Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs/Letter to Brigham Young
Letter to Brigham Young.
Sir:—To perform an action without being prepared to assign the reasons inducing that action, is the conduct of a fool. I have renounced your system, and denounced your designs. My reason for doing the first is my conviction of your error; my reason for the last, is my desire to avert the sacrifice of your deceived followers.
I have not resolved on this important and final step without much deliberation; and I am entirely persuaded of doing my duty to God and man in taking it. To the full extent of my limited opportunities and abilities I have investigated your faith. Increasing insight into your dogmas produced an increasing conviction of your error. I carefully weighed my responsibility and decided on my course.
I have revealed the mysteries of your secret order with its treasonable oaths. I did it, sir, not to gratify a merely morbid. curiosity of the public; but to show your adherents abroad, what are the schemes to which they are required to lend. themselves; and what are the blessings that you assert God has in reserve for them. I have done so, also, to direct the attention of the government of the United States to the real character and object of your system. Not only that they should be beforehand prepared, but also that they might be induced to adopt vigorous measures, as to delay action is only to afford you opportunity to increase your numbers, and if you will not forego your treasonable intentions, to increase also the number of the sufferers. I feel perfectly sanctioned by God and reason in violating the oaths of secrecy; equally as much as I feel justified in disregarding my covenant of obedience.
That by this violation, I render myself liable to the penalty you have affixed to your obligations, I am aware; but I believe my duty surpasses my risk. If your system be true, it ought not to shrink from the broad glare of universal sunshine. If it be false, the more thoroughly it is known, the better will it be for yourselves and for mankind at large.
I have endeavored in the chapters on yourself, to render you as you are; neither distorted by prejudice, nor favored by partiality. I do not wish to unduly inflame men's anger, nor excite men's approbation toward yourself. You have made yourself notorious; and have, therefore, given yourself to the public. I do not cherish any feeling of enmity to yourself, or your adherents. I only wish that your really great abilities had been devoted to a worthier cause, and for the promotion of a nobler object; and only regret that you have so fatally involved your believers in your policy, who are so blindly infatuated in your interests.
That you are sincere in your confidence in Joseph Smith, and in your own pretensions, I believe and acknowledge; but, at the same time, that you are leading confiding thousands to misery and ruin, is evident. Charity for them would induce the frustration of your designs.
I admire the industry of your people, their notable labors and their general sincerity, but I deplore their delusion, and I denounce their deceivers. I have carefully chosen my course, and shall, with the help of God, pursue it.
That you will ever be made, in this life, to see your madness and its inevitable consequences, I can not believe. That you would forsake it if you did see it, I can not hope. One thing is certain, you have forged your own chains, as well as the fetters that you have fastened on your deluded people. You are as hopelessly your own slave as ever you wished to make others.
But while you can not retract the past, you are still able to prevent much sorrow and difficulties in the future. The political ambition of Joseph Smith entailed suffering, exodus, and death upon his blindly devoted and fanatically infatuated followers. Your political ambition will involve in the same disastrous consequences your still more numerous adherents. Your own wisdom must teach that your object of founding an independent kingdom is hopeless; and that to attempt it is to insure your own destruction. You must be aware, too, that while religious martyrs are pitied, political adventurers are despised; and that such a course will divest you of all sympathy, and hand you and your ambition down to universal execration and contempt. If you do push matters to so lamentable an extremity as to come into collision with the federal authorities, remember that it is YOU and not THEY who will then be the real cause of the suffering and bloodshed that will ensue! Were you the President of the United States to-morrow, and were such another system as Mormonism, with such another leader as yourself, to attempt to defy or outrage your country and its institutions, remember that you would be the first man to crush them, as you crushed Sidney Rigdon at Nauvoo! What you would yourself do as President, will be done by the President, should occasion require such energy and action. To oppose the government is to expose yourself; to oppose it so far as to shed blood, is to bring the blood that may be shed on your own hands and head. Wisdom should dictate caution, and caution would advise the renunciation of wild and impracticable schemes, which can only end in confusion, and involve the ruin of simple and devoted thousands.
Not alone could you prevent such ruin, but you could accomplish much good; and, instead of being remembered as only a curse to your race, leave some gleam of a better heart and a sounder mind. Your position would enable you to accomplish much toward the advancement of the interests of your country and the consummation of human progress. That you have energy sufficient to arrest and break up the whole system of Mormon politics, that you could quell the disturbance and control the shock which would ensue from such an attempt, that you could divert the attention and direct the power of your followers into a far higher and more