionary is from the Greek popywr, meaning
“bugbear,” and in zoology is the name of several
animals, including a baboon. In the Book of Mor-
mon it occurs in the Book of Mosiah XVIII, 4, and
is the name of the place where Alma baptized those
whom he led to repentance, and it next occurs in
3 Nephi V, 20, where we read: “I am Mormon,
and a pure descendant of Lehi.” The “Words of
Mormon,” which is one of the divisions of the Book
of Mormon, begins: “And now, I Mormon, being
about to deliver up the record which I have been
making, into the hands of my son Moroni, behold,
I have witnessed almost all the destruction of my
people, the Nephites.”* It is said that when the
Mormons learned that the Greek word Mormon
means a “bugbear,” they began to look on the name
*It is a highly significant fact and an important link in the evidence
connecting Smith’s book with Spaulding’s manuscript that the word
Mormon as the name of a place and the word Nephites as the name
of a people occur in the very title of Spaulding’s production, which
is “Manuscript Found in the Wilds of Mormon; or Unearthed Rec-
ords of the Nephites.”
THE BOOK OF MORMON 97
as a term of reproach and ridicule and have ever
since objected to it, calling themselves “Saints.”
2. GENERAL CONTENTS AND SOURCES OF THE BOOK
The title-page of the first edition of this book
reads: ““The Book of Mormon: an Account Written
by the Hand of Mormon, upon Plates Taken from
the Plates of Nephi.” Then followed a general
statement as to the origin and contents of the book.
“By Joseph Smith, Junior, Author and Proprietor.”
For this latter statement the present editions substi-
tute “Translated by Joseph Smith, Jun.”
The Mormon claim for this book, as set forth in
the Divine Authenticity, a book by Orson Pratt, an
early Apostle and defender of the faith, is that “the
witnesses of the Book of Mormon are not only equal
in number, but superior in certainty to those which
this generation have of Christ’s resurrection,” and
that “this generation have more than one thousand
times the amount of evidence to demonstrate and
forever establish the divine authenticity of the Book
of Mormon, than they have in favor of the Bible.” ?
He further says that “the nature of the message in
the Book of Mormon is such that, if true, none can
be saved who reject it, and, if false, none can be
saved who receive it.” The truth and value of this
claim, on which we already have had some light,
will further appear as we proceed.
*Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 525.
98 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
We have read considerable portions of this book
and found it hopelessly confusing and repetitious
and dull and full of absurdities. We transcribe a few
verses, for the book is divided into chapters and
verses like the Bible, from 1 Nephi, Chapter VIII:
1. And it came to pass that we had gathered together
all manner of seeds of every kind, both of grain of every
kind, and also seeds of fruit of every kind.
2. And it came to pass that while my father tarried
in the wilderness, he spake unto us, saying, Behold, I
have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen
a vision.
3. And behold, because of the thing which I have seen,
I have reason to rejoice in the Lord, because of Nephi
and also of Sam; for I have reason to suppose that they,
and also many of their seed, will be saved.
4. And behold, Laman and Lemuel, I fear exceedingly
because of you; for behold, methought I saw in my
dream, a dark and dreary wilderness.
5. And it came to pass that I saw a man, and he was
dressed in a white robe; and he came and stood before
me.
6. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, and
bade me follow him.
The volume of 623 pages (edition of 1918) is
divided into fifteen books, which are named as fol-
lows: “First Book of Nephi, His Reign and Min-
istry,” seven chapters; “Second Book of Nephi,”
fifteen chapters; “Book of Jacob, the Brother of
Nephi,” five chapters; “Book of Enos,” one chapter ;
“Words of Mormon,’ one chapter; “Book of
Omni,” one chapter; “Book of Mosiah,” thirteen
chapters; “Book of Alma, a Son of Alma,” thirty
THE BOOK OF MORMON 99
chapters; “Book of Helaman,” five chapters; “Third
Book of Nephi, One of the Disciples of Jesus
Christ,’ one chapter; “Book of Mormon,” four
chapters; “Book of Esther,” six chapters; ‘Book
of Moroni,” ten chapters.
The following is Joseph Smith’s own summary of
the contents of the book, as published in the Times
and Seasons of March 1, 1842:
The history of America is unfolded from its first settle-
ment by a colony that came from the Tower of Babel
at the confusion of languages, to the beginning of the
5th Century of the Christian era. We are informed by
these records that America in ancient times has been in-
habited by two distinct races of people. The first were
called Jaredites, and came directly from the Tower of
Babel. The second race came directly from the city of
Jerusalem about 600 years before Christ. They were
principally Israelites of the descendants of Joseph. The
Jaredites were destroyed about the time that the Israelites
came from Jerusalem, who succeeded them in the in-
habitance of the country. The principal nation of the
second race fell in battle toward the close of the fourth
century. The remnant are the Indians that now inhabit
this country.
There were three emigrations out of Asia: the
first of the family of Jared from the Tower of Babel,
whose descendants were wholly destroyed more than
600 years B. C. The second of the family of Lehi
from Jerusalem about 600 B. C., the righteous part
of whose descendants were destroyed in a great bat-
tle 400 A. D., the wicked part of these descendants
being now the American Indians; and third, the
100 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
“people of Zarahelma,” the Jews, who came from
Jerusalem about eleven years after Lehi, and whose
descendants were destroyed by the wars or mingled
among those of Lehi.
The history of the wanderings and wars of these
families was engraved by their prophet on plates
of brass and gold and “ore,” and religiously
preserved until they came into the hands of
Mormon, one of the descendants of Lehi. He
made an abridgment of the history in 384 A.D.,
and, after burying the original plates, together
with certain other curiosities, in a hill, gave
the abridgment to his son Moroni, who added
to it an abridgment of the history of the
people of Jared and then boxed both up and buried
them in the hill “Cumorah” in New York State in
400 A. D. There, according to the Mormon story,
on September 22, 1827, they were given by an angel
to Joseph Smith, who “translated them by the gift
and power of God.” The first 116 pages of the
translation, as we have seen, were lost, and the trans-
lation of the rest of the plates constitutes the present
Book of Mormon. Hyde, however, enumerates
twenty-four other plates and articles which, accord-
ing to the book itself, were also buried at Cumorah
and are yet awaiting to be exhumed.?
We have already given the reasons for believing
that the historical framework and matter of the
book are principally taken from Spaulding’s “Manu-
* Mormonism, pp. 213-14.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 101
script Found.” To this Indian “romance” has been
added a large amount of Scriptural and other re-
ligious matter. About one-eighteenth of the book
is taken from the Bible, no credit being given for
this in the earliest editions, but in the present edi-
tion proper credit is given. The following chapters
are taken bodily: Isaiah 2 to 14, 18, 19, 21, 48, 49,
50, 51, 52, 54; Matt. 5, 6, 7; 1 Cor. 13. Besides
these chapters, Hyde counted, from page 2 to page
428, 298 direct quotations from the New Testament,
some of them paragraphs and others sentences. In
addition to these literal quotations there are numer-
ous and extensive adaptations: a long imitation of
the chapter in Hebrews on faith, new variations of
the woes against the Pharisees, and “twenty-six
pages of the supposititious sayings and doings of the
Lord in his Advent in America.” Finally there are
numerous transformations of Scriptural matter;
“for example, the parable of the dying olive tree is
grafted on the metaphor of the wild olive tree and
the whole, with its ramifications, spreads over nine
pages.” All this Biblical matter, including many
chapters of literal quotations from the Authorized
_ Version, is represented to have been translated from
the “reformed Egyptian” on the plates.
Much of the original matter contained in the book
can be traced to the religious controversies of the
day and some of it is more or less autobiographical.
The following passage with which the Book of
Mormon opens is an instance:
102 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore
I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father ;
and having seen many afflictions in the course of my days
—nevertheless, having been highly favored of the Lord in
all my days; yea, having had a great knowledge of the
goodness and the mysteries of God, therefore I make a
record of my proceedings in my days.
The name of this prophet is given as Nephi, but
the acts are the acts of Joseph. The dream of Lehi,
recorded on pages 15-16, when compared with the
dream of Joseph Smith, Sr., as recorded in Mrs.
Smith’s Biographical Sketches, pages 58-59, is seen
to be closely parallel.
Much of the knowledge relating to the American
Indians was such as was familiar to Joe in his boy-
hood, to whom Indians were a common sight. In
his mother’s biographical book we read this passage:
During our evening conversations, Joseph would oc-
casionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that
could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabi-
tants of this country, their dress, mode of traveling, and
the animals upon which they rode; their cities, their build-
ings, with every particular; their mode of warfare and
also their religious worship. This he would do with
as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole
life with them.
Fenimore Cooper, living in an adjoining county,
idealized the Indians, but to Joe they “were a dark,
loathsome, filthy and idle people, they wore a girdle
about their loins, their heads were shaven, they had
marked themselves with red in their foreheads. .. .
THE BOOK OF MORMON 103
They dwelt in tents; seeking in the wilderness for
beasts of prey; at night they did rend the air with
their cries and howlings and their mournings for
the loss of their slain. . . . They carried the bow,
the cimiter and the axe, they smote off the scalp
of their enemies; they took many prisoners and
tortured them.”
The theory that the American Indians are de-
scendants of the Hebrews and in particular of “the
lost Ten Tribes of Israel,’ who crossed the Pacific
to America, has long been prevalent and there is a
considerable literature on the subject. A book on
the subject by Elias Boudinot entitled A Star in the
West, or an Attempt to Discover the Lost Ten
Tribes of Israel, appeared in 1816, and some such
book may have fallen into the hands of Smith. This
was the theory of Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found.”
Our conclusion at this point is that the general ©
contents of the book were drawn from Spaulding’s
“Manuscript,” the Bible, and the Indian lore and pre-
vailing ideas of the time. A further examination
of these ideas will be made in the next section.
3. MARKS OF INVENTION IN THE BOOK
We now come to a closer critical examination of
the book to test its claim to be a supernatural “‘rev-
elation” to Joseph Smith, Jr. The story of the book
is full of impossibilities from beginning to end. The
claim that the plates contained “the learning of the
104 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Jews and the language of the Egyptians” is absurd,
for the Jews knew nothing of the Egyptian lan-
guage. Hyde calculates that plates of brass and
gold and “ore” that would have held the Book of
Mormon “would have formed an immense volume
of great weight,” perhaps several hundred pounds,
yet Joe, in one of his accounts, declares that after
finding it he ran all the way home with it.
The first emigration under Jared crossed the Pa-
cific in eight “barges” which “were small and they
were light upon the water,” and “‘the length thereof
was the length of a tree”! Yet these small boats,
something like Indian dugouts, were tossed about on
the Pacific “three hundred and forty and four days,”
and carried not only the emigrants but their “herds
and flock” and “all kinds of animals after their
kind,” including even “the fish of the waters,” with
not only “food for all,” but also “fresh water for
the same length of time.”
When, guided by a mysterious compass, they
landed “in the promised land,” somewhere on the
Western Coast of Central or South America, they
found there horses and asses, cows and oxen, swine
and elephants, though not one of these animals then
existed on this continent. They also found “cure-
loms and cumons,” but these creatures cannot be
disputed as they are Smith’s own creations.
The descendants of Jared multiplied and became a
great people, but grew in wickedness so that wars
sprang up among them and depopulated the country.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 105
In one of these battles two million men were slain.
Strange things happened in these battles. For in-
stance we read:
And it came to pass that when all had fallen by the
sword, save it were Coriantumr and Shiz, behold Shiz
had fainted with loss of blood. And it came to pass when
Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested
a little, he smote off the head of Shiz. And it came
to pass that, after he smote off the head of Shiz, that Shiz
raised upon his hands and fell; and after he had struggled
for breath, he died.
Another singular occurrence was the following:
And when Moroni had said these words, he went forth
among the people, waving the rent of his garment in the
air, that all might see the writing which he had wrote
upon the rent, and crying with a loud voice.
The book swarms with anachronisms, one of the
things a fraudulent author can hardly escape and
one of the surest proofs of invention and deception.
We read of the “Gospel” and of “churches” six
hundred years before Christ, and a hundred years
before Christ “‘all those who were true believers in
Christ took upon them gladly the name of Christ or
Christians, as they were called, because of their be-
lief in Christ who should come.” After his death
Christ appeared to these people in America and was
transfigured before them and delivered discourses
much like the Sermon on the Mount. He appeared
before a multitude of 2,500 persons and commanded
them, “Arise and come forth unto me that ye may
106 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
thrust your hands into my side,’ and the whole
multitude ‘‘did thrust their hands into his side, and
did feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in
his feet; and this they did, going forth one by one,
until they had all gone forth.” Allowing one-quar-
ter of a minute for each person, this action would
have taken over ten hours.
One of the astounding anachronisms in the book
is the fact that all the Scripture quotations, which it
is claimed were translated from the Egyptian lan-
guage on the plates, are in the English of the Au-
thorized Version, mistakes and all! For instance,
in incorporating 1 Cor. 13:5, in the ‘““Book of Mo-
roni,” the phrase “is not easily provoked,” reads as
in the Authorized Version, but the word “easily”
is not found in the Greek and is dropped in the Re-
vised Version. Joe’s “Urim and Thummim,”
however, did not detect the absence of this word and
he put it in. There are hundreds of such instances.
By the same token of anachronism Shakespeare is
proved to be a plagiarist, for his famous phrase
“from whence no traveler can return” was used in
2 Nephi 1, 14, twenty-two hundred years before the
bard of Stratford was born. Passages from the
New Testament are quoted hundreds of years before
it was written, and the Copernican theory of the
solar system is proved fifteen hundred years before
Copernicus (“for sure it is the earth that moveth,
and not the sun.” Helaman 12:15). Hundreds of
these anachronisms betray the fraudulent author-
THE BOOK OF MORMON 107
ship of the book. A multitude of modern words,
such as “baptize,” “‘barges,” ‘Bible,’ sprinkle its
pages. Ungrammatical sentences and the illiterate
use of words abound.*
As the book had its origin in Spaulding’s ““Manu-
script Found” as worked over by Rigdon and pos-
sibly further worked over or at least copied by
Smith, we cannot tell how many of these anachro-
nisms and other errors go back to Rigdon and to
Spaulding, but we may well attribute the illiteracy
to Smith, for, according to David Whitmer, a
Mormon authority, he “was illiterate and but little
versed in biblical lore, and was ofttimes compelled
to spell the words out, not knowing the correct pro-
nunciation.”’ ©
4. ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF THE BOOK
The general idea of the Book of Mormon, that
it is a final revelation completing that of the New
Testament as the New Testament completes the Old,
has appeared from time to time. The following
famous instance affords a remarkable precedent and
parallel to the revelation and plates of Joseph Smith:
About the close of the twelfth century appeared among
the mendicant friars that ominous work, which, under
the title of “The Everlasting Gospel,” struck terror into
the Latin hierarchy. It was affirmed that an angel had
*Rev. M. T. Lamb has collected many of these in his The Mor-
mons and Their Bible, pp. 44-51.
*Ibid., p. 50.
108 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
brought it from heaven, engraven on copper plates, and
had given it to a priest named Cyril, who delivered it to
the Abbot Joachim. The abbot had been dead about fifty
years, when there was put forth, A. D. 1250, a true
exposition of the tendency of the book, under the form of
an introduction, by John of Parma, the general of the
Franciscans, as was universally suspected or alleged.®
Belief in this “Everlasting Gospel” as the final
Gospel superseding all previous revelations, per-
sisted even down to the Reformation, though “the
burning of thousands of these ‘Fratricelli’ by the In-
quisition was altogether inadequate to suppress
them.” Sidney Rigdon, who was a scholar
of considerable attainments and was afterward
Professor of Church History in Nauvoo Uni-
versity, must have known this story, for it
was well known to students of church
history and was published in Mosheim’s Ecclesias-
tical History, Ancient and Modern, which was a
widely circulated book and an abridged edition of
which was published in Philadelphia in 1812. His-
tory has strange ways of repeating itself and thus
the very idea of the Book of Mormon may have been
derived from medieval history.
The Mormons claim that their book contains the
true history of the first settlement of this continent
and of the origin of the American Indians and that
it gave an account of the building of the ancient
cities whose ruins are now found in Mexico and
Central and South America before these ruins were
*Draper’s Intellectual Development of Europe, p. 382.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 109
known to modern historians and archeologists.
This claim has been utterly disproved in all its parts.
Shook gives the names of more than thirty volumes
in English on American history and archeology con-
taining an account of these ruins, that were pub-
lished before 1830, many of them books in popular
circulation. Spaulding and Rigdon must have
known some of these books.’
It has been further shown that the general ideas
as to the early settlement of this continent found
in the Book of Mormon were such as were preva-
lent before 1830. Shook has shown this in an ex-
haustive examination of the subject, and his con-
clusions are summarized by him as follows:
1. According to the Book of Mormon the arts, habits,
customs, language and religion of ancient America were
brought from the Old World. This opinion was held by
the great majority of Americanists at the beginning of
the last century, one deriving American culture from
China, another from Atlantis, another from Polynesia,
and another from Palestine.
2. The book claims that the first inhabitants of this
continent came direct from the Tower of Babel. A be-
lief that was shared in by such early writers as Ulloa,
Villagutierre, Torquemada, L’Estrange, Thompson and
others.
3. The book declares that the American Indians are
descendants of the children of Israel. Of earlier writers
who held this view may be mentioned Thorowgood, Penn,
Ben Ezra, Beatty, Edwards, Stiles, Smith, Boudinot,
Adair, Mayhew and Eliot. In 1873 Foster declared that
this theory was “profoundly entertained a century ago.”
*Cumorah Revisited, pp. 131-134.
110 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
4. The book tells us further that the valleys of the
Ohio and the Mississippi were inhabited in ancient times
by highly civilized peoples, distinct from the American
Indians. This theory was not new in 1830, having been
advanced about the beginning of the century by Rev.
Thaddeus M. Harris, and was held at that time by the
greater number of American archeologists.
5. After the defeat of the Nephites at Hill Cumorah
we are told that their remnant fled into the “south coun-
tries.’ Heckewelder, as we have seen, gave to the world
in 1819 a Delaware tradition according to which the
Tallegwi, the Ohio mound builders, after their defeat
by the combined forces of the Lenape and Hurons, also
fled southward.
6. The book further declares that two distinct, civi-
lized peoples, the Jaredites and the Nephites, dwelt, in
ancient times, in Central America and Mexico. Long
before 1830 the ethnical distinction between the Mayas
and Nahuas had been observed.
7. The Jaredites, it is claimed, were all exterminated,
with the exception of two individuals. The theory of
“extinct,” “vanished,” and “lost” races was held long be-
fore it entered into the minds of Spaulding, Rigdon and
Smith.
8. The belief that the Christian religion had been
preached in America, as made in the Book of Mormon,
was first advocated by many of the Spanish priests of
Mexico, who saw in the Aztec god, Quentzalcoatl, the
Apostle Thomas, who, they thought, preached in America
during the first century of our era.
Qg. Smith’s claim that he found the plates in Hill
Cumorah may have been suggested by the Stockbridge
Indian tradition, obtained by Dr. West and published
in Boudinot’s Star in the West, in 1816, according to
which “their fathers were once in possession of a ‘Sacred
Book’ which was handed down from generation to genera-
tion and at last hid in the earth.”
THE BOOK OF MORMON 111
Nearly all of these points have been disproved
by modern archeology, and over against them Shook
places the following conclusions of present Ameri-
canists, which are supported by numerous authori-
tative quotations and “have been fully established
in the preceding pages’’:
1. That the American race is, and has been, one from
the close of the Glacial Period to the present, and that
the American Indians are not descendants of the children
of Israel.
2. That the civilization of the ancient races was in-
digenous and was not derived from either Egypt or
Palestine, the analogies brought forward to prove such
a derivation being mere coincidences.
3. That none of the ancient peoples had attained to
the stage of culture attributed to the peoples of the
Book of Mormon, being ignorant of the arts of smelting
and working iron and the use of alphabetic characters.
4. That the theory of extinct races—that is, extinct
in the sense in which Mormons use the term, is a pure
fallacy, the ancient Mound Builders, Cliff Dwellers, Cen-
tral Americans, Mexicans and Peruvians being the direct
ancestors, in both blood and culture, of those races found
here by the whites.
5. That the ancient races were neither Jews nor Chris-
tians, but pagans and worshipers of the elements and
phenomena of nature, mountains, rocks, trees, beasts,
birds and men.
6. That the ancient empires were very small as com-
pared with the continent and did not comprehend parts of
both Americas. And
7. That the trend of migration in the Northern Conti-
nent was from the north to the south, instead of the
opposite direction.
Written across the claim of the historical credibility of
the Book of Mormon, in letters so bold that every intel-
112 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ligent, honest eye may read them, is the word “TEKEL,”
“thou art weighed in the balances and art found want-
nee),
The theological ideas in the Book of Mormon are
also easily traced to their sources in the religious
creeds and controversies of the day. In the early
decades of the nineteenth century Western New
York, along with New England, of which it was an
extension, was a hotbed of religious sects and rival-
ries, when Calvinism and Arminianism and Univer-
salism were at odds and many strange isms were
running rife. Alexander Campbell appeared at this
time in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio
and injected his controversial views into the arena,
Sidney Rigdon, after his exclusion from the Baptist
Church, becoming one of his followers. All of these
ideas and conflicts are reflected in the pages of the
Book of Mormon. The orthodoxy of Presbyterian-
ism, with which the Smiths were affiliated, was
under suspicion at this time. In 1837, as we have
noted, the four synods of Genesee, Geneva, Utica
and Western Reserve were judged “out of connec-
tion with the Presbyterian Church,” and ‘‘a few
trickles of rationalism were bound to seep into
Joseph’s skull.”
Professor I. W. Riley has traced the theological
ideas in the Book of Mormon, placing in parallel
columns passages from it and from the Westmin-
ister Confession of Faith, and his conclusion is:
®*Cumorah Revisited, pp. 134-136, 565-566.
THE BOOK OF MORMON 113
Strange as it may seem, the earliest (Indian) tribes
were Old School Presbyterians. If the speech of Nephi,
to his brethren, be compared with the Westminster Stand-
ards, a close parallelism will be disclosed. In all this
the author’s borrowings were the easiest possible. Even
if the rest of the family did not remain good Presby-
terians, the Westminster Confession was to be had in
other ways; it appeared, for instance, in the frequent re-
prints of the New England Primer, so that as children
thumbed its quaint pages, they sucked in Calvanism. But
if the young prophet had once learned what “man’s chief
end” was, he did not continue to believe that “In Adam’s
fall we sinned all’’; early in his book he began to drift
towards Universalism, saying that “the way is prepared
from the fall of man,” and that “salvation is free to all.”
This marked transition in habits of thought is to be gath-
ered from the elements of the reaction. The Book of
Mormon is said to present orthodox Trinitarianism; the
reverse is the truth: it is a hodge-podge of heterodoxy.
How the author came by the variant doctrines is a per-
tinent question, for it shows his absolute dependence on
his own times.®
Professor Whitsitt, of the Southern Baptist
Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky., in his article
on “Mormonism” in The Concise Dictionary of Re-
ligious Knowledge (New York, 1891), analyzes the
Book of Mormon with the following result:
In its theological positions and coloring the Book of
Mormon is a volume of Disciple theology (this does not
include the later polygamous doctrine and other gross
Mormon errors). This conclusion is capable of demon-
stration beyond any reasonable question. Let notice
also be taken of the fact that the Book of Mormon bears
traces of two several redactions. It contains, in the first
°The Founder of Mormonism, pp. 132-134.
114 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
redaction, that type of doctrine which the Disciples held
prior to November 18, 1827, when they had not yet for-
mally embraced what is commonly considered to be the
tenet of baptismal remission. It also contains the type
of doctrine which the Disciples have been defending since
November 18, 1827, under the name of the ancient Gospel,
of which the tenet of so-called baptismal remission is a
leading feature. All authorities agree that Mr. Smith
obtained possession of the work on September 22, 1827,
a period of nearly two months before the Disciples con-
cluded to embrace this tenet. The editor felt that the
Book of Mormon would be sadly incomplete if this notion
were not included. Accordingly, he found means to com-
municate with Mr. Smith, and, regaining possession of
certain portions of the manuscript, to insert the new
item. ... Rigdon was the only Disciple minister who
vigorously and continuously demanded that his brethren
should adopt the additional points that have been in-
cluded.
Alexander Campbell, the founder of the Disciples,
to the tenets of which Sidney Rigdon became a con-
vert, as early as 1832 wrote a pamphlet entitled
“Delusions: an Analysis of the Book of Mormon.”
in which he says:
He (the author) decides all the great controversies
(discussed in New York in the last ten years), infant bap-
tism, the Trinity, regeneration, repentance, justification,
the fall of man, the atonement, transubstantiation, fast-
ing, penance, church government, the call to the ministry,
the general resurrection, eternal punishment, who may bap-
tize, and even the questions of Freemasonry and the
rights of man.
Such are the contents of this book that claims
to be a new supernaturally originated and inspired
THE BOOK OF MORMON 115
Bible and the final revelation and completion of
Christianity. We have seen that its alleged origin
is absurd, that it swarms with impossibilities and
anachronisms and errors, and that it was fabricated
out of Solomon Spaulding’s “Manuscript Found
in the Wilds of Mormon” as worked over by Sidney
Rigdon and Joseph Smith, Jr. The result is a hodge-
podge of confusion and nonsense. As the ‘“‘Apoc-
ryphal Gospels” in their silliness and absurdity stand
in such glaring contrast with the historic sobriety
and reality of the genuine Gospels as affords further
proof of the truth and divine origin of the New
Testament, so do these modern new “Bibles” by
their irrationality in contrast with the sanity and
beauty and sublimity of the true Bible confirm our
faith in it as the Word of God.
CHAPTER V
THE FOUNDING AND ORGANIZATION OF THE
MORMON CHURCH
DEAS cannot live without a body and cannot
travel without hands and feet. Spirit cannot go
naked through the world but must incorporate itself
in flesh, and religion everywhere, however purely
spiritual it may be, soon secretes an organization.
Joseph Smith and his few associates now had the
idea of founding a religion and the next step was to
organize a church.
I. THE FOUNDING OF THE CHURCH
Before the Golden Bible was completed, accord-
ing to Smith a messenger from heaven, who turned
out to be John the Baptist, appeared to Smith and
Cowdery in May, 18209, ‘‘and having laid his hands
upon us, he ordained us, saying: Upon you, my fel-
low servants, in the name of the Messiah, I confer
the priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of
the ministering angels, and of the Gospel of repent-
ance, and of baptism by immersion for the remis-
sion of sins; and this shall never be taken again
from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again
116
THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 117
an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.” * The
messenger further informed them that “this Aaronic
priesthood had not the power of laying on of hands
for the gift of the Holy Ghost, but that this should
be conferred on us hereafter; and he commands us
to go and be baptized, and gave us directions that I
should baptize Cowdery, and that afterwards he
should baptize me.” This they did forthwith, and
no sooner had Smith baptized Cowdery than the
Holy Ghost fell upon him and Cowdery “stood up
and prophesied many things which should shortly
come to pass,” which things, however, Smith dis-
creetly failed to record. This ordination is held by
Mormon authorities to exceed that of the Pope and
bishops of Rome because it came direct from heaven
and not through a human succession.
Smith and Cowdery began preaching their new
religion and converts began to accept it. Smith’s
brother Samuel was the first convert, Cowdery bap-
tizing him, Hyrum Smith was the second, and pres-
ently there were little groups of converts in nearby
villages which were formed into churches. Almost
every new convert was the subject of a special reve-
lation to Smith, who was now receiving many such
communications which may be found recorded in
the Doctrine and Covenants.
On April 6, 1830, “the church of Christ in these
last days” was “regularly organized and established
agreeable to the laws of our country, by the will and
* Pearl of Great Price, p. 98.
118 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
commandments of God.” ? This meeting was held
in the house of Peter Whitmer at Fayette, N. Y.,
Smith and Cowdery laying their hands on the con-
verts and then administering the communion. Six
members were present at this meeting, but the whole
number of members at this time is given as being
about seventy.
The church at first had no distinctive name, it
being designated by Smith as “My Church,” and
on the title-page of the first edition of the Book
of Commandments it was called the “Church of
Christ.”” The name “Mormons” was never accept-
able to the early followers of Smith, and the present
official title, “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints,’ was adopted by a church council on May
4, 1834.
Such was the humble start of this church that
was destined to grow into an organization with hun-
dreds of thousands of members and to throw its
tentacles across the continent and into lands beyond
the seas.
2. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH
The church that was founded in the house of
Peter Whitmer with six members had for its officers
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery as its first and
second elders. But church polity grows by a pro-
cess of evolution as need arises for further division
? Doctrine and Covenants, p. 121.
THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 119
and distribution of powers. The Mormon Church
rapidly developed its organization and in time be-
came a highly complex and efficient system of
government and propaganda.
Smith himself outlined the system in a series of
revelations, assigned to different dates, that are
found in sections 18, 20, 102 and 107 of the Doctrine
and Covenants. There can be little doubt that Rig-
don furnished Smith the scheme, for David Whit-
mer in his “Address to Believers in the Book of
Mormon” says:
Rigdon would expound the Old Testament Scriptures
of the Bible and Book of Mormon, in his way, to Joseph,
concerning the priesthood, high priests, etc., and would
persuade Brother Joseph to inquire of the Lord about this
doctrine and about that doctrine, and of course a revela-
tion would always come just as they desired it.
This Mormon authority manifests no surprise
that the ‘revelation would always come just as they
desired it.”
A “revelation” in June, 1829 (Sec. 18), directed
the appointment of twelve disciples or apostles, and
in June, 1830 (Sec. 21), Smith received the follow-
ing “revelation” designating his own office in the
church: ‘Behold there shall be a record kept among
you, and in it thou shalt be called a seer, a translator,
a prophet, an apostle of Jesus Christ, an elder of
the church through the will of God the Father,
and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, being in-
spired of the Holy Ghost to lay the foundation
120 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
thereof, and to build it up unto the most holy faith.”
Clothed with this authority, Smith arrogated to him-
self the sole right to receive “revelations,” and he
could produce such a revelation at any moment to
meet any emergency, and by this means he put one
up and another down and ruled his organization
with the most arbitrary and despotic power. Ina
series of “revelations” he designated various mem-
bers of his family as well as others to offices, but
the “revelation” of April, 1829, contains the gen-
eral outline of his system, which is based on the
polity of the priesthood in the Old Testament.
Without following in detail the steps by which
the polity of the Mormon Church was developed, it
will be in order at this point to give an outline of
its organization as it stands today. It is a hier-
archy with authority concentrated at the top and
descending to the bottom.
At the head of the hierarchy is the president, who
is the supreme authority as the successor of Joseph
Smith, the “seer, translator, prophet.” He alone can
receive “revelations,” his arbitrary word is supreme
and final and he is “the reigning sultan of the
church.”
With the president are associated two councilors,
and the three together constitute the “first presi-
dency,’ who are supposed to be the successors of
Peter, James and John and to typify the trinity. The
word “quorum” is a general name for various
groups of officers within the organization of the
THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 121
church. The president and his two councilors con-
stitute the “quorum of the first presidency.”
Next in order but standing aside from the direct
line of power is the “patriarch,’ who has the power
of pronouncing “blessings,” usually for a considera-
tion. This office, which was instituted by Joseph
Smith, Jr., and assigned to his father and next to his
brother Hyrum, is in effect hereditary in the Smith
family and ‘“‘seems to have been created to provide
a title for one of that race.” He may have “visions”
but not “revelations” and has no real power but
“deports himself as ecclesiastical supernumeraries
have done since the days of Amen Ra.”’ *
Next after the “first presidency” in authority is
the ‘quorum of the twelve apostles,” the president
being one of these ex officio with authority equal to
that of the other eleven. They ordain all other
officers, elders, priests, teachers and deacons, lead
all religious meetings and administer the rites of
baptism and the communion. They are a traveling
high council and succeed to the supreme authority
in case the president dies or is disabled. The “high
council” proper consists of twelve high priests and
is the supreme court of the church for the trial of
important cases and to hear appeals from subordi-
nate high councils.
Below the “quorum of the twelve” are the “‘sev-
enties’ quorums.” These bodies are composed of
*Frank J. Cannon in his Brigham Young and His Mormon Em-
pire, from which this account of the organization of the Mormon
church is in part taken.
122 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
elders divided into groups of seventy, of which there
are now about one hundred and fifty. Each “sev-
enty” has seven presidents, and every seven of the
seventies has a president, and all of these presidents
constitute a quorum. These presidents are virtually
subordinate apostles and they are the missionaries
and propagandists of the church.
Next come the “high priests,” whose duty it is to
officiate in all the offices of the church in the absence
of the higher officials. The priests, teachers and
deacons constitute “the Aaronic priesthood.” The
“priesthood of Melchisedec”’ is made up of the presi-
dent, two councilors, patriarch, apostles, presidents
of the seventies, elders and high priests. In the
Aaronic priesthood, which is subordinate to the
priesthood of Melchisedec and is occupied mainly
with temporal affairs, the highest office is that of
the presiding bishop who superintends the collection
of the tithes.
The church is divided into “stakes of Zion,” or
territorial divisions, of which there are now ninety-
four, nine of these being outside of the United
States. Each stake is divided into wards, and each
ward into districts, each of which has its own meet-
ing house, Sunday school, day school, teachers, and
debating and literary societies. Each stake also has
its first presidency consisting of a president and two
councilors, and each ward has its bishop.
The church organization is thus a closely-knit hier-
archy with a myriad of officers descending in rank
THE FOUNDING OF THE MORMON CHURCH 123
from the autocratic president down to the teachers
in the day school. “Every capable man in Mormon
ranks is given something to do—and kept busy in
doing it.” The system is a machine which in elabo-
rate organization and ruthless authority and high
efficiency has probably not been surpassed in the
history of religion.
How are all these officers chosen? There is a
“General Conference” of the church at which the
chief officers are elected, and while the polity at the
top has the appearance of popular government, yet
the reality is thorough-going autocracy. On this
point we quote from Frank J. Cannon as follows:
_ All this large and intricate organization was in Brig-
ham’s hands. He filled vacancies in the quorum. He
named the presidents of seventies. He created bishops.
He promoted, deposed, shifted, supported, or left strug-
gling whomsoever he would—and in this irresponsible
despotism he has been followed unto this day. Never
since the Mormon Church was founded has the congre-
gation of the people nominated a ruler of the church,
nor even a member of the hierarchy. The congregation is
always asked to “sustain’—and always does so. And
the manner of that “sustaining” is a pitiful absurdity.
At the general conference of the church, one of the hier-
archy announces: “It is moved and seconded that we
sustain (giving the name) as prophet, seer, and revelator
to all the world.” And so on, through the list. “All
who are in favor of this motion signify it by raising the
right hand.” A wave of hands comes from the vast
assemblage. But no “motion” has been made. Neither
nomination nor opposition is permitted. The decree of
God has been uttered. The people are allowed to ratify
but not to refuse God’s irrevocable choice.
124 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Symonds remarks that the Jesuits seem to have dis-
covered the precise point to which intellectual culture
can be carried without intellectual emancipation. One
might say with yet more truth that the Mormon church
had learned the precise point to which the appearance
of popular government can be carried without the reality.*
*Mormon Empire, pp. 210-211.
CHAPTER VI
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH
HERE is no single official statement or creed
of Mormon doctrine, and the teaching of the
Mormon Church must be collected from its various
acknowledged standards. These consist of the
Bible, Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, Doc-
trine and Covenants, Compendium of Mormon Doc-
trine, Mormon Doctrine, Mediation and Atonement,
Key to Theology, Catechism, Journal of Discourses,
together with the “revelations” of the president of
the church and the teachings of Mormon instruc-
tors from the time of Joseph Smith to the present
day.
In 1842, Joseph Wentworth, editor of the Chi-
cago Democrat, applied to Smith for a statement of
his doctrine and received from him thirteen “Ar-
ticles of Faith,” which are now printed in the Pearl
of Great Price. These articles were given out at a
time when the Mormons were in disrepute and in
trouble in Missouri and were intended to allay popu-
lar prejudice and indignation and to give the im-
pression that the Mormons were simple Christian
believers holding to the faith of “the primitive
church.” These articles are as follows:
125
126 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
THE ARTICEERS OF (MAT TES
Of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
I. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His
Son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.
2. We believe that men will be punished for their own
sins, and not for Adam’s transgression.
3. We believe that through the atonement of Christ,
all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and
ordinances of the Gospel.
4. We believe that the first principles and ordinances
of the Gospel are :—First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ;
Second, Repentance; Third, Baptism by immersion for
the remission of sins; Fourth, Laying on of Hands, for
the Gift of the Holy Ghost.
5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by
prophecy, and by the laying on of hands, by those who
are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer
in the ordinances thereof.
6. We believe in the same organization that existed in
the Primitive Church, viz., apostles, prophets, pastors,
teachers, evangelists, etc.
7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revela-
tion, visions, healing, interpretation of tongues, etc.
8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as
it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of
Mormon to be the word of God.
9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He
does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal
many great and important things pertaining to the King-
dom of God.
10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and
in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion will be
built upon this continent; that Christ will reign person-
ally upon the earth; and that the earth will be renewed
and receive its paradisiacal glory.
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 127
11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty
God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and
allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how,
where, or what they may.
12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents,
rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sus-
taining law.
13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent,
virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may
say that we follow the admonition of Paul, We believe
in all things, we hope all things, we have endured many
things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there
is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praise-
worthy, we seek after these things.
There is very little distinctive Mormon teaching
in these articles and they are of small value in in-
forming us as to what this teaching really is. The
present chapter will set forth the chief Mormon doc-
trines as taught in the standards and by the authori-
ties of the Mormon Church.*
I. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF GOD
Our belief concerning God is the most funda-
mental and pervasive of all our beliefs, consciously
*In this presentation of Mormon teaching we wish to acknowledge
indebtedness to a booklet entitled Mormon Doctrine, by Rev. John D.
Nutting, D.D., and published by the Utah Gospel Mission, Cleve-
land, Ohio, 1905. It follows the thirteen articles, but under each
one gives quotations, with references, from Mormon authorities
which show the true Mormon teaching on the subject. It is a val-
uable summary which gives every indication of having been care-
fully and honestly made.
In this chapter the following abbreviations will be used: Book
of Mormon, B. of M.; Pearl of Great Price, P. G. P.; Doctrine and
Covenants, D. and C.; Compendium of Mormon Doctrine, Comp.;
Mormon Doctrine, Mor. Doc.; Mediation and Atonement, M. and A.;
Key to Theology, K.; Catechism, Cat.; Journal of Discourses,
‘Bae i:
128 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
or unconsciously shaping our thoughts of the uni-
verse and of life and character and destiny. The
first Article of Smith’s creed is: ‘“We believe in God,
the Eternal Father, and his Son, Jesus Christ, and in
‘the Holy Ghost.” This is a quite orthodox state-
ment, but the incontestable fact is that it is only a
mask to conceal the most materialistic and repulsive
views of God.
The Mormon doctrine of God embraces the fol-
lowing points: (a) There are many gods: “Are
there more Gods than one? Yes, many” (Cat., 13).
(b) These gods are polygamous or “sealed” human
beings grown divine: “God himself was once as we
now are, and is an exalted Man” (Joseph Smith,
J. of D., VI: 4); “And you have got to learn how
to be Gods yourselves, the same as all Gods have
done before you” (Jbid.); “Then shall they [that
have been “sealed” in marriage] be Gods, because
they have all power, and the angels are subject unto
them” (D. and C., 467). (c) Adam the God of this
world: ‘““He [Adam] is our Father and our God,
and the only God with whom we have to do” (Brig-
ham Young, J. of D., 1:50). (d) These Gods have
fleshly bodies: “There is no other God in heaven
but that God who has flesh and bones” (Smith,
Comp., 287). (e) They are polygamous: “When
our Father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he
came with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of
his wives, with him” (Young, J. of D., 1:50). (f)
They have children forever: “Each God, through
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 129
his wife, or wives, raises up a numerous family of
sons and daughters: ... for each father and
mother will be in a condition to multiply for ever
gacvever, (lhe Seer,.1237:).
When the mask is thus torn off the Mormon
“God, the Eternal Father,’ we see a hideous dis-
closure of fleshly polygamous gods reveling in sexual
propagation through all eternity. Such a God or
gods are the proper father of such a system of faith
and practice, and such a system is the proper and
necessary offspring of such sensual and polygamous
gods.
2. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF CHRIST AND THE HOLY
SPIRIT
The Mormon doctrine of Christ is in keeping with
the Mormon doctrine of God. (a) Christ is a fleshly
being along with the Father: “Jesus Christ and his
Father are two persons, in the same sense as John
and Peter are two persons. Each of them has an
organized, individual tabernacle, embodied in ma-
terial form, and composed of material substance, in
the likeness of man, and possessing every organ,
limb and physical part that man possesses” (K., 39-
40). (b) He is the son of the Adam-God: “The
Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He
was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is
the Father? He is the first of the human family”
(Young, J. of D., 1:50). (c) He was a polygamist:
130 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
“We say it was Jesus Christ who was married [at
Cana to the Marys and Martha] whereby he could
see his seed before he was crucified” (Apostle Orson
Hyde, Sermon 3).
The Holy Spirit is also viewed as a refined ma-
terial substance, to be classed with “electricity, gal-
vanism, magnetism, animal magnetism,” etc. “The
purest, most refined and subtle of all these sub-
stances, and the one least understood, or even recog-
nized, by the less informed among mankind, is that
substance called the Holy Spirit” (K., 44). “Each
of these Gods ... is subject to the laws which
govern, of necessity, even the most refined order of
physical existence” (K., 42). ‘There is no such
thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but
is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by
purer eyes” (Joseph Smith, Comp., 259).
3. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF MAN
The following are the chief points in the Mormon
doctrine of man: (a) Men and Gods are one species:
“Gods, angels and men are all of one species, one
race, one great family, widely diffused among the
planetary systems, as colonies, kingdoms, nations,
etc.” (K., 39). (b) Men were born in the spirit-
world and came to this world for bodies: ‘This
individual, spiritual body, was begotten by the
Heavenly Father, in his own likeness and image
and by the laws of procreation. . . . This has been
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 131
called the ‘first estate.’ . . . The spirits which kept
their first estate were permitted to descend below,
and to obtain tabernacles of flesh in the rudimental
existence in which we find them in our present
world, and which we call a second estate” (K., 53-
54). (c) Man’s mission is to propagate: “You are
here . . . to raise families and properly educate
them” (President Snow). (d) Polygamists and
other “sealed’’ Mormons become gods: “Through
the essence and power of the Godhead, which is in
him, ... he is capable of rising from the contracted
limits of manhood to the dignity of a God, . . . and
is capable of eternal exaltation, eternal lives [in the
propagation of children] and eternal progress”
(President Taylor).
4. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF SIN
The pantheistic pluralism of Mormonism logically
leads to fatalism in its doctrine of sin: ““Adam found
himself in a position that compelled him to disobey
one of the requirements of God” (J. E. Talmage).
“Was it necessary that Adam should partake of the
forbidden fruit? A. Yes, unless he had done so
he would not have known good and evil here, neither
could he have had moral posterity. . . . Did Adam
and Eve lament or rejoice because they had trans-
gressed the commandment? A. They rejoiced and
praised God” (Cat.).
132 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
5. THE MORMON DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT AND OF
BLOOD ATONEMENT
“The word atonement signifies deliverance,
through the offering of a ransom, from the penalty
of a broken law. As effected by Jesus Christ, it
signifies the deliverance, through his death and re-
surrection, of the earth and everything pertaining
to it, from the power which death has obtained over
them through the transgression of Adam” (Comp.,
8).
The doctrine of atonement in time was perverted
into the horrible Mormon doctrine and practice of
“blood atonement.” This was the doctrine of human
sacrifice and was based on the theory that some
grave sins can be atoned for only by the shedding
of the blood of the sinner himself. This dreadful
obsession, while earlier hinted at, was first openly
promulgated in Salt Lake City by Jedediah M.
Grant, of the first presidency, who was sometimes
called ‘““Brigham’s sledge hammer.” ? At a notable
meeting in 1856 he declared: “I say there are men
and women that I would advise to go to the Presi-
dent immediately, and ask him to appoint a com-
mittee to attend to their case; and then let the place
be selected, and let that committee shed their blood.
We have those amongst us that are full of all man-
ner of abominations; those who need to have their
7On the doctrine of blood atonement see Journal of Discourses,
IV : 219-220; Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 292-308; Hyde,
Mormonism, 179-180; Linn, Story, pp. 444-447, 454-457.
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 133
blood shed, for water will not do; their sins are too
deep for that.” In the next year Brigham Young
in a sermon, which may be read in the Journal of
Discourses, Vol. IV, declared:
All mankind love themselves: and let those principles
be known by an individual, and he would be glad to have
his blood shed. This would be loving ourselves even
unto eternal exaltation. Will you love your brothers
or sisters likewise when they have a sin that cannot be
atoned for without the shedding of their blood? That is
what Jesus meant. . . . I could refer you to plenty of in-
stances where men have been righteously slain in order
to atone for their sins. ... The wickedness and ig-
norance of the nations forbid this principle being in full
force, but the time will come when the law of God will
be in full force. This is loving our neighbor as ourselves ;
if he needs help, help him; if he wants salvation and it is
necessary to spill his blood on earth in order that he may
be saved, spill it.
We shall hear later of the practice of this terrible
fanaticism.
6. CHURCH ORGANIZATION
Article 6 of Smith’s Thirteen Articles reads:
“We believe in the same organization that existed in
the primitive church, namely, apostles, prophets,
pastors, teachers, evangelists, etc.” We have seen
however, how this primitive organization has been
developed in the Mormon Church into an enormous
tyrannical hierarchy. All the Christian churches,
according to Mormon doctrine, are spurious and
are under the wrath and curse of God. Joseph
134 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Smith in his account of his first ‘“‘vision’’ declares:
“I was answered that I must join none of them,
for they were all wrong . . . all their creeds were
an abomination in his sight.” The ministry of the
Christian church is “‘a spurious priesthood, desti-
tute of divine authority, divine inspiration and di-
vine power, .. . set up by ambitious and design-
ing man, . .. base counterfeit of true and heavenly
coin’ (Mor. Doc., p. 21). “Any person who shall
be so wicked as to receive a holy ordinance of the
gospel from the ministers of these apostate churches
will be sent down to hell with them, unless he re-
pents of the unholy and impious act’ (The Seer,
Vols. I and II, p. 255).
7. THE PRIESTHOOD
Article 5 reads: “We believe that a man must be
called of God, by prophecy, and by laying on of
hands, by those who are in authority, to preach the
Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.”
This authority of the Mormon priesthood is applied
and exercised in the most absolute and arbitrary
way over all thoughts and actions: “Their priest-
hood gives them the right to advise and instruct the
Saints, and their jurisdiction extends over all things
spiritual and temporal” (Sermon by Dr. Gowans,
Logan Journal, May 26, 1898). ‘When aman says
you may direct me _ spiritually but not tem-
porally, he lies in the presence of God”
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 135
(Deseret News, April 25, 1895). ‘Whatever I
might have obtained in the shape of learning by
searching and study respecting the arts and sciences
of men, whatever principles I may have imbibed
during my scientific researches, yet, if the prophet
of God should tell me that a certain theory or prin-
ciple which I might have learned was not true, I
do not care what my ideas might have been, I should
consider it my duty at the suggestion of my file
leader to abandon that principle or theory” (Wil-
ford Woodruff, J. of D., V: 83).
8. ORDINANCES
We believe that the first principles and ordinances of
the Gospel are :—First, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ;
Second, Repentance; Third, Baptism by immersion for
remission of sins; Fourth, Laying on of Hands for the
Gift of the Holy Ghost.” Baptism is extended to baptism
for the dead by which living substitutes may be baptized
for dead friends or for any dead. ‘The living may be
baptized for the dead... . The living relatives stand
in the name and place of the departed and receive the
ordinances to be placed to the credit of the dead. (Mor.
Doc. 38, 40).
This doctrine was a very taking one with the uneducated
Mormon converts who crowded into Nauvoo, and the
church officers saw in it a means to hasten the work on
the Temple. At first families would meet on the bank of
the Mississippi River, and some one, of the order of
the Melchisedec Priesthood, would baptize them whole-
sale for all their dead relatives whose names they could
remember, each sex for relatives of the same.®
*Linn, Story, p. 119.
136 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
It is said that the Mormons have performed this
rite for Abraham Lincoln and many other noted
men.
Q. MIRACLES
“We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy,
revelation, visions, healing, interpretation of
tongues, etc.” “QO. What are the peculiar manifes-
tations of the Holy Ghost? A. Amongst others, vi-
sions, dreams, prophecies, speaking divers tongues,
interpretation of tongues, discernment of spirits and
angels; knowledge, wisdom, extraordinary faith,
healings and miraculous powers. ... These .
manifestations of the Spirit always follow faith
in and obedience to the Gospel” (Cat., pp. 43,
44). Asanexample of such “prophecy” we may take
the following uttered in 1838 by Parley P. Pratt and
printed in his pamphlet Mormonism Unveiled: “I
will state as a prophecy, that there will not be an
unbelieving Gentile upon this continent 50 years
hence; and if they are not greatly scourged, and in
a great measure overthrown, within five or ten years
from this date, then the Book of Mormon will have
proved itself false.”
I0. THE BIBLE AND MORMON REVELATIONS
“We consider the Bible, Book of Mormon, Book
of Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 137
and sayings of Joseph, the Seer, our guides in faith
and doctrine’ (Com., Preface). “Thou fool, that
shall say, A Bible, a Bible, we have got a Bible,
and we need no more Bible . . . ye need not sup-
pose that it contains all my words; neither need ye
suppose that I have not caused more to be written”
(B: of M., 2 Nephi, 29:6-10). ‘Wilford Woodruff
is a prophet, and I know that he has a great many
prophets around him, and he can make Scriptures
as good as those in the Bible” (Apostle J. W. Taylor,
Conference, Salt Lake, April 5, 1897). ‘Compared
with the living oracles these books are nothing to
me” (Wilford Woodruff).
II. LIBERTY OF WORSHIP
“We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty
God according to the dictates of our conscience, and
allow all men the same privilege, let them worship
how, where or what they may.” Over against this
statement stands not only much bloody Mormon
history but also this equally authoritative statement
of Brigham Young: “I say, rather than apostates
should flourish here, I will unsheath my bowie knife,
and conquer or die. Now, you nasty apostates,
clear out, or judgment will be put to the line... .
I want you to hear, bishops, what I am about to tell
you: Kick these men out of your wards” (J. of D.,
1:83).
138 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
IZ. RELATION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT
“We believe in being subject to kings, presidents,
rulers and magistrates, in obeying, honoring and
sustaining the law.” Another fair statement against
which cries out many a bloody page of Mormon
rebellion and many inspired declarations such as the
following: The priesthood holds “the power and
right to give laws and commandments to individuals,
churches, rulers, nations and the world; to appoint,
ordain and establish constitutions and kingdoms;
to appoint kings, presidents, governors, or judges’’
(Key, p. 70). The priesthood “is the legitimate
rule of God, whether in the heavens or on the earth,
and it is the only legitimate power that has a right
to rule on the earth; and when the will of God is
done on the earth as it is in heaven, no other power
will be or rule’ (Apostle John Taylor).
13. MORALITY AND VIRTUE
The professed “Articles of Faith” end with the
following: “We believe in being honest, true, chaste,
benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men;
indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition
of Paul, We believe all things, we hope all things,
we have endured many things, and hope to be able
to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous,
lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek
after these things.” It need not be denied or
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 139
doubted that there is a fair degree of morality and
virtue among Mormon people, especially in these
latter days when they are more exposed and sub-
ject to public opinion and civil law, but on this point
we shall let their own highest authority speak:
“T have many a time, in this stand, dared the world
to produce as mean devils as we can. We can beat
them at anything. We have the greatest and
smoothest liars in the world, the cunningest and
most adroit thieves, and any other shade of char-
acter that youcan mention. Wecan pick out elders
in Israel right here who can beat the world at gam-
bling; who can handle the cards; can cut and shuffle
them with the smartest rogue on God’s footstool. I
can produce elders here who can shave their smart-
est shavers, and take their money from them. We
can beat the world at any game. [Why?] We
can beat them because we have men here that live
in the light of the Lord; that have the holy priest-
hood, and hold the keys of the kingdom of God”
(Brigham Young, Deseret News, VI, 291; J. of D.,
IV: 77). This point in Mormon history and prac-
tice will frequently recur later in this study.
I4. POLYGAMY AND MARRIAGE
The most distinctive doctrine and practice of
Mormonism is not mentioned in these “Articles of
Faith,” but it is abundantly written in its standards.
The Book of Mormon itself repeatedly forbids plu-
140 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
rality of wives. In the “Book of Jacob,” 2:24-27,
it is recorded: ‘Behold, David and Solomon truly
had many wives and concubines, which thing was
abominable before me, saith the Lord. . . . Where-
fore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word
of the Lord; for there shall not any man among you
have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall
have none. For I, the Lord God, delighteth in the
chastity of women.” But later, on July 12, 1843,
Smith received a long “‘Revelation on the Eternity of
the Marriage Covenant, including Plurality of
Wives,” which still stands as Section 132 in the
Book of Doctrine and Covenants. “And again, as
pertaining to the law of the priesthood: if a man
espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, . . .
if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law,
he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him,
and they are given unto him, therefore he is justi-
fied” (p. 473). “If plural marriage be unlawful,
then is the whole plan of salvation, through the
house of Israel, a failure, and the entire fabric of
Christianity without foundation” (Comp., p. 125).
“Those who denounce patriarchal marriage will
have to stay without and never walk the golden
streets” (Bible and Polygamy, p. 158). It is an
essential part of the Mormon doctrine that marriage
is for eternity and will be attended with “eternal
increase’ (Comp., p. 120), and salvation for women —
is made to depend on their being ‘“‘sealed” in mar-
riage to eternity.
THE DOCTRINES OF THE MORMON CHURCH 141
The matter of polygamy will frequently enter into
our further account of Mormonism, and we conclude
this brief summary of Mormon doctrine with the
following statement of its system in the article on
“Mormons” in the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclo-
pedia Britannica:
A system of polytheism has been grafted on an earlier
form of the creed, according to which there are grades
among the gods; the place of supreme ruler of all being
taken by the primeval Adam of Genesis, who is the deity
highest in spiritual rank, while Christ, Mahomet, Joseph
Smith and Brigham Young also partake of divinity. The
business of these deities is the propagation of souls to
people bodies begotten_on earth, and the sexual relation
permeates the creed. The saints on leaving this world
are deified, and their glory is in proportion to the number
of their wives and children; hence the necessity and
justification of polygamy (although its practice is not
now authorized by the Church), andthe practice of having
many wives sealed to one saint. Marriage, if accom-
panied by the ecclesiastical ceremony of “sealing,” is for
eternity, and is a necessary pre-requisite of heavenly bliss.
A man may be sealed to any number of women, but no
woman may be sealed to more than one man. Both mar-
riage and sealing by proxy are permitted to assure salva-
tion to women who die unsealed. This system of spiritual
wives or celestial marriage is based on the idea that a
woman cannot be saved except through her husband.
Polygamous marriage is supposed to make possible the
procreation of enough bodies for thousands of spirits
which have long awaited incarnation. Especially in their
earlier years the Mormons believed in faith healing, and
Joseph Smith bade them “trust in God, and live by faith
and not by medicine or poison.” Their distinguishing points
of faith are: religiously, a belief in a continual divine
142 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
revelation through the inspired medium of the prophet at
the head of the Church; morally, polygamy, though this
is condemned in the Book of Mormon, as has been noticed
above; and, socially, a complete hierarchical organization.
They believe in the Bible as supplemented by the Book of
Mormon, the Book of Doctrine, and revelation through the
president of the Church; in the gift of prophecy, miracles
and casting out devils; in the imminent approach of the
end of the world; in their own identity with the apoca-
lyptic saints who shall reign with Christ in a temporal
kingdom, either in Missouri (at Independence) or in Utah;
in the resurrection of the body; in absolute liberty of
private judgment in religious matters; and in the salva-
tion of man only if he believes in Christ’s atonement, re-
pents, is baptized by immersion by a Christ-appointed
apostle and receives the laying on of hands for the gift
of the Holy Ghost by duly authorized apostles.
CuHapTter VII
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO
MITH and his followers, having organized their
church at Fayette, New York, on April 6, 1830,
began the work of preaching their faith, but soon
encountered checks in public prejudice and opposi-
tion. It outraged the moral and religious sense of
the community that people of the ill reputation of
the Smiths should be proclaiming a new religion and
baptizing converts. A dam that had been thrown
across a stream to provide a place for baptisms was
destroyed in the night. Joe Smith himself was ar-
rested on a charge that he had obtained a horse and
yoke of oxen by means of an alleged ‘‘revelation”’
and also that he had behaved improperly towards
the daughters of one of his followers, but at the trial
he was acquitted. These conditions and events led
Smith and his followers to seek a more congenial
environment, and westward the star of Mormonism
took its way.
I. THE CHURCH AT KIRTLAND
The evidence shows, as we have already seen, that
Smith had several years before this time formed a
143
144 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
secret arrangement with Sidney Rigdon, who was
pastor of a Disciples church at Kirtland, in north-
eastern Ohio, and this fact turned the course of
events to this village in the Western Reserve. In
October, 1830, four elders, Oliver Cowdery, Parley
P. Pratt, Peter Whitmer, Jr., and Ziba Peterson,
were sent as missionaries ostensibly to preach to the
‘Lamanites” or Indians and reached Kirtland, where
they tarried for a time and then passed on westward
to Missouri, where we shall follow them later in this
story.
At Kirtland Cowdery and his associates found
Rigdon and entered into negotiations with him. At
first Rigdon made some show of hesitation at re-
ceiving the new Bible, but he knew more about it
than appeared on the surface. Presently he pro-
fessed conversion and was baptized. He then ap-
peared before his church in his pulpit and “in a two
hours’ discourse of fervid eloquence, eloquent to
those hearers, he expostulated, instructed, explained,
and converted them ;—he wept tears of sorrow and
joy over them, fell into swoons several times, and
related visions of heaven to them. They became
real fanatics.’ * The conversion of Rigdon, who
was a powerful revivalistic preacher and influential
leader, made a profound impression and drew many
of his people after him.
The settlers of the Western Reserve, who had
emigrated from New England bringing with them
*J. W. Gunnison, The Mormons, p. Io.
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 145
its mental and emotional characteristics, were easily
excited and swayed in their religious beliefs, and
fanatical contagion ran with incredible swiftness
through the community. Revivalism was rampant,
and the physical and psychical phenomena of “jerks”
and other strange doings at times swept over the
neighborhood like wildfire. The new religion with
its “revelations” and miraculous healings and won-
derful stories of “gold plates” and a new Bible
caught the credulity of the people and they accepted
it with unreasoning alacrity and avidity. In several
weeks after the Mormon emissaries arrived in Kirt-
land they had baptized 127 converts, and by the next
spring the number had increased to 1,000.
The missionary propaganda of the church was
formally inaugurated by Smith in a “revelation”
(Sec. 42) given at Kirtland on February 9, 1831, in
which the elders, except Smith and Rigdon, were
commanded to “go forth for a little season.” ‘And
ye shall go forth in the power of my Spirit, preach-
ing my gospel, two by two, in my name, lifting up
your voices as with the voice of a trump, . . . and
from this place ye shall go forth into the regions
westward; and inasmuch as ye shall find them that
will receive you, ye shall build up my church in
every region.” This was the beginning of the sys-
tem of propaganda which has been extended over
the world and is today being prosecuted with such
persistent and earnest zeal.
These first missionaries went, not only westward,
146 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
but also northward into Canada and back eastward
into New England and met with astonishing success.
Joe Smith did not have to labor and wait under dis-
couragement for years before seeing any substantial
results, but his sails caught the wind as soon as his
ship was loose from the shore. Powerful oppo-
nents at once arose against the new cult and fa-
naticism, for it was immediately seen to be not only
absurd but a social and moral menace. Alexander
Campbell blew a mighty blast from his trumpet in
a pamphlet exposing it, which pamphlet was re-
printed and scattered through New England, yet the
new religion found a ready reception, and “in three
years after Smith and Rigdon met in Palmyra, Mor-
mon congregations had been established in nearly
all the Northern and Middle states and in some of
the Southern, with baptisms of from 30 to 130 ina
place.” ?
2. BUSINESS VENTURES AND FAILURES
Kirtland was at first viewed as a temporary stop-
ping place in the westward march of Mormonism,
for Smith and Rigdon had their eyes on Missouri
as the location of their “New Jerusalem,” and early
visited that state, but they met with discouraging
opposition and decided to make a permanent stake
of Zion in Ohio. They then began to launch out
*Turner’s Mormonism in All Ages, p. 38, quoted by Linn, Story,
p. 132.
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 147
on various business schemes that soon involved them
and their church in disaster.
Several farms were purchased and the town of
Kirtland was laid out on paper in a plan that pro-
vided for 32 streets crossing at right angles and
cutting out 225 blocks of 20 lots each. Lots were
sold and speculation set in and ran high. Ground
was set apart for a temple and its construction
began, the corner-stone being laid on July 23, 1833,
and the dedication taking place on March 27, 1836.
The building, which is still in use, is 60 by 80 feet
in size, and two stories high, the spire rising to a
height of 123 feet. True religious devotion was
shown in its building, the men giving one day a
week to the work without pay, often living on corn
meal, and the women knitting and weaving garments
for the workmen. It cost $40,000, and involved
the church in a debt of upward of $20,000. The
long prayer received by Smith in a “revelation” and
offered at the dedication of this temple is recorded
in the Doctrine and Covenants, pages 395-404, and
contains many threats of vengeance against the ene-
mies of the new faith, calling upon the Lord to
“make bare thine arm,” and “that the cause of thy
people may not fail before thee, may thine anger be
kindled, and thine indignation fall upon them, that
they may be wasted away, both root and branch,
from under heaven.” Smith and Rigdon had made
a new translation of the Scriptures at Kirtland,
being the Authorized Version with some changes
148 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
and additions of their own, and their study of tlie
Old Testament had obviously inspired them with the
temper and methods of the imprecatory Psalms.
It would appear that all the members held their
property subject to the disposition of the church,
or of Smith, who could at any time receive a “revela-
tion” commanding any member to hand over his pos-
_ sessions. As originally published the Book of Com-
mandments declared “Thou shalt consecrate all thy
properties, that which thou hast, unto me, with a
covenant and deed which cannot be broken.” It is
confusing, however, to find these “revelations,”
which Smith professed to receive by direct commu-
nication from God, undergoing many changes in
different editions of the Doctrine and Covenants,
so that this book for many years was in a fluid
state and presents various conflicting and sometimes
contradictory commands. The provision on this
point now is (Sec. 42: 32): ‘Every man shall be
made accountable unto me, a steward over his own
property, or that which he received by consecration,
inasmuch as is sufficient for himself and family.”
As debts were piling up, Smith would get what he
could by this provision, though evidently he did not
dare go too far with it.
On July 8, 1838, after he fled to Missouri, he re-
ceived a “revelation” ordering William Marks,
Newel K. Whitney, Oliver Granger, “‘and others,”
to “‘settle up their business speedily, . . . repent of
all their sins,” and “Let the properties of Kirtland
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 149
be turned out for debts, saith the Lord.” Under
the same date he received another “revelation” re-
quiring “‘all their surplus property to be put in the
hands of the bishop of my church of Zion, for the
building of mine house, and for the laying of the
foundation of Zion and for the Priesthood, and for
the debts of the Presidency of my church; and this
shall be the beginning of the tithing of my people.”
Yet Smith was not able by this enforced expropria-
tion of property to clear his organization of debt and
save it from bankruptcy.
Various business enterprises were launched at
Kirtland. A general store was opened, described as
“a poorly furnished country store where commerce
looks starvation in the face.” The store lost money
because the members would demand goods on trust
and then would not pay for them. “Joseph was a
first rate fellow with them all the time,” explained
Brigham Young, “provided he would never ask them
to pay him.” <A steam sawmill and a tannery and
printing shop were started and these were losing
concerns.
All sorts of schemes were devised to meet these
growing losses and debts. On one occasion Smith
and Rigdon and Oliver Cowdery went to Salem,
Massachusetts, whither they were lured by a tale
brought them by a Mormon named Burgess of a
hidden treasure buried in the cellar of a house in
that town. Smith hired a house that he thought
might be the right one, but when they found the tale
150 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
was a delusion, he, as usual, met the situation with
a “revelation” (Sec. 111), in which he said: “I, the
Lord your God, am not displeased with your com-
ing this journey, notwithstanding your follies; I
have much treasure in this city for you, .. . andit
shall come to pass in due time that I will give this
city into your hands, that you shall have power over
it, . . . and its wealth pertaining to gold and silver
shall be yours. Concern not yourself about your
debts, for I will give you power to pay them.” This
expedition of the “money-digger” proved him a
dupe and his “revelation” false, for many of the
debts at Kirtland were never paid.
The great business venture and fiasco at Kirt-
land was the bank which was organized on Novem-
ber 2, 1836, as “The Safety Society Bank,” with an
alleged capital of $4,000,000. Oliver Cowdery went
to Philadelphia to get plates for printing the money,
and he came back not only with the plates but also
with $200,000 in printed bills. The state legisla-
ture had refused a charter to the society, and the
notes of unchartered banks were outlawed by the
state law. To meet this difficulty the Safety So-
ciety reorganized on January 2, 1837, as the ‘“‘Kirt-
land Safety Society anti-Bank-ing,” the bills being
changed with a stamp by inserting “anti” before
and “ine” after the word “Bank.’*? Upwards of
$100,000 of these bills were floated, and when a de-
mand was made by some Pittsburgh banks for their
*A facsimile of one of these bills is given by Linn, Story, p. 148.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 151
redemption in specie, Rigdon loudly asserted the
solvency of the institution. “But when a request
for the coin was repeated, it was promptly refused
by him on the ground that the bills were a circulating
medium ‘for the accommodation of the public,’ and
that to call any of them in would defeat their object’’!
All sorts of subterfuges were employed to refuse
and defeat payment of the bills, which were never
redeemed. Smith and Rigdon’s clever “anti-Bank-
ine’”’ device did not protect them from the state law,
and they were arrested and convicted, but appealed
the case. Before the appeal came to trial, the
prophet and his accomplice fled the state.
3. IMMORALITIES, DISSENSIONS AND FLIGHT
The stay of the Mormons at Kirtland was marked
by increasing disorders and dissentions. Smith
himself was the object of much criticism and of
some grave charges. He was outspoken to the point
of ‘brutal frankness and abuse in his relations with
his officers and members. In his sermons in the
temple he would express himself in crude and slangy
style and was in the habit of announcing, ‘The truth
is good enough without dressing up, but brother Rig-
don will now dress it up”; and he bluntly told a con-
vert who had come from Canada to join his church
“not to bray so much like a jackass.”
The prophet was arrested on a charge of having
hired two Mormons to kill a farmer near the town
152 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
who was specially open in his opposition to the cult,
but at the hearing he was discharged. He was also
charged with improper relations with an orphan girl
Mrs. Smith had taken into the family, and it was
said that he had confessed to similar relations with
another young woman.
It was already rumored around that polygamy
was being practiced by “the Saints” at Kirtland; and
color is given to this charge by action taken by the
Mormons themselves. In the 1835 edition of the
Doctrine and Covenants occurs this passage (Sec.
101): “Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been
reproached with the crime of fornication and polyg-
amy, we declare that we believe that one man should
have one wife, and one woman one husband, except
in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry
again.” This passage disappeared from later edi-
tions, but its presence shows that this charge was
made. Evidence that even elders practiced polyg-
amy at this time is found in a minute adopted on
April 29, 1837, at a meeting of the Presidents of the
Seventies which declared: ‘‘First, that we will have
no fellowship whatever with any elder belonging to
the Quorum of the Seventies, who is guilty of
polygamy.”
These rumors together with the exposure of
Smith’s financial methods led to the seizure of Smith
and Rigdon on the night of March 25, 1832, by a
“Details and evidence as to these and other charges will be found
in Linn, Story, pp. 153-160.
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 153
mob who dragged them out of their homes and
tarred and feathered and otherwise abused them.
The Mormons claim that this outrage was an act
of religious persecution; but the evidence in the case
shows that it grew out of the financial and moral
practices of Smith and his followers who soon be-
came obnoxious to the community.
The most damaging evidence against the Mor-
mons at this time comes out of their own mouths,
for they indulged in the bitterest mutual recrimina-
tions. Against Oliver Cowdery and David Whit-
mer, “witnesses” to the plates, this charge was made
in writing: “You commenced your wickedness by
heading a party to disturb the worship of the Saints
in the first day of the week, and made the house of
the Lord in Kirtland to be a scene of abuse and
slander, to destroy the reputation of those whom the
church had appointed to be their teachers, and for
no other cause only that you were not the persons.”
In 1837 a High Council was called to try eight high
officials, who were in rebellion against Smith, but
“the Council dispersed in confusion.” In an edi-
torial in the Elders’ Journal Smith denounced “a set
of creatures” that had been expelled from the church
as a “gang of horse thieves and drunkards.” Mar-
tin Harris, one of the “‘witnesses,” and now a high
priest, and Cyrus Smalling, one of the Seventy, were
declared by Smith to be “beneath contempt,” and
Leonard Rich, one of the seven presidents of the
seventy elders, was declared to be “generally so
154 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
drunk that he had to support himself by something
to keep from falling down,’ and two members of
the sacred “Twelve” are branded as “a pair of
blacklegs.”’
There were a number of rebellions and secessions
from the church in these early days. One of these
was led by “a certain young woman,” who began to
prophesy by means of “looking through a black
stone,’ and when a paper was circulated “in order to
ascertain how many would follow them, it was
found that a large number of the church were
disaffected.” °
The collapse of the “anti-Bank-ing’’ society led
to violent scenes among the Mormons and in the
sacred precincts of the temple itself. One Sunday
evening the elder Smith made charges against War-
ren Parish, on whom the Smiths tried to lay the
blame of the bank failure, when Parish leaped at the
old man and attempted to drag him bodily from the
pulpit. One of the Smith brothers rushed Parish
out of the temple, others became involved, a weapon
was drawn, and “at this juncture,” says Mother
Smith, “TI left the house, not only terrified at the
scene, but likewise sick at heart to see the apostasy
of which Joseph had prophesied was so near at
hand.”
In December, 1837, Smith and Rigdon made their
last appearance in the temple in which they made a
®Mother Smith gives an account of this disaffection in her Bio-
graphical Sketches of Joseph Smith, Chapter XLV.
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 155
resolute defense of their case against the various
charges that had been brought against them. But
Kirtland was becoming too dangerous a place for
them. Public indignation was rising against them
and they both sought safety in flight. On the night
of January 12, 1838, they escaped on horseback
and never returned. The temple was sold in 1862
and in 1873 it passed into the possession of the
Reorganized Church and is still used by this non-
polygamous branch of Mormonism.
4. ENTRANCE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG, MASTER MIND OF
MORMONISM
During the settlement in Ohio there quietly en-
tered into this story a convert who presently proved
to be the Moses to lead the new religion out of the
wilderness into its promised land and the architect
and builder who rescued its wreckage when it was
rapidly going to pieces and rebuilt it into the solid
structure that stands to this day. This was Brig-
ham Young, who from this point on will loom large
in this history and who will ever stand forth as the
master mind of Mormonism. Had it not been for
his practical head and firm hand and business man-
agement and forceful personality, Joseph Smith’s
name and cult might have perished with his life in
his tragic death.
Brigham Young was born in 1801, four years
earlier than Smith, and in the same state of Ver-
156 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
mont, so that they both grew up under similar social
and religious conditions. Young came of better
stock than Smith, but in youth he had little school-
ing and never cared for books and throughout life
was a man of action and not of thought, especially
of the speculative kind. He soon became a Yankee
jack-of-all-trades, though specially skilled in glaz-
ing and carpentry which stood him in good stead in
after years. At the age of twenty-one he united
with the Methodist church and was married at 24,
and in 1829 he moved to Mendon, N. Y., where his
father and brother Phineas were living. Phineas
was already a convert to Smith, and in his brother’s
house Brigham first saw the Book of Mormon in
1830, and two years later he was baptized and began
preaching and made two missionary trips to Can-
ada. The following year he went to Kirtland where
he met Smith and joined his fortunes to the cause
of the prophet with results that either of them could
have little foreseen or dreamed.
These two men, Smith and Young, were strangely
contrasted yet were complementary in personality,
and each supplied what the other lacked. Dreamer
and doer met in them and combined with tremendous
consequences. This contrast and complementary
character of the two men are strikingly set forth
by Cannon and Knapp in their book:
Joseph was a prophet of pronunciamentos. Brigham
was an apostle of work. Joseph indulged in revelations
on every commonplace topic. Brigham put forth but one
SETTLEMENT IN OHIO 157
revelation in his life. Joseph was sometimes im-
pressive, sometimes jocular, but he was destitute
of real seriousness and real humor. Brigham had
plenty of both. Joseph was a scatterer. Brig-
ham was a collector. Joseph turned aside after every-
thing that crossed his path. Brigham never left his
appointed trail. Joseph dreamed of being ruler of the
United States. Brigham made himself czar of a desert
empire; small, to be sure, but unique among modern com-
munities—and his own. Both men were necessary to the
creed they supported. Brigham could not have founded
a church. Joseph could not have preserved one. Joseph
and his earlier aids had gathered a thousand planks of
doctrine. Brigham built these planks into a compact
house of faith which endures to this day.®
* Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire, pp. 28-29.
CHAPTER VIII
REMOVAL TO MISSOURI
ISSOURI in the thirties of the last century
was the West of the time and was in the
plastic turbulent condition of a new region that was
attracting adventurous pioneers of various types
and temperaments. Fiery elements were then being
fused in the great melting pot of the Mississippi
Valley. Emotionalism and fanaticism ruled the
social and political and religious life of the people,
and short methods and direct action were the ready
resort in settling practical problems and perils. The
sparsely settled country and rich soil were a lure
to immigrants, but the social environment turned out
to be very unfriendly and unfortunate ground for
Mormonism to select for its new settlement.
Smith and his associates early cast their eyes
westward for the location of their Zion, and in
1831 four missionaries were sent to Missouri to spy
out the land, which was described as “a land flowing
with milk and honey, upon which there shall be no
curse when the Lord cometh.” ‘Revelations’ came
thick and fast to Smith in connection with the new
adventure, which will be found in the Doctrine and
Covenants, Sections 52-64. Alluring prospects and
158
REMOVAL TO MISSOURI 159
promises were held out, intimating that the new
land would be given to them as the chosen of the
Lord. “I will consecrate the riches of the Gen-
tiles unto my people which are of the house of
Israel.” “If ye are faithful ye shall assemble your-
selves together to rejoice upon the land in Missouri,
which is the land of your inheritance, which is now
the land of your enemies.” “Behold it is said in
my laws, or forbidden, to get in debt to thine ene-
mies. But behold it is not said at any time, that the
Lord should not take when he pleased, and pay as
seemeth him good.” ‘Wherefore the land of Zion
shall not be obtained but by purchase or by blood,
otherwise there is none inheritance for you.’ These
repeated intimations that the land might be paid for
or be taken “by blood” scattered through many
“revelations” had a sinister sound which had much
to do with the trouble that followed.
I. IN JACKSON COUNTY
The first party of Mormon emigrants, consisting
of Smith, Rigdon and about thirty elders, reached
Independence, in Jackson County on the western
border of the state, in June, 1831, and a “revelation”
quickly declared that “‘this is the land of promise and
the place of the City of Zion.” Land was purchased
and a site was secured for the temple in the center
of the town which consisted of only a few houses.
A somewhat theatrical show was made of laying
160 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
a corner stone for the temple, and then Smith and
Rigdon returned to Kirtland and started streams
of the faithful towards the new Zion. They went
forward so rapidly that in less than two years the
Mormons numbered more than twelve hundred and
were about one third of the population of the
county.
Suspicion and friction growing into hostility soon
began to develop between the Gentiles and the Mor-
mons. The Gentiles resented the manners and
morals of the Mormons, their claims to divine reve-
lations and their boast that they were setting up a
theocracy in which the land was the Lord’s gift to
them as his peculiar people. This hostility culmi-
nated in a public meeting at Independence when a
notice was served upon the Mormons that they must
leave the county, and with a grim sense of humor
these rough Westerners closed their address to the
followers of the new religion with the notice that
“those who fail to comply with the requisitions be
referred to those of their brethren who have the
gifts of divination and of unknown tongues, to in-
form them of the lot that awaits them.”
Smith at Kirtland delivered a “revelation” against
the removal of his “Zion” from Independence and
declared, ‘Zion shall not be moved out of her
place.” * The non-Mormons of Jackson County also
made an offer ‘“‘to pay the Mormons the valuation
*Mormons claim that this prophecy is still in force and declare
their intention to build their most splendid temple at this place.
REMOVAL TO MISSOURI 161
fixed by the appraisers, with one hundred per cent
added, within thirty days of the award; or, the
Jackson County citizens would agree to sell out their
land in that county to the Mormons on the same
terms.” The offer was refused by the Mormons,
who made a counter proposal, which was in turn
promptly rejected by the county citizens.
In the meantime mobs were beginning to attack
the Mormons, the printing house of the Evening and
Morning Star, the paper they were publishing at
Independence, was destroyed, and the Mormons
were forced across the Missouri River into Clay and
other counties to the north.
While there was ground in the peculiar claims and
threats and morals of the Mormons that in some
degree justified or at least made inevitable their ex-
pulsion by the people of Jackson County, yet it was
also attended with much injustice and lawless vio-
lence and it inflicted pitiable suffering on many of
them, especially their women and children.
2. FURTHER TROUBLES IN AND EXPULSION FROM
MISSOURI
North of the Missouri the Mormons spread
through several counties, for a time making their
headquarters at Liberty, the county seat of Clay, the
first county north of the river, and then founded the
town of Far West in the neighboring county of Ray.
This was early in 1834 and at this time Smith and
162 . THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Rigdon gathered at Kirtland “The Army of Zion,”
a motley assembly of two hundred men acting under
the authority of a “revelation” declaring that ‘‘the
redemption of Zion must needs come by power.”
This ragged company made their way to Missouri,
but a committee of armed Missourians met them as
they approached Ray County and warned them
not to proceed further. This turn of affairs gave
Smith, who generally knew how to exercise that
prudence that is the better part of valor, a pause and
he sent word to the Missourians that “we have con-
cluded that our company shall be immediately dis-
persed.” His surrender was also bolstered up and
sanctioned by the always inevitable and convenient
“revelation” that the Lord did not “require at their
hands to fight the battles of Zion.” These many
self-contradictory revelations of the prophet follow-
ing in rapid succession and veering around with
every change in the political situation or circum-
stance of the hour, like a weathercock in the wind,
never seemed to perplex or surprise the logical sense
or the common sense of his followers.
In 1838 Smith appeared at Far West and found
his church in a state of dissension. The High Coun-
cil promptly expelled Elder Brown, Lyman E. John-
son, Oliver Cowdery and David Whitmer, the
latter two being two of the three witnesses who
testified to the genuineness of ‘‘the plates.” The
expulsion of these high officials was made on various
grounds, such as uttering counterfeit money and
REMOVAL TO MISSOURI 163
accusing the prophet of adultery, and Smith
promptly produced a “‘revelation”’ filling their places
with others. Thomas B. Marsh, President of the
Twelve, and Orson B. Pratt, one of the original
Apostles, at this time withdrew from the church and
subsequently gave damaging testimony against it.
On July 4, the corner stone of a temple at Far
West was laid with a procession and speeches and
much spectacular ceremony. Sidney Rigdon was
the orator of the day and delivered an address
breathing threats in fiery language that greatly
alarmed the non-Mormons, and had much to do
with kindling the fires of persecution against their
undesirable neighbors. Rigdon warned these non-
Mormons that the “mob that comes on us to dis-
turb us, it shall be between us and them a war of
extermination ; for we will follow them until the last
drop of their blood is spilled or else they will have
to exterminate us, for we will carry the seat of war
to their own houses and their own families, and one
party or the other shall be utterly destroyed.” ?
At Far West also was organized ‘The Danites,”
who became practically a band of murderers whose
deeds were subsequently written in blood on some
of the darkest pages of the history of Mormonism
or of any human or inhuman society masquerading
*Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 78. This oration is known
as “Sidney’s Salt Sermon,’ from its text, Matthew 5:13. Brigham
Young, during the trial of Rigdon some years afterward, said:
“Filder Rigdon was the prime cause of our troubles in Missouri,
by his Fourth-of-July oration.” Stenhouse, p. 79.
164 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
in the name of religion. The Danite Oath as given
by Bennett bound each member to “uphold the Presi-
dency, right or wrong; and that I will ever conceal,
and never reveal, the secret purpose of this society,
called Daughters of Zion.* Should I ever do the
same, I hold my life as the forfeiture, in a caldron
of boiling oil.” * We shall hear of the terrible do-
ings of this murderous band hereafter.
At this time Smith produced a “‘revelation” estab-
lishing the tithing system that became and still is
one of the strongholds of this cult. It requires all
members of the church to put all their surplus prop-
erty “into the hands of the Bishop,” and after that
“those who have thus tithed shall pay one tenth of
all interest annually; this shall be a standing rule
forever.” By this rule the income of the church by
1878 was estimated at $1,000,000 a year, and during
Brigham Young’s administration the total receipts
were $13,000,000.”
The course of growing friction and trouble be-
tween the Mormons and their neighbors in Jackson
County was repeated in Clay and Ray and other
counties. Public meetings were held at which the
Mormons were denounced as enemies on account of
their claims and threats and practices and it was
declared that they must leave the state. In time
armed bands of both parties were riding around
> A name subsequently changed to Danites.
*For an extended extract from this address, see Gibbs, Lights
and Shadows of Mormonism, p. 8o.
*Linn, Story, p. 193.
REMOVAL TO MISSOURI 165
plundering and burning and killing and a state of
civil war and anarchy prevailed.
Governor Boggs authorized General John B.
Clark to raise four hundred mounted militia and
declared to him in a letter that “The Mormons must
be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or
driven from the state of necessity for the public
peace—their outrages are beyond description.” This
language of the Governor cannot be justified and
added to the flames of the situation, but it shows
how desperate the situation was growing.
The militia approached Far West and demanded
that Smith and Rigdon and several other leaders
should be surrendered and this was done and later
they were given a hearing. Testimony as to the
purposes of the Mormons was given, the most dam-
aging by Mormons or ex-Mormons themselves.
Thomas B. Marsh, one of the Twelve Apostles who,
as we have seen, had withdrawn from the church,
made an affidavit, as follows:
The plan of said Smith, the Prophet, is to take this
state; and he professes to his people to intend taking the
United States and ultimately the whole world. The
Prophet inculcates the notion, and it is believed by every
true Mormon, that Smith’s prophecies are superior to
the law of the land. I have heard the prophet say that
he would yet tread down his enemies, and walk over their
dead bodies; that, if he was let alone, he would be a sec-
ond Mohammed to this generation, and that ne would
make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to
the Atlantic Ocean.®
*[bid., p. 213.
166 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
The prisoners were removed from one county to
another and finally in some way were permitted to
escape, one charge supported by an officer of the
militia being that Smith gave the sheriff and his
guards $1,100 to allow them to slip off. Smith was
indicted for “murder, treason, burglary, arson, lar-
ceny, theft, and stealing,’ and after his escape into
Illinois the authorities of Missouri tried for years
to secure his extradition, but he never returned to
the state.
While these arrests and hearings were going on,
mob law continued to be inflicted on the Mormons
and they were harassed from county to county east-
ward until they reached the Mississippi and, stripped
of most of their property, they crossed the river into
Illinois and the chapter of their troubled days in
Missouri was closed.
CHAPTER IX
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS
T would be hard to find on the pages of history
a seemingly more defeated and disconsolate band
of people than the various groups of Mormons that
came fleeing and straggling across the Mississippi
into Quincy, Ill., in the spring of 1839. However
intolerable was their presence with their strange
and abhorrent doctrines and deeds in an American
commonwealth, yet their hard treatment and suffer-
ings excite our pity if not our sympathy. Yet there
were heroic spirits among them and their leaders
were unbeaten. Among these was Joseph Smith,
the Prophet, himself, who never abated his claims
or flinched in the face of his enemies, but was as
resolute as ever in his plans and purposes. In
Quincy, also, awaiting the refugees was Brigham
Young, the master spirit of Mormonism, who now
began to push his aggressive personality into promi-
nence and proved to be the Moses of these bitter
days.
Illinois, like Missouri, was little advanced beyond
a border state and was easily swept by violent emo-
tion and direct action, and in this same decade Owen
Lovejoy, for publishing an abolition newspaper at
167
168 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Alton, had his printing plant destroyed and was him-
self murdered by a mob. The political parties in
the state at this time were about equally balanced
between the Democrats and the Whigs, and the
Mormon vote arrived in time to play an important
part in the course of these events.
Both parties in turn made a bid for Mormon
support. The Democratic Association of Quincy,
acting on the report of a committee, condemned the
treatment of the Mormons in Missouri and in vari-
ous ways the newcomers were given a welcome.
Even Governor Carlin and his wife were declared
by Rigdon in a letter to “enter with all the enthusi-
asm of their nature” into a plan to have Congress
investigate the rough usage of the Mormons in
Missouri.
I. A MORMON TOWN RISES ON THE RIVER
The Mormon leaders cast about for a settlement in
the state and various proposals to buy land and
locate were considered, but finally choice fell on the
small town of Commerce about fifty miles north of
Quincy on the Mississippi. About eight hundred
acres of land were bought for $67,000, and then
Smith produced the inevitable “revelation” justify-
ing the removal of “Zion” from Jackson County,
whence an equally inspired “revelation” had declared
it should never be removed, to the new location,
which was now named Nauvoo, a name which was
SETTLEMENT IN. ILLINOIS 169
declared to be of Hebrew origin, meaning “‘a beauti-
ful place.” * The town now rose with surprising
rapidity in population and prestige. It was laid
out in blocks 180 by 200 feet along a river frontage
of three miles, and streams of emigrants were
started flowing towards it from the East and from
Europe. The Times and Seasons, published in
Nauvoo from 1839 to 1845, claimed for it a popula-
tion of 15,000, with two steam mills and other manu-
facturing concerns. An English traveler of the time
described it as a “city of great dimensions, laid out
in beautiful order; the streets are wide and cross
each other at right angles, which will add greatly
to its order and magnificence when finished.” The
Mormons have been marvelous builders, and wher-
ever they settle a substantial town or splendid
city rapidly rises, the supreme example and achieve-
ment being Salt Lake City itself.
A temple was always a primary and central con-
sideration in founding a new Mormon town. A
Dr. Galland, who had become interested in the Mor-
mon religion, addressed one of their elders in a let-
ter in which he outlined a plan for a temple.’ “The
project of establishing extraordinary religious doc-
trines,” he said, “being magnificent in its character,”’
calls for “preparations commensurate with the plan,”
and he suggested ‘“‘a temple that for size, proportions
and style shall attract, surprise and dazzle all behold-
*Smith had a fancy for inventing learned etymologies which were
wholly fictitious.
2 Mackay’s The Mormons, quoted by Linn, p. 227.
170 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
99 66
ers,” “unique externally, and in the interior peculiar,
imposing and grand.” These suggestions caught
the ambition of Smith and he forthwith produced a
“revelation” directing that a temple should be built
and ordering all the Saints to come to Nauvoo “‘with
all your gold, and your silver, and your precious
stones,” together with a long list of enumerated pos-
sessions. The building measured 83 by 128 feet
and was 60 feet high with a spire planned to rise
100 feet higher. Commenced on April 6, 1841, its
capstone was laid on May 24, 1845, after the death
of Smith, and its dedication took place on May 1,
1846.
The portico of the temple was supported by thirty
stone pilasters costing $30,000 each, and under the
tower ran in golden letters the words, ‘““The House
of the Lord, built by the Church of Latter-Day
Saints.” The Mormons estimated the cost at
$1,000,000. The magnificent building wholly dis-
appeared with the decadence of the town after the
expulsion of the Mormons and its site is now occu-
pied in the small town of 1,300 inhabitants by two
modern buildings.
By reason of the desire of both political parties
to keep on good terms with people who had votes
with growing political influence, the Mormon lead-
ers were able to obtain from the state legislature a
city charter for Nauvoo granting it extraordinary
powers. The government consisted of a mayor,
four aldermen and nine councilors with authority
SETTLEMENT IN-ILLINOIS 171
to pass any ordinances not in conflict with the state
and federal constitutions and with the right to issue
writs of habeas corpus. The town was thus in a
large degree a political entity independent of the
state and even of the national government. Further
and more extraordinary still, it had authority to
maintain a military force known as the Nauvoo Le-
gion, and a general order signed by Smith declared
that ‘The officers and privates belonging to the
Legion are exempt from all military duty not re-
quired by the legally constituted authorities thereof ;
they are therefore expressly inhibited from per-
forming any military service not ordered by the gen-
eral officers, or directed by the court martial.” Smith
himself was commander-in-chief of the Legion and
on state occasions appeared in a uniform more gor-
geous than any Napoleon ever wore in all his glory.
This Legion was in line with the general Mor-
mon claim to be a supreme political organization,
which has been frequently officially asserted by Mor-
mon leaders. Apostle Orson Pratt declared that all
other governments “are in direct rebellion against
the Kingdom of God,” and Joseph F. Smith, Presi-
dent of the church, declared in 1896: ‘The fact of
the matter is, when a man says, ‘You can direct me
spiritually but not temporally,’ he lies in the presence
of God; that is, if he has got intelligence enough to
know what he is talking about.” *
Such an anomaly in an American commonwealth
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, pp. 108-109.
172 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
as Nauvoo with its autocratic charter and military
Legion was justly termed by Governor Ford as “a
government within a government; a legislature to
pass ordinances at war with the laws of the state;
courts to execute them with but little dependence
upon the constitutional judiciary, and a military
force at their own command.” These claims backed
up by a show of military force had much to do with
the hostility of the citizens of Illinois against the
Mormons and precipitated the final tragedy.
2. SMITH ENTERS NATIONAL POLITICS
In the Times and Seasons of October 1, 1843,
appeared an editorial entitled, ““Who shall be our
next President?” advocating the selection of a can-
didate who would do justice to the Mormons, espe-
cially in the matter of their grievances. Smith wrote
letters to Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, who
were the leading Whig and Democratic candidates,
asking them what would be their “rule of action
relative to us as a people should fortune favor your
ascendancy to the chief magistracy?” The replies
simply enraged Smith, who was now beginning to
swell with a sense of his political importance and to
take himself seriously as a probable candidate him-
self. Clay replied that if elected to the office, “I
must go into it free and unfettered, with no guaran-
tees but such as are to be drawn from my whole
life, character and conduct,” and Calhoun made a
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 173
similar declaration. To both of these men Smith
replied in terms of personal abuse and threats of
divine wrath.
His next step was to issue a long address in which
he outlined his own policies, including such remedies
for evils as a national bank whose “officers shall be
elected yearly by the people, with wages of $2 a day
for services,” a proposal to “send every lawyer, as
soon as he repents and obeys the ordinances of
heaven, to preach the Gospel to the destitute, without
purse or scrip,’ and other equally preposterous po-
litical panaceas.
In due time another editorial appeared in Times
and Seasons, answering the question, “Whom shall
the Mormons support for President?” with the
reply, “General Joseph Smith. A man of sterling
worth and integrity, and of enlarged views; a man
who has raised himself from the humblest walks in
life to stand at the head of a large, intelligent, re-
spectable and increasing society, . . . and whose
experience has rendered him every way adequate
to the onerous duty.”
A propaganda was now started to promote
Smith’s candidacy throughout the country. Two or
three thousand speakers, it was claimed, took the
field, and meetings were held north and south. A
state convention was held in Boston, which was dis-
turbed by rowdies and then adjourned to Bunker
Hill, but Smith’s death had already occurred though
the news of it had not yet reached that city.
174 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
3. THE TRAGEDY AT NAUVOO
Smith’s troubles both private and public were al-
ready thickening upon him in Nauvoo. Polygamy
as a doctrine and practice, the introduction and his-
tory of which among the Mormons will be taken up
in a later chapter in this book, was assuming the
proportions of a public scandal, and Smith himself
was charged with grave immorality.*
Some members of the Mormon Church at Nauvoo
seceded from it on the ground of opposition to its
polygamy and started a newspaper called the E-x-
positor in which they voiced their views and opposi-
tion. Smith promptly used his authority to suppress
the paper and issued an order to the commander of
the Legion “to remove the printing establishment of
the Nauvoo Expositor,’ with the result that the off-
cer reported that “The within-named press and type
is destroyed and pied according to order on this 1oth
day of June, 1844.” The publishers of the Ex-
posttor fled to Carthage, the county seat of Hancock
County, where they sued out a writ for the arrest
of Smith. When brought before the Municipal
Court Smith was quickly discharged and then he is-
sued a “proclamation” in which he said that “Our
city is infested with a set of blacklegs, counterfeiters
and debauchees and that the proprietors of this press
were of that class,” and closed by warning “‘the law-
*For details see Linn, Story, pp. 270-271.
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 175
less not to be precipitate in any interference in our
affairs, for as sure as there is a god in Israel we
shall ride triumphant over all oppression.”
This: high-handed procedure aroused the non-
Mormon citizens of the county as they now realized,
as did the people of Missouri, that they had an alien
and intolerable element in their American democ-
racy. At Warsaw, eighteen miles down the river, a
public meeting was held at which it was “Resolved,
that the time, in our opinion, has arrived when the
adherents of Smith, as a body, should be driven from
the surrounding settlements into Nauvoo: that the
Prophet and his miscreant adherents should then be
demanded at their hands, and, if not surrendered,
a war of extermination should be waged, to the en-
tire destruction, if necessary for our protection, of
his adherents.”
Armed forces began forming and Governor Ford
advised Smith and his associates to surrender, prom-
ising to protect them. Joseph Smith and his brother
Hyrum and John Taylor gave themselves up and
were taken to Carthage, where they were placed in
the county jail. The governor chose the Carthage
Grays as their guard, an unfortunate selection, as
these men, being citizens of Hancock County, were
known to be specially hostile to the Mormons. The
three prisoners were confined in a room on the sec-
ond floor of the jail and on the morning of June 17,
1844, members of the militia forced their way up
the stairs and through the door and began firing,
176 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Hyrum was the first to fall dead, and Joseph in the
act of leaping out the window was struck by two
bullets and exclaiming, ‘““O Lord, my God,” he fell to
the ground below and was either dead when he fell
or, as some accounts say, was quickly despatched
with other shots. Taylor, though wounded, recov-
ered and later become President of the church.
The news of the assassination created a panic of
consternation and sorrow among the Mormons, and
the next day the bodies of the Smith brothers were
brought to Nauvoo and a great funeral conducted
with solemn pomp was held. Though the bodies
were supposed to be in the coffins carried to the
grave, it has since been disclosed they were not in
the caskets but were clandestinely buried in a secret
spot on the banks of the Mississippi, where they still
repose in unmarked graves.
Whatever alleviation of this tragic event may be
found in the circumstances out of which it grew in
the rough customs and ready resort to direct action
of the time, the accumulated hostility and resent-
ment against the Mormons on the ground of their
claims of divine revelations sanctioning their polyg-
amous preaching and practice and their political
usurpation, yet the killing of Joseph Smith was a
cold-blooded murder. ‘The militia ostensibly set to
guard him themselves became a lawless mob and the
governor failed to provide the protection he had
promised, and thereby this crime remains as an ugly
blot on the State of Illinois.
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 177
And further, the opponents of Mormonism did
the greatest damage to their own cause and gave a
powerful impulse to the religious and social system
they hated by this act. Persecution has ever been
a powerful propagandist and has helped many a
wrong as well as many a right cause. The murder
of the Prophet of Mormonism deepened and intensi-
fied the faith and devotion of his followers as no
other event could have done, and to this day Car-
thage is a Calvary in their cult. It is an abiding fact
and force in their faith, and the blood of this
Prophet is the seed of his church.
4. CHARACTER OF JOSEPH SMITH
Joseph Smith was a complex and strange com-
pound of incongruous elements. He sprang from a
morbid, diseased and superstitious ancestry and out
of a social soil in which all kinds of psychological
and religious vagaries and cults, such as animal
magnetism, clairvoyance, hypnotism, spiritualism,
faith healing, and crass religious doctrines and
heated emotional revivals, grew rapidly and rank.
His ill-balanced, highly excitable brain was easily
infected and inflamed with these flying sparks or
floating disease germs in the air, and he caught most
of the mental and emotional disorders of his day.
The line between fact and fancy in his mind was
easily blurred, and he no doubt came to believe many
of the imaginings and obsessions that seized and
178 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
moved him. His power of hypnotizing others al-
most equally hypnotized himself and he was the dupe
of his own deceptions and the victim of his own
visions.
He could not have been self-deceived as to the
true nature of his gold plates and their alleged reve-
lations, and yet in time the success of his deceptions
may have deluded himself. Nothing succeeds like
success even with false prophets, and the lying
prophet may come to believe in the genuineness of
his own fraudulent pretensions. That the Mormon
Bible is fraudulent is plainly stamped upon all its
pages, and yet its author may have been led by its
wide acceptance to believe in it himself. What
others think of him is apt to affect what a man thinks
of himself, and when others acclaim him an inspired
genius he is likely to think they are right and put the
same estimate upon himself. It is not strange if
Joseph Smith yielded to this flattering psychology.
The egoism of Smith, budding in his ill-balanced
brain in his boyhood and fed by his family, grew
into an all-absorbing mania. He saw nothing ridic-
ulous but only his proper place and destiny in aspir-
ing to the presidency of the United States, and
dressed in a gorgeous, gold-laced uniform with
plumed hat and glittering sword as commander of
the Nauvoo Legion, he felt himself another Napoleon
or Alexander the Great. He declared that he would
“become the second Mohammed of this generation,”
and averred that Mormonism would some day rule
SETTLEMENT IN: ILLINOIS 179
the world. As an inspired prophet he stood on
equal heights with Moses and Isaiah and his revela-
tions constituted the final Bible of humanity. He
would stride the ages as the supreme religious
Prophet and political Colossus of the world and over-
top all the centuries. He dreamed himself a Caesar,
crossing every Rubicon, and as Mohammed has
struck the Cross from the Eastern world, so would
he strike the Crescent from the modern world and
supersede all other religions with his own “revela-
tions.” He did not, however, rise to the height of
vanity and blasphemy where he put himself beside
or above Christ.
No crisis or imminent disaster in his career could
give him pause or beget in him a suspicion of his
own limitations and follies. During his final legal
difficulties he boasted, “I am a big lawyer, I com-
prehend heaven, earth and hell.”
The Prophet’s nature was compounded of explo-
sive passions. He was specially subject to anger
and trivial provocations would inflame him to the
point of the most violent outbursts. His sense of
his own importance and apparent power could brook
no interference with his will, and any intrusion upon
his real or imaginary rights would throw him into
a rage. “Before I will be dragged away again
among my enemies for trial I will spill the last drop
of blood in my veins and will see all my enemies in
hell.” Sexuality was strongly marked in him, and
his vanity was swollen to the limit of bursting. The
180 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
truth was not on his tongue or pen when untruth
served him better. Sincere he must have been at
times, but he was deeply veined with inveracity and
when it fitted his purpose he was an adept at wear-
ing the mask of hypocrisy.
One or two expert opinions of his character may
here be given. Josiah F. Gibbs, an ex-Mormon and
former missionary of the church whose book bears
the marks of judicial temperament and just judg-
ment, says:
As a psychological subject he has baffled the ablest
minds. ‘The activity of his mind was phenomenal, and
must have been the product of abnormal nervous energy.
And in order to have deceived himself in the matter of
the revelations, his nervous force, at times, must have
been such as to produce temporary hallucinations. The
vividness and realism of the products of his imagination
were such as to convince him that they were supernatural.
Those delusions were intensified by his natural and ac-
quired egotism which was one of his most glaring defects
of character. The grandiloquent verbiage of many of
his speeches, writings and revelations, was such as would
have caused “Bombastus Furioso”’ to turn green with
envy.”
Professor I. Woodbridge Riley, in his psychologi-
cal study of Joseph Smith, thus states his general
conclusion:
The words and deeds of Joseph Smith in his last days
offer ground for the belief that he was, at times, actually
demented. If the case be brought into harmony with his
* Lights and Shadows, p. 128.
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 181
previous pathological experiences—color sensations, dizzi-
ness, vacuity, coma and bodily bruises—the prophet’s
final activities suggest epileptic insanity. In general such
a patient shows marked narrowness of mental horizon,
with limited ideation and imperfect associations of ideas.
In conversation and writing there is a strong tendency to
detail and circumstantiality. The vocabulary consists
largely of set phrases, platitudes and passages from the
Bible. These symptoms may be deemed too inclusive to
be conclusive. There are to be added more particular
marks suggesting a tendency to pronounced mental aber-
ration. Such are the facts that the epileptic insane betray
an abnormal prominence of the self: that the most sense-
less and fantastic schemes are devised in which the
patients do not fully recognize the incongruity between
their grandiose plans and their limited ability; finally, that
the judgment is impaired in proportion to the amount of
mental deterioration. How far such deterioration ex-
tended in the case of Joseph Smith the reader must de-
cide for himself.®
Yet over against the defects of heredity and false
claims and scandals of his life, Joseph Smith stands
upon the pages of history as a figure that must be
reckoned with. He has not passed but is still on
the stage and has grown in influence with the more
than three quarters of a century that have elapsed
since his tragical death. The bullet that killed him
did not kill his Bible or his church. He founded an
institution that is casting a long and broadening
shadow and it looms larger with the years. An in-
creasing multitude of followers are his devoted ad-
herents and are rooting their religion in many of
* The Founder of Mormonism; a Psychological Study, pp. 437-438.
182 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
our states and are throwing their branches out over
the world. Ridicule does not reduce the proportions
of his personality and of his achievements. His ab-
surdities cannot assign him to oblivion. It is true
that better balanced and abler men have seized his
peculiar institution and pushed it to success, but it
was his spirit that initiated it and still inspires it.
History plays strange tricks in our human world,
and one of the strangest of these is Joseph Smith.
5. LAST DAYS AT NAUVOO
At the time of the death of Smith, some of the
most important leaders of the church were absent on
various missions, Brigham Young himself being off
electioneering for Smith as a candidate for President
in New Hampshire. These leaders now quickly as-
sembled at Nauvoo to consider what was to be done,
now that the Prophet was slain. Joseph and Hyrum
Smith and Sidney Rigdon constituted the First
Presidency, and now the question was, Who was to
succeed to the chief office? Only Rigdon remained
of the First Presidency and he had withdrawn from
Nauvoo and was residing with his daughter in Pitts-
burgh, Pa. Brigham Young, however, was at the
head of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and he
saw that his hour was now come.
Rigdon appeared at Nauvoo and took steps to
assert his own succession to the head of the Presi- —
dency, chiefly in the form of senseless ravings that
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 183
were supposed to be indications of his power to re-
ceive “revelations.” Young, however, cut short his
inspired career by seeing that he was charged with
determining to “rule or ruin the church,” and forth-
with he was expelled from it. This strange man,
the ex-Baptist preacher who knew more than any
other man, with the possible exception of Joseph
Smith himself, of the real origin of the Mormon
Bible, returned to Pittsburgh and attempted to start
a movement of his own, but soon retired to live with
a son-in-law at Friendship, New York, where he
died on July 14, 1876, carrying his secret to his
grave.
Young now managed the church as the head of
the Twelve, judiciously keeping the matter of the
Presidency in the background, until on December
5, 1847, after the expulsion from Nauvoo while the
Mormons were temporarily located at Winter Quar-
ters in Iowa, Young was made President and H. C.
Kimball and William Richards were made his Coun-
cilors, the three constituting the First Presidency.
Thus this masterful man fastened his grip upon the
Mormon church and never relaxed it until death
broke it.
The death of Smith did not allay the hostility be-
tween the Mormons and the Gentiles, but this was
ageravated during the following winter. Charges
of stealings enraged the people, and they visited re-
taliation upon the Mormons in the form of burnings
and other depredations.
184 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Internal troubles and quarrels also grew in viru-
lence in the church. William Smith, brother of Jo-
seph and Hyrum, returned to Nauvoo from the East
and was made Patriarch, but was soon “cut off and
left in the hands of God.” Whereupon he issued an
eight-page statement in the Warsaw Signal in which
he expressed his views of the situation in general
and of Brigham Young in particular. “It is my
firm and sincere conviction,” he said, ‘‘that, since
the murder of my two brothers, usurpation, and
anarchy, and spiritual wickedness in high places
have crept into the church, with the cognizance and
acquiescence of those whose solemn duty it was to
gcuardedly watch against such a state of things.
Under the reign of one whom I may call Pontius
Pilate, under the reign, I say, of this Brigham
Young, no greater tyrant ever existed since the days
of Nero.”
Trouble and disorder grew until a military force
of the state was assembled, and the Mormons were
notified that they “must go.” Repeated negotia-
tions finally resulted in an agreement by which they
were to leave Illinois. This decision was announced
in the Millennial Star of December 1, 1845, in the
following language: “The End of American Lib-
erty. The following official corespondence shows
that this government has given thirty thousand
American citizens the choice of death or banishment
beyond the Rocky Mountains. Of these two evils
SETTLEMENT IN ILLINOIS 185
they have chosen the least. What boasted liberty!
What an honor to American character !”
The process of evacuating Nauvoo and starting
for the distant West took upwards of a year and was
attended with much social disorder and hardship.
The Mormons disposed of their property as best
they could and the next spring their loaded wagons
began crossing the Mississippi on ferryboats and
assmbling on the Iowa side, where they pitched
their temporary tents. There were still clashes
between the Mormons and the Gentiles who were
impatient with the slow movement of things, and
there was a final “Mormon War” in September
which was terminated with another agreement of
the Mormons to surrender Nauvoo, deliver up their
arms and “leave the state, or disperse, as soon as
they cross the river.” By the end of September,
1846, the last of these objectionable people were out
of Illinois and to the number of about 17,000 they
were moving across the Mississippi River into Iowa.
CHAPTER X
BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYGAMY
HE deepest distinctive feature of Mormonism
is its doctrine and practice of polygamy,
and more than any other fact in its system and his-
tory has this given offense and been the cause of its
troubles. Monogamy is and has been a foundation
stone in Christian civilization for more than twenty
centuries and stands today unshaken, and any doc-
trine that undermines or threatens it imperils the
whole structure and will arouse against it the deeply-
rooted instincts and organized opposition of
Christendom.
Polygamy is the chief rock of offense and greatest
menace of Mormonism and as long as this doctrine
remains in its creed and the right to practice it is
asserted, however the practice of it may be tempo-
rarily held in obeyance by the hand of law, distrust
of the Church of Latter-Day Saints will persist.
I. EARLY MORMON TEACHING
Rumors of irregular sex relations early began to
circulate in connection with the Mormons at Kirt-
land, Ohio. Joseph Smith was accused of such in-
186
BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYGAMY _ 187
dulgences, and numerous affidavits are on record
declaring that he entered into polygamous relations
as early as 1841 and by 1843 had formed four other
such marriages. These rumors are borne out by
the fact that in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants,
published in Kirtland in 1835, there is a Section
(101) containing this declaration: “Inasmuch as
this Church of Christ has been reproached with the
crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that
we believe that one man should have one wife, and
the one woman one husband, except in case of
death, when either is at liberty to marry again.”
This statement admits the fact of the charges and
seeks to counteract them.
The early official Mormon teaching on the subject
of polygamy opposed the doctrine and practice and
denounced it. We quote again and more fully the
declarations of the Mormon Bible as found in the
Book of Jacob, 2:24-28, as follows:
Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and
concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith
the Lord; wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this
people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of
mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous
branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph.
Wherefore, I, the Lord God, will not suffer that this
people shall do like unto them of old. Wherefore my
brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord;
for there shall not any man among you have save it be
one wife; and concubines he shall have none; for I, the
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, pp. 98-102.
188 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Lord God, delighteth in the chastity of women. And
whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the
Lord of hosts.
To the same effect were some of Smith’s “revela-
tions” in Kirtland. In one dated February 9, 1831,
it was commanded (Sec. 42), “Thou shalt love
thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her
and none else; and he that looketh upon a woman to
lust after her shall deny the faith, and shall not have
the spirit, and if he repents not he shall be cast out.”
In another, dated in March (Sec. 49), it was
declared, “Wherefore it is lawful that he should
have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh,
and all this that the earth might answer to the et
of its creation.”
These views were expressed at Kirtland at a time
when Smith was under the influence of Sidney Rig-
don, who always sternly opposed polygamy, and may
in some degree be attributed to his influence.
Later at Nauvoo in 1844 Joseph and Hyrum
Smith issued a statement signed with their names in
which they declared:
As we have been lately credibly informed that an Elder
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, by
the name of Hirum Brown, has been preaching polygamy
and other false and corrupting doctrines, in the county of
Lapeer, State of Michigan, this is to notify him, and the
church in general, that he is cut off from the church for
his iniquity, and he is further notified to appear at the
BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYGAMY _ 189
special conference on the 6th of April next, to make an-
swer to these charges.”
2. LATER OFFICIAL TEACHING
Yet the official teaching of the church on the sub-
ject of polygamy is unequivocal and undenied and
so stands to this day. Elder B. H. Roberts is one
of the standard authorities of the Mormons and
he gives the following account of the origin of the
doctrine:
The revelation making known this marriage doctrine
came about in this way: First, it should be stated—and
it is evident from the written revelation itself, which
bears the date of July 12th, 1843—that the doctrine was
revealed and the practice of it began before the partial
revelation now in the Doctrine and Covenants was writ-
ten. As early as 1831, the rightfulness of plurality of
- wives under certain conditions was made known to Joseph
Smith. In the latter part of the year, especially from
November, 1831, and through the early months of 1832,
the Prophet with Sidney Rigdon as his assistant was
earnestly engaged at Hirum, a village in Portage County,
near Kirtland, Ohio, in translating the Jewish scripture.
It must have been while engaged in that work that the
evident approval of God to the plural marriage system
of the ancient patriarchs attracted the Prophet’s attention
and led him to make those inquiries of the Lord to which
the opening paragraphs of the written revelation refer.®
*It will be noted that the date of this hypocritical letter is a year
and more after Smith’s “revelation”. on the subject of polygamy.
. The rising tide of indignation against the Mormons because of their
polygamous teaching and practice was the cause of: this pretended
repudiation of it.
* Rise and Fall of Nauvoo, p. 114.
190 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Roberts further says that while the doctrine thus
revealed was not made known to the world at the
time, yet “Joseph did make known what had been
revealed to him to a few trusted friends, among
them were Oliver Cowdery and Lyman E. Johnson,
the latter confiding the matter to Orson Pratt, his
missionary companion.”
There is abundant evidence that not only Smith
practiced polygamy at Nauvoo, but that others did
also at the same time and place. John D. Lee, a
missionary of the faith and afterwards notorious in
the part he played, in his Mormonism Unveiled
gives a complete record of his nineteen plural wives,
the first plural marriage taking place at Nauvoo in
1845 and the last one at Salt Lake City.‘
The official “revelation” of Smith on “celestial
marriage” is Section 132 in the modern editions of
the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. It was dic-
tated to William Clayton who wrote it down and it
was prepared with special reference to Smith’s wife,
who was restless at his irregular relations. The
long jumble of words bears out this statement as to
the mode of its preparation. As printed by Sten-
house ° it consists of 25 paragraphs and fills six
large pages of fine type. It is headed, ‘‘Revelation
on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, includ-
ing Plurality of Wives. Given through Joseph, the
* The record is given by Linn, Story, p. 277.
°The Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 176-182.
BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYGAMY 191
Seer, in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, July 12,
1843.” Space will permit only a few extracts,
which are all that are essential to this story.
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Joseph,
that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand, to know
and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; as also Moses, David and
Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and
doctrine of their having many wives and concubines:
Behold! and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer
thee as touching this matter:
Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the
instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all
those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the
same ;
For behold! I reveal unto you a new and everlasting
covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye
damned; for no one can reject this covenant, and be per-
mitted to enter into my glory.
And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, Joseph’s wife,
receive all those that have been given unto my servant
Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and
those that are not pure, and have said they were pure,
shall be destroyed, saith the Lord God.
And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood,
if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another,
and the first give her consent; and if he espouse the sec-
ond, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other
- man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery, for
they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery
with that which belongeth unto him and to no one
else.
And now, as pertaining to this law, verily, verily I
say unto you, I will reveal more unto you hereafter;
therefore, let this suffice for the present. Behold, l-am
Alpha and Omega. Amen.
192 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
While this “revelation” is dated July 12, 1843, yet
it was not published to the church until August 28,
1852, when it was announced at a Church Confer-
ence at Salt Lake City. In connection with the
reading of ‘the revelation Orson Pratt spoke at
length on the subject, among other things saying:
If it can be proved to a demonstration that the Latter-
Day Saints have actually embraced, as a part and portion
of their religion, the doctrine of a plurality of wives, it
is constitutional. And should there be laws enacted
by this government to restrict them from the free exercise
of their religion, such laws must be unconstitutional. .. .
Now let us inquire what will become of those individuals
who have this law taught them in plainness, if they reject
it. I will tell you. They will be damned, saith the Lord,
in the revelation he hath given. Why? Because, where
much is given, much is required.
The Millennial Star, which was begun in Liver-
pool, England, in 1840 and is still published there,
in its report of this conference in its issue of Janu-
ary I, 1853, said of the “revelations,” referring spe-
cially to the one on polygamy:
None seem to penetrate so deep, or be so well calculated
to shake to its very center the social structure which has
been reared and vainly nurtured by this professedly wise
and Christian generation, none more conclusively exhibit
how surely an end must come to all the works, institutions,
ordinances and covenants of men; none more portray the
eternity of God’s purpose—and, we may say, none have
carried so mighty an influence, or had the power to stamp
their divinity upon the mind by absorbing every feeling
of the soul, to the extent of the one which appeared in our
last.
BEGINNINGS OF MORMON POLYGAMY _ 193
The publication of this “revelation” in England,
however, was attended with reaction and disastrous
results in that country, as is shown by the fact that
it was followed by 2,164 excommunications reported
at the semiannual conference of December 31, 1852,
and 1,776 at the June conference of 1853.°
Mormon teaching and practice on the subject of
polygamy, beginning in the early days of the church
with emphatic denial of such doctrine and the more
or less irregular and concealed practice of it, in due
time thus came out into the open in the official “reve-
lation” and publication of both the doctrine and the
practice, and this peculiar and distinctive institution
of Mormonism was declared to be a foundation stone
of its system of faith and life. It was solemnly
asserted that “the Almighty has revealed such a
doctrine,” and that “it is a part and portion of our
religious faith.” It was fully understood and pro-
claimed that the institution was “well calculated to
shake to its very center the social structure which
has been reared and vainly nurtured by this pro-
fessedly wise and Christian generation,” and it was
set up in defiance of the laws of the United States
with the declaration that “should there ever be laws
enacted by this government to restrict them from
the free exercise of their religion, such laws would
be unconstitutional.” This thing was not done in
a corner or with any lack of understanding of its
full meaning and grave consequences. The fol-
*Linn, Story, p. 287.
194 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
lowers of this system may have been dupes, but the
leaders were not. They knew what they were doing
and meant to do it. They flung and flaunted this
offense and menace to our Christian civilization
defiantly in its face and challenged opposition.
And this doctrine still stands written in the official
creed of this church. Not one line of it has ever
been erased or modified. It still stares the Christian
world in the face and defies the ethics of Christen-
dom. One of the deepest roots of civilization that is
the outgrowth and experience of thousands of years
of human history is still denied and attacked by this
church and would be torn up by it, did it have the
power. It is true that the doctrine is now held in
obeyance under the prohibition and power of law,
but the doctrine itself has never been renounced or
modified but only slumbers until the day of its awak-
ening may safely come. Dynamite may be locked
up in a secure place, where it may not threaten any
immediate danger, but it is still dynamite and all
its enormous power of destruction is coiled up in it
ready, at the touch of the first electric spark or other
circumstance, to explode and spread devastation far
and wide. American civilization will be exposed to
this menace as long as polygamy is the doctrine of
the Mormon Church and is only waiting for a time
when it may be let loose in all its evil power.
CHAPTER XI
THE REORGANIZED CHURCH OF LATTER-DAY
SAINTS
ORMONISM from the beginning ran the
course of all religions in being subject to in-
ternal differences which split it into rival factions
and divided it into branches. In its early years it
was attended with many quarrels which led to dis-
affections and expulsions, resulting in a number of
leaders going off to launch movements of their own.
As many as twenty or more of these rival churches
were started, which were only local groups and soon
came to an end.
I. EARLY DIVISIONS AMONG THE MORMONS
One of the most important of these disaffected
leaders was Sidney Rigdon, who, after his expul-
sion by the High Council at Nauvoo in 1844 in the
midst of the dissensions and rivalries following the
death of the Prophet Joseph, returned to Pitts-
burgh, Pa., and started a church which he called
“The Church of Christ,’ and began the publica-
tion of a newspaper to carry on his propaganda.
His pretensions to “visions” and “revelations” met
195
196 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
with ridicule, and his church quickly disappeared.
Another rival church was set up in Wisconsin by
James Strang who claimed to be the successor of
the Prophet and practiced polygamy and was shot
by two of his followers whom he had offended. And
still another of these leaders was Lyman Wight, who
had been one of the Twelve in Missouri and led a
company into Texas where he practiced polygamy
and had a short career.
All attempts to appropriate the Prophet Joseph’s
mantle and steal his thunder failed with one excep-
tion and this one survives today in the Reorganized
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, popu-
larly known as “Josephites,” which has its head-
quarters at Lamoni, Ia. After the death of the
Prophet there were a number of small groups of
Mormons scattered through Ohio, Illinois, Wiscon-
sin, and Iowa, who did not follow the leadership of
Brigham Young or accept the doctrine and practice
of polygamy. After several preliminary meetings,
a meeting was held on April 6, 1860, at Amboy, IIL,
where Joseph Smith, son of the Prophet, delivered
a long address and then was ordained as Prophet,
Seer and Revelator, a complete set of officers were
elected, and the church was started. The mother
of the original Prophet Joseph was received into its
membership, and the original Smith family gener-
ally cast in their lot with the Reorganized branch.
The True Latter-Day Saints’ Herald was started
as the organ of the church and was published in
THE REORGANIZED CHURCH 197
Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1860 to 1863, when it was
removed to Plano, IIl., and in 1881 it was removed to
Lamoni, the present headquarters of this branch,
where a publishing house and a college are main-
tained.
2. THE DOCTRINES AND GROWTH OF THE REORGANIZED
CHURCH
The “Josephites’” have always repudiated polyg-
amy and denied that the Prophet Joseph ever re-
ceived or promulgated a “revelation” sanctioning
this doctrine. Their position on this point is found
in an official “Epitome of the Faith and Doctrines
of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Lat-
ter-Day Saints” which declares:
We believe that Marriage is ordained of God; and
that the law of God provides for but one companion in
wedlock, for either man or woman, except in cases where
the contract of marriage is broken by death or transgres-
sion,
We believe that the doctrines of a plurality of wives
are heresies, and are opposed to the law of God.
Yet they accept the Prophet Joseph as the in-
spired founder of their church and the Book of
Mormon as their Bible along with the Scriptures,
and they accept the Doctrine and Covenants with the
exception of Section 132 on polygamy. Their de-
nial, however, that Joseph Smith ever received or
promulgated his “revelation” on polygamy is dis-
198 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
proved by indisputable facts, as we have already
seen. |
The Reorganized Church has its main seat at
Lamoni, Ia., but also maintains headquarters at In-
dependence, Mo., and has in its possession the orig-
inal Mormon temple at Kirtland, O. It is an
aggressive missionary body and at the present time
has about 100,000 members and 200 missionaries in
the field. It has sent missionaries abroad into Can-
ada and England and as far as the Society Islands.
This church claims to be the lineal and legal succes-
sor of the original church founded in 1830, and this
claim has twice been recognized by the United States
Supreme Court. The “Josephites” have invaded
Utah, where they have about 1,000 members, but the
two branches, like the Jews and Samaritans, have
“no dealings” with each other; and even the aban-
donment of polygamy by the Utah branch has not
tended to bring them together.’
*A long and tedious History of the Mormon Church, running to
four volumes, “written and compiled by President Joseph Smith and
Apostle Heman C. Smith, of the Reorganized Church,” gives a de-
tailed account of the origin and teachings of this church. The
account of its founding is in Vol. III, Chapter XII.
Es We i al a
THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS
Y the first of February, 1846, the greater part
of the Mormons had made their way across the
Mississippi and assembled and formed their first
“Camp of Israel” at Sugar Creek in Iowa. They
were now confronted with the trying problem of
where to go and how to get there. For more than
a year their leaders had foreseen the necessity of
getting out of the Middle West and had been casting
their eyes to the mountains and beyond to California
and Oregon. The whole far western region was
then little known and only vague ideas and wild
rumors were available for the guidance of those
looking towards the setting sun.
Like Abraham the Mormon emigrants were about
to go forth, “not knowing whither.” Lorenzo Snow
in his Biography says of their departure: “On the
first of March, the ground covered with snow, we
broke encampment about noon, and soon nearly four
hundred wagons were moving to—‘We knew not
where.”
I. ACROSS THE PLAINS OF IOWA
Several weeks were spent in preparations for the
great adventure into the unknown. At this time
199 |
200 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Brigham Young gave out his first and only “reve-
lation.” It differs characteristically from Smith’s
religious lucubrations in that it contains little re-
ligious teaching but is rather a business document
giving directions as to the organizations of the
Saints for their journey. They were to be divided
into companies of fifties and of tens with captains,
and all to be under the direction of the Twelve
Apostles. Provisions were made for the supply of
the emigrants on their long journey. “Let each
company prepare houses and fields for raising grain
for those who are to remain behind this season; and
this is the will of the Lord concerning this people.”
Only in the last paragraph does he fall into the
pompous style of Smith: “Now, therefore, hearken!
oh ye people of my church, and ye Elders listen to-
gether. You have received my kingdom: Be diligent
in keeping all my commandments, lest judgment
come upon you, and your faith fail you, and your
enemies triumph over you. Amen and Amen.” *
Each company had a commissary department to
secure supplies and “make a righteous distribution
of grains and provisions.” These supplies were ob-
tained by temporary farming, trading and hunting.
About the first of March the first companies
started and stretched out over a long trail in sections
and stopped at intervals to establish camps and plant
crops which were left for later comers. The route
*The revelation is given in full by Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain
Saints, pp. 253-254.
THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS 201
lay across Iowa over rough or unbroken roads and
began in the snows of winter and proceeded through
the rains and mud of spring and the hot dusty days
of summer. A leaf from Orson Pratt’s diary gives
a picture of the hardships of the journey:
April 9. The rain poured down in torrents. With
great exertion a part of the camp were enabled to get
about six miles, while others were stuck fast in deep mud.
We encamped at a point of timber about sunset, after
being drenched several hours in rain. We were obliged to
cut brush and limbs of trees and throw them on the ground
in our tents, to keep our beds from sinking in the mud.
Our animals were turned loose to look out for them-
selves; the bark and limbs of trees were their principal
food.
The Missouri River was their first objective, and
this distance of 400 miles was covered in four
months and in July the emigrants established them-
selves at Winter Quarters near the present location
of Omaha. Here they established a more perma-
nent camp which became a town of 700 log houses,
and a Council House called the Octagon was erected
in which the High Council held its meetings.
2. FROM IOWA TO THE GREAT SALT LAKE
Several months were spent at Winter Quarters in
preparation for the longer journey to an indefinite
destination. The emigrants kept arriving in strag-
gling companies from Nauvoo and the East and
converts from Europe.
202 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
From this point there set out a pioneer party to
proceed to explore the western country and find a
suitable location for the new Zion. Brigham Young
was its leader and it consisted of 143 men and three
women. They had 73 wagons and moved two wag-
ons abreast and the men were under military dis-
cipline, marching with loaded weapons and camping
with the wagons arranged around them. There was
fear of attacks from Indians, but though roving
bands of them were encountered, no attack occurred.
This intrepid band of men under the masterful
leadership of Brigham Young set out on April 14,
1847, and by the first of June had reached Fort
Laramie 522 miles from Winter Quarters and 509
from Great Salt Lake. They crossed the Platte
River and struck the Oregon trail and by June 21
had reached the Sweetwater River in Wyoming.
They were now in the mountains and approaching
the pass dividing the waters of the Atlantic from
those of the Pacific but were still in doubt as to their
destination. Young by this time had his mind di-
rected to the Great Salt Lake Valley, but met with
discouraging reports from traders and travelers
who had been in it.
The explorers pushed on and on July 18 an ad-
vance party of them from an elevation saw ‘“‘a broad
open valley at the north end of which the waters of
the Great Salt Lake glistened in the sunbeams.”
On the 24th of July Brigham Young and his party
of explorers reached the lake and at its sight they
THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS 203
exclaimed, “The Land of Promise! The Land of
Promise !—held in reserve by the hand of God for
the resting-place of his Saints.” To this day in Salt
Lake City the 24th of July is celebrated in memory
of this event. Eleven hundred miles of slow travel
attended with much hardship and peril and adven-
ture had brought them from Winter Quarters on
the Missouri to what they hailed as their divinely
appointed destination.
Successive companies of Mormons kept moving
along this trail from the Mississippi and the Mis-
souri during the summer of 1847 and later years.
The first large company, called “the first emigra-
tion,’ consisted of 1,553 persons equipped with
wagons, horses, cattle, sheep and other animal stock.
The stream of emigrants resumed its steady flow in
1848 when two companies, one of 1,229 persons and
another of 662 persons with their outfits, arrived,
and the population grew rapidly on the site and in
the city of the new Zion.
3. THE DISASTROUS HAND-CART EXPEDITION
For a number of years Mormon converts from
the East emigrants from England traveled to
Salt Lake over the road from Iowa to the valley
which was opened by the pioneers of 1847. It ran
across Iowa to the Missouri, where it started across
the plains to the Platte River, following this to the
Sweetwater and over the South Pass down into the
204 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
valley, a distance of more than 1,200 miles beset
with hardship and danger. The roads were mostly
mere trails, the plains were hot and dusty in summer,
which rains turned to mud, many rivers and streams
had to be crossed, and the winter cold and snows
in the mountains were severe and often terrible to
man and beast.
The records show that on an average upwards of
two thousand persons a year made this journey in
wagons or on foot, and in 1855 the number exceeded
four thousand. Companies of emigrants were as-
sembled in England, chiefly at Liverpool, and ar-
rangements made to send them across the Atlantic
and on from New York to Iowa, where expeditions
were organized for the journey to Salt Lake. The
endeavor was made to send adults from England to
Utah for $50 each, children half price, but it cost
them more than this before the new Zion was
reached.
Brigham Young, wishing greatly to increase im-
migration, conveyed to Elder F. D. Richards in
Liverpool his plan as follows: “We cannot afford to
purchase wagons and teams as in times past. Iam
consequently thrown back upon my old plan—to
make hand-carts, and let the emigration foot it.
Fifteen miles a day will bring them through in 70
days, and, after they get accustomed to it, they will
travel 20, 25, or even 30 with all ease, and no danger
of giving out, but will continue to get stronger and
stronger; the little ones and sick, if there are any,
THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS 205
can be carried on carts, but there will be none sick
in a little time after they get started.” This prophecy
compared with the disastrous results shows how
easy it is to draw up such plans on paper.
Elder Richards proceeded to announce, in the
Millennial Star published in Liverpool, the plan of
the hand-cart expedition “with such a flourish of
trumpets as would have done honor to any of the
most momentous events in the world’s history.” ?
In the summer of 1856 about 1,300 persons
reached Iowa City and started out in five successive
companies on their long journey. Delays were oc-
casioned by the fact that the hand-carts were not
ready for the immigrants on their arrival. These
carts were flimsy affairs, consisting of two light
wheels with two projecting shafts on which each
family was to transport its goods, limited to seven-
teen pounds of clothing and bedding, together with
a sack of flour weighing 98 pounds.
The five companies starting in July and August
were warned that it was too late in the season to
make the journey before winter would set in. Elder
Levi Savage, using “his common sense and his
knowledge of the country,” declared that they could
not cross the mountains so late in the season without
much suffering and sickness and death, but “he
was rebuked by other elders for want of faith, one
7A complete account of this expedition written by John Chislett,
a member of the company, is found in Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain
Saints, Chapter XXXVII.
206 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
elder even declaring that he would guarantee to eat
all the snow that fell on us between Florence and
Salt Lake City.”
The dire predictions of those who had made the
journey and knew what would happen soon began
to be fulfilled. The carts began to break down and
were in need of constant repairs, the aged and the
children began to fail and had to be provided with
transportation, and sickness developed at an alarm-
ing rate. Winter caught them in the mountains and
the most terrible scenes ensued. A few extracts
from Chislett’s narrative will suffice to indicate the
pitiful sufferings of these people:
Weakness and debility were accompanied with dys-
entery. This we could not stop or even alleviate, no
proper medicines being in the camp. . . . Many a father
pulled his cart, with his little children on it, until the
day preceding his death. I have seen some pull their carts
in the morning, give out during the day, and die before
the next morning. . . . In the morning the snow was
over a foot deep. Our cattle strayed widely in the storm,
and some of them died. But what was worse than all this
was the fact that five persons of both sexes lay in the
cold embrace of death. We buried these five people in
one grave, wrapped only in the clothing and bedding in
which they died. ... The weather grew colder each
day, and many got their feet so badly frozen that they
could not walk. These severities of the weather also
increased our number of deaths, so that we buried several
each day. ... There were so many dead and dying
that it was decided to lie by for the day. I was appointed
to go round the camp and collect the dead. I took with
me two young men to assist me in the sad task, and we
collected together, of all ages and both sexes, thirteen
THE FLIGHT TO THE MOUNTAINS 207
corpses, all stiffly frozen. We had a large square hole dug
in which we buried these thirteen people, three or four
abreast and three deep. . . . What a terrible fate for
poor, honest, God-fearing people, whose greatest sin was
believing with a faith too simple that God would for their
benefit reverse the order of nature. They believed this
because their elders told them so; and had not the Apostle
Richards prophesied in the name of Israel’s God that it
would be so? But the terrible realities proved that Levi
Savage, with his plain common sense and statement of
facts, was right, and that Richards and the other elders,
with the “Spirit of the Lord,” were wrong.
The company of which Chislett was a member
started with near 600 people “and lost over one-
fourth of their number by death.” Other companies
lost in like proportion, and only miserable remnants
of these miguided bands of Mormon converts strag-
gled and staggered ragged and starved and half-
dead into their “Zion.” They had been told that if
they had not faith enough to undertake the trip to
Utah, they had not “faith sufficient to endure, with
the Saints of Zion, the celestial law which leads to
exaltation and eternal life,” and this hand-cart ex-
pedition was the terrible disillusionment they experi-
enced and price they paid for their credulity.
Brigham Young, who had planned and initiated
by his direct and autocratic order this ill-fated ex-
pedition, found it necessary to unload the tragedy
and odium of it on other shoulders, and of all men
in the world he picked on Elder D. F. Richards, the
very man in Liverpool to whom he had revealed his
plan and given his order to carry it out. “On the
208 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
arrival of the Apostle Richards, Brigham attacked
him in the Tabernacle, held him up to ridicule and
contempt, and cursed him in the name of Israel’s
God. Elder Daniel Spencer, who had been the
counselor of Richards, came in for his share of the
contempt and anathemas. For years after, the
apostle could scarcely lift up his head; he absented
himself from the public meetings and was rarely
seen in times of rejoicing. For ten years Richards
and Spencer were under a cloud and silently bore
their heavy grief.”’* Thus the disastrous hand-
cart expedition illustrated the autocracy of Brigham
Young, his power over his dupes that could even
reach with its long hand over the sea, and his mean-
ness in evading his own responsibility and throwing
its burden of odium on others. Yet one cannot
withhold his admiration for the heroism of these
immigrants in enduring hardship in the service of
their faith even unto death.
*Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 341-342.
CHAPTER XIII
MORMON MISSIONS
NE test of the aggressive faith and force of
a religion is its missionary spirit and service.
Is it a local cult content to stay within its native
home, or does it push out across all boundaries and
dream of being a world religion? Tested by this
principle Mormonism is to be ranked as a missionary
religion with world ambitions, for this dream was
cherished and surprising strides made towards this
goal. This was from the beginning the claim of its
founder. Joseph Smith averred that “Mormonism
would some day rule the world.”
I, EARLY MORMON MISSIONS
Mormonism began missionary work surprisingly
early. The first edition of the Mormon Bible ap-
peared in 1830, but before this converts were being
gained, Joseph Smith’s brother Hyrum being the
first. The Mormon church was organized on April
6, 1830, and within this year there were branch
churches at Fayette, Manchester and Colesville,
New York. In October of this year four mission-
aries were sent to Ohio under the leadership of Oli-
209
210 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ver Cowdery, ostensibly to preach to the Lamanites
or Indians. They stopped at Buffalo to instruct the
Indians and went to Kirtland, Ohio, where the head-
quarters of the church were soon established. Cow-
dery and Pratt continued their missionary journey
westward and reached the western border of Mis-
souri in 1831. Smith and Rigdon followed them
to Independence in that state, where they laid the
corner stones of the City of Zion and its temple, for
already they were contemplating removal from Ohio
to the West. In June of this year thirty elders were
sent westward on a preaching tour.
These first missionaries and all subsequent ones
preached along with the distinctive doctrines of
Mormonism the imminent second coming of Christ
with alarmist accompaniments and effects and prac-
ticed faith healing with the usual kind and degree
of results in this line. They also went at their own
charges and were bound to go forthwith and un-
questioningly at the bidding of the President or
other authority; and this authority was often used
as a means of disposing of an undesirable member
or of inflicting punishment.*
The testimony of Stenhouse, who wrote out of
personal knowledge, may be adduced on this point:
From the youth in his teens, to the elder in hoary age,
all the brethren are subject to be “called on mission”’ at
*Thus Orson Pratt, having fallen under the displeasure of
Brigham Young and been branded as an “Apostate,” was sent by
him on a mission to Europe. Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints,
PP- 493-494.
MORMON MISSIONS 211
any time, and in such calls no personal conveniences are
ever consulted. Should a merchant be wanted for a “mis-
sion,” his business must be left in other hands, and his
affairs can be conducted by other brains: so with the
artisan, the mechanic, the farmer, and the ploughboy—
they must in their way do the best they can. Seed-time
or harvest, summer or winter, pleasure or important
work—nothing in which they are engaged is allowed to
stand in the way. If poor, and the family is dependent
on the outgoing missionary, that must be no hindrance—
the mission is given, he has to go, and the family “trusts
in the ‘Lord,’ ” and in the tender mercies of the bishop! ?
And Lorenzo Snow, who was sent out on a mis-
sion from Kirtland in 1837, says: “It was a severe
trial to my natural feelings of independence to go
without purse or scrip—especially the purse; for,
from the time I was old enough to work, the feeling
that ‘I paid my way’ always seemed a necessary ad-
junct to self-respect.” * We must admire the hero-
ism of such faith and obedience, and it is one secret
cf the aggressiveness of Mormonism to this day.
Converts at Kirtland were now rapidly growing
and congregating and soon numbered more than a
thousand. Many converts were sent out as mission-
aries in every direction. Brigham Young himself
soon after joining Smith at Kirtland went as a mis-
sionary to Canada and subsequently spent a year in
this service in Europe.
In his Autobiography Smith gives an account of a
missionary journey into New England undertaken
* Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 568.
®Linn, Story, p. 229.
212 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
by himself and his brother Hyrum and Sidney Rig-
don that illustrates their method. He says that on
July 25, 1836, they were in Salem, Mass., where
“we hired a house and occupied the same during the
month, teaching the people from house to house.”
On this trip, however, Smith was combining busi-
ness with religion, for he had been told a tale, by
a convert from this town, of a buried treasure in
Salem and he hired the house with the hope of find-
ing it in the cellar. But this hope, like other treas-
ure hunting expeditions of his, proved vain.
Within three years from the organization of the
Mormon Church there were congregations “in
nearly all the Northern and Middle states and in
some of the Southern, with baptisms of from 30 to
130 each.” * When Smith was assassinated in June,
1844, Brigham Young was electioneering for him
in New Hampshire as a candidate for the presi-
dency, and the next year a conference of Mormons
was held in New York City with representatives
from the states of New York, Connecticut and New
Jersey to consider the question of moving the head-
quarters of the church west of the Rocky Moun-
tains.
This rapid growth of Mormonism is almost in-
credible, but the soil of the time, as we have seen,
was ripe for rank growths of superstitious cults, and
Mormonism, with its new Prophet and Bible and
“revelations,” its mythical chronicles and strange
*Linn, Story, p. 132.
MORMON MISSIONS 213
jargon and metaphysical mummeries that work with
hypnotic power on persons in a susceptible psycho-
logical and pathological condition, found a ready
reception.
2. MORMON MISSIONS ABROAD
Even more surprising than its rapid spread in this
country is the early date at which Mormonism
leaped across the Atlantic and took vigorous root in
England and invaded the Continent and then crossed
the Pacific and swept around the world. It is an
astonishing fact that within six or seven years after
Smith had completed his absurd Bible his cult was
extended to foreign lands.°
The Lord revealed to Joseph, says Stenhouse, that
“in order to save his church” a foreign mission must
be improvised, and Great Britain was selected as the
new field of labor. “The Apostles Heber C. Kimball
and Orson Pratt were accordingly chosen to intro-
duce the gospel in Europe. On the 12th of June,
1837, they left Kirtland, and thus began the first
foreign mission. These apostles were accompanied
by other elders, and in a few months were successful
in converting great numbers in England, and in
doing so saved the church in America.” In one
English town, Preston in Lancashire, 500 converts
®For details as to early Mormon foreign missions, see Linn,
Story, pp. 228-230; Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 9-10,
68, 312, 475; Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, Chapter XI; Pres-
ident Joseph Smith (of Reorganized Church), History, Vol. II,
Chapter XXII.
214 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM ~
were secured in a short time. Brigham Young and
other members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apos-
tles were among these early missionaries.
In 1840 Orson Hyde was sent on a special mission
to the Jews in London, Amsterdam, Constantinople,
and Jerusalem, “and the same year missionaries
were sent to Australia, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of
Man, and the East Indies. In 1844 a missionary was
sent to the Sandwich Islands; in 1849 others were
sent to France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Ice-
land, Italy, and Switzerland; in 1852 a branch of the
church was organized at Malta; in 1853 three elders
reached the Cape of Good Hope; and in 1861 two
began work in Holland, but with poor success.”
Another astonishing fact is that the Millennial
Star, an organ of Mormonism, was started in Liver-
pool, England, in May, 1840, and is continued to this
day. ‘The early volumes contain the official epistles
of the heads of the church to their followers, Smith’s
Autobiography, correspondence describing the early
migrations and the experiences in Utah, and much
other valuable material, the authenticity of which
cannot be disputed by the Mormons.” ®
The membership of the Mormon church in Eng-
land and Scotland increased rapidly from the begin-
ning. In 1840 the General Conference reported
4,019 in England, and in 1850 they numbered 27,863
in England and Scotland, and in Wales 4,342. In
1851 the report to the General Conference said:
*Linn, Story, pp. VII-VIII.
MORMON MISSIONS 215
“During the last fourteen years more than 50,000
have been baptized in England, of which nearly
17,000 have migrated from her shores to Zion.”
These converts in Great Britain poured steady
streams of emigrants across the Atlantic to Nau-
voo and then on to Salt Lake. Steamships were char-
tered and they were sent in boat loads to New York,
until the route was changed to New Orleans and up
the Mississippi at less expense. The converts were
required to pay their own way and the effort was
made to select men of means and mechanics of all
kinds were also sought as emigrants to the new Zion.
From 1840 to 1845 inclusive twenty-eight vessels
crossed the Atlantic carrying 3,750 emigrants, the
largest number, 1,614, crossing in 1842.
England in the eighteen forties was a specially
favorable time and soil for the Mormon propaganda.
The factory system was then at its worst in herding
the people in mill towns where poverty caused by
low wages sunk multitudes in misery, and the drab
existence of the dreary factory drudgery made any
prospect of escape a welcome relief. The people
were in a gullible psychological condition, and the
stories told of the new Zion, pictures painted in the
lurid millennial colors of a new Paradise, seized
with the avidity and force of an obsession upon the
wearied souls and susceptible imagination of the
superstitious and swept them in crowds into the
Mormon meetings. The novelty of the doctrine, the
wonders of the alleged miracles, the easy way of get-
216 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ting to America, the land of golden promise, the
special attractions held out to young women of
speedy marriage invested with a new divine halo,
the boundless opportunities of a new rich country
for men of means and ambition, these and other
motives combined to win converts and send them in
steamship loads across the sea. ‘The excitement,”
says Stenhouse, ‘“‘was contagious, even affecting per-
sons in the higher ranks of social life, and the result
was a grand outpouring of spiritual and miraculous
healing power of the most astonishing description.
Miracles were heard of everywhere, and numerous
competent and most reliable witnesses bore testimony
to their genuineness.” * However their genuineness
was also badly damaged by the exposure of some of
them as clumsy tricks of deception.
All sorts of tales were told to work upon the feel-
ings and hopes of the people. Letters were written
from officers in America to the missionaries declar-
ing that the immigrants traveled in wagon trains a
mile in length and that the Lord rained down upon
them manna in such rich profusion that it covered
from seven to ten acres of ground. It was like
wafers dipped in honey and both Saints and sinners
partook of its abundance.
The disillusionment of such hopes that many ex-
perienced was often speedy and sometimes tragic,
the disaster of “the hand-cart expedition” being an
instance of it. Some converts became backsliders
‘Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 10.
MORMON MISSIONS 217
before they left England and at times and places the
church membership rapidly fell off. Some of the
most intelligent and influential converts gave up the
faith and bore testimony against it.
3. LATER MORMON MISSIONS
Mormon missions both home and foreign have
not maintained their initial aggressiveness and rapid
growth, and yet they have continued active and have
not become a spent force. Missionaries are still sent
out in large numbers, although the number during
recent years appears to be at a standstill, if not on
a decline. “The number of missionaries at work in
October, 1901,” says Linn, “was stated to me by
church officers at from fourteen hundred to nine .
teen hundred, the smaller number being insisted
upon as correct by those who gave it. As nearly as
could be ascertained, about one-half of this force is
employed in the United States and the rest abroad.” ®
The total number of home and foreign missionaries
at present (1925), according to available informa-
tion, is about eighteen hundred, the Reorganized
branch having about two hundred.
Mormon missionaries have continued to be sent
out from Salt Lake City to every part of the country.
Their chief fields and success, however, have been in
the adjacent states of Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming,
Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico, in all of which
® Story, p. 612.
218 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
they have become a strong and in several of them a
dominating element and influence, controlling poli-
tics and electing legislatures and United States Sen-
ators. These missionaries are still selected and sent
by the church officers and must go without question-
ing the order and at their own expense, and the
arbitrary dictatorial autocracy of the church at this
point has not declined.
Mormon missionaries are also sent into other
states, east and west, north and south. They are
especially numerous and successful among the illit-
erate and superstitious classes in the South who are
susceptible to Mormon preaching and practices.
They are also found in leading cities, east and west,
and have headquarters in New York. They seldom
hold public meetings that are exploited so as to at-
tract attention, but send their agents quietly from
house to house to distribute leaflets and other litera-
ture that set forth their doctrines and attractions.
Special pains are taken to reach servant girls and
many of them have been lured to Utah with the
promise of husbands and homes of their own.
The Mormon foreign missionary propaganda re-
ceived a strong check with the publication of the
doctrine of polygamy. This at once slowed down
the increase in the converts in England and Scotland
and was followed in time with a great falling off
in Mormon church membership in foreign lands.
The number of these members, as published in the
Mullenmal Star of December, 1899, was as follows:
MORMON MISSIONS 219
Great Britain, 4,588; Scandinavia, 5,438; Germany,
1,198; Switzerland, 1,078; Netherlands, 1,556. The
total for all these foreign countries in 1899 was only
13,850, whereas the total in Great Britain alone in
1850 was 32,185. Polygamy was the chief cause
of this decline to less than one half, but other causes
were the discouraging reports of misrepresentations
and disappointments experienced by converts who
had gone to the new Zion, which with many proved
to be a land of hard labor and bitter disillusionment.
In due time, also, after the United States had out-
lawed polygamy in Utah, steps were taken by the
federal authorities to stop the organized immigra-
tion of law-defying polygamists. In 1879 Secretary
of State Evarts sent a circular to all diplomatic
officers of the United States calling their attention to
“a deliberate and systematic attempt to bring persons
to the United States with the intent of violating their
laws,” and instructing them to call the attention of
the foreign governments to the matter that they
may take steps to “‘check the organization of these
criminal enterprises.” Careful vigilance is still kept
on Mormon immigrants to see that they are not
brought in under an arrangement or understanding
that would be inimical to our laws.
The Mormons make comparatively few converts
from their Gentile neighbors and must go away
from home, where they are less well known, to induce
people to accept their religious and social system.
They have made some incursions into Canada and
220 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Mexico, but in both these countries they have met
with small welcome and much suspicion, and with
surveillance from the authorities to see that they do
not bring with them the practice of their peculiar
institution.
CHAPTER XIV
THE CITY BY THE GREAT SALT LAKE
HEN Brigham Young with his little company
of pioneers on July 24, 1847, looked out over
the Salt Lake Valley and saw the glittering waters
of its sea, did his prophetic foresight catch a vision
of the fair city, even one of the most picturesque for
situation and beautiful cities in the world, rising as
if by magic in that silent solitude? We do not know,
but he claimed to have seen the place in a vision
and he proceeded to act as though he had done so,
and he made his dream come true.
I. THE VALLEY AND THE LAKE
Salt Lake Valley is a unique region in the heart of
the mountainous district of the West. It runs south-
east and northwest and is rimmed with ranges so
that it is like a saucer with no outlet for its waters,
but on the northwest the rim dips low and ap-
proaches the level of the desert. The soil is dry and
generally rich and at the magic touch of water
wakes to life and is prolific in grass and flowers and
fruits and harvests. The Great Salt Lake lies in
the heart of this natural depression with an extreme
221
222 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
length of 75 miles and a breadth of 50 miles, with
a mountainous promontory thrust into it from the
northeast and several rocky islands. In earlier geo-
logical times the waters filled the whole valley in a
large inland sea and found an outlet over the low
rim to the north into the Columbia river. But
changed geological conditions permitted evapora-
tion to dry up the sea to the present dimensions of
the lake, which now lies in the central trough of the
valley. It is a shallow body of water, its greatest
depth being 60 feet and its average depth from 15
to 20 feet. Itis fed by mountain streams and chiefly
by the Jordan, the Bear and Weber rivers flowing
into it from the mountains to the east and south.
The most remarkable characteristic of the lake is
its salinity. As it has no outlet, continued evapora-
tion has left in its water a deposit of salts from the
impregnated rocks and soil of the region until it
contains nearly 25 per cent by weight of solid mat-
ter, making its water very bitter and giving it such
specific gravity that the human body will not sink in
it. Its beach is thus a safe and delightful bathing
resort where drowning is practically impossible.
The level of the lake is subject to seasonal fluctua-
tions and also to periodic variations of level of as
much as 13 feet. Mineral and hot springs abound in
the canyons and yet the water in the streams is clear
and pure.
The region is one of picturesque features and
scenic beauty. The rim of the mountains cut and
THE CITY BY THE GREAT SALT LAKE 223
carved with canyons, the foaming cascades and
sparkling springs and streams, the grass-covered,
flowered-embroidered plain, and the smooth shim-
mering sea, combine to form a picture of rare grand-
eur and loveliness, and no wonder that Apostle
Wilford Woodruff, who was one of Brigham
Young’s pioneer party, records in his diary:
We gazed in wonder and admiration upon the vast
valley before us, with the waters of the Great Salt Lake
glistening in the sun, mountains towering to the skies,
and streams of pure water running through the beautiful
valley. It was the grandest view we had ever seen till
this moment. . . . President Young expressed his en-
tire satisfaction at the appearance of the valley as a rest-
ing place for the Saints, and felt amply repaid for his
journey.
Such was the valley, then a part of Mexico, into
which the Mormons through incredible tribulations
escaped out of the United States, to found, as they
believed, a new empire which they came near realiz-
ing, a dream which they do not believe is yet dead.
The setting was worthy of the dream and it has
ever since played the leading part in this story, and
its city is the seat and center of Mormonism today.
2. THE FOUNDING AND BUILDING OF THE CITY
The work of founding and building the city, at
first named “The City of the Great Salt Lake,” and
* History of Salt Lake City, by Edward W. Tullidge, p. 43. This
large volume is a full Mormon history of the city.
224 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
subsequently changed to Salt Lake City, began and
was pushed forward with incredible energy and ra-
pidity. “As soon as our encampment was formed,”
writes Woodruff in his diary, “before taking my
dinner, having half a bushel of potatoes, I went to
the plowed field and planted them, hoping, with the
blessing of God, to save at least seed for another
year. The brethren had dammed up one of the
creeks and dug a trench, and by night nearly the
whole ground, which was found very dry, was
irrigated.”
This arrival was on Saturday and the Sabbath
was observed as a day of rest and worship, and then
on Monday morning business began early. Four
days after the arrival Brigham Young located the
site of the city about ten miles east of the lake and
waving his hand over it said: “Here is the 40 acres
for the temple. The city can be laid out perfectly
square, north and south, east and west.” The 4o
acres for the temple were in a few days reduced to
10, but on that spot the temple was built as the
center and hub from which everything radiates, and
the whole city, now a splendid expanse of buildings
and streets and parks, stands today as it was struck
out at one blow from the fertile brain of its master
builder. It is fortunate in having had a man of such
vision and leadership to lay it out on such an ample
and systematic plan and to foreordain its future.
Immigrants continued to pour in in a steady
stream and the city grew so rapidly that within
THE CITY BY THE GREAT SALT LAKE 225
eight months it had 423 houses, and 1,671 inhabi-
tants. Captain Howard Stansbury, of the United
States Topographical Engineers, arrived in the city
in August, 1849, only two years after it was
founded, and from his description of it as it stood in
1850, we transcribe some extracts which give a good
picture of the physical features of the city even as it
is today:
A city has been laid out upon a magnificent scale, being
nearly four miles in length and three in breadth; the
streets at right angles with each other, eight rods or one
hundred and thirty-two feet wide, with sidewalks of
twenty feet; the blocks forty rods square, divided into
eight lots, each of which contains an acre and a quarter
of ground. By an ordinance of the city, each house
is to be placed twenty feet back from the front line of
the lot, the intervening space being designed for shrub-
bery and trees. The site for the city is most beautiful:
it lies at the western base of the Wasatch Mountains, in
a curve formed by the projection westward from the main
range of a lofty spur which forms its southern boundary.
On the west it is washed by the waters of the Jordan,
while to the southward for twenty-five miles extends a
broad, level plain, watered by several little streams, which
flowing down from the eastern hills, form the great ele-
ment of fertility and wealth to the community. Through
the city itself flows an unfailing stream of pure, sweet
water, which, by an ingenious mode of irrigation, is made
to traverse each side of every street, whence it is led into
every garden-spot, spreading life, verdure and beauty over
what was heretofore a barren waste. On the east and
north the mountain descends to the plain by steps, which
form broad and elevated terraces, commanding an exten-
sive view of the whole valley of the Jordan, which is
bounded on the west by a range of rugged mountains,
226 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
stretching far to the southward, and enclosing within
their embrace the lovely little Lake Utah. On the northern
confines of the city, a warm spring issues from the base
of the mountain, the water of which has been conducted
by pipes into a commodious bathing house; while, at
the western point of the same spur, about three miles
distant, another spring flows in a bold stream from be-
neath a perpendicular rock, with a temperature too high
to admit the insertion of the hand (128 Fahrenheit). The
city was estimated to contain about eight thousand inhabi-
tants and was divided into numerous wards, each, at the
time of our visit, enclosed by a substantial fence, for the
protection of the young crops.?
Few white men had visited the valley before the
coming of the Mormons, and when they settled in it
they thought they had at last found a retreat and
refuge from the presence and perils of the civiliza-
tion that had been so inhospitable to them. But
already California was beginning to attract atten-
tion, and the discovery of gold there in 1849 at once
started streams of gold-seekers, the ‘“forty-niners,”’
flowing through the valley, and the Mormons them-
selves “struck gold” in furnishing them with sup-
plies. Brigham Young discouraged to the point of
forbidding them from following the new lure and
admonished them not to abandon farming for pros-
pecting, and to this day with one of the largest
copper mines in the world within sight of their city
they take little interest in mining.
Salt Lake City continued to grow in manufacture
and trade and wealth until it became a dominating
* Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, p. 55.
THE CITY BY THE GREAT SALT LAKE 227
center. The coming of the railroads, especially such
great transcontinental lines as the Union Pacific in
1869, the Western Pacific, and the Los Angeles and
Salt Lake, greatly increased the importance and fa-
cilities of its position and made it the metropolis
between Denver and San Francisco.
3. SALT LAKE CITY TODAY
Salt Lake City is today in every respect a modern
city with unique attractions among American cities.
Its present population is about 120,000 and its pic-
turesque situation, salubrious and delightful climate,
admirable plan, wide streets, beautiful parks and
many notable buildings sustain its reputation and
draw visitors from many parts of the world. A
noted writer has recently declared it to be “one of
the most beautiful towns on the planet”... in
“that spacious valley lying between the snow-topped
Wasatches on the east, and the dreamy Oquirrhs on
the west, the far glitter of the Great Salt Lake on
one horizon replying across the miles to the streams
that flash their silver down all the countless canyons
of the Wasatch Range—that valley, wide incredibly,
and filled to its distant brim with green that turns,
at the edge of the Rockies, to the purple of the
north and the blue of Italy.” *
The Gentiles now outnumber the Mormons, yet
* Katherine Fullerton Gerould, in Harper’s Monthly Magazine for
June, 1924.
228 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
it is the Mormon establishment and interests that
are the distinctive features of the city. In the Tem-
ple Block as the dominating center and stone core
of the city stands the stately Temple, 186 by 99 feet
in dimensions, with granite walls six feet thick and
six spires, the highest rising to 220 feet. It was
40 years in process of construction (1853-1893),
and as it is a Mormon production in architectural
conception and erection the Mormons are proud of it
and claim that it was planned by divine inspiration.
It is an impressive building as it looms up over every
part of the city, but it is a house of mystery to all
but Mormons, for only they are permitted to enter it
and then only through an underground passage, as it
has no outer doors. It hides still deeper mysteries
as in its inner chambers are performed the secret
rites of initiation and marriage.
Next in order of importance and of more interest
to Gentiles, as it is accessible to them, is the Taber-
nacle, a huge, squat, elliptical structure with a turtle-
shell shaped roof. The auditorium, with its circular
gallery running clear around it, its choir gallery,
and its great organ, seats 10,000 people, and yet its
acoustics are so perfect that ordinary conversation
in its pulpit is heard with distinctness and ease in
every part of its vast space, another instance, it is
claimed, of inspired architecture. The Tabernacle
is the great Mormon show-place for Gentiles, as
great public services are held here, when Mormonism
hides its most objectionable features and puts on its
as ae :
*
a ees
Pe abt nepe
THE TABERNACLE
THE CITY BY THE GREAT SALT LAKE 229
best appearance, and the great organ plays grandly,
and the choir of 500 trained voices sings magnifi-
cently. The writer attended one of these services
and was impressed by the vast throng and heard an
apostle deliver a sermon faultless in diction and elo-
cution from which all distinctive Mormon doctrine
and coloring were carefully eliminated, and one
might have thought that he was in an evangelical
Christian church, although the spirit of worshipful
quiet and reverence was noticeably if not painfully
lacking. The great organ is also played daily. at
noon and good music is rendered and this attracts
throngs of visitors.
The Temple and the Tabernacle are the two foci
of Mormonism in the city, although there are other
important buildings, such as the Assembly Hall and
the bishopric building in which are the church of-
fices. While the Tabernacle is the central seat of
Mormon worship, yet the Mormons appreciate the
importance of local supervision, and small churches
are planted around in the wards where Sunday
morning services and Sunday school are held and
the ward bishop and elders and teachers can main-
tain close oversight and control of the members.
The orthodox Christian churches are well
represented in the city, and many of them have
imposing buildings and large and influential con-
gregations. Among these are the St. Mary’s Roman
Catholic Cathedral, St. Mark’s Protestant Episcopal
230 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Cathedral, the First Presbyterian Church, the First
Methodist Episcopal Church, and others.
Educational interests are well provided for. The
public school system is up to date, and the University
of Utah, chartered by the Mormons in 1850, has
passed out of their hands and is now a state uni-
versity with a campus of 60 acres and modern
equipment and standards. The Mormons now have
their own institution, the Brigham Young Univer-
sity, although some Mormon students prefer to at-
tend the state university. The Presbyterians have
their Westminster College, and the Roman Catho-
lics, Congregationalists and Protestant Episcopali-
ans have their educational institutions of college or
academy rank.
The business of the city is largely in Gentile hands
as are the principal newspapers, notably the Salt
Lake Tribune, a newspaper of exceptional ability
and influence. The Mormons have their Zion’s Co-
operative Mercantile Institution, as the central man-
ufacturing and distributing agency of their wide-
spread business. It has many factories and branches
and does an annual business running up into many
millions of dollars. The Mormons are intensely clan-
nish and in business as well as in religion stick
together and support their own institutions. In the
early days every effort was made to keep out Gentile
manufactures and merchants, and police were sta-
tioned at Gentile stores to see that Mormons did not
enter and buy. However, there is now a general and
THE CITY BY THE GREAT SALT LAKE 231
friendly commingling of the Mormon and Gentile
elements and interests in the city.
Salt Lake City is today a clean, orderly and beau-
tiful city, and its level of morality and culture com-
pares favorably with that of other American cities;
but it is now a predominantly Gentile city in which
American Christian ideals and law have suppressed
the chief ugly social feature and moral menace of
Mormonism, and its condition in its early days when
it was wholly Mormon and, secluded from other in-
fluences, presented a very different picture. No
language was then too severe and vulgar and pro-
fane to express the judgment and condemnation of
its condition by its own founders and apostles. In
1856 J. M. Grant, the first mayor of the city, de-
clared that “you can scarcely find a place in this city
that is not full of filth and abomination,” and Brig-
ham Young expressed himself on the same subject in
language that is now hardly fit to print. The in-
filtration of Americanization, of modern education
and culture, of Christian ideas and ideals, has pro-
foundly affected Mormonism, and this is the hope
for it in the future,
‘Linn, Story, p. 443.
CHAPTER XV
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH
HEN they had reached their final settle-
ment in Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons be-
gan to act with their usual energy and aggression
and made history with surprising rapidity.
I. POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
They quickly picked out the strategic points in the
Valley and occupied them with settlements and
within four years they incorporated cities or towns
at Salt Lake, Ogden, Provo, Manti, Parowan, and
other places. When they entered Utah the region
vaguely belonged to Mexico, but by a treaty of July
4, 1848, it passed into the possession of the United
States. Brigham Young quickly sensed the situa-
tion that he was again within the reach and power
of the federal government and he immediately took
steps to organize an American state. A convention
was held at Salt Lake City on March 4, 1849, at
which a constitution was adopted for a state to be
called the State of Deseret; * and its wide-sweeping
_*The name Deseret has no connection with the word desert, but
is a word of Mormon coinage which Mormons say means honey-bee.
Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, p. 168.
232
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH 233
boundaries were described as extending from the
Columbia River on the north to Mexico on the south
and westward clear to the Pacific Ocean.
A petition asking for the admittance of this state
was sent to Congress, where it was opposed by a
counter petition signed by William Smith, a brother
of the Prophet Joseph, and twelve other Mormon
members on the ground that the Mormon emigrants
before leaving Nauvoo had taken an oath that they
would “avenge the blood of Joseph Smith upon this
nation” and “keep the same a profound secret now
and ever.”
The petition was refused, but on the 9th of Sep-
tember, 1851, the Territory of Utah was admitted
and Brigham Young was appointed governor.
In the meantime the legislature of the State of
Deseret met and transacted business as though it
had been legally constituted. It adopted laws and
ordinances and incorporated “The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” giving the church
complete authority to make its own laws, including
the regulation of marriage, and thus it planted the
seeds of polygamy in the charter of the church.
When Brigham Young was appointed by Presi-
dent Fillmore Governor of Utah it appeared to the
followers of Joseph Smith that his dream of a theo-
cratic state with the Governor of the state and the
Prophet or President of the church united in one
vicegerent of Jehovah was being realized. Brigham
Young himself felt the elation of his position and
234 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
uttered great swelling words of boasting arbitrary
authority and defiance. Speaking in the Tabernacle
on February 15, 1855, he said:
My kingship, my presidentship, and all shall bow to
that eternal priesthood which God has bestowed upon me.
I have been Governor of this Territory ever since it had
one, and in all my official transactions I have acted in ac-
cordance with the priesthood.
At a conference of the church in 1853 Apostle
Taylor said:
Let us now notice our political position in the world.
What are we going to do? We are going to possess the
earth. Why? Because it belongs to Jesus Christ, and
he belongs to us, and we to him; we are all one, and will
take the kingdom and possess it under the whole heavens,
and reign over it for ever and ever. Now, ye kings and
emperors, help yourselves, if you can. This is the truth,
and it may as well be told at this time as any other.?
Obviously there was no uncertainty in the minds
of the Mormon leaders as to the kind of a theocracy
and autocracy they were setting up in the Salt Lake
Valley.
2. FIRST CLASH WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
When Utah was admitted as a federal territory
President Fillmore, besides appointing Brigham
Young Governor, also appointed other federal off-
cers, most of whom were Mormons; but three of
them, Chief Justice L. G. Brandebury, Associate
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, p. 170.
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH 235
Justice P. E. Brocchus and Secretary B. H. Harris,
were non-Mormons. On the arrival of these Gentile
officials they were well received, but in September
at a general conference of the Mormon Church
Judge Brocchus was invited to address the assembly,
when he took occasion to admonish the Mormons on
the subject of loyalty to the federal government and
also made a reference to polygamy which Linn char-
acterizes as “mild language,” and which Tullidge de-
scribes as “‘a rebuke (to) the community relative to
their peculiar religious and social institutions.”’
Brigham Young, however, would brook no such
language and took the floor in a towering rage and
said to the judge: “Are you a judge, and can’t even
talk like a lawyer or a politician?’ George Wash-
ington, he went on to say, was first in war, and
Young could handle a sword as well as Washington.
“But you standing there, white and shaking now
at the howls which you have stirred up yourself—
you are a coward.” Ina later discourse, speaking
of the behavior of the Mormons on this occasion
he said: “They bore the insult like saints of God. It
is true, if I had crooked my little finger, he would
have been used up, but I did not bend it. If I had,
the sisters alone felt indignant enough to have
chopped him to pieces. . . . Every man that comes
to impose on this people, no matter by whom sent,
or who they are that are sent, lay the axe at the
root of the tree to kill themselves. I will do as I
said I would at last conference. Apostates, or men
236 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
who never made any profession of religion, had
better be careful how they come here, lest I should
bend my little finger.”
On September 20, 1851, Judge Brocchus wrote
to a friend in the East: ‘How it will end I do not
know. I have just learned that I have been de-
nounced, together with the government and officers,
in the bowery again today by Brigham Young. I
hope I shall get off safely. God only knows. Iam in
the power of a desperate and murderous sect.”
Eight days later the three non-Mormon officers left
Salt Lake City and returned to Washington, where
they ‘made a report which set forth the autocratic
attitude of the Mormon church, the open practice
of polygamy, and the non-enforcement of the laws,
not even murderers being punished.’ * The first
contact of the federal government with the Mormon
autocracy under Brigham Young had resulted un-
happily and foreboded graver troubles yet to come.
3. THE MORMON WAR
Other federal officers were appointed and re-
turned with reports that the laws could not be en-
forced and other clashes arose during the years fol-
lowing 1851 until complications thickened up into
what became known as “the Mormon war” of 1857-
det detailed documented account of the various conflicts and the
“war” between the federal government and the Mormons is given
by Linn in his Story, and the Mormon account of the same events
is given by Tullidge in his History.
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH 237
58. As these events became known in the East
through reports of federal officials and newspaper
correspondents, popular indignation arose to fever
heat and Mormonism was seen to be a national men-
ace and became a national issue. The Republican
national convention in 1856 in its platform declared
that “it is both the right and the duty of Congress
to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of
barbarism—polygamy and slavery.’ United States
Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had befriended
the Mormons when they were in Illinois, with an
eye to the Democratic presidential nomination in the
Same year said in a speech at Springfield, IIl.:
“When the authentic evidence shall arrive, if it shall
establish the facts which are believed to exist, it will
become the duty of Congress to apply the knife, and
cut out this loathsome, ugly ulcer.”’ Surveyor Gen-
eral Burr, in a report in February, 1857, declared:
“The fact is, these people repudiate the authority
of the United States in this country, and are in open
rebellion against the general government.” And in
the same year President Buchanan in his annual
message said of the Mormon church and of Gover-
nor Brigham Young:
The people of Utah almost exclusively belong to this
church, and, believing with a fanatical spirit that he is
Governor of the Territory by divine appointment, they
obey his commands as if these were direct revelations from
heaven. If, therefore, he chooses that his government
shall come into collision with the government of the
United States, the members of the Mormon church will
238 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
yield implicit obedience to his will. Unfortunately, exist-
ing facts leave little doubt that such is his determination.
In answer to all these allegations the Mormon
leaders grew more defiant and violent in their lan-
guage and threats. Mayor J. D. Grant, of Salt
Lake City, in the Tabernacle on March 2, 1856, said,
addressing certain weak-kneed Mormons: “They
will threaten us with United States troops! Why,
your impudence and ignorance would bring a blush
to the cheek of the veriest camp-follower among
them. We ask no odds of you, you rotten carcasses,
and I am not going to bow one hair’s breadth to
your influence.” And Brigham Young declared, “I
said then, and I shall always say, that I shall be gov-
ernor as long as the Lord Almighty wishes me to
govern this people.”
The sending of soldiers was the next logical and
inevitable step, and soon after his inauguration
President Buchanan appointed Alfred Cumming of
Georgia Governor of Utah in place of Brigham
Young and ordered troops to march to Utah to
uphold the federal authorities. Two regiments of
infantry, one regiment of cavalry and two batteries
of artillery set out under General Albert Sidney
Johnston in October, but before they reached Utah
were overtaken by winter in the mountains and
suffered severe distress. In November, the troops,
which had been divided, were assembled at Camp
Scott, where they spent the winter, Governor Cum-
ming being with them.
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH 239
The actual approach of troops threw the Mormon
leaders into a frenzy of defiance. Brigham Young
declared: “I am not going to permit troops here for
the protection of the priests and the rabble in their ’
efforts to drive us from the land we possess... .
You might as well tell me you can make hell into
a powder house as to tell me that they intend to keep
an army here in peace.” To Captain Van Vliet,
who had been sent in July to visit Salt Lake City,
Young said that “therefore he and the people of
Utah had determined to resist all persecution, and
that the troops now on the march for Utah could
not enter Great Salt Lake Valley.” He then issued
a proclamation beginning, ‘Citizens of Utah: we
are invaded by a hostile force, who are evidently
assailing us to accomplish our overthrow and de-
struction,’ forbidding “all armed forces of every
description from coming into this Territory, under
any pretence whatever,” declaring martial law and
ordering “that all forces of every description hold
themselves in readiness to march at a moment’s no-
tice to repel any and all such invasion.” The Nauvoo
Legion was called out under Gen. D. H. Wells,
and his first act was to send to the federal com-
mander a copy of Young’s proclamation together
with a letter from Young, saying, “By virtue of
the authority vested in me, I have issued, and for-
warded you a copy of, my proclamation forbidding
the entrance of armed forces into this Territory.
This you have disregarded. I now further direct
240 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
that you retire forthwith from the Territory, by the
same route you entered.” To this treasonable and
impudent demand Col. Alexander, who had received
the letter, answered: ‘I have only to say that these
troops are here by the orders of the President of
the United States, and their future movements and
operations will depend entirely upon orders issued
by competent military authority.”
During the winter of 1857-58 the Mormons car-
ried on a guerrilla war against the federals, way-
laying their wagon trains and burning them and
stealing their cattle and horses. Yet during this
entire “war” there was no clash of arms and no
lives were lost.
At this point Col. T. L. Kane, of Philadelphia,
who has been represented as a friend of the Mor-
mons and it is even declared that he was baptized
as a Mormon, appears as an intermediary between
the federal government and forces and the Mor-
mons.* Kane obtained from President Buchanan
two letters as an introduction of his visit of inter-
mediation to Salt Lake City, one recognizing his
“desire to serve the Mormons by undertaking so
laborious a trip,’ and in the other the President
saying, “I would not at the present moment, in view
of the hostile attitude they have assumed against the
United States, send any agent to visit them on be-
half of the government.”
*Linn gives one account of Kane and his mission, Story, Chapter
XIV, and Stenhouse, in his Rocky Mountain Saints, Chapter
XXXIX, gives a somewhat different coloring to the story.
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH 241
With these letters Kane proceeded to Salt Lake
City and had an interview with Brigham Young and
also went to Camp Scott and had interviews with
Governor Cumming and General Johnston. These
interviews opened the way for Governor Cumming
to go to Salt Lake City and appear on the platform
of the Tabernacle with President Young and ad-
dress the Mormons. Some disturbing things oc-
curred at this meeting, but the Governor declared
that he had come to vindicate the national sover-
eignty ‘‘and to exact an unconditional submission on
their part to the dictates of the law.”
Young had already realized that he could not
maintain his stand, hitherto so defiantly proclaimed,
against the United States government and troops
and had counseled his people to remove from Salt
Lake City and the northern part of the Valley, and
about 30,000 of them packed up their goods and hur-
riedly fled 50 miles south of the city to Utah Lake,
a flight comparable in hardship and suffering with
the passage across the plains and even with the
“hand-cart expedition.” Young had threatened
that if the troops came in, his people would go out,
burning everything and leaving the Valley a desert,
and he was contemplating a further flight to some
still more inaccessible region.
Governor Cumming now sent a report to Wash-
ington to the effect that he had been favorably re-
ceived by the Mormons and that the way was open
for a settlement of the difficulties with them. Presi-
242 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
dent Buchanan appointed two “‘peace commission-
ers” to go to Salt Lake City and also issued a proc-
lamation offering ‘“‘a free and full pardon to all
who will submit themselves to the just authority
of the federal government.’”’ These commissioners
appeared in Salt Lake City in June, 1858, and after
a conference with President Young and his asso-
ciates reported as follows:
We are pleased to state that the conference resulted
in their agreeing to receive, quietly and peaceably, all the
civil officers of the government, and not to resist them in
the execution of the duties of their offices; and to yield
obedience to the authorities and laws of the United States;
that they offer no resistance to the army; that the officers
of the army should not be resisted in the execution of their
orders within the Territory. In short, they agreed that
the officers, civil and military, of the United States,
should enter the Territory without resistance, and exer-
cise, peaceably and unmolested, all the functions of their
various offices.®
The army now, July, 1858, marched into and
through the deserted and empty city and pitched
their camp at Cedar Valley, forty miles to the west
of Salt Lake City, and the same day Governor Cum-
ming officially announced “the restoration of peace
to the Territory.” Brigham Young now appealed
to his followers to return, Governor Cumming
joined in this endeavor, and these poor deluded peo-
ple, that had fled almost like a flock of panic-stricken
sheep at the word of their prophet, slowly crept
back to their homes and fields.
*Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 395.
EARLY HISTORY IN UTAH 243
Thus ended “the Mormon war” without blood-
shed but with the flag of the United States flying
over Utah. Brigham Young’s blustering defiance
of the federal government based on his belief or
claim that he had founded an independent empire
of his own, his promises that the Lord would bring
them victory, and his predictions of destruction
hurled at the federal troops, all proved false. He
and his deluded followers acknowledged the sover-
eignty of the United States, an acknowledgment
resentfully given and enforced and obeyed at the
point of the sword.
CHAPTER XVI
MORMONISM AND MURDER
HE title sounds harsh and seems incredible and
sharply raises the question of its justice, but it
is true to historic fact and cannot be toned down or
smoothed away. No charity can be stretched to
cover it, rose-water will not sweeten it, and all the
multitudinous seas will not wash out its crimson
stain. It is to be applied, of course, only to the
early days of Mormonism in Utah and not extended
to the present time.
I. THE DOCTRINE OF BLOOD ATONEMENT
The seeds of this scarlet fruit were sown far back
in doctrines that were bound to bring forth bloody
deeds. We have already seen* that this dreadful
doctrine, by which the Mormons claimed the right
to put to death so as to extinguish in their own blood
the guilt of unfaithful Mormons and of Gentiles,
was publicly avowed in Salt Lake City in 1856 by
Jedediah D. Grant, of the first presidency, and by
President Brigham Young, and we give two more
quotations from the public utterances of these high
*Chapter VI, Section 5.
244
MORMONISM AND MURDER 245
Mormon officials. In the Tabernacle, on March 12,
1854, Grant delivered a long discourse on the sub-
jest in which he declared:
I wish we were in a situation favorable to our doing
that which is justifiable before God, without any con-
taminating influence of Gentile amalgamation, laws and
traditions, that the people of God might lay the axe at
the root of the tree, and every tree that bringeth not
forth fruit might be hewn down. What! do you believe
that people would do right, and keep the law of God, by
actually putting to death the transgressors? Putting to
death the transgressors would exhibit the law of God, no
matter by whom it was done.
Later in the same place he said: “We have been
trying long enough with this people, and I go in for
letting the sword of the Almighty to be unsheathed,
not only in word, but in deed.”
In the Tabernacle, on September 21, 1856, Brig-
ham Young said:
There are sins that men commit for which they cannot
receive forgiveness in this world, or in that which is to
come; and if they had their eyes open to their true con-
dition, they would be perfectly willing to have their blood
spilt upon the ground, that the smoke thereof might ascend
to heaven as an offering for their sins, and the smoking
incense would atone for their sins; whereas, if such is
not the case, they will stick to them and remain upon them
in the spirit-world. I know, when you hear my brethren
telling about cutting people off from the earth, that you
consider it is strong doctrine; but it is to save them, not
to destroy them.
These and many similar utterances were not said
in secret but openly upon the platform of the Taber-
246 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
nacle, and were revised and published in The Deseret
News, the official Mormon newspaper in Salt Lake
City, and afterwards were republished in the Jour-
nal of Discourses in the office of the Millenmal Star
in Liverpool, England, and in these official publica-
tions they may be read to this day.
2. THE PRACTICE OF THE DOCTRINE
This bloody doctrine, that the Mormon Church
could visit blood atonement upon the guilty, was not
only preached, but it was practiced as it was intended
to be. And the Mormon leaders were logical in first
inflicting it upon their own members. In 1856 there
broke out in Salt Lake City a fanatical movement,
known as ‘The Reformation,” in which Grant and
Young made charges against various members and
sometimes against the people in general in the gross-
est language.
Meetings were held by all the “Quorums” of “High
Priests,” “Seventies,” and “Bishops,” which were largely
attended. The greatest zeal for the good of “‘the king-
dom” and unquestioning obedience were manifested, and
the weak in faith, the doubting and rebellious, were,
with “Uncle Sam”’ and all the Gentiles, denounced without
mercy. The confessions of the Saints were texts for dis-
courses, and curses were hurled on them publicly. The
revelations of the sins wormed out of them by the cate-
chism and other methods adopted were astonishing, and
a lower state of morals was discovered to exist than even
the best informed could have suspected. . . . The con-
fessions, as before observed, were groundwork for re-
MORMONISM AND MURDER 247
proofs, rebukes, and denunciations. Brigham Young in
his speech put a motion as follows: “All you who have
been guilty of adultery, stand .up.”’ To the surprise of
some, and the chagrin of the presidency, more than three-
fourths stood on their feet.?
Such preaching and practices soon brought forth
their proper fruit. Members against whom charges
were made, without any trial or proof, were seized
and whipped, dreadfully abused, and, in one instance,
mutilated, or otherwise maltreated. Literal ‘‘blood
atonement” was also inflicted. The strange fanat-
icism went to such a length that victims themselves
would voluntarily receive the death baptism of blood.
Two such cases may be cited. A wife who had been
guilty of adultery “consented to meet the penalty
of her error, and while her heart was gushing with
affection for her husband and her children, and her
mind absorbed with faith in the doctrine of human
sacrifice, she seated herself upon her husband’s
knee, and after the warmest and most endearing em-
brace she had ever known—it was to be her last—
when the warmth of his lips still lingered about her
glowing cheek, with his own right hand he calmly
cut her throat and sent her spirit to the keeping of
the gods. That kind and loving husband still lives
near Salt Lake City, and preaches occasionally with
great zeal. He seems happy enough.” ®
Another equally incredible case is quoted by Linn
2 Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 294-206.
* Ibid., pp. 469.
248 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
from Orson Hyde, who himself gave the first public
intimation from the Tabernacle pulpit of the doc-
trine of blood atonement. Rosmos Anderson, a
Danish convert and immigrant, confessed to adul-
tery with his step-daughter and “‘the council decided
that he must die. Anderson was so firm in the Mor-
mon faith that he made no remonstrance, simply
asking half a day for preparation. His wife pro-
vided clean clothes for the sacrifice, and his execu-
tioners dug his grave. At midnight they called for
him, and, taking him to the place, allowed him to
kneel by the grave and pray. Then they cut his
throat, ‘and held him so that his blood ran into the
grave.’ His wife, obeying instructions, announced
that he had gone to California.” *
Others who suffered the fatality of blood atone-
ment were not such willing victims. William R.
Parrish was a prominent supporter of Joseph Smith
in Nauvoo and made the flight to the Salt Lake
Valley. In March, 1857, rumors were afloat that
he was disaffected and was contemplating removal
with his family to California. Bishop Johnson, a
polygamist with ten wives, with two companions
visited Parrish at Springville and questioned him
as to his intentions. At a meeting at Johnson’s house
a letter was read from Brigham Young in which he
stated that “the better way is to lock the stable door
before the horse is stolen.”
*Linn, Story, pp. 456-457.
MORMONISM AND MURDER 249
Two men, Durfee and Potter, were then sent to
the Parrishes to find out when they proposed leaving
and to deal with them in the manner they thought
efficient. Parrish unsuspectingly went out for a
walk with Potter and was led past a point where an
armed Mormon by the name of Bird was concealed
to shoot Parrish. Bird mistook Potter for Parrish
and shot him dead, a striking instance of poetic jus-
tice, and then grappled with Parrish, an old man,
and stabbed him to death with a knife. Parrish had
two young boys and when they appeared on the
scene Bird shot one of them and the other escaped
back to the house. When Mrs. Parrish appealed
to Brigham Young he told her he “would have
stopped it had he known anything about it,’ and
when she persisted he advised her to “drop it.”
Judge Cradlebaugh, Associate Justice of Utah Terri-
tory, afterwards declared in the House of Represen-
tatives, “I am justified in charging that the Mormons
are guilty, and that the Mormon church is guilty, of
the crimes of murder and robbery, as taught in their
books of faith.” ° In the same spring, also, occurred
the murder of several members of the Aiken party
on their arrival from California in Utah, which
Judge Cradlebaugh pronounced “peculiarly and
shockingly prominent.” °
® Stenhouse, in Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 464-467, gives the con-
fession of J. M. Stewart, the counselor of Bishop Johnson, of the
murder of Parrish and his boy.
*Linn, Story, pp. 450-451.
250 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
3. THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE
We now come to the blackest blot and biggest
splotch of blood on this Mormon record, known as
“The Mountain Meadows Massacre,” which oc-
curred on Friday, September 11, 1857, a day as in-
famous as St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572,
when the signal was given for the massacre of the
Huguenots in France. A party of thirty families
and 140 persons was emigrating from Arkansas to
California. They were pious and peaceable people,
mostly Methodists, and a Methodist minister was
with them. They did not travel on Sunday and pray-
ers were held every morning and evening in their
camp. They were proceeding through Southern
Utah without molesting anybody, although after-
wards the Mormons circulated false stories that they
committed depredations and poisoned a spring.
Young was now defying the federal government and
on September 15, four days after the massacre, is-
sued a proclamation that ‘‘no person shall be allowed
to pass or repass into or through or from this terri-
tory without a permit from the proper officer.” The
passage of these Arkansans was quickly reported at
headquarters and concerted measures were promptly
taken against them. This antagonism first took the
form of refusing to sell the emigrants any supplies
or to do any trading with them, a business that the
Mormons carried on with all travelers and from
MORMONISM AND MURDER 251
which they reaped rich profits. By reason of this
refusal the Arkansas party were reduced to dire dis-
tress with their food supplies almost exhausted and
their horses and cattle completely fagged out.
The Mountain Meadows are a valley 350 miles
south of Salt Lake City and are about five miles
long and one mile wide, a narrow defile that was a
perfect natural trap for this tragedy. The worn-
out and discouraged Arkansans pitched their camp
in this place on Monday, September 7. Wrtih their
depleted supplies they now faced seventy days of
travel across a desert to San Bernardino. They had
had friendly relations with the Indians and were
unsuspicious of any attack, when on this Monday
morning they were fired on by Indians from the
surrounding heights and seven of their party were
killed. Subsequent evidence made it plain that
this Indian attack was instigated by the Mormons
in the hope that the party would thus be extermi-
nated while they would escape responsibility. The
Arkansans, however, were not so easily overcome,
but quickly drew their wagons around them and dug
a rifle pit and thus were soon intrenched in a fort
from which they successfully resisted the attack of
the Indians and killed some of them.
For four days the emigrants repulsed the Indians,
when the Mormons saw that they must resort to
other measures. On Friday morning they sent one
of their number, William Bateman, with a flag of
truce, and he was gladly received in the rude for-
252 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
tress of the besieged Arkansans. The plan proposed
by the Mormons was that the Arkansans should
surrender all their arms and these with their
wounded were to be placed in wagons and then a
procession was to be formed and march to Cedar
City. In this march the wagons were to lead, then
were to follow the women and children, and then
the men, with an armed Mormon beside each Arkan-
san. Major John M. Higbee, of the Mormon mili-
tia, was in command of the soldiers stationed
nearby, and John D. Lee * a Mormon ranchman liv-
ing in the neighborhood, was deputized by him to
carry out the plan. Some of the Arkansans were
suspicious of this surrender, but they were at the
extremity of their means and there was little else
for them to do than submit and commit themselves
into the hands of the Mormons.
At length all things were in readiness and the
procession started on its fatal march. Lee after-
wards made a full confession so that we have in-
timate knowledge of the affair and of his feelings
in discharging his part in it. At a given signal
every armed Mormon was to kill the defenseless
Arkansan by his side and thus exterminate the
whole party at a stroke. Lee tells us how he felt
just before this signal was given, in the following
words:
"A brief autobiography of Lee is given by Gibbs, Lights and
Shadows, pp. 214-217. He was born in Illinois in 1812 and was con-
nected with the Virginia Lees and was a relative of General Robert
E. Lee, of the Southern Confederacy. He had nineteen wives, of
which he gives a chronological list, and 64 children.
MORMONISM AND MURDER 253
I doubt the power of man being equal to even imagine
how wretched I felt. No language can describe my feel-
ings. My position was painful, trying, and awful; my
brain seemed to be on fire; my nerves were for a moment
unstrung; humanity was overpowering as I thought of
the cruel, unmanly part that I was acting. Tears of bitter
anguish fell in streams from my eyes; my tongue refused
its office; my faculties were dormant, stupefied and dead-
ened by grief. I wished that the earth would open and
swallow me where I stood.
The fatal signal, “Do your duty,” rang out along
the line and each Mormon shot the Arkansan at his
side, and other Mormons and Indians attacked the
women and children who were walking, while Lee
and his two companions killed the wounded men and
older children in the wagons. Every last man and
woman of the party was run down and killed, and
only the seventeen young children, who “could not
talk” and “were too young to tell tales,” were saved,
and these were afterwards returned to their friends
in Arkansas.
The property of the party, estimated at upwards
of $70,000, was now seized, and the corpses were
robbed and stripped and left lying naked upon the
ground. The next day the Mormons returned and
made some effort at covering the bodies piled to-
gether with earth, but they were soon seized by
wild beasts and torn to pieces. Nearly two years
later, in May, 1859, a federal army detail was sent
to bury the remains and found a ghastly scene.
“Many of the skulls bore marks of violence, being
254 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
pierced with bullet holes, or shattered with heavy
blows, or cleft with some sharp-edged instrument.”
There are conflicting accounts as to just what
happened among the Mormon leaders in this affair
before and after the massacre. These leaders were
Isaac Haight, president of the Cedar City stake,
Major Higbee and Colonel Dame of the Iron Militia,
Bishop Klingensmith, and John D. Lee. A few
days before the slaughter they sent a messenger to
Brigham Young for orders, but for some reason
he did not return until several days after the affair
was over. Ata council held on Thursday evening
Major Higbee reported that President Haight’s or-
ders were that “all the emigrants must be put out of
the way.” All then knelt in prayer and Higbee gave
Lee a paper ordering “the destruction of all who
could talk.” The day after the massacre, these
leaders “held another council, at which God was
thanked for delivering their enemies into their
hands; another oath of secrecy was taken, and all
voted that any person who divulged the story of the
massacre should suffer death, but that Brigham
Young should be informed of it. It was also voted,
according to Lee, that Bishop Klingensmith should
take charge of the plunder for the benefit of the
church.” ®
John D. Lee was then sent to Salt Lake City to
inform Brigham Young of the affair, but Young
had had previous information and remarked to him,
' 8Linn, Story, p. 527.
MORMONISM AND MURDER 255
“Isaac (Haight) has sent me word that, if they had
killed every man, woman, and child in the outfit,
there would not have been a drop of innocent blood
shed by the brethren; for they were a set of mur-
derers, robbers, and thieves.” After Lee had told
his story Young said to him:
This is the most unfortunate affair that ever befell
the church. I am afraid of treachery among the brethren
who were there. If any tells this thing so that it will
become public, it will work us great injury. I want you
to understand now that you are never to tell this again,
not even to Heber C. Kimball. It must be kept a secret
among ourselves. When you get home, I want you to set
down and write a long letter, and give me an account of
the affair, charging it to the Indians. You sign the letter
as farmer to the Indians, and direct it to me as Indian
agent. I can then make use of such a letter to keep off
all damaging and troublesome inquirers.
Lee further says, in his confession, that Young
told him to call upon him the next morning, when
Young said:
I have made that matter a subject of prayer. I went
right to God with it, and asked him to take the horrid
vision from my sight if it was a righteous thing that
my people had done in killing those people at the Mountain
Meadows. God answered me, and at once the vision was
removed. I have evidence from God that he has over-
ruled it for good, and the action was a righteous one and
well intended.
Thus Brigham Young, on the confession of John
D. Lee, a prominent Mormon leader in the affair,
was in complicity with this crime in that he, accord-
256 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ing to his own statement, was accessory to it and
sanctioned it after the fact. But was Young in com-
plicity with it or did he have any knowledge of it
before the fact? Stenhouse investigated this ques-
tion as thoroughly as he could. He wrote Young a
letter telling him he was “preparing a work for
publication” and asking him for his account of the
affair, but he received no answer. In 1871 a series
of letters appeared in the Corinne Reporter, a Gen-
tile paper published about sixty miles north of Salt
Lake City, signed “Argus,” which directly accused
Brigham Young of responsibility for the massacre.
Stenhouse knew the author of the “Argus” letters
and says he had been for thirty years a Mormon
priest and that he assured Stenhouse that “before a
federal court of justice, where he could be protected,
he was prepared to give evidence of all that he
asserted.”
The official Mormon explanation of the massacre
is that it was wholly an Indian attack for which the
Mormons had no responsibility. ‘The apostles,”
says Stenhouse, “who have spoken and written upon
this painful subject, have endeavored to fasten the
guilt solely upon the Indians, but this was a grave
error, as well as being directly and palpably false.”
John Henry Evans, Instructor in Church History
in the Brigham Young University, Salt Lake City,
in his One Hundred Years of Mormonism, a book
that bears the official endorsement of a Mormon
committee, says in a footnote, “This wretched affair
MORMONISM AND MURDER 257
is not discussed here, because, strictly speaking, it is
not a part of Mormon history,” and in the text he
says that these murders, “like everything else that
was disagreeable, were laid at the door of the
church,’ and made “a pretext to solidify the ele-
ments of discontent.” This is said by an “instruc-
tor in church history” in an official Mormon book in
the face of the documented history of the crime and
the detailed confessions of John D. Lee and Bishop
Klingensmith! ,
Stenhouse says:
The dominant theory among the intelligent Mormons
was that Brigham Young had not himself ordered the
massacre, but that he feared its investigation, as the
men who did the deed were his brethren in the faith,
and were in official relations with him, and that the
massacre being brought before a court it would doubtless
lead to the execution of men who might plead that it
was the teachings of the Tabernacle that had rendered
them capable of the perpetration of such a terrible crime.
And Stenhouse’s own conclusion on this point is
as charitable as it could well be:
Whatever differences of opinion may exist between
former members of the Church and the Prophet, no
proper-minded person among them desires to see any
wrong imputed to Brigham Young of which he is inno-
cent; and of the responsibility of this massacre, above all
other things, his bitterest enemy should be pleased to see
him exonerated.®
® Stenhouse’s whole account of this affair is very full and impar-
ete thoroughly documented, Rocky Mountain Saints, Chapter
258 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
It was twenty years before even partial justice
fell upon this bloody deed. In 1874 a better federal
law regulating the courts in Utah was passed, and
Lee, Dame, Haight, Higbee, and Klingensmith, and
others were indicted. Lee was dragged out of his
hiding place and put on trial. On the first trial the
jury disagreed, and on the second he was found
“guilty of murder in the first degree.” On March
23, 1877, he was taken to Mountain Meadows that
on the very spot where the crime was committed it.
might with poetic justice be expiated. Standing
beside his coffin Lee “made a brief farewell speech
in which he denied any intent to do wrong, and
placed the blame where it justly belonged. He
claimed, and rightly, too, that he had been betrayed
—and sacrificed in the interest of the church to
which he had given his whole life.” *° He calmly
stood up, the rifles rang out over the Meadows, and
he fell dead beside his rude coffin. A cairn of stones
was piled up over the grave in which the bones of
the 120 victims of the massacre were buried and in
its center a beam fifteen feet high was planted and
on its cross-tree was painted: “Vengeance is mine,
saith the Lord, and I will repay it.” This has long
since disappeared, removed, it is said, by order of
Brigham Young.
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, p. 235.
MORMONISM AND MURDER 259
4. EXPLANATION OF THIS DOCTRINE AND SPIRIT
What is the explanation of the murderous spirit
and deeds of these Mormon leaders? Were they
cold-blooded and saturated with conscienceless mal-
ice above other men of like circumstances and pas-
sions with themselves? We cannot think so. They
were men of New England origin and traditions and
had come out of the orthodox churches. They were
men of the average education and conscience of
their day. And they were generally above the aver-
age in ability and forceful personality as has been
abundantly proved by their arduous deeds and by
the masterful way in which they had rescued the
remnants of their ruined religious adventure from
the madness of mobs in Illinois and transported them
across trackless regions to Salt Lake Valley and
had already turned it from a desert to fruitful fields
and planted it with cities. The explanation of these
murderous deeds, then, must be found in the reli-
gious obsession which turned them into bigoted and
blind fanatics that dulled and destroyed all their
ordinary sense of reason and right. This view is
well expressed by Gibbs, who wrote with inside
knowledge and yet with the restraint of truth and
charity. He says:
The impelling force—motive—to the perpetration of
crime is, by mortal ethics, presumed to be the chief factor
in determining what is justice to criminals. John D. Lee
was, at heart, not a murderer. Nor were the fifty-five
260 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
white participants murderers under the common definition.
They were devout Mormons and believed that they were
obeying the instructions of the representatives of proph-
ets, seers and revelators, who were in daily communion
with the Creator of the universe. Call them crazy fanat-
ics, but not murderers in the generally accepted term.
Let your anathemas fall on those who promulgated the
damnable doctrine of unquestionable obedience and blood-
atonement, and on those of the present-day “prophets”
who enunciate, or endorse, the doctrine that a man “lies
in the presence of God,” because he declines to surrender
his temporal rights along with his spiritual being.**
The phenomena of such religious obsession have
not been and are not now rare in history. Did not
Samuel “hew Agag in pieces before the Lord” and
Paul “verily think that he ought” to “persecute unto
death” the disciples of Jesus and were not his hands
stained with the blood of Stephen and other mar-
tyrs? Did not Roman religionists put to death the
early Christian martyrs, and then did not these
Christians in time burn one another as heretics?
Coming into our own country and close to our day
and religious kindred, did not a Christian judge pro-
nounce guilty and our Puritan forbears hang nine-
teen wretched women as witches in New England
Salem? Has this spirit even yet wholly disappeared
from our orthodox churches? Do we not now see
manifested by some Christian ministers a spirit of
intolerance and bigotry and bitterness against other
Christian brethren that carries in its bosom seeds
that in earlier days would have borne the scarlet
* Lights and Shadows, p. 235.
MORMONISM AND MURDER 261
blossoms of bloody deeds? “I have never heard of a
crime,” said the pure and dispassionate Emerson,
“that I myself might not have committed.” This
does not justify or even excuse the dreadful mas-
sacre of Mountain Meadows and other Mormon
murders, but it should enable us to understand the
psychology of their time and spirit and temper with
charity our judgment of their deeds.
CHAPTER XVII
MORMONISM DURING THE CIVIL WAR
HE breaking out of the American Civil War
was hailed by the Mormon leaders with un-
concealed and openly-expressed delight. This could
have been predicted with the certainty of a solar
eclipse from their relations with the federal gov-
ernment. Their political position and ambition
from their early days was that they were the in-
spired founders of an independent empire or King-
dom of God, which was a theocracy and absolute
autocracy, owning allegiance to none and claiming
sovereignty over all human governments even
around the world. ‘‘Any people,” declared Orson
Pratt, “attempting to govern themselves by laws
of their own making, and by officers of their own
appointment, are in direct rebellion against the King-
dom of God,” meaning the “church founded by
Joseph Smith.” *
They attempted to carry out this theory with a
high hand, as we have seen, in Missouri and Illinois,
and especially in Utah, where they had defied the
federal government and officials and troops and
were brought into nominal subjection by the actual
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, p. 108.
262
MORMONISM AND THE CIVIL WAR 263
presence of a United States army. But they were
only biding their time, and to this day they have
not repudiated this doctrine of the absolute King-
dom of God embodied in their political and religious
system. )
Already in the national Republican platform of
1856 polygamy and slavery had been pilloried to-
gether as “the twin relics of barbarism,” and as
slavery was now lifting its head in rebellion against
the United States, polygamy took advantage of the
situation to assume and assert the same attitude in
the hope that both together might wreck the federal
government and each set up its own sovereignty.
I. MORMON TREASONABLE UTTERANCES
The leaders of Mormonism were plain and defiant
enough in their public declarations in both print and
speech. Linn has gathered a page of these trea-
sonable utterances as follows:
The attitude of the Mormons toward the government
at the outbreak of hostilities with the Southern states was
distinctly disloyal. The Deseret News of January 2, 1861,
said, ‘““The indications are that the breach which has
been effected between the North and the South will con-
tinue to widen, and that two or more nations will be
formed out of the fragmentary portions of the once
glorious republic.’”’ —The Mormons in England had before
that been told in the Millennial Star (January 28, 1860)
that “the Union is now virtually destroyed.” The ser-
mons in Salt Lake City were of the same character.
“General” Wells told the people on April 6, 1861, that
264 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
the general government was responsible for their expul-
sion from Missouri and Illinois, adding: “So far as we
are concerned, we should have been better without a gov-
ernment than such a one. I do not think there is a more
corrupt government upon the face of the earth.” Brig-
ham Young on the same day said: “Our present Presi-
dent, what is his strength? It is like a rope of sand,
or like a rope made of water. . . . I feel disgraced in
having been born under a government that has so little
power, disposition and influence for truth and right.
Shame, shame on the rulers of this nation. I feel myself
disgraced to hail such men as my countrymen.?
Linn and Gibbs multiply utterances of this kind.
Elder G. A. Smith said: “Mr. Lincoln now is put
into power by that priestly influence; and the pre-
sumption is, should he not find his hands full by the
secession of the Southern states, the spirit of priestly
craft would force him, in spite of his good wishes
and intentions, to put to death, if it was in his power,
every man that believes in the divine mission of
Joseph Smith.” Later, on August 31, 1862, Brig-
ham Young declared that “the nation that has slain
the prophet of God will be broken in pieces like a
potter’s vessel.” After the war was over Tullidge,
the Mormon historian, said that “the Mormon view
of the great national controversy, then, is that the
Southern states should have done precisely what
Utah did, and placed themselves on the defensive
ground of their rights and institutions as old as
the Union. Had they placed themselves under the
political leadership of Brigham Young, they would
2 Story, Pp. 543.
MORMONISM AND THE CIVIL WAR 265
have triumphed, for their cause was fundamentally
right; their secession alone was their national
crime.* This spirit continued through the war and
when Lincoln was felled by an assassin’s bullet and
all the nation was in tears, the Mormons were say-
ing one to another, “’Tis the judgment of God on
Abraham Lincoln. Had he lived he would have
tried to fulfill his party’s pledge to destroy polygamy.
The Almighty has removed him—praise to the Lord
God of Israel.” *
2. FEDERAL ACTION
It was plain that such a nest of disloyalty in Utah
could not long be tolerated though hidden behind the
wall of the Rockies in the heart of the Wasatch
Mountains and would soon call for action. Yet Mr.
Lincoln had his hands full and was slow to take on
further trouble, saying, “I will let the Mormons
alone if they will let me alone.”
Action came in May, 1862, when the Third Cali-
fornia Infantry and part of the Second California
Cavalry under Colonel P. E. Connor appeared upon
the scene and the colonel issued an order directing
commanders of posts, camps and detachments to
arrest and imprison, until they took the oath of
allegiance, ‘“‘all persons who from this date shall be
guilty of uttering treasonable sentiments against the
* Life of Brigham Young, Chapter XXIV.
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, p. 255.
266 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
government,’ and declaring, “Traitors shall not
utter treasonable sentiments in this district with im-
punity, but must seek some more genial soil, or re-
ceive the punishment they so richly deserve.’
Threats were uttered against the federal troops that
they should not approach Salt Lake City, but Colonel
Connor marched them into the public square and
then pitched his tents within sight of the Mormon
capital with his guns trained on Brigham Young’s
official residence.
Stephen S. Harding, of Indiana, arrived as gov-
ernor of the territory in July and on December 8
read his first message to the legislature. Congress
had just passed and Mr. Lincoln had signed on July
2 an act “to prevent and punish the practice of
polygamy in the territories,” and Governor Hard-
ing called attention to it in his message, saying he
desired to do so ‘in no offensive manner or unkind
spirit,’ and declared that ‘no community can hap-
pily exist with an institution so important as that
of marriage wanting in all those qualities that make
it homogeneal with institutions and laws of neigh-
boring civilized countries having the same spirit.”
He referred to the recent marriage of a mother and
her daughter to the same man as “no less a marvel
in morals than in matters of taste,’ and warned them
against such offenses against the federal laws.
This message gave great offense to the Mormons
as ‘‘an insult offered to their representatives,” ° and
*Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, p. 305.
MORMONISM AND THE CIVIL WAR 267
the territorial legislature adjourned without sending
to Governor Harding any appropriation bill, and
on the next day, January 16, 1863, the legislature
of the so-called State of Deseret, which still claimed
to be in existence as the legal government of the
territory, met and received a message from “Gov-
ernor”’ Brigham Young. A mass meeting was then
held “for the purpose of investigating certain acts
of several of the United States officials in the ter-
ritory,’ and a committee was sent to Governor
Harding and Judges Drake and Waite asking them
to resign and leave the territory. Of course the
impudent demand was peremptorily refused, Judge
Drake telling John Taylor, a member of the com-
mittee who was not a naturalized American citizen,
that it was a special insult for him, a citizen, to be
asked by a foreigner to leave any part of the Re-
public, and saying to the committee, ‘““Go back to
Brigham Young, your master, that embodiment of
sin, shame, and disgust, and tell him that I neither
fear him, nor love him, nor hate him—that I utterly
despise him. Tell him, whose tools and tricksters
you are, that I did not come here by his permission,
and that I will not go away at his desire nor by his
direction.” In the Tabernacle, on March 8, 1863,
Brigham Young in a heated harangue said, “Is there
anything that could be asked that we would not do?
Yes. Let the present administration ask us for a
thousand men, or even five hundred, and I’d see them
268 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
d d first, and then they could not have them.
What do you think of that ?”
In this critical situation the Mormon Prophet was
moved to take to himself another wife and Amelia
Folsom was ‘‘sealed” to him after much persuasion
and many arts had been used to effect his purpose.
The tension between the military officers and
Brigham Young was growing acute and the Prophet
had reason to believe that he was about to be ar-
rested. The polygamous marriage he had just con-
summated was then made the occasion and the
means of what Stenhouse designates some “smart
practice” by which the impending arrest was clev-
erly averted. One of the brethren accused the
Prophet of having violated the anti-polygamy law
and the grand jury, composed of Mormons, promptly
found no indictment and discharged Young. He
was thus placed ‘“‘beyond the reach of the military
officers’ and the Prophet was dexterously extri-
cated from a threatening situation. But the same
grand jury that acquitted Young censured Governor
Harding and voted Camp Douglass ‘‘a nuisance”!
As the Civil War drew to its close and it was seen
that the Union would stand, the Mormon leaders
began to cool down in their outspoken disloyalty and
prepared to accept the inevitable. They even joined
in a celebration of Union victories at Camp Doug-
lass on March 4, 1865, and at the assassination of
President Lincoln a memorial service was held in
the Tabernacle and the city was draped in mourning.
CHAPTER XVIII
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH
OF MORMONISM
RIGHAM YOUNG, President, Prophet, Seer,
and Revelator, was now at the height of his
power and reigned as monarch of Mormonism until
his death in 1877 at the age of seventy-six years.
He had successfully negotiated the rocks and rapids
that stretched in a tortuous and troubled stream
from the collapse in Illinois across the plains into
the Great Salt Lake Valley and had established his
throne on his personal power. We shall sketch some
of the principal events in these closing years.
I. GENTILE IRRUPTION AND BUSINESS MONOPOLY
The westward movement of immigration was
greatly increased after the Civil War and flowed
into and through Great Salt Lake Valley in a swell-
ing tide. Mormonism had sought seclusion and im-
munity from the outer world, but now even the walls
of the Rocky Mountains could not resist and keep
out the Gentile flood. The coming of the Union
Pacific Railroad and other railway lines cut through
the mountains and leveled the protecting dykes and
269
270 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
let the sea in. The attractions of the valley and
the glowing visions of wealth in the mines and in
the region stretching on into California, a land of
golden promise dyed in the hues of the sunset, lured
streams of settlers, gold-seekers and all classes of
adventurous spirits.
The Mormons, while sending for and bringing in
immigrants of their own kind, viewed with un-
friendly eyes these Gentile new-comers who were
unassimilable aliens in their social order and enemies
of their peculiar institution. Brigham Young took
measures to isolate these foreign elements and con-
fine business to his own people. Non-Mormons
opened stores and often offered superior goods at
lower prices and thus attracted Mormon trade.
Young denounced and fought these stores fiercely.
In a discourse delivered on March 28, 1858, he urged
the people to use only home-made material and said:
“Let the calicoes lie on the shelves and rot. I would
rather build buildings every day and burn them
down at night, than have traders here communing
with our enemies outside, and keeping up a hell all
the time, and raising devils to keep it going. They
brought their hell with them. Wecan have enough
of our own without their help.” A large portion of
the Tabernacle sermons were devoted to “freezing
out” the Gentiles. A system of close espionage was
established to carry out this policy. ‘‘Surveillance
was offensively placed upon their stores, in order
to discover who among the Saints would persist in
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 271
trading withthem. The police in sauntering to and
fro could see the offenders and report them, and
with these official eyes upon them, it took courage
in the people to deal with a Gentile, Jew, or Apostate
—especially with the latter.” *
Yet competition with the Mormon stores persisted
and grew into serious proportions. Notable among
such opponents were four Walker brothers, who
with their mother had been lured as converts from
England and grew dissatisfied with Mormonism and
its doings. They set up business on their own ac-
count, and as they presently refused to pay a tithe
of their annual income to ‘‘the church,” which was
synonymous with Brigham Young, they quickly fell
under his displeasure and every means was used to
ruin them. Police espionage was doubly increased
and Brigham Young called a meeting of the mer-
chants at City Hall in October, 1868, and there it
was determined that the words ‘‘Holiness to the
Lord,” over an all-seeing eye, should be written on
every sign-board, and be put over the door of every
Mormon store, so that “the wayfaring man, though
a fool, might not err therein.” ? But “‘stolen waters
are sweet,” and “the Saints’ persisted in stealing
into forbidden Gentile stores and buying better
goods at lower prices.
It was a critical situation and Brigham Young
was quick to sense it and see that it imperiled the
*Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 623.
2 Tbid., p. 625.
272 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
very existence of his “empire.” He conceived and
projected “the idea of uniting all the Mormon mer-
chants in one grand cooperative commercial scheme,
by which he hoped finally to be able to freeze out the
Gentiles.” This organization was effected in 1869
and was called the “Zion Cooperative Mercantile
Institution,’ commonly known as the “Z. C. M. I.”
and which is in operation to this day. Brigham
Young was made president with a vice-president and
five directors, and pressure was now brought to bear
on all the faithful to come into this combination.
“The Mormon merchants who did not join the Co-
operative Institution and bring their goods there,
and who did not put ‘Z. C. M. I.’ and the all-seeing
eye over their doors, soon had a little of the Gentile
experience. The police walked before their stores,
and, by their presence, morally intimidated the
Saints from buying of the rebellious brother.”
Branch stores were started in the wards, but these
did not prosper and failed and the stockholders iost
their money. |
The Prophet was now out for profit, and the min-
ister of religion was a merchant rapidly making
money. The success of the project exceeded his
utmost dreams, and his mercenary instinct made
Brigham Young a financial magnate and the richest
man in his domain. Tullidge, the Mormon his-
torian, says:
It was the moment of life or death to the temporal
power of the church. . . . The organization of Z. C. M. I.
BSS
Photo by C. R. Savage
MONUMENT TO BRIGHAM YOUNG AND THE PIONEERS
SALT LAKE CITY
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 273
at that crisis saved the temporal supremacy of the Mormon
commonwealth.” *
And Stenhouse says:
“The grand experiment served the Prophet well. It
made him at once the business associate of the leading
Mormon merchants—the men of energy and success—
and, without the toil and trouble of creating a business,
he suddenly found himself a sharer in their profits, and
in another particular, ‘Z. C. M. I.’ was specially useful,
for, in the varied branches of this commerce, his numer-
ous sons, sons-in-law, and special friends have found
permanent occupation.”’ *
Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution has
grown through the years into a huge organization
that has entered many fields of manufacture and
merchandise and thrown its tentacles out over all
the Mormon states, and the Church of the Latter-
Day Saints of Jesus Christ is now a vast and wealthy
business concern, and this has added immensely to
its religious and social and political power.
2. REVOLT LIFTS ITS HEAD
Extremes beget extremes. Action is equaled
by reaction. Tyranny breeds revolt, and out of the
loins of despotism liberty is born. Brigham Young’s
dictation and domination, ever growing more arbi-
trary and oppressive by feeding on its own insolence,
* History of Salt Lake City, p. 385.
“Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 628.
274 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
at length stirred opposition and resentment, until
revolt lifted its head right in his own camp. ‘These
Mormons, however deluded they were under the
spell of their Prophet, after all were human. Their
native American sense of right had not been wholly
eradicated out of them and at last asserted itself.
The ‘‘New Movement,” as it came to be called,
sometimes also called “The Reformation,” began
with the founding of the Utah Magazine, a purely
literary journal established by the Mormon elders
W. S. Godbe, a merchant, and E. L. T. Harrison,
who had launched a previous literary adventure and
had some literary aspirations. The magazine met
with little success and was apparently nearing the
end of its career, when Godbe and Harrison went
ona trip to New York for rest and recreation. The
journey had unexpected and far-reaching conse-
quences. Like Saul, the persecutor on his way to
Damascus, these two elders, when they got away
from the Mormon environment and atmosphere,
began quietly to think about and discuss their faith,
and then doubts arose in their minds. Stenhouse,
who was soon involved with them in the “New
Movement” and had inside knowledge of it, will tell
us of the experience of Godbe and Harrison:
Away from Utah, and traveling together over the
plains, the old rumbling stage-coach afforded the two
friends, as every traveler in those days experienced, an
excellent opportunity for reflection. On the way they
“compared notes’ respecting the situation of things at
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 275
home, and spoke frankly together of their doubts and
difficulties with the faith. . . . Both of them had strug-
gled to preserve their faith in Mormonism, but the con-
tents of the Book of Mormon, critically viewed, was a
terrible test of credulity, and many of the revelations of
“the Lord” savored too much of Joseph Smith, and
abounded with contradictions, and were very human at
that. As for Brigham, “he was a hopeless case; many
of his measures were utterly devoid of even commercial
sense, and far less were they clothed with divine wisdom
—in all his ways he was destitute of the magnanimity of
a great soul, and was intensely selfish.” To their devel-
oped intellects now, Mormonism seemed a crude jargon
of sense and nonsense, honesty and fraud, devotion and
cant, hopeless poverty to the many, overflowing wealth
to the favored few—a religion as unlike their conceptions
of the teachings of Christ, as darkness to light.°
This picture of Mormonism drawn by these two
elders in 1868 is still true to life today.
Arrived in New York, the two elders in the seclu-
sion of their hotel began to have “‘spirit communica-
tions’ and “revelations” of their own that confirmed
their doubts, and they returned to Salt Lake City
and disclosed the story of their adventure and of
their “revelations” to a small circle of confidential
friends, but especially to Elder Eli B. Kelsey, a Mor-
mon of twenty-seven years’ standing, and Elder
Edward W. Tullidge.® “Believing that Brigham,”
continues Stenhouse, “had set out to build up a dy-
nasty of his own, and that he, like David the king,
° Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 630-631.
*Tullidge afterwards wrote The History of Salt Lake City, which
was censored by Mormon authorities before its publication.
276 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
looked upon the people as his ‘heritage,’ these four
Elders resolved to sap the foundations of his throne,
and to place before the people the best intelligence
they could command to enable them to realize their
position.”
A quiet propaganda against the autocracy of the
Prophet was now carried on in the Utah Magazine,
which took on new life as an organ that ventured
to raise questions of doubt and suggest reforms.
This critical attitude was at first veiled and made
no personal reference to the Prophet. The editors
began to hint that ruthless suppression of liberty of
thinking should give way to independent thought
and free speech. ‘There is,’ wrote Harrison, “one
fatal error, which possesses the minds of some; it
is this: that God Almighty intended the priesthood
to do our thinking.. . . Our own opinion is that,
when we invite men to use free speech and free
thought to get into the church, we should not call
upon them, or ourselves, to kick down the ladder by
which they and we ascended to Mormonism. They
should be called upon to think on as before, no mat-
ter who has or has not thought in the same direction.
... Think freely, and think forever, and, above
all, never fear that the ‘Ark’ of everlasting truth
can ever be steadied by mortal hand or shaken.”
While the “New Movement” was under way, two
sons of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Alexander H.
and David Hyrum, who had gone off with the Re-
organized Church of Latter-Day Saints, appeared in
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 277
Salt Lake City, and called upon Brigham Young to
discuss with him the subject of polygamy to which
they were opposed. There were several hundred of
these ‘“‘Josephites,”’ as they were called, in the city
at the time, and many of the followers of Brigham
Young himself regarded them as the rightful suc-
cessors of their father. Young was quick to see
this dangerous rivalry and took decisive measures to
cut it short. He refused to permit Alexander and
Hyrum to speak in the Tabernacle and told them
that they could not enter the kingdom except by be-
ing baptized by one of Brigham’s elders, receiving
from him the priesthood and acknowledging that
polygamy was divine. He then told them that their
mother Emma was “a liar, yes, the damnedest liar
that ever lived,” and declared that she had tried to
poison her husband the Prophet.
The upshot of the matter was that Godbe and
Harrison were excommunicated. The “reformers”
now became more outspoken in their opposition to
Young and in time started the Tribune, which is
now The Salt Lake Tribune, a strictly non-Mormon
newspaper of great ability and wide influence.
The “New Movement” did not result in any con-
siderable reform of Mormonism, but it did in no
small degree impair the despotism of Brigham
Young. Stenhouse appraises its outcome and value
as follows:
But for the boldness of the Reformers, Utah today
would not have been what it is. Inspired by their ex-
278 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ample, the people who have listened to them disregarded
the teachings of the priesthood against trading with or
purchasing of the Gentiles. The spell was broken, and,
as in all such experiences, the other extreme was for a
time threatened. Walker brothers regained their lost
trade, and, in one year from the time that this “New
Movement”’ began, the stores of these merchants were so
crowded during the Conference, that it was with difficulty
their patrons could be served. . . . Reference should be
made to elders, some of whom had to steal away from
Utah, for fear of violent hands being laid upon them
had their intended departure been made known, who are
today wealthy and respected gentlemen in the highest
walks of life, both in the United States and in Europe.’
3. THE PROPHET AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWER
The comparative failure of the “New Movement’’
to curb the arbitrary power of the Prophet only in-
flamed his arrogancy and he now rose to the zenith
of his reign. He was known as “The Lion of the
Lord” and his two residences in which he housed
his wives were named the “Beehive House” and the
“Lion House,” “concerning which,’ say Cannon
and Knapp, “a thousand stories were told.” He
certainly looked and acted the part of a “Lion,”
but whether a “Lion of the Lord” was far from be-
ing unanimously conceded. Growing wealth and
influence caused him to assume and assert regal airs
"Rocky Mountain Saints, pp. 644-645. Cannon and Knapp think
the New Movement effected very little, saying that it ‘‘cost the
Mormon kingdom the cession of not a single dogma, and the loss
of scarcely a hundred members. Seldom, if ever, has so formidable
seeming an attack on ecclesiastical ramparts been so quickly and
finally repelled.” Brigham Young, p. 352.
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 279
and he moved around in his domain with something
of the pageantry and the mien of a monarch.
An effort was made at this point in his career
to catch the Prophet in the net of the law by federal
officials. In 1871 James B. McKean, then recently
appointed chief justice of the territory of Utah, dis-
played uncommon zeal in haling the Mormon
Prophet before the bar of justice. In September a
grand jury was drawn under federal law composed
entirely of Gentiles which indicted Young for “lewd
and lascivious cohabitation” under a territorial law
which the Mormons had passed and which they
claimed did not apply to polygamous marriages.
Still more offensive to the Mormons was the ad-
dress of Judge McKean in refusing a motion to
quash the indictment, in which he said:
It is proper to say that while the case at bar is called
“The People versus Brigham Young,” its other and real
title is “Federal Authority versus Polygamic Theocracy.”
The government of the United States, founded upon a
written constitution, finds within its jurisdiction another
government claiming to come from God—imperium in
impertio—whose policy and practices are, in grave par-
ticulars, at variance with its own. The one government
arrests the other, in the person of its chief, and arraigns
it at the bar. A system is on trial in the person of
Brigham Young. Let all concerned keep this fact con-
stantly in view; and let that government rule without
a rival which shall prove to be in the right.®
This language from the bench may have strained
the limits of judicial impartiality and propriety, but
* Brigham Young, p. 364.
280 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
it bluntly told the truth. The case against Young,
however, failed when the Supreme Court of the
United States decided that the district courts of
Utah were territorial courts and that juries must
be drawn in accordance with territorial law and this
invalidated the procedure against Young. Judge
McKean, however, was not through with the
Prophet and had the satisfaction of sending him to
jail for a day for contempt of court in the case of
the suit of his wife Ann Eliza for divorce, which
will be referred to later.
These “‘persecutions” “The Lion of the Lord” re-
guarded only as annoying bites and stings of pestif-
erous insects, and he moved on in his course with
something of the pose and the pomp of a conquering
monarch. Wealth was now flowing into his coffers
in increasing streams. The church tithes, the collec-
tion of which was constantly pressed upon the ofh-
cials of the stakes as their supreme duty, came
wholly into his hands and were treated by him as
his private funds without any accounting. It is
estimated that “this tithing fund must have
amounted to nearly a million dollars a year” and he
“left a fortune well above two million dollars in the
valuation of that time—potentially it was worth tens
of millions.” ® The business ramifications of the
“Z. C. M. 1.” and the establishment of new lines of
commercial expansion opened new fountains of
* Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young, pp. 379-380.
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 281
wealth, in the profits of which the Prophet did not
fail to get his share. j
Young constantly had his eye out roving over the
regions to the north and the south and he planted
stakes from Canada to Mexico and before his death
his missionaries had invaded both of these countries.
Any Mormon colony in any secluded mountain val-
ley or canyon or far-flung settlement up near the
snows of Canada or down in the tropic heat of Mex-
ico at once became self-supporting and a new center
of further propaganda and a new fountain of wealth
for the Prophet, for streams quickly began to flow
back from these springs, however distant, to the
reservoir of Young’s private treasury. On every
Mormon mill and granary and other edifice in Utah
were nailed the hammered iron letters “B. Y.” as the
sign of his ownership. “He did not extend this
definite mark of ownership into his provinces; but
if Brigham had chosen to use a flag, and if he had
chosen to plant it wherever his power was supreme,
it could have floated in an almost unbroken line
through the Rocky Mountain region, from Alberta
to Sonora.” *°
Once a year the Prophet traveled through his
Utah domain from the north to the south of the
territory. “His visit to the northern settlement
lasted usually three or four weeks; that to the south-
ern towns about twice as long. He was accom-
panied on these trips by a considerable number of
* Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young, p. 354.
282 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
his courtiers, and by one or more of his wives.
They were royal progresses, and were treated as
such. At each town, the visiting monarch was met
by deputations of citizens and officials; and in each
place where he stopped for more than a casual halt,
he gave clear indications of his imperial pleasure.” **
His constant care and urgent direction to his offi-
cials and followers was to fasten their hold on the
land and extend their possessions—and pay their
tithes. “Get choice land; till it intelligently; get
water-power for your mills; file on coal-mines and
quarries; build good meeting-houses and comfort-
able homes; pay your tithes—pay your tithes. Make
no unnecessary political conflict with your Gentile
neighbors; but hold your own—and our own is all
that comes within your reach.”
Thus Brigham Young rose on the steps of deeds
done from a poor New England boy and member of
the Methodist church to the Prophet of a church
largely of his own creation, a business promoter and
millionaire magnate and the practical monarch of
all he surveyed.
4. THE WIVES OF THE PROPHET
The prophets and apostles of the Mormon faith
believed in polygamy and they practiced it in liberal
measure. Joseph Smith was sealed to twenty-seven
wives, Heber Kimball was reputed to have twenty,
“Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young, p. 383.
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 283
and many others had equally numerous harems.
Brigham Young was not noted for economy in mat-
ters pertaining to his personal comfort and pleasure
and he did not exercise severe self-restraint in the
number of his wives. Just how many he had at the
end of his life is not certain and perhaps he had some
doubt about the number himself. At the death of
Joseph Smith he had five or six, and of Smith’s
reputed twenty-seven wives he married six of his
widows. At the expulsion from Nauvoo he had
sixteen and “perhaps twenty at the first settlement
of the Salt Lake Valley.”” In Pictures and Biogra-
plies of Brigham Young and His Wives, published
by J. M. Crockwell of Salt Lake City, “by authority
of Young’s eldest son and of seven of his wives, but
not complete,” there are the names of twenty-five
women, with the date of each marriage and the num-
ber of children born to each wife, the whole number
of children being forty-four.””
The last name in this list is Ann Eliza Webb who
was married to Young in April, 1868. With ref-
erence to this wife, Cannon and Knapp say:
Ann Eliza Webb posed as Brigham’s nineteenth wife,
and custom has fixed that as her number. There is just
as good warrant for calling her the twenty-ninth, or the
hundred and nineteenth. At the time of her marriage
there were known to be eighteen other women with whom
Brigham had sustained or was sustaining marital rela-
tions. Careful search probably would have doubled the
number, and not even Brigham could have told how many
” This list is given by Linn in Story, p. 580.
284 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
women he had “sealed.” The marriage ceremony was
sufficient to cover cohabitation in every case; and no
domestic census-taker could have drawn the line between
the three sorts of spouses.?*
Evidently the number of Brigham’s wives is fad-
ing into misty uncertainty and is as variable and ex-
pansive as sacred numbers in the hands of some
“prophetic” manipulators.
Cannon and Knapp give a page of pictures of
Brigham’s wives, with “The Lion of the Lord” pos-
ing in the midst of them, and their number is twenty-
one. ‘The pictures are not a very tempting exhibi-
tion and advertisement of the attractions of
polygamy. It seems to prove, however, that the
monarch of Mormonism had a monopoly of the mat-
rimonial market and it cannot be denied that “The
Lion of the Lord” had an uncommon carnal appe-
tite and was not sparing in providing for its
gratification.
Stenhouse lets us see into the process by which
the Prophet went about the business of winning
new wives. Rival younger men often had to be
gotten out of the way, and if a hint was not enough
to induce a contestant for a coveted hand to retire
gracefully, he would be sent off on a mission op-
portunely received “from the Lord.’”’ The case of
Amelia Folsom, who became one of his favorite
wives, illustrates his wily arts.
* Brigham Young, pp. 368-360.
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 285
Miss Folsom could play the piano and sing “Fair
Bingen on the Rhine.” Such accomplishments, at that
time, were rare and appreciated. Brigham had not taken
to himself a wife for a goodly number of years, and
“had got all the wives he wanted”; but Amelia attracted
him. His carriage lingered by her mother’s door for
hours nearly every day. He got barbered and perfumed
every morning, and replaced his homespun garments with
broadcloth. Twice the Endowment House was warmed
and made comfortable for the marriage : twice the Prophet
was disappointed. Finally the young woman was told
that it was the will of “the Lord,” but the Prophet would
trouble her no more. Alarmed with the fear of possibly
doing wrong, she sent for the Prophet, the Endowment
House was again warmed, and the “sealing” was
performed.**
How did Brigham Young conduct his extensive
marital establishment? He kept his first and legal
wife in the residence which stood apart from others
known as the “White House.” Most of his harem
were housed in the “Lion House,” a long building
having twenty rooms on the first floor in which each
wife had her separate quarters with sleeping rooms
above for the children and dining room and other
rooms below. He then maintained separate houses
for his two or three favorites, who would hold their
place in his affections and attentions for a time and
then be displaced by new-comers who were younger
and more comely women. Many of his wives he
seldom saw except when they all assembled in the
general dining room or in the parlor for evening
prayer. He was a generous provider and declared
“ Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 605.
286 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
of his wives that “he would provide them comfor-
table homes, clothe them properly, and give them
what they wanted to eat’’; but he would be “master
of his own actions.”
The rivalries in such an establishment and espe-
cially the displacement of one favorite by another
were necessarily attended by frictions and disap-
pointments and heart-burnings, for these women
were stillhuman. Brigham himself recognized fac-
tions and quarrels among his wives, for in a dis-
course delivered on September 21, 1856, he
declared:
And my wives have got to do one of two things; either
round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this
world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for I
will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone,
rather than have scratching and fighting all about me.
I will set all at liberty. ‘‘What, first wife too?” Yes, I
will liberate you all. I know what my women will say;
they will say, “You can have as many women as you
please, Brigham.” But I want to go somewhere and do
something to get rid of the whiners. . . . Sisters, I am
not joking.?°
The case of Ann Eliza Webb, who attained na-
tional celebrity as “No. 19,” but is No. 25 in the
authorized Pictures and Biographies, throws light
upon this phase of the Prophet’s life. She was a
young divorcée whom her father urged in marriage
upon Brigham in 1868. The Prophet was not
strongly inclined to the proposal as he was growing
* Linn, Story, p. 585.
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 287
old and had several young and beautiful wives, but
finally yielded and the dashing young “‘grass widow”
was added to his harem. Her period of favoritism
was brief and in 1873 she gave the Prophet a new
experience by bringing suit against him for divorce
on the grounds of neglect, cruel treatment and deser-
tion, alleging that he had property worth eight mil-
lions of dollars and an income of not less than forty
thousand dollars a year and asking an allowance of
one thousand dollars a month and a final award
of two hundred thousand dollars. Brigham sur-
prised everybody by meeting the charge with a
denial of a full legal marriage and averring that his
property did not exceed six hundred thousand dol-
lars and that his total income was not more than six
thousand dollars a month. Judge McKean ordered
Young to pay Ann Eliza three thousand dollars
counsel fees and five hundred dollars a month ali-
mony, and when he failed to obey sent him to jail
for contempt of court for one day. The case lin-
gered on for four years and passed through the
hands of five judges, when in April, 1877, Judge
Schaeffer “decreed that the polygamous marriage
was void, annulled all orders for alimony, and as-
sessed the costs against the defendant.”’
After her release from Mormonism Ann Eliza
took the lecture platform and for ten years lectured
all over the country more than a hundred and fifty
times a year, exposing “that accursed system with its
polygamous, murderous and other criminal prac-
288 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
tices.” In 1908 after retiring from the lecture plat-
form she published a large volume of over 500 pages
in which she gives much inside information as to
Mormonism, especially in relation to Brigham
Young’s polygamous family. Six chapters are de-
voted to a detailed account of the Prophet’s mar-
riage to each of his wives and of his experience with
them and of their experience with him and with
one another. Chapter XXXIV is entitled “Brig-
ham’s Plural Wives and Their Troubles,” and they
had plenty of them. The “Lion House” concealed
many a tragedy of an unhappy life and broken heart.
A few sentences may be quoted with reference to
one of them, Clara Chase, whose name does not
appear among the authorized Biographies:
Clara Chase was usually spoken of as the ‘‘maniac.”
Brigham at first treated her with great consideration. As
long as he devoted himself personally to her, she was
comparatively cheerful and content, and tried to be happy;
but when he neglected her she was almost desperate, and
wandered about in a half-dazed fashion, weeping and
moaning, and calling on God to forgive her. . . . When
she saw her husband, she cursed him as the cause of
her downfall. . . . She died in the midst of her ravings.?®
* Life in Mormon Bondage: A Complete Exposé of Its False
Prophets, Murderous Dantes, Despotic Rulers, and Hypnotized,
Deluded Subjects, by Ann Eliza Young, 19th Wife of Brigham
Young, pp. 389-390. Among the Mormon secrets revealed in this
book is the process of being initiated into “the degrees” of the
“Endowment House” which Ann Eliza went through. Much curi-
osity has been felt about this secret initiation and grave suspicions
have been entertained concerning it. As meticulously described by
Ann Eliza it contains nothing immoral, but is a long rigmarole of
fantastic mummeries which only excited her ridicule and contempt.
However, she declares it contains or did contain an oath “to enter-
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 289
Women are usually even more devoted than men
to any “peculiar institution” to which they are com-
mitted as a social inheritance, and therefore Mor-
mon women have mostly professed themselves to be
satisfied with polygamy and few have publicly com-
plained against it. Yet Ann Eliza is not the only
one who turned against it and disclosed its inmost
secrets and tragedies. When Mr. and Mrs. T. B.
H. Stenhouse left the Mormon church at the time of
the “New Movement,’ Mrs. Stenhouse unbosomed
herself in a book entitled Tell It All. Mrs. C. B.
Waite, who lived with her husband in Salt Lake
City in 1862-63 when her husband was Chief Jus-
tice of Utah, wrote The Mormon Prophet, which
gives much inside information, reporting a conver-
sation she had with one Mormon wife who said:
Oh, it is hard, very hard; but no matter we must bear
it. It is a correct principle, and there is no salvation
without it. We had one (wife) but it was so hard, both
for my husband and myself, that we could not endure it,
and she left us at the end of seven months. She had
been with us as a servant several months, and was a
good girl; but as soon as she was made a wife she became
insolent, and told me she had as good a right to the house
and things as I had, and you know that didn’t suit me
well.
tain an everlasting enmity to the United States government, and to
disregard its laws so far as possible; we swore that we would use
every exertion to avenge the death of our Prophet Joseph Smith and
his brother Hyrum upon the Gentile race, by whose means they were
brought to their unhappy fate, and to teach our children to foster
this spirit of revenge also.” Page 283.
290 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
There is no concealing the hard and cruel and
repulsive features of polygamous Mormonism, what-
ever exceptions it may have presented, and the
Prophet himself had many thorns in his flesh and
many of his wives had cups of exceeding bitterness.
5. THE DEATH OF THE PROPHET
Brigham Young died in Salt Lake City in the Bee-
-hive House on August 29, 1877, in his seventy-
seventh year. Six days before he had a severe at-
tack of cholera morbus which developed into inflam-
mation of the bowels, to which he had been subject,
and he steadily grew worse and died uttering the
repeated word, “Joseph! Joseph! Joseph!” The
body lay in state in the Tabernacle from Saturday,
September 1, until Sunday, when the funeral, which
drew thousands from all quarters of Mormondom,
was held. John Taylor, President of the Quorum
of Apostles, who was to succeed him in the presi-
dency of the church, delivered the funeral oration,
in which he expressed the confidence that the death
of the great Prophet would leave no gap that could
not be filled and that Zion would march with accel-
erated momentum to its rightful sovereignty over
the world. The body was buried in the heart of
the city which had grown up around him and which
he had largely created, and the grave is now marked
by a block of granite weighing many tons and is
surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. That block
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 291
of granite acts as though it were a great magnet
sending out subtle attractions to the ends of the
earth and it draws to it every day visitors and tour-
ists some of whom stand before it in reverence and
devotion and others who look upon it with curiosity.
Thus ended the strange career of the man who
began life in Vermont as a poor boy with little
schooling and no advantages, at twenty-one joined
the Methodist church, at thirty-one was baptized
into the faith of Joseph Smith and joined the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and at sev-
enty-seven died as President, Prophet, Seer and
Revelator of his church, the husband of twenty-five
or more wives, a multimillionaire and the virtual
monarch of all he surveyed.
Brigham Young appeared at an opportune mo-
ment. Joseph Smith conceived a scheme and
launched an enterprise which his ill-balanced brain
and weak fumbling hands could never have carried
to successful realization; in fact, he steered his ship
upon the rocks. Brigham Young seized the wreck-
age and by his foresight and practical judgment and
forceful personality and iron will carried it across
the plains and planted it in a secluded valley rimmed
around with mountains, where it had immunity from
the surrounding sea of civilization and time to get
rooted and grow into self-support and a vigorous
propaganda. He tightened his grip upon it and
subordinated it to his own will and sovereignty.
More and more his word was law and gospel. His
292 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
practical sagacity seized upon the land and joined
field to field, picking out the fertile valleys and the
mill-sites and the mines. The Prophet also devel-
oped into a business promoter and wedded Mormon-
ism to Mammon with singular success. All sources
of wealth poured streams into his own coffers. The
city he founded grew around him like a fair plant
and bloomed into a splendid blossom that is now one
of the beautiful cities of the country and the world.
He pushed his settlements northward into Canada
and southward into Mexico and flung the tentacles
of his system out over the neighboring territories of
Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico
and Colorado, threw them across the Atlantic into
Europe and over the Pacific into the Sandwich
Islands and with them encircled the world. He was
a despotic emperor within his own empire, attended
with royal pageantry and ruling with an iron hand.
For a time he treated even the United States govern-
ment with contempt and defiance or held it at bay,
and only the glitter of bayonets in the streets of his
capital city and cannon trained upon his private resi-
dence brought him to acknowledge the federal
authority.
Yet this man had few gifts and narrow limita-
tions. He lacked the higher and finer elements of
human greatness. His “mind was uncorrupted by
books” and “he probably never read a book, outside
of the Mormon faith, in his life.”?’ His ethical
* Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 638.
BRIGHAM YOUNG, MONARCH OF MORMONISM 293
sense was blunt and blinded by self-interest, and
his nature was coarse and hard. His vanity was
abnormal and enormous, and his sensuousness was
deeply ingrained and imperious, brooking little re-
straint. Yet he had masterful control over himself
and over his subjects within the limits of his domi-
nant objective. Hecould compress all currents into
the channel of his will to make the Mormon system
supreme and sovereign. He dreamed of world em-
pire as truly as Alexander and Napoleon, but with
little basis of reason and fact. Yet he played the
part admirably in the sight of his own people. He
comported himself and did things in a grand manner
and strode his domain like a colossus. His subjects
bowed before him in almost abject subservience, for
they believed he held the keys of salvation in this
world and of destiny in the next. His assumption
of supreme authority was superb, his very impu-
dence was so amazing as to be amusing, and at times
he looked and acted “The Lion of the Lord” as he
ruled with lordly pose and power over his obsequious
people and shook his frightful mane and roared ter-
rifyingly at his enemies. If he had had a rich sense
of humor he could have laughed uproariously at
himself. Yet he was never a small man and at times
commands our respect.
Conscientious he no doubt was, as are all religious
founders and fanatics, though at times he must have
been playing the part of a hypocrite. How much
he really believed in the “revelations” and “Bible”
294 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
of Smith cannot be known, and he evidently had lit-
tle faith in his own power of “revelation” as he had
the sense to restrain his gift to one deliverance. But
he was an adroit opportunist and turned everything
into a means to his own ends. Nota dreamer but a
doer, Joseph Smith and his Bible were good enough
for his purpose, and he used them with masterly
skill and power.
He had a kind and degree of greatness which is
evidenced by the arduous test of deeds done. His
power to bring things to pass was the pragmatic
chain by which he bound his followers to himself and .
kept them in bondage. As an empire builder he
achieved a success that stands as a witness to him
to this day.
Yet he set himself against the civilization and
ethical spirit of his age, and judged by this test he
cannot be counted great or good. He sought to
undermine monogamy and restore one of the twin-
relics of pagan and pre-Christian barbarism. He
did what he could to turn the clock of human prog-
ress and rational religion back three thousand years.
He tried to change the front of the universe rear-
ward, and it does not move in that direction. The
stars were against him, and hardly was he gone
until the key-stone fell out of the arch of his system
in the surrender of the practice of polygamy. The
ultimate fate of his system and of his personal fame
is yet to be seen.
CHAPTER XIX
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY
5 Osha strength, the perpetuity, and the destiny of the
nation rests upon our homes, established by the law
of God, guarded by parental care, regulated by parental
authority, and sanctified by parental love. These are not
the homes of polygamy.
The mothers of our land, who rule the nation as they
mold the characters and guide the actions of their sons,
live according to God’s holy ordinances, and each, secure
and happy in the exclusive love of the father of her
children, sheds the warm light of true womanhood, un-
perverted and unpolluted, upon all within her pure and
wholesome family circle. These are not the cheerless,
crushed, and unwomanly mothers of polygamy.
The fathers of our families are the best citizens of
the Republic. Wife and children are the sources of the
patriotism, and conjugal and parental affection beget
devotion to the country. The man who, undefiled with
plural marriage, is surrounded in his single home with
his wife and children, has a status in the country which
inspires him with respect for its laws and courage for
its defence. These are not the fathers of polygamous
families.
These bold words were uttered by President
Grover Cleveland in his first message to Congress
in 1885. They voiced the deep, pent-up, long ac-
cumulating convictions and feelings of the American
people and rang out over the land like the strokes of
295
296 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
a great iron-throated bell tolling the death-knell of
Mormon polygamy. Federal legislation had already
made gestures against the system, but this language
had teeth in it which foretold a decisive attack.
I. THE MORMON SYSTEM OF POLYGAMY
We have already traced the development of the
Mormon practice and doctrine of polygamy. It be-
gan as an irregular practice and ugly rumors con-
nected it with Joseph Smith at Kirtland, Ohio, it
was Officially denied at Nauvoo in 1844, but it was
openly practiced in that town in 1845, and Smith’s
“revelation” on the subject was dated July 12, 1843,
and this was announced to a church conference at
Salt Lake City on August 28, 1852. It had by this
time become the general and ostentatious doctrine
and practice of Mormon officials and was advocated
and urged on all their people.
Writing in 1857 in his book on Mormonism,’
Elder John Hyde thus enumerated the homes and
wives of some of the leaders:
A very pretty house on the east side was occupied by
the late J. M. Grant and his five wives. A large barrack-
like house on the corner is tenanted by Ezra T. Benson
and his four ladies. A large but mean-looking house to
the west was inhabited by the late Parley P. Pratt and
his nine wives. In that long, dirty row of single rooms,
half hidden by a very beautiful orchard and garden,
lived Dr. Richard and his eleven wives. Wilford Wood-
*Page 34.
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 297
ruff and five wives reside in another large house still
further west. O. Pratt and some four or five wives
occupy an adjacent building. Looking toward the north,
we espy a whole block covered with houses, barns, gar-
dens, and orchards. In these dwell H. C. Kimball and
his eighteen or twenty wives, their families and depen-
dents.
Evidence that such harems were often torn with
internal jealousy and strife and unhappiness, some
of which has already been given, could be multiplied
indefinitely from the many Mormon books and ad-
missions and confessions on the subject. Several
more are here given from Linn. Brigham Young
himself, speaking in the Tabernacle on September
21, 1856, said: “Men will say, ‘My wife, though a
most excellent woman, has not seen a happy day
since I took my second wife; no, not a happy day
for ayear.’” J. M. Grant declared that there was
“scarcely a mother in Israel’ who would not, if they
could, “break asunder the cable of the church in
Christ; and they talk it to their husbands, to their
daughters, and to their neighbors, and say that they
have not seen a week’s happiness since they became
acquainted with that law, or since their husbands
took a second wife.’ And the coarse and plain-
spoken H. C. Kimball thus defined the duty of
polygamous wives: “It is the duty of a woman to be
obedient to her husband, and, unless she is, I would
not give a damn for all her queenly right or author-
ity, nor for her either, if she will quarrel and lie
298 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
about the work of God and the principles of
plurality.” ?
On what grounds did and do the Mormons re-
habilitate and justify a relic of barbarism that had
long since been cast off and left behind by advancing
civilization and that is attended with so much opposi-
tion and unhappiness? The original suggestion of
it probably came to Joseph Smith when he was mak-
ing his “Bible,” which involved some study of the
Old Testament, and “‘it is not at all improbable that
Smith’s natural inclination toward such a doctrine
as polygamy secured a foundation in his reading of
the Old Testament license to have a plurality of
wives.’ The Mormons still maintain that polygamy
has upon it the sanction of the Old Testament patri-
archs, but they quietly ignore the fact that the New
Testament positively forbids any such practice.
Even in the Old Testament polygamy, along with
slavery, is not commanded or expressly sanctioned
but is dealt with as an existing ancient social institu-
tion which could not be suddenly uprooted, but it
was regulated and mitigated and started towards
extinction and monogamy.
Frank J. Cannon, who was brought up in the
Mormon church and has intimate knowledge of its
doctrine and practice, devotes a chapter to a “Study
of Polygamy,” ° and states the case as follows:
* Story, pp. 584-585.
* Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire, Chapter XXIV. —
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 299
Mormon apologists for polygamy claim for it four
points of superiority over monogamy. These are:
That polygamy tends to a more rapid increase of
population.
That polygamy gives the only chance of wifehood and
honorable motherhood to millions of women.
That polygamy prevents prostitution.
That polygamy secures better safeguards for mother
and child during pregnancy and the nursing period.
Mr. Cannon convincingly refutes each and all of
these four claims. The first is disproven by the fact
that “in practically every case, it may be predicted
that the woman who becomes a plural wife will bear
fewer children than she would bear in monogamy.”
The second becomes laughable in the face of the fact
that “in the nation at large, there are 105 males to
every hundred females.” The third is not borne
out by the facts of experience. And the fourth is
discredited by the fact that ‘three generations of
Mormon children born in polygamy” do not “out-
strip in either health or intelligence the offspring of
monogamous marriages.”
Whatever justification there may have been for
polygamy in barbarous times * and however it was
permitted among the ancient Hebrews because of
“the hardness of their hearts” or their low stage of
ethical development, yet Christianity set its whole
doctrine and spirit against it and it has been driven
* Polygamy probably arose along with slavery out of the custom
of sparing the lives of captives in war instead of killing them, and
this way of disposing of them was at that time a step forward in
humanity.
800 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
from all the higher levels of civilization. The con-
science of Christendom condemns it and revolts
against it. It is a monstrous wrong and cruelty
to womanhood. The unity and peace of the home
depend upon it and the children need the undivided
care and love of both parents. It is truly a relic
of barbarism and had to go along with slavery.
The American people were a bit slow to realize
what was going on among the Mormons in their
early days. They received with ridicule the rumors
of Smith’s “Bible” and heard of the troubles in Mis-
souri and at Nauvoo without attaching much signifi-
cance to them. “Joe” Smith’s candidacy for the
presidency of the United States was only a “joke,”
and Brigham Young’s “Mormon war” was more
amusing than serious. Other issues were crowding
to the front. The Civil War absorbed the national
consciousness and conscience. But when these great
issues were out of the way, the American people be-
gan to realize that Mormonism was more than a
comedy and had already turned to tragedy. They
saw that the fair city the Mormons had reared like a
splendid blossom in the Great Salt Lake Valley was
really a great cancer planted in the very bosom and
heart of the continent and was rapidly sending its
noxious roots out through neighboring territories
and threatening to poison the life-blood of the na-
tion. This conviction grew in depth and intensity
until it took the form of decisive action.
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 301
2. THE COURSE OF LEGISLATION AGAINST POLYGAMY
The first federal law against polygamy was em-
bodied in the Morrill Bill which was passed by Con-
gress in 1862 and signed by President Lincoln. It
limited its application to bigamy and the punishment
for its violation consisted of a fine not to exceed
$5,000 and imprisonment for not more than a year.
Little action resulted from this law as in 1867 the
presiding officers of the Utah legislature petitioned
Congress to repeal it, declaring that “the judiciary
of this territory has not, up to the present time, tried
any case under said law, though repeatedly urged to
do so by those who have been anxious to test its
constitutionality.” However, in 1874, the law hav-
ing been strengthened in that year by an act known
as the Poland Bill, George Reynolds, Brigham
Young’s private secretary, was convicted of bigamy,
and, being released on a technicality, was the next
year again convicted and fined and imprisoned.
This case came up to the Supreme Court of the
United States in 1878 and the Mormons endeavored
to have the law declared unconstitutional on the
ground that it interfered with liberty of religious
belief. But the court sustained the conviction in an
opinion in which it reviewed the history of polygamy
in England and the United States. It was formerly
a capital offense in England as it also was in Vir-
ginia as late as 1788. The court declared:
802 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
In the face of all this evidence, it is impossible to
believe that the constitutional guarantee of religious free-
dom was intended to prohibit legislation in respect to
this most important feature of social life. . . . So here,
as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive
dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural
marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his
practices to the contrary because of his religious belief?
To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines
of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and
in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto
himself. Government could exist only in name under
such circumstances.
In 1878 national interest received a fresh impulse
towards some decisive action against polygamy by
a mass meeting of women in Salt Lake City opposed
to polygamy, which adopted an address “to Mrs.
Rutherford B. Hayes and the women of the United
States” and a petition to Congress, declaring that
there had been more polygamous marriages in the
last year than ever before in the history of the Mor-
mon Church; that the Mormons had the balance of
power in two territories and were plotting to extend
it; and asking Congress “to arrest the further prog-
ress of this evil.”
Action was now urged on Congress by the next
three Presidents of the United States. President
Hayes, in his annual message in 18709, declared,
“Polygamy can only be suppressed by taking away
the political power of the sect which encourages
and sustains it,’ and recommended “that Congress
provide for the government of Utah by a Governor
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 303
and Judges, or Commissioners, appointed by the
President and confirmed by the Senate, (or) that
the right to vote, hold office, or sit on juries in the
Territory of Utah be confined to those who neither
practise nor uphold polygamy.” President Garfield
in his inaugural in 1881 declared, “The Mormon
church not only offends the moral sense of mankind
by sanctioning polygamy, but prevents the adminis-
tration of justice through ordinary instrumentali-
ties of law,” and called for action that would not
allow “any ecclesiastical organization to usurp in
the smallest degree the functions and power of the
national government.” And President Arthur in
his annual message in December, 1881, referred to
“this odious crime, so revolting to the moral and
religious sense of Christendom,” and called for legis-
lation. We have seen the strong language used by
President Cleveland in his first annual message in
1885.
The Edmunds Bill, the first decisive blow struck
at polygamy by Congress, was signed by President
Arthur on March 22, 1881. Its provisions are sum-
marized by Linn as follows:
It provided, in brief, that, in the territories, any person
who, having a husband or wife living, marries another,
or marries more than one woman on the same day, shall
be punished by a fine of not more than $500, and by
imprisonment, for not more than five years; that a male
person cohabiting with more than one woman shall be
guilty of misdemeanor, and be subject to a fine of not
more than $300 or to six months imprisonment, or both;
304 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
that in any prosecution for bigamy, polygamy, or un-
lawful cohabitation, a juror may be challenged if he is
or has been living in the practice of either offence, or
if he believes it right for a man to have more than one
living and undivorced wife at a time, or to cohabit with
more than one woman; that the President may have
power to grant amnesty to offenders, as described, before
the passage of this act; that the issue of so-called Mor-
mon marriages born before January 1, 1883, be legit-
imated; that no polygamist shall be entitled to vote in any
territory, or to hold office under the United States; that
the President shall appoint in Utah a board of five persons
for the registry of voters, and the reception and counting
of votes.
This law was amended and strengthened in 1887
by additional provisions, dissolving the corporation
called the Perpetual Emigration Company and for-
bidding the legislature to pass any law to bring per-
sons into the territory, dissolving the corporation
known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints and giving the Supreme Court of the terri-
tory power to wind up its affairs, and annulling all
laws regarding the Nauvoo Legion and all acts of
the territorial legislature.
The Edmunds law created Mormon excitement
and indignation in Utah and was met with the deter-
mination to evade and resist it in every way. Mor-
mon preachers and newspapers flamed out against
it and reiterated the divine nature of the “revela-
tion” concerning polygamy and its obligatory char-
acter and urged the people ‘‘to stand by their lead-
ers in opposition to it.” ‘An Epistle from the First
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 805
Presidency to the officers and members of the
church,” dated October 6, 1885, was issued, of which
the following are a few specimen extracts:
The war is openly and undisguisedly made upon our
religion. To induce men to repudiate that, to violate its
precepts, and break its solemn covenants, every encour-
agement is given. The man who agrees to discard his
wife or wives, and to trample upon the most sacred obli-
gations which human beings can enter into, escapes 1m-
prisonment, and is applauded; while the man who will
not make this compact of dishonor, who will not admit
that his past life has been a fraud and a lie, who will
not say to the world, “I intended to deceive my God,
my brethren, and my wives by making covenants I did
not expect to keep,” is, beside being punished to the full
extent of the law, compelled to endure the reproaches,
taunts, and insults of a brutal judge. . . . Upward of
forty years ago the Lord revealed to his church the prin-
ciple of celestial marriage. . . . Who would suppose that
any man, in this land of religious liberty, would presume
to say to his fellow-man that he had no right to take
such steps as he thought necessary to escape damnation?
Or that Congress would enact a law which would present
the alternative to religious believers of being consigned
to a penitentiary if they should attempt to obey a law of
God which would deliver them from damnation?
With the First Presidency denouncing the Ed-
munds law in these unmeasured terms, how was it
obeyed? Linn, who is our chief authority at this
point, summarizes the results of the law as follows:
The records of the courts of Utah show that the
Mormons stood ready to obey the teachings of the church
at any cost. Prosecutions under the Edmunds law began
306 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
in 1884, and the convictions for polygamy or unlawful
cohabitation (mostly the latter) were as follows in the
years named: 3 in 1884, 39 in 1885, 112 in 1886, 214 in
1887, and 100 in 1888, with 48 in Idaho during the
same period. Leading men in the church went into
hiding—“under ground,” as it was called—or fled from
the territory. As to the actual continuance of polygamous
marriages, the evidence was contradictory. A _ special
report of the Utah Commission in 1884 expressed the
opinion that there had been a decided decrease in their
number in the cities, and very little decrease in the
rural districts. Their regular report for that year esti-
mated the number of males and females who had entered
into that relation at 459. The report for 1888 stated
that the registration officers gave the names of 29
females who, they had good reason to believe, had con-
tracted polygamous marriages since the lists closed in
June, 1887.
In the face of this continued violation of the law
federal legislation and enforcement kept drawing
the noose tighter around the neck of polygamy. The
Utah Commission, which entered upon its duties in
August, 1882, proved an effective means of restrain-
ing Mormon defiance, and removal from office, peni-
tentiary walls and the threatened dissolution of the
church organization and the forfeiture of its entire
property were not shadows without substance or
laws without teeth. Within two years after the
Commission began business about 12,000 Mormon
voters had been disfranchised, of the 1351 elective
officers in the territory not one was a polygamist,
and no municipal officers of Salt Lake City had ever
had plural wives.
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 307
In the summer of 1890, Judge John W. Judd,
after sentencing some fifty or sixty Saints to the
penitentiary, said to them:
I want to say a few words to you people before you
depart to the penitentiary. You haven’t the appearance
of criminals. And aside from the special offense for
which you have received light sentences, you are a law-
abiding people. But the laws of the United States have
declared that polygamy and unlawful cohabitation are
crimes. And I will say to you, in all kindness, that Uncle
Sam is on top in this Territory, and you people have one
of three alternatives—you can obey the law, leave the
Territory, or go to the penitentiary.®
In his report for 1890, Governor A. L. Thomas
declared that the Mormon Church under its system
could only define its position on polygamy by a pub-
lic declaration by the President of the church, or by
action by a conference, and “there is no reason,”
he said, “‘to believe that any earthly power can ex-
tort from the church any such declaration.” He did
not know how soon this very thing would be done.
3. THE MORMON MANIFESTO OF 1890
Events of a menacing nature to polygamy now
moved rapidly. In the summer of 1889 the non-
Mormon element of Salt Lake City, organized as
the “Liberty Party” under the leadership of Judge
O. W. Powers, put George M. Scott in the field
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, pp. 265-266.
308 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
as a candidate for the mayoralty of the city. The
Mormons made desperate efforts to defeat him by
gathering as many of their voters as possible from
neighboring regions into the city, but at the
election on August 4 Scott was elected, and the
next morning the Mormons read on the walls of
Zion the ominous words, “Liberal Majority of 41—
George M. Scott, Mayor. Mene, Mene, Tekel,
Upharsin.’ The control of their own citadel had
passed out of their hands, and this foreshadowed
their doom. Having lost control at home they knew
they could not long hold their own anywhere else.
With all their defiance and bluff, they could not con-
ceal from themselves that the game was lost. The
ever increasing roar of the sea of indignation
against polygamy throughout the country spread
alarm through Mormondom and sounded the death-
knell of the institution. The polygamists knew that
angry waves were rising against them which even
the dikes of the Rocky Mountains could not shut out.
Bills of increasing stringency and hostility against
polygamy kept turning up in Congress, and when
on May 19, 1890, the Supreme Court of the United
States affirmed the decision of the lower court con-
fiscating the entire property of the Mormon Church
and declaring that church to be an organized re-
bellion, and when on June 21 the Senate passed a
bill disposing of the real estate of the church for the
benefit of the school fund,® the Mormon authorities
*This confiscated property was afterwards restored to the church.
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 309
realized that they must take decisive action to save
their institution and take it soon.
President John Taylor succeeded President Brig-
ham Young, and Apostle Wilford W. Woodruff
succeeded Taylor to the Presidency. He was eighty-
three years old, a polygamist who had refused to
take the test oath and had been disfranchised, and
he now appeared as the Moses to lead the Mormons
across the Red Sea that rolled its angry waves be-
fore them. He extricated his people out of their
predicament by the bold stroke of issuing, on Sep-
tember 25, 1890, a “manifesto” which plays an
important part in this history. It began by announc-
ing an untruth in declaring that “we are not preach-
ing polygamy, nor permitting any person to enter
into its practice,’ and it closed with the following
important part of the proclamation:
Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress,
which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the
court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to sub-
mit to these laws, and to use my influence with the mem-
bers of the church over which I preside to have them do
likewise.
There is nothing in my teachings to the church, or
in those of my associates, during the time specified,
which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encour-
age polygamy, and when any elder of the church has
used language which appeared to convey any such teach-
ings he has been promptly reproved.
And now I publicly declare that my advice to the Lat-
ter-Day Saints is to refrain from contracting any mar-
riage forbidden by the law of the land.
310 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
On October 6, 1890, the General Conference of
the church, on motion of Lorenzo Snow, a polyg-
amist and Apostle who succeeded Woodruff to the
presidency of the church, unanimously adopted the
following resolution, which was reaffirmed by the
General Conference of October 6, 1891:
I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as Presi-
dent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,
and the only man on earth at the present time who holds
the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully
authorized, by virtue of his position, to issue the manifesto
that has been read in our hearing, and which is dated
September 24, 1890, and as a church in general con-
ference assembled we accept his declaration concerning
plural marriages as authoritative and binding.’
These General Conferences of the church, held in
the Tabernacle, were each attended by upwards of
ten thousand people, so that this thing was “not done
in a corner.”
The matter of harmonizing this action of the
church with previous official “revelations” and
teachings confronted the Mormon leaders and gave
them great difficulty. In his “revelation” of polyg-
amy, Smith declared: “Behold! I reveal unto you
a new and everlasting covenant; it was instituted
for the fulness of my glory; and he that receiveth
a fulness thereof, must and shall abide the law, or
he shall be damned, saith the Lord God.” Brigham
Young declared in 1855, “Now, if any of you will
*The manifesto is given in full by Gibbs, Lights and Shadows,
DP. 273.
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 311
deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so,
I promise that you will be damned.” Charles W.
Penrose, a Mormon hymn-writer and polygamist,
said in 1875, “We did not originate the doctrine of
‘celestial marriage’; we have no right to abolish it.”
The manifesto itself contains no reference to any
divine sanction for it and in fact it is only President
Woodruft’s advice.” However, Mormon leaders
found themselves pressed for some kind of authority
or ground on which to rest the manifesto and pres-
ently began to invent or at least put forth explana-
tions that they had not mentioned before. George
©. Cannon reverted to Smith’s “revelation” of Jan-
uary 19, 1841, given out to excuse the failure to
establish a Zion in Missouri, namely, that when
their enemies prevent their performing a task as-
signed by the Almighty, he would accept their effort
to do so, and said that “it was on this basis’ that
the manifesto had been issued. President Wood-
ruff explained: “It is not wisdom for us to make
war upon 65,000,000 people. . . . The Prophet or-
ganized the church; all that he has promised in
this code of revelations has been fulfilled as fast as
time would permit. That which is not fulfilled will
beer ®
Thirteen months after the proclamation of the
manifesto President Woodruff delivered a sermon
in which he said with reference to how he came to
issue it:
*Linn, Story, pp. 603-604.
312 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
I laid it before my brethren, such strong men as Brother
George Q. Cannon, Brother Joseph F. Smith and the
twelve apostles. I might as well undertake to turn an
army with banners out of its course as to turn them out
of a course they considered to be right. These men
agreed with me, and 10,000 Latter-Day Saints also agreed
with me. Why? Because they were moved upon by the
Spirit of God and by the revelations of Jesus Christ to
do it.
At last they reached the ground of a divine reve-
lation for an action which was forced out of them by
the necessities of their situation. More than once
during these critical days United States troops were
held in readiness for possible action.
At this time an event occurred that added fuel to
the flames of public hostility to polygamy. The
territorial legislature of Utah adopted a law which
had the effect of nullifying the federal law against
polygamy, but this action aroused such protest
throughout the country that the Mormons saw their
mistake and the Governor vetoed the bill.
The proclamation of the manifesto was followed
in December of the next year with a petition for
amnesty presented to the President of the United
States and signed by the First Presidency and Apos-
tles of the Mormon Church. It declared that polyg-
amy had been taught and practiced by the authori-
ties and members of the church but that under the
pressure of the law “the present head of the church
in anguish and prayer cried out to God for help for
his flock, and received permission to advise the mem-
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 313
bers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day
Saints that the law commanding polygamy was
henceforth suspended,” and ended with respectfully
praying “that full amnesty may be extended to all
who may be under disabilities because of the so-
called Edmunds-Tucker law.”
President Benjamin Harrison responded with a
proclamation of amnesty which concluded as fol-
lows:
Now, therefore, I, Benjamin Harrison, President of
the United States, by virtue of the powers vested in me,
do hereby declare and grant a full amnesty and pardon
for all persons liable to the penalties of said act, by
reason of unlawful cohabitation under color of polyga-
mous marriage, who have, since November Ist, 1890,
abstained from such unlawful cohabitation, but upon ex-
press condition that they shall in the future faithfully
obey the laws of the United States hereinbefore named
and not otherwise. Those who shall fail to avail them-
selves of the clemency hereby offered will be vigorously
prosecuted.
4. WAS THE MANIFESTO KEPT?
The country breathed more freely after the adop-
tion of the manifesto and the President’s amnesty,
hoping, if not supposing, that the Mormons had been
brought to book and would keep their promise. “The
mutual surrender,” says Gibbs, “produced an era of
good feeling between Gentiles and Mormons.”
Many Mormon husbands did divorce or cease to
live with their plural wives and this brought great
314 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
distress upon these women. On this point Gibbs
writes:
It was on those plural homes that the shadow of the
manifesto fell with crushing force. Those women had
laid the best of their lives and all they possessed on the
altar of polygamy. By the edict of the manifesto, hun-
dreds of modern Hagars were driven forth into the wil-
derness of a new and strange existence. In some cases
the first wife voluntarily secured a divorce from her
husband, so that the plural wife might become the legal
wife, and that, too, from the loftiest motives.
So sore and pitiful were these cases that in many
instances “‘the Gentiles permitted, without protest,
the return of prodigal husbands. Under all the
circumstances, they regarded it as the lesser of the
evils.”
It was not long, however, until it began to appear
that there had been no real change of heart on the
part of the Mormon leaders and that their offensive
teachings and practices had not stopped. Evidence
of this based on Mormon authorities is conclusive.
It is to be remembered that the Mormon authorities
did not in the manifesto and do not now deny the
doctrine of polygamy. Referring to this doctrine,
Joseph F. Smith, one of the Twelve Apostles who
signed the amnesty petition, declared on June 12,
as published in The Deseret News of June 23, 1903,
that “The Latter-Day Saint who denies and rejects
that truth in his heart, might well reject every other
truth connected with his mission’; and in 1904 he
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 315
declared at Washington, “I believe in that principle
today as much as ever I believed in it.”
But did they practice it after the manifesto? The
evidence on this point is equally clear. J. F. Gibbs,
having come out from Mormonism and writing with |
inside knowledge of the facts, devotes Chapter
XXXI of his Lights and Shadows of Mormonism
largely to this question and gives abundant proof
from official sources that the Mormon leaders did
not keep the manifesto. He gives the following
extract from “An Address. The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the World,” 1907,
as proof that President Joseph F. Smith and his
councilors and apostles had definite knowledge of
post-manifesto plural marriages:
When all the circumstances are weighed, the wonder is,
not that there have been sporadic cases of plural marriage,
but that such cases have been so few. It should be
remembered that a religious conviction existed among
the people, holding this order of marriage to be divinely
sanctioned. Little wonder then that there should appear,
in a community as large as ours, and as sincere, a few
over-zealous individuals who refused to submit to the
action of the church in such a matter, or that these few
should find others who sympathized with their views;
the number, however, is small.
This explicit admission that there were violations
of the law, however ‘“‘few,” establishes the fact, and
the “number” can be better determined otherwise
than by this official Mormon statement. The am-
nesty proclamation carried with it the fact that
316 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
polygamous cohabitation was to cease, but Gibbs de-
clares that ‘“‘by the time the amnesty proclamation
of January 4th, 1808, was issued, nearly every polyg-
amous Saint had resumed his former relations with
his plural wives,” and that “notwithstanding Presi-
dent Harrison’s pardon was based on the discontinu-
ance of unlawful cohabitation, the registry files
throughout Utah, and the large increase in the num-
ber of votes cast at the next election, prove beyond
controversy that polygamous Saints registered_and
voted.” Gibbs then gives specific proof that Apos-
tles John W. Taylor and Abraham H. Cannon mar-
ried plural wives after the amnesty proclamation.
The same guilt was admitted on the stand at Wash-
ington before the Senate Committee on Privileges
and Elections in the case of the retention of Apostle
Reed Smoot in the Senate.’
Ex-Senator Frank J. Cannon is another witness
to the violation of the federal law, and especially of
the amnesty, who writes with inside knowledge, and
the following extract will suffice:
The first oracular disclosure made by the Prophets,
on the witness stand (at Washington), came as a shock
even unto Utah. They testified that they had resumed
polygamous cohabitation to an extent unsuspected by
either Gentiles or Mormons. President Joseph F. Smith
admitted that he had had eleven children borne to him
by his five wives, since pledging himself to obey the
“revealed’ manifesto of 1890 forbidding polygamous
°For official extracts from the testimony of Joseph F, Smith in
this case see Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, pp. 289-293.
THE SURRENDER OF POLYGAMY 317
relations. Apostle Francis Marion Lyman, who was
next in succession to the Presidency, made a similar ad-
mission of guilt, though in a lesser degree. So did John
Henry Smith and Charles W. Penrose, apostles. So
did Brigham H. Roberts and George Reynolds, Presi-
dents of Seventies. So did a score of others among the
lesser authorities. And they confessed that they were
living in polygamy in violation of their pledges to the
nation and the terms of their amnesty, against the law
and the constitution of the state, and contrary to the
“revelation of God” by which the doctrine of polygamy
had been withdrawn from practice in the church! Presi-
dent Joseph I. Smith admitted he was violating the law
of the state. He was asked: “Is there not a revelation
that you shall abide by the law of the state and of the
land?” He answered, “Yes, sir.’ He was asked: “‘And
if that is a revelation, are you not violating the laws of
God?” He answered: “I have admitted that, Mr. Sen-
ator, a great many times.” 1°
Other indubitable instances of violation of the
law after the amnesty are given by Cannon and
Gibbs, and Linn, whose work on The Story of Mor-
monism was published in 1901, says, ‘““The most in-
telligent non-Mormon testimony obtainable in the
territory must be discarded if we are to believe that
polygamous relations have not been continued in
many instances.” On June I1, 1906, a majority
of the committee made a report to the Senate rec-
ommending that Apostle Smoot was not entitled to
his seat in that body on the ground that he was one
of a “‘self-perpetuating body of fifteen men, uniting
in themselves authority in both church and state,”
* Under the Prophet in Utah, by Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J.
‘O’Higgins, pp. 268-269.
318 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
who “so exercise this authority as to encourage
among their followers a belief in polygamy as a
divine institution, and by both precept and example
encourage among their followers the practice of
polygamy and polygamous cohabitation.”
The evidence is conclusive that both the teaching
and the practice of polygamy were continued among
the Mormon leaders and people on a considerable
scale after the manifesto and the amnesty. Prose-
cutions were negligible and came to nothing because
of Mormon influence. Brigham H. Roberts was
tried in the district court in Salt Lake City in April,
1900, on the charge of unlawful cohabitation, but
the jury disagreed. It is hard to resist the conclu-
sion, boldly asserted by both Gibbs and Cannon, that
the Mormon authorities in their manifesto perpe-
trated a fraud upon the American people. Perhaps
a simple-minded Mormon woman let the secret out
when she said that the manifesto was “just to fool
the Gentiles.” Perhaps also they were playing for
bigger game.
(CLAP TAR ON
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD
HIS bigger game was statehood for Utah.
Mormonism is a political as well as a religious
system. As it was a reversion from monogamy to
polygamy, so was it from democracy to autocracy,
and this made the system doubly atavistic and an-
achronistic, degenerate and dangerous.
I. EARLY DREAMS OF EMPIRE
We have already seen how the founders of Mor-
monism were heading towards political supremacy
and even of world empire from the beginning.
Wherever they settled they quickly came into colli-
sion with the constituted authorities. At Nauvoo
they endeavored to set up a state within the state,
with its own laws and officials and military estab-
lishment. It had its Nauvoo Legion uniformed and
armed and Joseph Smith was its general-in-chief
blazing in gold-laced uniform and white-plumed
cockade in which he seemed to pose and look the
part of Napoleon. His candidacy for the Presi-
dency of the United States was no jest with him
and his followers, however ridiculous it seemed to
319
820 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
the country. Brigham Young was off in New Eng-
land electioneering for him when the comedy at
Nauvoo turned to tragedy, and he hurried back to
seize the presidency of the church and catch up and
carry on the same torch of empire. He followed this
star across the western plains into a valley, shut in
with mountains, which he supposed was outside the
jurisdiction of the United States, where he could
set up his empire behind walls that would protect
him and his followers from interference and from
which they could in the coming day of their strength
issue forth to rule the world. On entering the
valley he said, “Now if the Gentiles will let us alone
for ten years, I’ll ask no odds of them.” MHardly
had the Mormons arrived when a treaty with Mex-
ico settled the jurisdiction of the United States over
the region, and when they saw the Stars and Stripes
fluttering from a neighboring hill top, one of them
exclaimed, “There’s that damned flag again.”
Nevertheless they set up their “State of Deseret”
with its legislature and governor and judges and
with its Nauvoo Legion, and began to exercise all
the powers of an empire. Brigham Young was
verily an emperor for many a day.
He matched his wits against the might of the United
States government, and did not come off second-best.
He yielded in outward seeming to federal power; but in
reality he was emperor of his little realm to the hour of
his death, and his subjects never doubted his supremacy.
He drove federal appointees in disgrace from his king-
dom, and took their positions for himself and his favor-
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD 321
ites. No matter how overwhelming the power with
which he was dealing, Brigham Young never was a
suppliant. He stormed, bullied, lied, intrigued, finessed,
cajoled; he never pleaded for mercy nor owned himself
in need of mercy.
It took years for the American people to realize
what was going on in the Salt Lake Valley, how
sincere and serious were the purposes and growing
power of the Mormons and how destructive and
deadly to American institutions they were. When
other national issues were cleared out of the way
they turned their attention to the Mormon empire
and at the point of the sword brought it to its knees.
2. STEPS TO STATEHOOD
For years the Mormons had been planning and
working for statehood. They felt they were fatally
handicapped and crippled in political power by the
fact that Utah was only a federal territory with no
representative in the United States Senate and with
only a delegate without vote in the House of Repre-
sentatives. They were thus without power in the
national Capital and with only the shadow of power
in their own territorial capital. Even when their
legislature did venture to adopt an act that virtually
annulled the enforcement of the federal law against
polygamy their Governor was constrained by public
opinion to veto it.
_ *Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire,
p. Io.
322 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
The manifesto and the amnesty were moves in
the game for statehood. Of course there were other
motives and a degree of sincerity in these moves,
for mixed motives are involved in all human action.
But the Mormons saw that they must yield to the
increasing pressure of public opinion and of federal
legislation against their system, or they could never
reach statehood or escape more stringent federal
legislation and even military enforcement. Hence
the manifesto was adopted and the petition for am-
nesty was presented, and, this being granted, the
stage seemed to be cleared for statehood, when the
Mormons would have in their hands an instrument
of power which they had long dreamed of but never
attained.
Up to 1890, the year of the manifesto, they had
no fewer than seven times adopted a state consti-
tution; but though the one adopted in 1887 had pro-
vided that “bigamy and polygamy, being considered
incompatible with ‘a republican form of govern-
ment,’ each of them is hereby forbidden and de-
clared a misdemeanor,’ yet the non-Mormons
attacked the declaration as insincere and Congress
refused admission.
Until the time of the manifesto, also, only two
political parties existed in Utah, the People’s, the
Mormon party, and the Liberal, or anti-Mormon.
The Mormons saw that this party division based
on their peculiar system cut them off from the gen-
eral political life of the country and they took steps
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD 323
to end this division. On June 10, 1891, the People’s
Territorial Central Committee adopted a resolution
dissolving the party and calling for a new formation
of party lines.” The Republican Territorial Com-
mittee a few days later “voted that a division of the
people on national party lines would result only in
statehood controlled by the Mormon democracy.”
The Democratic Party Committee took the opposite
view, and at the territorial election in August the
Democratic party cast 14,116 votes, the Liberal,
7,380, and the Republican, 6,613. The old party
lines were thus broken up, the Liberal or anti-Mor-
mon party quickly disappeared, and the national
Democratic and Republican parties took the field.
Events now moved rapidly to statehood. The
country had faith in the manifesto and the amnesty,
and opposition to granting statehood to Utah largely
ceased. At the first session of the Fifty-third Con-
gress, J. L. Rawlings, a Democratic territorial dele-
gate from Utah, introduced an act enabling the
people of the territory to enter the Union as a state,
and this passed the House and the Senate, and on
July 10, 1894, was signed by the President, and
the deed was done; and while statehood fell immeas-
urably short of the dream of empire which the Mor-
mons had long entertained, yet it placed them in a
much better political position than they had hith-
erto enjoyed.
* The inside history of politics in Utah from 1888 onward, with
all the Mormon intrigues and plots and plans, is given in detail in
Cannon and O’Neil’s Under the Prophet in Utah.
324 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
A constitutional convention was held in Salt Lake
City from March 4 to May 8, 1895, consisting of
107 delegates, of whom 59 were Republicans and 48
were Democrats. The constitution framed by this
convention contains the following provisions:
Article I, Section 4. The rights of conscience shall
never be infringed. The state shall make no law respect-
ing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; no religious test shall be required as a
qualification for any office of public trust, or for any
vote at any election; nor shall any person be incompetent
as a witness or juror on account of religious belief or the
absence thereof. There shall be no union of church and
state, nor shall any church dominate the state or inter-
fere with its functions. No public money or property
shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious
worship, exercise, or instruction, or for the support of
any ecclesiastical establishment.
Article III. The following ordinance shall be irrev-
ocable without the consent of the United States and the
people of this state: Perfect toleration of religious senti-
ment is guaranteed. No inhabitant of this state shall
ever be molested in person or property on account of his
or her mode of religious worship; but polygamy or
plural marriages are forever prohibited.
This constitution was adopted by the people of
Utah on November 5, 1895, by a vote of 31,305 to
7,687, and President Cleveland issued a proclama-
tion on January 4, 1896, admitting Utah as a state
into the Union.
3. UTAH AS A STATE
Heber M. Wells, son of General Wells of the
Nauvoo Legion, was the first Governor of the state
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD 825
and in his inaugural took occasion ‘‘to resent the
absurd attacks that are made from time to time
upon our sincerity by ignorant and prejudiced per-
sons outside of Utah.’ These persons, however,
were not altogether “ignorant and prejudiced” and
“the absurd attacks” were not without foundation.
We have already seen that plural marriages were
both sanctioned and practiced by Mormon apostles
after the manifesto and amnesty and also at a date
after the admission of Utah as a state, and further
evidence of this will now appear.
It turned out that both the Democratic and the
Republican parties in Utah were more or less under
Mormon control. On September 7, 1904, a gather-
ing of protesting non-Mormons was held in Salt
Lake City, at which a committee consisting of five
Republicans and five Democrats was appointed to
outline a policy by which the members of these par-
ties and others opposed to the Mormon domination
could free themselves from it and carry out a differ-
ent policy. This committee issued a proclamation
that opened with the following preamble:
Whereas, an experience of fourteen years since the first
material sign of the abatement of troubled conditions
here was seen in the promulgation of the Woodruff mani-
festo, has shown that the promises made were crafty
and insincere, that the sought-for division of the people
on party lines was not carried out in good faith; that
both party organizations have been dominated and used
for the double purpose of maintaining an ecclesiastical
control which had no regard for either, and of preventing
326 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
remonstrance or opposition by those who favor the free
exercise of individual judgment and preference in po-
litical affairs; and,
Whereas, repeated experiences, emphasized by events
just past, have fully proved that this ecclesiastical domi-
nance is all-powerful and persistent, and that it cannot
be shaken off so long as those who oppose it are divided
into hostile camps, but on the contrary since by such
division of the friends and supporters of American insti-
tutions, their voices are stifled, and the hands are strength-
ened of the crafty manipulators of church power and
its application to political affairs ; therefore be it resolved.*
Six resolutions followed and were adopted, de-
claring that the committee would no longer play
into the hands of the church and would repel with
every means the intrusion of ecclesiasticism into pol-
itics, and demanding complete freedom in political
affairs, and closed, “Appealing to all fair-minded
citizens of Utah to sustain us in this our righteous
purpose.”
This resulted in the organization, at a mass meet-
ing’ on September 14, 1904, of the “American party”
which elected its candidate, Ezra Thompson, as
Mayor of the city. The American party continued
for a time as a local party, but it made no headway
outside of Salt Lake City and after several years it
finally disappeared and the Republican and Demo-
cratic parties survive as integral parts of the na-
tional parties, the Republicans generally controlling
the state.
*The resolutions are given in full by Gibbs, Lights and Shadows,
Pp. 522-523.
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD 327
The admission of Utah into the Union as a state
raised the question of the kind of representatives
it would send to the national Senate and Congress
and the country watched this point with jealous
interest. One of the first Senators elected was
Frank J. Cannon, whose presence in the Senate
encountered no criticism, for though he was a nom-
inal member of the Mormon Church yet he never
was a polygamist himself and had boldly advocated
a strict adherence to the terms of the manifesto and
amnesty and opposed polygamous practices in the
church. But in 1898 Brigham H. Roberts, a polyg-
amist who had three wives, was elected to Congress,
and this act aroused the country. After a hearing,
his seat in the House was declared vacant by a vote
of 268 to 50. He was the first and the last polyg-
amist that was ever sent from Utah to Washington.
In 1903 Reed Smoot was elected to the Senate,
and this event precipitated another controversy. He
was not a polygamist, but he was one of the Twelve
Apostles who along with the three members of the
First Presidency are the fifteen men that are the
ruling hierarchy of the church. Strong opposition
arose to his being seated in the Senate. The case
was taken up by the Senate Committee on Privileges
and Elections and hearings were held. A “protest’’
against seating Smoot was presented signed by
eighteen prominent citizens of Salt Lake City, the
first name on it being that of Rev. Dr. W. M. Paden,
328 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of the city.
The protest read in part:
We protest as above upon the ground and for the
reason that he is one of a self-perpetuating body of fifteen
men, who, constituting the ruling authorities of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or ‘“Mor-
mon” Church, claim and by their followers are accorded
the right to claim, supreme authority, divinely sanctioned,
to shape the belief and control the conduct of those under
them in all matters whatsoever, civil and religious, tem-
poral and spiritual, and who thus, uniting in themselves
authority in church and state, do so exercise the same
as to inculcate a belief in polygamy and polygamous co-
habitation; who countenance and connive at violations
of the laws of the state prohibiting the same regardless
of pledges made for the purpose of obtaining statehood
and of covenants made with the people of the United
States, and who, by all the means in their power, protect
and honor those who with themselves violate the laws
of the land and are guilty of practices destructive of
the family and the home.
Petitions aggregating a million names protesting
against Senator-elect Smoot were sent to the Sen-
ate from almost every state east of the Missouri
River.
It was before this committee that President Jo-
seph F. Smith appeared and admitted that he had
been living in polygamy since the manifesto and
amnesty, and other high Mormon officials made the
same admission. Joseph F. Smith, the son of Hy-
rum, the brother of the Prophet Joseph, became
President of the church in 1901 at the death of
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD 329
President Lorenzo Snow, who succeeded President
Woodruff.
The Committee on Privileges and Elections re-
ported to the Senate a resolution calling for the
expulsion of Senator Smoot and this gave rise to
long debate. The position of the majority demand-
ing expulsion was expressed by Senator Newlands,
of Nevada, who declared, “I shall vote for the ex-
clusion of Mr. Smoot, not because of any personal
unfitness for the position which he holds, but be-
cause he is a high priest in a religious organization
which believes in the union of church and state and
which seeks to control the action of the state in
temporal matters.”
~On the other hand, Senator Hopkins, of Illinois,
probably represented the views of the minority of
the committee favoring the retention of Mr. Smoot
when he declared, ““Reed Smoot is an apostle of this
higher and better Mormonism. He stands for the
sacred things of the church against polygamy and
all the kindred vices connected with the loathsome
practice. In his position as a member of the church,
and as an apostle and preacher of the doctrines of
the church, he had done more to stamp out this
foul blot upon the civilization of Utah and the other
territories where polygamy has been practised, than
any other thousand men outside of the church.”
On February 20, 1907, four years after his elec-
tion, the Senate voted to reject the resolution ex-
pelling Senator Smoot by 42 nays to 28 yeas, and
330 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Apostle Smoot remained in the United States Sen-
ate, where he is now (1925) serving his fourth con-
secutive term, which will expire March 4, 1927.
Senator Smoot was and still is a straight-out
Republican and he was seated principally by Re-
publican votes. The charge was made at the time
that he was seated largely on grounds of political
expediency. Gibbs declares: “The fact is, and no
one knows it better than those Senators who voted
for Reed Smoot, that his retention was a matter of
political expediency rather than for constitutional
reasons. They knew that if Reed Smoot were ex-
pelled, Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, all of them under
the absolute control of the Mormon prophets, would
be switched into the Democratic column, and that
the Republican party would lose three members of
the House, six members of the Senate, and nine
electoral votes.”’ Cannon makes the same charge
and declares that President Roosevelt at first op-
posed the election of Apostle Smoot, “but this much
is certain. President Roosevelt’s opposition to Apos-
tle Smoot, for whatever reason, changed to favor.” °
Since the seating of Senator Smoot no other Sen-
ator or Congressman from Utah has encountered
opposition on the ground of connection with the
Mormon Church, and this issue has largely dis-
appeared from our national politics.
Ex-Senator Frank J. Cannon, who because of his
* Gibbs, Lights and Shadows, p. 518; Cannon, Under the Prophet
in Utah, pp. 292-203.
THE FIGHT FOR STATEHOOD 331
continued outspoken opposition to and exposure of
Mormon polygamy and politics was excommuni-
cated from the Mormon Church in 1905, at the time
of the writing of his second book in 1910, had not
relaxed his charges against the Mormon hierarchy.
In Under the Prophet in Utah, Chapter XVII is
entitled “The New Polygamy,” in which he gives
much evidence to show that the Mormons were en-
couraging and practicing polygamy secretly, as “all
checks were withdrawn when Smoot’s case was fa-
vorably disposed of.” “Today,” he declares, “in
spite of the difficulty of discovering plural mar-
riages, because of the concealments by which they
are protected, The Salt Lake Tribune is publishing
a list of more than two hundred ‘new’ polygamists
with the dates and circumstances of their marriages;
and these are probably not one tenth of all the cases.
During President Taft’s visit to Salt Lake City, in
1909, Senator Thomas Kearns, one of the propri-
etors of the Tribune, offered to prove to one of the
President’s confidants hundreds of cases of new
polygamy, if the President would designate two
secret service men to investigate. I believe, from
my own observation, that there are more polyg-
amous wives among Mormons today than there were
before 1890.” So stood the case in the judgment of
this competent witness in IQIO.
CHAPTER XXI
MORMONISM TODAY
ALT LAKE CITY stands today a city of 120,-
000 people, beautiful for situation, rarely attrac-
tive with its wide clean streets constantly flushed
along each side with sparkling mountain water,
splendid parks, fine residential districts, stately
buildings, modern schools and universities, libraries
and hospitals and churches, influential newspapers,
prosperous business interests, and intelligent and
cultivated people. A majority of its inhabitants are
non-Mormons and it is pervaded by American
ideals and spirit, and the casual visitor may at first
see little that would lead him to suspect that it is any
other than a typical western city. Yet it is the
heart of Mormonism where are located its central
institutions, and its hierarchy have their seats and
exercise their authority and whence its life-blood
goes out through all the arteries of its own terri-
tory in Utah and in a lesser degree through the
adjacent states and then is propagated out over the
country and around the world.
332
MORMONISM TODAY 333
I. MORMONISM GROWING AND AGGRESSIVE
Mormonism today stands stronger and more ag-
gressive than ever before. While it has lost some
of its original fanaticism and fervor and cooled into
a calmer state of mind, and while it has abated its
greatest social offense and menace and has shed or is
concealing some of its grosser features, yet it main-
tains its growth and aggressiveness and is all the
more effective in its methods. Starting in 1830
with six members of unpromising antecedents and
prospects, it now has half a million members and an
organization dominating a region of something like
200,000 square miles and an income of approxi-
mately $4,000,000 a year.
Dr. H. K. Carroll, an authority on religious sta-
tistics, in his annual census of the churches for 1924,
reported the Latter-Day Saints (two bodies) as
having 10,157 ministers, 1,764 churches and 623,744
members, with a gain of members for the year of
15,929. In his report for 1925 he credits these two
bodies with 625,160 members and a gain of only
1,416. The Utah Latter-Day Saints are given
4,241 ministers, 1,062 churches, 535,659 members
and a gain for the year of 7,556, whereas the Re-
organized Church is credited with 5,629 ministers,
1,624 churches, 89,501 members and a decrease dur-
ing the year of 287 ministers, 140 churches, and
6,140 members. In round numbers, the Utah branch
has 536,000 and the Reorganized branch has
334 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
90,000 members. As the Mormons estimated their
total number in 1900 at 300,000, they have doubled
their membership in the last twenty-five years, which
at least does not fall below the ratio of growth of
most religious bodies, though their ratio of increase
now appears to be falling considerably. In the last
fifty years the non-Mormon population of Utah has
increased threefold, but in the same period the Mor-
mon increase has been twenty-five fold. Such rapid
erowth is common in the initial stages of a new
movement and in later stages it necessarily slows
down. The Mormon increase in Utah has been
checked by the outflow of their members to other
states and countries, such as Mexico and Canada.
The Mormons have lost by emigration, and the non-
Mormons have gained by immigration. It has been
estimated that 90 per cent of the members of all
religious bodies in Utah are Mormons, 53 per cent
in Idaho, 24 per cent in Nevada, 21 per cent in Wyo-
ming, II per cent in Arizona, 1.6 per cent in Oregon,
1.3 per cent in Colorado, and 1.1 per cent in
Montana.
The number of missionaries maintained within
the United States at present is 1,092 and in foreign
countries is 779, a total of 1,871, and these missions
are carried on at an annual cost of $2,000,000 and
the mission property is valued at $2,000,000. These
figures indicate no lessening of zeal and efficiency
in the propagation of Mormonism. The mission-
aries are sent out on orders from the hierarchy and
MORMONISM TODAY 335
must forthwith go at their own expense, and this
drastic decree, however it may be received with in-
dignant denunciation, is yet obeyed with a sur-
prising degree of acquiescence and few ever refuse
to go out, even to the ends of the earth. Last year
(1925) acall went out for 1,000 business men to go
on missions at their own expense, and 1,700 re-
sponded. What other church could: equal this
record? These missionaries stay only several years
and generally return with a favorable report of their
work and converts, and then their good standing in
the church is assured.
The “Directory of the General Authorities and
Officers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
Day Saints, Issued by the Church, June 1924,” isa
complete handbook of information on the present
organization, officers, boards, missions, stakes and
branches of the church, from the “First Presidency”
with Heber J. Grant, “President of the Church,”
down through the “Council of the Twelve Apostles,”
the “Presiding Patriarch,” the “First Seven Presi-
dents of the Seventies,” the ‘Presiding Bishopric,”
the seven “Missions” into which the country is di-
vided, each being a center for missionary work, the
twenty-five ‘Mission Presidents” stationed through-
out the world, and the eighty-five “stakes,” each with
its general officers, wards with their bishops, and
branches. The total number of “wards” and
“branches,” which are the same as ‘“‘churches” and
“missions,” in the country is 1,015.
336 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
The Mormons believe in education of their own
kind and have a complete system of schools and
theological seminaries, all heading up in their unt-
versity. Among their “General Officers” are the
“Church Board of Education’ with eleven members,
the “Commissioners of Education” with three mem-
bers, and their ‘Superintendent of Church Schools.”
The “theological seminaries,” of about the rank of
high schools, now number about fifty. The Presi-
dent of “Brigham Young University” is Franklin
S. Harris, who is an alumnus of his own university
but also has a Ph. D. from Cornell University and
is the author of several scholarly volumes, including
The Principles of Astronomy and Sctentific Re-
search and Human Welfare.
The Mormons have not been sparing in their out-
lay of money for buildings in Utah. Of the fifty-
four ward chapels or meeting houses in Salt Lake
City, the majority have been built or rebuilt during
the last twenty-five years. About twenty-five of
these have cost an average of $15,000 each. Scores
of new meeting houses and tabernacles have been
erected in outside towns and villages. In Salt Lake
City a hospital costing $300,000, and an administra-
tion building and offices costing $250,000 have been
erected in the last twenty-five years. Besides these
sums, over $400,000 has been spent in buildings for
schools and colleges at Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake
City, Provo, and Mesa in Arizona. Since 1897 the
temple in Alberta, Canada, has cost $600,000, the
MORMONISM TODAY 337
temple in Hawaii $200,000, and $100,000 is now
being spent on the temple in Mesa, Arizona.
At the opening of the General Conference of the
church held in the Tabernacle at Salt Lake City,
April 4-6, 1925, President Heber J. Grant delivered
an address giving a review of the work of the church
throughout the world for 1924, from which we give
the opening paragraphs together with some other ex-
tracts.’
It is very gratifying, indeed, to see this immense con-
gregation here this morning, bespeaking the interest of
the Latter-Day Saints in the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It is customary at the opening session of our
conference to give some statistics and to refer to the
condition of the church at home and abroad. I am
very pleased to be able to announce that the work of the
Lord is growing all over the world: and that there is
never a month or a year but what the church is stronger,
spiritually and financially, than it was the month or the
year previous.
The following financial statement I am sure will be
of interest to the people here assembled:
From the tithes of the church there has been ex-
pended for stake and ward purposes, $1,352,663.43.
For education, the maintenance and operation of
church schools, $727,808.93.
For the construction, maintenance and operation of
temples, $442,018.46.
For the care of the worthy poor and other charitable
purposes, including hospital treatment, $175,520.77.
For the maintenance and operation of all the missions,
and for the erection of places of worship and other build-
ings in the missions, $700,664.09.
*This address is published in full in The Deseret News of Salt
Lake City in the issue of April 11, 1925.
338 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
This makes a total of $3,398,785.68, taken from the
tithes and maintenance and operation of the stakes and
wards, for the maintenance and operation of church
schools and temples, for charities, and for mission ac-
tivities.
In addition to charities paid out of the tithes as before
named, there have also been disbursed the fast offerings
and the Relief Society and other charities, amounting to
$489,406.61, which amount, added to the $175,520.77
paid from the tithes, makes a total of church charities,
$664,927.38.
Church Growth
Children blessed and entered on the records of the
Church in the stakes and missions, 19,955.
Children baptized in the stakes and missions, 14,047.
Converts baptized and entered on the records of the
stakes and missions, 7,566.
There are now 94 stakes of Zion, 907 wards, 70 inde-
pendent branches connected with the stakes, 24 missions
and 654 branches in the missions.
Missionary Work
Perhaps no one thing in connection with the church
is as dear to the hearts of the Latter-Day Saints as our
missionary labor. Counting the time, the salaries that
might be earned by those who are in the mission field,
and the expense of maintaining them there, the Latter-Day
Saints are expending today something over $2,000,000
a year for the spread of the gospel in the world.
There follows a detailed statement giving the
number of missionaries, the number of members,
and the value of the church property in each of the
nine missions on this continent, these being the Cali-
MORMONISM TODAY 339
fornia, Canadian, Central States, Eastern States,
Mexican, Northern States, -Northeastern States,
Southern States, and Western States.
Total missionaries in the United States, 1,092;
total membership, 64,189; total church property,
$1,008,230.35.
Foreign and Island Missions
Each and all of the men presiding over these missions
are giving the best in their power for the advancement
of their missions. They are men of God, devoted to the
welfare of their respective missions. And this can be
said also of all the other missions, the statistics of which
I shall now read, giving the name of the mission, the
president, the missionaries, the membership and the
church property.
There follows a detailed statement of these mis-
sions in Armenia, Great Britain, Denmark, France,
Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden,
Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Hawaii, Japan,
New Zealand, Samoa, Tahiti, and Tonga.
Making a total of 220 missionaries, 26,780 members
and $518,383.30 church property.
The grand total of our missionaries is 1,871; of
members in the missions, 117,340; the grand total of
church property in these missions is $1,934,763.51, lack-
ing but a very few dollars of $2,000,000 of money in-
vested in church property in the missions throughout
the world.
Certainly when we consider the limited means of the
people who embrace the gospel all over the world—for
the gospel seems to reach the poor—we have great cause
340 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
to rejoice in the financial showing in our missions, as
well as the wonderful showing financially here at home.
In membership, missions, converts, property, and
zealous and efficient propaganda it stands proven
that Mormonism today is growing and aggressive.
Doctrinally Mormonism stands unchanged in any
single syllable, with its three Smith Bibles, The Book
of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants, and The
Pearl of Great Price, unexpurgated and unrevised,
and even the fraudulent and preposterous “Book of
Abraham” remains in the latter of these books. The
church still teaches the doctrine of polygamy as an
inspired article of their faith, and the doctrine of
many gods having fleshly bodies with sexual organs
and appetites, Adam being the God they worship;
and all these gods have many wives, so that their
heaven is an eternal harem. The chief hope of
the followers of this religion and the glory of their
heaven is to become such gods themselves. Mor-
monism still holds that it is the only true religion
and in it is the only salvation; and the only hope of
salvation for women is for them to be married or
sealed to husbands. These gross features are con-
cealed or even denied when it is thought to be the
best policy to do so, but they stand written in their
own “inspired” books, where they may be read of all
men. Mormonism is still, in some features, an
atavistic form of Mohammedanism and in others of
gross paganism; yet in spite of these anachronistic
MORMONISM TODAY 341
aspects so repellent to our Christian civilization it
eTows and is aggressive and is to be reckoned with
more than ever.
Mormonism continues to be a business and polit-
ical as well as a religious organization. Zion’s Co-
operative Mercantile Institution is still a flourishing
and powerful business concern, and other great in-
dustries under Mormon control are the Utah-Idaho
Sugar Company and the Inland Crystal Salt Com-
pany. The President of the church, Heber J. Grant,
was recently elected a director of the Union Pacific
Railroad to succeed the late William G. Rockefeller.
These and other related business interests contrib-
ute to the power and help to swell the receipts of the
church. The presence and domination of the church
in business, however, are not without criticism and
unfavorable reaction within the church itself.
Young Mormon business men have voiced their ob-
jections against the extensive activities of the church
in the business world, a form of competition which
they feel is unfair to the independent merchant and
which many assert is holding back outside capital
from entering the Mormon domain.
Politically the Mormons are in the ascendancy in
Utah and control most of the offices and are influ-
ential in the neighboring states into which Mormon-
ism has infiltrated. They comprise two-thirds of
the population of Utah, but more than half of Salt
Lake City is non-Mormon. The present Governor
of Utah is a non-Mormon, but the two United States
342 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
Senators and one representative in Congress, most
of the state officials, the State Superintendent of
Public Instruction, the President of the State Agri-
cultural College, the President of the State Univer-
sity, the Superintendent of Salt Lake City public
schools, the Mayor of the city, half the city Board of
Education, and all but one of the city commissioners
are Mormons.
2. HAS THE MORMON PRACTICE OF POLYGAMY CEASED?
What is the present status of polygamy in Mor-
mondom? More than in any other question in con-
nection with this religion are the American people
interested in this one. We have traced the history of
this doctrine and practice down to 1910, at which
time Ex-Senator Frank J. Cannon declared, “I be-
lieve, from my own observation, that there are more
polygamous wives among Mormons today than
there were before 1890.”
The situation is different today. The evidence
points to the conclusion that the law against polyg-
amy is reasonably well obeyed. Let it be remem-
bered that no law is perfectly obeyed, and the Vol-
stead act under the Eighteenth Amendment is a
case in point. It has also always been felt that po-
lygamous marriages contracted before the manifesto
of 1890 should be dealt with leniently, if not openly
tolerated, because of the cruel hardship the strict en-
forcement of the law would inflict on many polyg-
MORMONISM TODAY 343
amous wives who had entered the relation in good
faith. Many if not most of these relations were
broken off after the manifesto, and no polygamous
Senator -or Representative has ever been tolerated
in Congress. Although President Woodruff, who
issued the manifesto, and other leaders swore that
it forbade not only new polygamous marriages but
also polygamous living, yet some of these leaders
lived in violation of this interpretation. Three of
them, Lorenzo Snow, Joseph F. Smith, and Heber
J. Grant, became Presidents of the Mormon Church.
Yet the increasing pressure of public opinion
among both non-Mormons and the Mormons them-
selves, the stricter enforcement of the law, and the
changing views on the subject of the rising genera-
tion, have brought about the practical abandonment
of the practice of the doctrine. At the General Con-
ference of the church in 1921 President Grant de-
clared: “There is no man on earth that has power to
perform plural marriage. A so-called plural mar-
riage ceremony if performed is not marriage at all:
it is adultery before God and the laws of the land.
Any person who attempts to teach any other system
than the prevailing system of one wife to one man is
sanctioning the practice of adultery.” This is ex-
plicit enough to satisfy the most exacting.
While no doubt there are lingering survivals and
irregularities and occasional violations under the
law, yet the Mormon authorities and people must
be given credit for having thoroughly repudiated
844 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
and almost completely stamped out the practice of
polygamy. This “twin relic of barbarism’ has
at last gone in this country, along with slavery and
the saloon, into the limbo of forbidden things, and
any remaining practice of it is to be classed along
with “bootlegging.”
Yet this repudiation does not apply to the doctrine
itself which is still held and even proclaimed by the
Mormon authorities and taught in their inspired
“revelation” as firmly as ever. The author heard
Apostle James E. Talmage, one of the ablest and
most scholarly of their leaders and the official theo-
logian of the church, declare in a public address that
the Mormons would ever hold to polygamy as a di-
vinely revealed and authorized social system and
that they would never under any pressure or perse-
cution give it up. The doctrine is only lying dor-
mant for the present, and in this state it is like so
much dynamite in their system and is fraught with
danger for the future.
3. THE TESTIMONY OF RESIDENT PROTESTANT MINISTERS
The history of Mormonism is open to any one
who will take the time to read its literature, but
those who live on its ground in intimate touch with
its institutions and people and life can best estimate
and evaluate its present state and future prospects.
The author has obtained the views of several Prot-
estant ministers who have long lived in Utah and
MORMONISM TODAY 345
studied Mormonism and are intimately acquainted
with it.
We first present extracts from a paper written
by the Rt. Reverend Franklin S. Spalding, who
was Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Utah from 1904
to his death in 1914. He was a close and impartial
student of Mormonism and wrote the destructive
examination of “The Book of Abraham” which we
have already quoted. The following extracts are
from a paper read by the Bishop before the Home
Missions Council in Salt Lake City in February,
1914. He quotes a statement that had been recently
made in the East as a means of anti-Mormon propa-
ganda that characterized it as follows: “Open de-
fiance of law, the teaching of treason, the multiply-
ing of polygamous marriages, the most aggressive
proselyting now progressing in the world—these
compel attention to the Mormon church and organ-
ized action against it.’ Bishop Spalding then
proceeds:
A careful man, cognizant of the facts, would have to
qualify every one of those statements. The people in
Utah are law-abiding, the charge of treason depends on
a part of the temple ritual which may be as much a dead
letter as parts of the Anglican Liturgy. The old Temple
oath to revenge the death of the prophet is undoubtedly
repeated by the majority of Mormons with a mental
reservation. Not only are polygamous marriages not
multiplying, but polygamy was never practiced by the
Mormons to the extent popularly supposed, and if the
churches are even half awake, they have nothing to fear
from the proselyting efforts of 2,000 Mormons scattered
346 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
over the earth, most of whom are school boys, who only
know a few little speeches and a few Bible texts and who
look at the call to a mission quite as much as a chance to
see the world as to convert it. The point I want to insist
on most strongly is that we must be on our guard lest
we yield to the temptation actually to regret that the
Mormons are improving—to be almost sorry that we have
lost our old thunder because we can no longer honestly re-
peat the stories of the sensationalists who are not held back
by either truth or charity. It is high time that the same
hopeful attitude was taken with reference to Mormonism
as has been taken in regard to other religions which we
as Christians consider inadequate. The thoughtful stu-
dent of the great ethnic religions today tries to find
points of contact and glimmerings of truth. The days
in which interest in foreign missions was aroused by
dreadful tales of brutality, lust and ignorance have hap-
pily passed away, and the spiritual and ethical value in
even the religions of the backward races is being recog-
nized. The attitude toward the Mormon seems to be the
sole exception to this more philosophical method of ap-
proach. We will surely be wiser and more Christian if
we think that because the Latter-Day Saints have so much
truth they deserve more truth than to persuade ourselves
that they have wilfully rejected all truth and are steeped
in lust and crime and are therefore utterly bad.?
We next give some extracts from an article on
the “Mind of Mormonism,” by Rev. Claton S. Rice,
published in The Pactfic Christian Advocate, of Oc-
tober 10, 1923. Mr. Rice began work years ago as
a Presbyterian home missionary in “darkest Utah,”
and is now Assistant Superintendent of the Idaho
Congregational Conference.
_ * This paper is published in The Pacific Christian Advocate in the
assue of May 7, 1924.
MORMONISM TODAY 347
The majority of educated young Mormons are remain-
ing in the church. In spite of university advantages,
in spite of travel, in the face of intimate association with
cultured Christian Gentiles, the average educated young
Mormon is still, outwardly at least, a Mormon... .
As we come into contact with these men, we find, as
we might very well expect, several different types of mind.
We shall attempt to discuss four of these.
1. We find many young Mormons who are not greatly
interested in the truthfulness, or lack of it, of the Mormon
claims. They are not vitally concerned with religion in
any form. Brought up in the Mormon church, their
parents loyal, their whole connection proud of the church’s
accomplishments and proud as well because of what they
have endured for the sake of the church, they accept the
church and her claims as a matter of fact. It is enough
that they have been born into a Mormon family. The
family’s religion is good enough for them. They them-
selves are not much concerned with religion, but so far
as they know or care to know, the religion of the family
suits them perfectly.
We Protestants enroll thousands of such people in our
churches.
2. There are those among our educated young Mor-
mons whose experience is something like this: They have
thought far enough to realize that thinking is destruc-
tive of their faith. Fearful of the consequences of
apostasy, they have succeeded in isolating their religion,
placing it in a secret chamber of the brain, where they
shield it studiously against the light of reason.
They will be brilliant doctors or well-informed lawyers
or thorough school-men. They may possess enough com-
mon sense and scientific knowledge to completely destroy
the crude, materialistic, insufficient theology of their
fathers, but they never allow reason and religion to meet.
Safely vaulted away, the faith of their fathers is lovingly
brought forth on state occasions when there is no danger
of reason and faith meeting. At such times brainy men
348 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
are seen to bow reverently and are heard to exclaim fer-
vently, “I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of
God.”
There are times, at least, when we can fully sympathize
with the young Mormon in his almost heroic effort to hold
fast, in spite of intellectual difficulties, to that which his
fathers have found good.
3. Sometimes we come in contact with educated Mor-
mons who are wholly convinced that the claims of Mor-
monism are largely fraudulent. Morally, they feel that
they are cowards for remaining in the church. In spite
of this fact, hating themselves greatly at times, they re-
main in the church to the end of their days.
It takes a man of high moral courage and of fixed
resolution to face such consequences. ‘To renounce the
Mormon church, to face parental sorrow and all that clan
wrath means, to make one’s way alone among strangers—
these things make men pause before they act. The young
Mormon pays a heavy price when he acts.
4. There are an increasing number of intelligent men in
the church, I believe, who excuse their presence in the
Mormon church on the grounds of Pragmatism.
This situation is an anomalous one for a university
man to find himself in. Yet we must not condemn him
too severely. I have heard Pragmatism used as the
argument for remaining true to other discredited systems,
used by men whose educational advantages have been
superior to that of the young Mormon. Our churches
have used it.
In conclusion let me add that the early Christianization
of the educated young Mormon may be brought about if
we are willing to pay the price. When the thinking young
Mormon can find a moral courage, an intellectual honesty,
a whole-hearted consecration to the Christian religion
among his Gentile associates which is so strong that he
is forced to compare its fiery brilliancy with the dullness
of his own, then he will be inspired to break his bonds,
that he may receive that which produces such admirable
MORMONISM TODAY 349
things in others. He is religious by nature, and he will
pay the price if it seems worth while.
Ultimately Truth must win. A long, slow process of
attrition, taking scores of years, may grind away the
theological crudities of the Mormon church, while an
equally long process of assimilation may bring to her the
real Christianity of the Christ. But, oh—the weary years
wasted in the process, and oh, the long-suffering people,
wandering in darkness!
A bright, burning, fearless Christianity in the Christian
churches of the land from Utah east and west, will con-
vert the young Mormon in a few years. The slower
process may take centuries. O, Christian, West and
East, how are you living?
We next present the views of Rev. Dr. Edward
L. Mills, who from 1911 to 1914 was superintendent
of the Methodist Episcopal Utah Mission and from
1914 to 1920 was superintendent of frontier work of
the Board of Home Missions and Church Extension
of his church, and since 1920 has been editor of The
Pacific Christian Advocate published at Portland,
Ore. Few men are more competent and fairer in
judging Mormonism than Dr. Mills, and he has
sent us his views of it as follows:
Is there a “Menace” in Mormonism? ‘There are three
answers to this question?
First, that of the people who are fighting Mormonism
for a living. They claim to see a great menace and pre-
sent the matter to public congregations all over the country
in a way calculated to horrify the latter and to increase
contributions to the cause they represent. Exaggeration
is distinctly in their interest. Their ostensible objective,
a federal law against polygamy, is praiseworthy but is
350 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
not nearly so important to secure as a uniform divorce
law.
Second, there is the answer of the average non-Mormon
who lives in Utah and comes into business or professional
contact with Mormons. He quite readily reaches the
conclusion that Mormonism is simply one variety of
Christianity and is about as good as any other, himself
not caring much for any of them. The 300,000 tourists
who casually visit Salt Lake City each year are probable
subscribers to this opinion.
Third, there is the answer of the Christian missionary
in Utah and of such tourists and residents as have a real
sense of spiritual values. To them the appalling deficien-
cies of Mormonism as a vehicle of religion are evident and
like Paul, they feel a holy compulsion to preach the Gospel
they have experienced. They are not afraid of the
Mormon “menace” any more than our missionaries to
China are afraid of the yellow “peril.” ... The great
increase in Mormonism is purely mythical. The increase
really amounts to about 10,000 a year, which considering
the efforts put forth by 1,500 full-time missionaries, is
exceedingly small. Most of the converts moreover are
ignorant and in social standing inferior to those made
by Christian Science. Almost never does one hear of
“Gentiles” in communities predominantly Mormon be-
coming converted to Mormonism. To speak plainly,
Mormonism is a second rate religion and whenever it
meets on equal terms religions with a creditable past and
a real program, it is helpless. Its persistence in Utah is
due to the fact that there it does not meet other religions
on terms of equality but under favorable conditions fixed
by itself. Of course the 460,000 Mormons will exercise
some influence upon the 4,000,000 other people in states
contiguous or accessible to Utah. But the influence of
the 4,000,000 upon the 460,000 is what worries the
Mormon leaders.
It is possible here only to hint at the very considerable
number of Mormons who are now to be found in Chris-
MORMONISM TODAY 351
tian Churches, to mention the potent influence of evan-
gelical missions in producing the present patriotic atti-
tude of Utah; to point out how these same forces have
acted as a pace maker for the dominant church in methods
of work, the use of Christian hymns and increasing stress
upon the Bible. As a single instance we may note that
the Episcopal St. Marks Hospital was the first institu-
tion of the sort in Utah. Today the Mormon Church has
fine hospitals in Salt Lake and Ogden and is only at the
beginning of activity in that line. There are plenty
of results of Christian missions in Utah if one knows
where to look for them.
The young people of Utah read the same books and
magazines and their minds are formed by the same in-
fluences today as the young people in other States. In
addition they have the special influences arising from
a desperate effort on the part of the Mormon Church to
put its teaching into their minds. But no one who knows
anything about the situation, doubts that the Mormon
Church is fighting a losing battle against modern knowl-
edge in science and philosophy.
Writing on ‘(Mormonism Today,” in The Chrts-
tian Century of April 15, 1926, Dr. Mills says:
A result of evangelical missions has been to speed up
the shift of Mormon emphasis from distinctively Mor-
mon doctrines to those which are more Christian in
their content. This process is not yet finished. In a
recent book of Mormon apologetics, thirteen hundred
references are made to the Bible as against nine hundred
to the Book of Mormon. The Bible is now a best seller
among the Mormons. It is impossble to speak with exact-
ness concerning this tendency. The more modernism gets
into the system, the more vociferous become the funda-
mentalists in behalf of the ancient landmarks. There is
plenty of evidence, however, that the grip of the old doc-
352 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
trines on the younger generation is lessening. This does
not impair the force of family tradition nor destroy the
power of social and economic solidarity.
The Rev. William M. Paden, D.D., pastor of the
First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City from
1897 to 1912 and since then superintendent of Pres-
byterian Home Missions in Utah, for twenty-eight
years has been a resident of Salt Lake City and has
traveled over the State of Utah and has intimate
knowledge of Mormonism and personal acquain-
tance with many of its officials, including President
Grant and apostles and professors of Brigham
Young University. He has contributed to this vol-
ume the following statement of his view of the
present situation:
The Mormons are the largest, the best organized, the
most agressive and, strategically, the best located in-
digenous religious cult in the United States. The inter-
mountain variety has more locally enrolled members than
all the other religious bodies combined in Utah and cer-
tain contiguous communities.
The membership of the two Mormon sects—Brigham-
ite and Josephite—is increasing at the rate of 20,000 to
25,000 members each year, chiefly through birth rate,
though the Utah Mormons have, for several years, been
making larger accessions from their Gentile neighbors
than in former days. Both sects have been increasingly
aggressive since the great war. Their two thousand or
more missionaries bring in some converts from non-
Mormon communities, though, as has been suggested, the
large majority of the additions are born in it and very
many of them grow into the cult as their clan rather
than as a specifically religious organization. They are
MORMONISM TODAY 358
bound together by consciousness of kind and hold to-
gether by appeals to group interests and passion.
The Utah cult owes much of its strength to the fact
that its members are, as a rule, colonized and held together
in communities, towns or states in which its adherents
have an overwhelming majority and have valuable church
property, or in which, as lesser or larger majorities, they
can more than hold their own.
Some of the Mormons are devoutly religious, but the
zeal of the Mormon leaders is generally sectarian rather
than Christian and their unction is dogmatic rather than
spiritual. The vast majority of the rank and file pin their
faith to the Mormon Church as an organization which
assures them special privileges in the world to come and
certain social, economic and political dividends in the
world that now is. They are knit together and overso-
cialized by isolation, discipline, intermarriage and en-
forced co-operation, easy moral standards and a type of
religion which is quite attractive to the ordinary natural
man.
The church is, at least outwardly, sloughing off some
of its grosser features. We do not hear, as formerly,
defense of Brigham’s declaration that Adam is the God
of the human race or Spencer’s contention, still published
under church auspices, that Mary and Martha were the
wives of Jesus, or the claim, still made in the Mormon
hymn book, that the Eternal Father has a wife or wives.
And, of course, the world has been told that the laws
concerning plural marriage as set forth by Joseph Smith
are now held in abeyance by the manifesto of the late
President Woodruff in which he advised the Latter Day
Saints to refrain from marriages forbidden by the laws
of the land; but the principle or doctrine of plural mar-
riage is still endorsed and upheld by the Mormon leaders
“as a high privilege conferred upon special conditions
directly under commandment of God.” While the practice
of polygamy has been discountenanced and certain crudi-
ties of doctrine are being sloughed off, the Mormon leaders
354 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
still hold to the assumptions on which their cult is founded
with uncompromising tenacity.
Many of the Mormons are better than Mormonism;
many of the Mormon people have not taken oaths in the
temple, and many Mormons care little for the peculiar
tenets of Mormonism. ‘They are making less and less of
testimony that Joseph Smith is a prophet, and have little
use for the so-called “revelations” peculiar to Mormon-
ism. The majority of the present-day Mormons never
practiced polygamy, and many of them do not believe that
the principle is holy and right, though they are not yet
free to say so publicly. These Mormons do not expect
to become gods and do not think of the world or worlds
to come as under the control of an aggregation of: male
and female deities. They are ridding themselves of
theories, teachings and practices which are basic in Mor-
monism. Our desire is to help such Mormons out of
Mormonism and into fellowship with those whose inspira-
tions for service and hope of eternal life are based on the
redeeming passion of God in Christ through the Holy
Spirit.
The Rev. Dr. John D. Nutting was pastor of the
First Congregational Church of Salt Lake City from
1892 to 1898 and has since carried on the Utah
Gospel Mission and has extensively traveled, writ-
ten and lectured in connection with his mission work
amongst the Mormons. His knowledge of the sub-
ject is thorough and he has sent the author his view
of the future of Mormonism as follows:
The one power which is stronger than priestcraft and
error combined is the truth of God according to the
Bible, backed by the Spirit of God who always enforces
the real Gospel message presented in clearness and love.
We look for the outcome of the Mormon question, not in
MORMONISM TODAY 355
the destruction of the whole system by force so much as
in its gradual inner change from perverted views, and the
wrong practices bred by these, into the true teachings
and the reborn hearts and right conduct which naturally
follow them. And the only way to change ideas is by other
ideas presented as attractively as possible in evident Chris-
tian love.
These views bear the marks of thorough personal
knowledge, fair judgment and a sympathetic spirit,
and it is evident that these writers are honestly and
also successfully endeavoring to tell us “the truth
about Mormonism.”
4. CONCLUDING CONSIDERATIONS
On the basis of these views and of the whole
course of this study we may now draw some con-
cluding considerations.
A. Mormonism is an errant form of Christianity.
Mormonism is a religion and a form of the Christian
religion with some of the virtues of religion. It is
a corrupt form, from the orthodox point of view, a
degeneration or throwback to the early religion of
the Old Testament and on back into paganism, yet
it fulfills in some degree for its followers the object
of religion in finding God. They do accept the
Christian Bible and believe in and worship the Lord
Jesus Christ, and so far they accept vital Christian
truth. They are brought up in and inherit Mor-
monism as their traditional faith and find it works
in their experience. It stands the pragmatic test
356 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
with them, and this is the main ground of the faith
of most of the followers of all religions. Few are
the members in our orthodox and most enlightened
churches that have any scholarly and critical knowl-
edge of the historic and theological foundations of
their faith; they were brought up in their religion
and it works and this satisfies them. This is true of
all religions, even the darkest and most degraded,
else they would not survive.
Mormonism thus has a core and root of truth
and is not to be eradicated root and branch but it
is to be pruned and purged. Its followers, however
ignorant and deluded many of them may be, are
not wilful, much less wicked devotees of error and
corruption, but are genuinely sincere believers in
their religion.
B. The “menace” of Mormonism ts abated. The
menace of Mormonism, especially in the practice of
polygamy, has practically passed away. The Mor-
mon authorities set their solemn seal on the mani-
festo and, after a period of hesitating delay, have
endeavored to enforce it, and such instances of po-
lygamous relations as now remain are the infrac-
tions that attend most laws. This menace of Mor-
monism having ceased, this line of attack upon it is
now closed. This ammunition, so effective in popu-
lar propaganda against the system, is now spent.
In a considerable measure, also, other features of
the menace of Mormonism have been abated. The
alarmist facts and figures that have been the stock
MORMONISM TODAY 357
in trade of some opponents of the system have been
exaggerated. Reports and assertions have gone out
of ‘a million” and even “a million and a half” Mor-
mons in this country with accounts of their phe-
nomenal growth. But the million has shrunk to
half as many, and the growth is not abnormal but
well within the average ratio of increase of other
religious bodies. In fact, when we consider the
large number of missionaries the Mormons send out
in comparison with their total membership, far in
excess of the like relative numbers of other religious
bodies, their growth is much slower than that of
most of the orthodox churches. The fact, also, that
Gentiles are pouring into their territory much faster
than the Mormons are increasing is another limi-
tation upon their relative growth and reduction of
their relative power.
Mormonism as a political and business menace
has also largely lost its alarming features. What-
ever methods these people may have pursued in for-
mer days, it does not appear that they now use any
other means and in any other degree than those
which are common among the adherents of other
churches. Any church is rather proud of the mem-
bers it may have in Congress and is immensely
flattered when one of its communion is elected Presi-
dent and does not hesitate to make capital out of
the fact. We should be fair towards the Mormons
and not simply magnify their faults and be blind to
their virtues. All of us have enough failures and
358 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
faults to answer for, and let him that is without
sin among us cast the first stone.
C. Mormonism has inner checks and self-lumita-
tions. It is burdened with its impossible Book whose
historical absurdities and immoral doctrines will
ever bar it from general acceptance among educated
classes. Its doctrine of polygamy is still a millstone
around its neck. While polygamy is in the Old Tes-
tament, yet it is not commanded as a duty but is
only tolerated as an existing social institution which
could not be suddenly uprooted, an outgrown good
or survival relic of the past which was not yet ready
to be wholly put away, as it was in due time. But
the offense and menace of the Mormon “revelation,”
however, is that it does not simply permit but en-
joins polygamy as a duty and even declares it is an
eternal principle.
The Mormon concept of God is also a pagan
doctrine that cannot stand the light of our modern
thought. In fact, Mormonism even today has not
cast off the rags of its pagan doctrines, though it
has put on the garments of Christian respectability
in its practice. As a consequence it has appealed
principally to the less educated and more easily de-
luded class of people and has made small inroads
upon the higher and more intelligent grades. It
wins comparatively few converts from non-Mor-
mons but grows mostly by birth from its own
people. These checks and limitations reduce the
peril of Mormonism. It tends to run its course
MORMONISM TODAY 359
and arrest itself. It can therefore never become a
dominant cult in this or in- any other enlightened
country.
D. How to meet and deal with it? The chief
problem that now confronts us is how to meet and
deal with Mormonism. Enough has been shown
and said to indicate the course to be followed. The
attitude towards Mormonism should be that of
friendly relationship. Persecution will not put it
down. Persecution is often a powerful propagan-
dist of the very faith it is trying to destroy. The
blood of any martyr is likely to become the seed
of his creed, whether it be truth or error. The
assassination of Joseph Smith that cut short his
life also extended the life of his church. Had “Joe”
Smith been permitted to live out his natural days he
would probably have so loaded down his boat with
his multiplying ‘revelations’ and fanaticisms and
follies as would have sunk it beneath the waves or
run it on the rocks of public opinion. It was because
Joseph Smith was removed before he had hopelessly
wrecked his church that Brigham Young could save
it. Killing Smith only converted multitudes to his
cause, and persecuting his church will still add to
its numbers and prolong its life.
Ridicule and sarcasm will not laugh Mormonism
out of the world or it would have gone long ago.
These means only stiffen up the courage and the
resolution of its adherents to be loyal to their tradi-
tional faith and sacred associations. It welds'and
360 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
tightens the band that binds the clan into a solid
mass. Some of the objections that have been urged
against it may be turned with equal application and
destructiveness against other Christian sects. We
must be careful that we do not hoist ourselves with
our own petard. In destroying Mormon faith we
may be pulling down the temple of all religious faith
and making the last state of Mormons worse than
the first.
Our hope for the future of Mormonism is that the
growing light of knowledge, science and education,
Christian truth and grace, will slowly pervade and
modify it. The method of Paul at Athens is still
good for our day and for this problem. The spirit
of modern thought that insensibly and irresistibly
penetrates and pervades all religious creeds and cults
cannot be excluded from and resisted by Mormon-
ism. The Rocky Mountains can no longer wall it
in with immunity any more than they shut out the
winds from the Pacific Ocean. This work is now
visibly and measurably going on. Modern knowl-
edge, especially archeology and history, biology and
psychology, is putting dynamite under the founda-
tion of Mormonism, or rather is dissolving it as
icebergs are melted when they float into warmer
seas and a more genial sun. Mormons cannot shut
modern books and magazines out of their homes and
keep them out of the hands of their people and
especially of the rising generation, and still more is
it impossible for them to keep their minds immune
MORMONISM TODAY 361
against modern ideas. These germs float in the air
and this cannot be breathed without imbibing them.
They soak insensibly and unwittingly through the
very pores of the skin and are absorbed and assimi-
lated into the blood. Brigham Young was aware of
this when he fled with his people to an immune
region, but there are no more protected places and
the Mormons can fly no further.
Modern knowledge is now penetrating the
schools and colleges and universities of Utah. In
I9Q1r “modernism” disrupted the faculty of the
Brigham Young University at Provo and three of
its members were forced out. The disintegrating
transforming effect of modern education is brought
out in a psychological and ethical study of Mor-
monism by Professor E. D. Ericksen, Professor of
Philosophy in the University of Utah, the state in-
stitution at Salt Lake City, in which he says:
Among the most important of the conditions that tend
to bring about readjustment is the rapid growth of col-
leges and high schools in the state as well as the tendency
for a large number of young people to seek education out-
side the state. Between four and five thousand young
people of Mormon parentage are attending college every
year and many times that number are in high schools.
They are thus coming in contact with the educational
spirit and developing a great many new ideals and values.
The many possibilities of the larger life, social and
scientific, are being forced upon them. ‘These new inter-
*The Life and Philosophy of W. H. Chamberlin, a professor who
was forced out of the Brigham Young University in 1916 and sub-
sequently recalled, throws much light upon the inner workings of
Mormon educational management.
362 THE TRUTH ABOUT MORMONISM
ests are not regarded as antagonistic to the Mormon ideals,
but little by little they detract attention from creed and
abstract theology.?
The day for alarmist cries and appeals is past.
We must now settle down to slow, patient, char-
itable, tactful methods and means of Christian
teaching and influence. Already have these erring
children come part way back home. They are now
preaching and teaching a gospel that appears to be
approximating more closely our common Christian-
ity. Many of their sermons and prayers sound
strikingly orthodox. They are even speaking of the
Bible in terms that exalt it above their own bibles.*
Dropping the Book of Mormon together with their
other inspired books will be the hardest and one of
the last things the followers of Joseph Smith will
do. Perhaps in time they can gradually and quietly
let it fall into innocuous desuetude or let it become
encysted in their system very much as many ortho-
dox Christians do with some portions of the Old
Testament. If they will also quietly drop Joseph
Smith as their prophet and cast off pagan additions
to their doctrines they might in time become a rec-
ognized form of Christianity and take their place in
the circle of the Christian brotherhood.
se Psychological and Ethical Aspects of Mormon Group Life,
p. 98.
*In The Deseret News, the official organ of the church, of June 7,
1924, on the editorial page appears an article headed “Bible
Thoughts” of which the closing sentence is the following: “The
Bible is the grandest of all sacred records. It is the true foundation
of all excellent writings and useful facts.”
MORMONISM TODAY _ 363
This hope may seem too good to come true, but
there are even now some signs of it and God often
works out our problems in ways that exceed our
expectations and faith. The day will reveal it.
In the meantime, let us give ourselves to our work
in consecration and sacrifice at least equal to that
which are so admirably displayed by the Mormons
themselves. A bright and burning Christianity
may yet kindle and purify their dull and degenerate
faith. They also are the children of our common
heavenly Father, and we should so regard them and
welcome them back to their ancestral faith and fel-
lowship. This, we believe, is the truth about
Mormonism,
ie
ee *
Atte
th
i
ak
I wre |
a?
cite
” 4
ity ee
hy
}
i
%
Biait:
an
¥
bo 4
INDEX
Advocate, The Pacific Christian,
349-351.
Anthon, Charles, 64-65, 76.
Arthur, President Chester A.,
303.
Atonement, Blood, Mormon doc-
trine of, 122-123, 244-262.
Bateman, William, 251.
Bentley, Adamson, quoted, 88.
Bible, The Golden, its origin,
50-76; printing and editions
of, 67-60.
Bissing, Friedrich von, quoted,
79.
Boggs, Governor of Missouri,
165.
Agel Rev. Dr. A. J., quoted,
Boudinot, Elias, 103.
Brandeburg, Justice L. G., 234-
235.
Breasted, James H., quoted, 78.
Brocchus, Justice P. E., 235, 236.
Buchanan, President James, 237-
242.
Burr, Surveyor General, quoted,
237.
Calhoun, John C., 172.
Campbell, Alexander, 112, quot-
ed, 114, 146.
Canon, Frank J., quoted, 121,
123-124, 156-157, 278, 283-284,
208-299, 316-317, 320-321, 323;
Senator, 327, 330, 342.
Cannon, George Q., quoted, 311-
Bra.
Carlin, Governor of Illinois, 168.
Carlyle, Thomas, 66
Carroll, H. K., his religious sta-
tistics, 333.
Century, The Christian, 351-352.
Chase, Clara, wife of Brigham
Young, 288.
Chase, A. D., quoted, 90.
Chase, Williard, quoted, 58.
Chislett, John, quoted, 206-208.
Christ, Mormon doctrine of,
120-130.
Church, of Latter-Day Saints,
see Mormonism.
Church, Reorganized, of Latter-
Day Saints, 195-198, 276-277,
323.
City, Salt Lake, 221-231.
Clark, John A., quoted, 43.
Clark, Gen. John B., 165.
Clay, Henry, 172.
Cleveland, President
205, 303, 324.
Conner, Col. P. E., 265.
Cooper, Fenimore, 102.
Court, The Supreme, on polyg-
amy, 301-302, 308.
Cowdery, Oliver, one of the
“witnesses,” 70-73, 117, 144,
147, 153, 162, 190, 210.
Cradelbaugh, Judge, quoted, 2409.
Crockwell, J. M., 283.
Cumming, Governor of Utah,
238-242.
Grover,
Danites, organized, 163-164.
Deseret, State of, 232, 267, 320.
ihe Sarat among Mormons, 195-
196.
Doctrine and Covenants, quoted,
117-118.
Dodd, Cephas, quoted, 85-86.
Douglass, Stephen A., 237.
Drake, Judge, 267.
agen John W., quoted, 107-
108,
365
366
Eaton, Mrs. Horace, 89.
Edmunds, Senator, 303-306.
“Egyptian,” Smith’s “Reformed,”
77-79; ol. e A
Encyclopaedia Britannica, quot-
ed, 141-142.
Ericksen, Professor E. D.,
quoted, 361-362.
Evans, John H., Mormon church
historian, quoted, 256-257.
Evarts, W. M., Secretary of
State, 219.
Fillmore, President Millard, 233-
234.
Folsom, Amelia, wife of Brig-
ham Young, 284-285.
Ford, Governor of Illinois, 175.
Garfield, President James A.,
303.
Gerould, Katherine F., quoted,
ps se
Gibbs, J. F., quoted, 171, 180,
187-188, 252, 258, 259-260, 262,
265, 307, 313-314, 330.
od, Mormon doctrine of,
129.
Godbe, W. S., 274-277.
Grandin, E. B., 67-68.
Grant, Heber J., President of
the Church, 335, 337, 341, 344.
Grant, Jediah M., quoted, 132-
133; first mayor of Salt Lake
City, 231; quoted, 238, 244-
246, 296, 330-331.
Gunnison, J. W., quoted, 144.
127-
Hale, Isaac, father of Joseph
Smith’s wife, 45-46, 63-64.
Harding, Governor Stephen S.,
266-267.
Harris, Abigail, 59, 60.
Harris, Secretary B. H., 235.
Harris, Franklin S., 336.
Harris, Martin, 62-63, 66-67, 68-
69; one of the “witnesses,”
70-73, 153.
Harrison, President Benjamin,
313.
Harrison, E. L. T., 274-277.
INDEX
Hayes, President Rutherford B.,
302-303.
Hayes, Mrs. Rutherford B., 302.
Hendrix, Daniel, quoted, 61, 68.
Higbee, Major John M., 252.
eb uaa Magazine, quoted, 37,
Hopkins, Senator, 320.
Howe, E. D., quoted, 48, 65, 80-
81, OI.
Hyde, John, 94-95, 100, 296-297.
Hyde, Orson, 214, 248.
Ingersoll, Peter, quoted, 57-58.
Institution, Zion Codperative
Mercantile, 272-273, 280-281.
Irvine, Mrs. Mary Winter,
quoted, 86.
Johnson, Bishop, 248.
Johnston, General Albert Sidney,
238, 242.
Judd, rary John W., 307.
Kane, Col. T. L., 240-241.
Kearns, Senator Thomas, 331.
Kelsey, Elder Eli B., 275.
Kennedy, J. H., quoted, 40, 2
42, 60, 64.
Kimball, Heber, 282.
Kimball, H.C, 383° 233 200m
Kirtland, Ohio, Mormon settle-
ment at, 143-157.
Lake, Great Salt,
Mormons, 202-203;
221-223.
Lake, Henry, quoted, 82-83.
reached by
described,
Lamb, M. T., 107.
Law, The Edmunds, 303-306,
373:
Lee, John D., 190; connection
with the Mountain Meadows
Masaene 252-257; executed,
258.
Legion, The Nauvoo, 171.
Linn, W. A., quoted, 40, 60, 66,
68, 92, 164, 190, 193, 211, 212,
213, 217, 240, 248-249, 263-
264, 297-298, 303-304, 305-306,
317.
INDEX
Lincoln, President Abraham,
265-266, 268, 301.
Mack, Lucy, 35.
Mack, Solomon, 36.
McKean, Chief Justice James B.,
279-280, 287.
i ee Mormon doctrine of, 130-
Mec tiestn, The, 309-318.
“Manuscript Found,”
Spaulding’s, 81-93.
Marsh, Thomas B.,
165.
Massacre, The Mountain Mead-
Ows, 250-261.
Meyer, Edward, quoted, 79.
Millennial Star, quoted, 43-44,
192, 205, 214, ‘218- -219.
Mills, Rev. Dr. Edward L.,
quoted, 349-352.
Missions, Mormon, 209-220, 334-
335, 338-340.
“Modernism,”
361.
Morgan, William, 33.
Mormon, Book of, who wrote?
79-92; connection with Spauld-
ing’s “Manuscript Found,” 81-
93; contents of, 94-103; marks
of invention in, 103-107; ori-
gin of its ideas, 107-115.
Mormon, meaning of name, 95-
Solomon
163; quoted,
in Mormonism,
Mormonism, a new religion, 25;
roots of, 26-33; its Golden
Bible, 50-93; contents of its
Book, 94-115; founding and
organization of its Church,
116-124; doctrines of, 125-142;
relation to civil government,
138; polygamy, 139-142, 152,
186-194, 205-318, 324, 327, 331,
342-344, 356; settlement in
Ohio, 143-157; removal to
Missouri, 158-166; in Illinois,
167-185; flight to the Rocky
Mountains, 199-208; and mis-
sions, 209-220; at Salt Lake
City, 221 ff.; in Utah, 232 ff.;
and blood atonement, 244-262;
367
and the Civil War, 262-268;
the “New Movement,” 274-278;
_its surrender of polygamy, 295-
318; today, 332-363; statistics
of, 333-334, 337-339; testimony
to of resident Protestant min-
isters, 344-355; concluding
considerations, 355-363.
Mormon War, The, 236-243.
preg re “The New,” 274-
278.
Nauvoo, IIl., 168-185.
News, The Deseret 246, 263, 314,
337, 362.
Nutting, Rev. Dr. John D., 127,
354-355.
Paden, Rev. Dr. W. M., 327-
328; quoted, 352-354.
Paine, Tom, his Age of Reason,
political in Utah, 323,
326.
Parrish, William R., 248-249.
Patterson, Robert, 80, 84.
Pearl of Great Price, quoted, 5,
51, 53-56, 77, 116-117.
Penrose, Charles W., 311.
Peters, John, quoted, 78.
Peterson, Ziba, 144.
Polygamy, Mormon doctrine and
practice of, 139-142, 152, 186-
194; Mormon surrender of,
295-318; the Manifesto, 315-
318; has it ceased? 342-344;
its menace abated, 356.
Powers, Judge O. W., 307.
Pratt, Orson, 39, quoted, 79, 97,
114, 163 171, 190; on polyg-
amy, 192; quoted, 201, 210, 262,
32.
Parties,
207.
Pratt, Parley P., quoted, 87, 136,
206, 297.
Presbyterianism,
1837, 33, 112.
Presidency, First, explained, 120.
Priesthoods, orders of, ex-
plained, 122.
its division in
Quorums, explained, 120-121.
368
Rawlings, J. L., 323.
Religion, its nature, 25; roots of,
26-27.
Reynolds, George, 301.
Rice, Rev. Clayton S., quoted,
346-349.
Rice, L. D., 91.
Rich, Leonard, 153.
Richards, Elder F. D., 204, 206,
208.
Richards, William, 183.
Rigdon, Sidney, connection with
the “Manuscript Found,” 83-
92, 108, 114, 146, 163, 168, 182;
death of, 183, 195, 212.
Riley, I. W., quoted, 37, 112-113,
180-181.
Roberts, Brigham H., 189-190,
317-318, 327.
Roosevelt, President Theodore,
330.
Rosa, Dr. S., quoted, 89.
Sayce, A. H., quoted, 78.
Schaeffer, Judge, 287.
Scott, George M., 307-308.
Shook, C. A., quoted, 48-49, 80,
90-91, 92, 109-112.
Sin, Mormon doctrine of, 131.
Smalling, Cyrus, 153.
Smith, the family, character of,
46-49.
Smith, Alexander H., son of the
Prophet Joseph, 276-277.
Smith, David Hyrum, son of the
Prophet Joseph, 276-277.
Smith, Mrs. Emma, wife of Jo-
seph, 66-67, quoted, 102.
Smith, Elder G. A., quoted, 264.
Smith, Apostle Heman C., 108.
Smith, Hyrum, brother of Jo-
seph, 117; killed, 175-176, 188-
212.
Smith, Joseph, Junior, the Proph-
et, birth and boyhood, 38-
42; money-digger and peek-
stone expert, 43-46; his “vi-
sions” of the “plates,” 51-52;
discovery and translation of
the “plates,” 52-67; founding
INDEX
and organization of his church,
116-124; his “Articles of
Faith,” 126-127; his experi-
ences at Kirtland, Ohio, 143-
157; in Missouri, 158-166; in
Illinois, 167-185; runs for the
Presidency, 172-173; his death,
174-177; character of, 177-182;
his relations with polygamy,
186-194.
Smith, Joseph F., son of Hyrum
and nephew of the Prophet,
quoted, 171, 314-315; Presi-
dent of the church, 316, 328.
Smith, Joseph, Senior, 34,30
peck- -stone expert, 42; his vi-
sions, 38; “Patriarch” in the
church, 121.
Smith, Lucy, mother of Joseph,
Junior, 36-37; quoted, 44, 154.
Smith, Samuel, brother of Jo-
seph, I17.
Smoot, Apostle Reed, 317-318;
Senator, 327-330.
Snow, Lorenzo, quoted, 199, 310;
President of the church, 329.
Spalding, Rt. Rev. Franklin S.,
78-79, 345-346.
Spaulding, John, quoted, 81-82.
Spaulding, Solomon, his part in
the origin of the Book of
Mormon, 80-93.
Spencer, Elder Daniel, 208.
Spencer, Herbert, 25.
Spirit, Holy, Mormon doctrine
of, 130.
Standards, of Mormonism,
Howard,
125,
340.
Stansbury, Captain
quoted, 225-2206.
Stenhouse, T. B., 95, 163, 190,
200, 208, 210-211, 213, 216, 240,
246-247, 249, 257, 268, 273,
275, 277-278, 289, 202.
Stenhouse, Mrs. T. B., her
book, 280.
Taft, President W. H., 331.
Talmage, Apostle James E.,,
quoted, 344.
INDEX
Apostle John,
Taylor,
President,
quoted, 234;
309.
Thomas, Governor A. L., of
Utah Territory, 307.
Times and Seasons, quoted, 95-
96, 99, 169, 172, 173.
Tribune, Salt Lake, 230, 277, 331.
Tucker, Pomeroy, quoted, 60, 89-
90.
Tullidge, E. W., 213, 223, 236,
264, 272-273.
1753
290,
Utah, steps to its statehood, 319-
331.
Van Vliet, Captain, 239.
Waite, Judge C. B., 267.
Waite, Mrs. C. B., her book
quoted, 289.
Weed, Thurlow, 67.
Wells, D. H., General of Nauvoo
Legion, 239.
Wells, Heber M., first Governor
of Utah, 324-325.
Wentworth, Joseph, 125.
Werner, M. R., quoted, 92.
Whitmer, David, quoted, 69; one
se the “witnesses,” 70-73, 153,
162.
369
Whitmer, Peter, 118, 174.
Winter, Dr. John, quoted, 86.
Witnesses, to the “Golden
Plates,” “The Three,” 70-76;
“The Eight,” 74-76.
Whitsin, Professor, quoted, 113-
114.
Woodruff, Wilford, quoted, 135,
137, 223-224, 297; becomes
President, 309; his Manifesto,
309-318.
Young, Brigham, quoted, 139;
conversion to Mormonism, 155-
156; becomes President of the
church, 182-183; his only
“revelation,” 200; reached
Great Salt Lake, 202-203, 204;
his disastrous “Hand-Cart Ex-
pectation,’ 203-208; locates
Salt Lake City, 224; Governor
of Utah Territory, 233-234;
in Mormon War, 236-243; on
blood atonement, 245; connec-
tion with the Mountain Mead-
ows Massacre, 254-257; trea-
sonable attitude in the Civil
War, 264-268; at the height of
his power, 269-294; his wives,
282-289; his death and charac-
ter, 290-294.
tlw Lf:
Date Due
exo apwyo=*? |
fhe A sreacteme
in DT ae 4 eee
wily
“ACU cs ——
OC 7A a a
erid el
bl tsi ac
4
=>
vom may
-
-
= ne Se hE
Lykis ate
Witee FP
De ae
+ katie. Ce ay
fe
Ai HS,
BY BEA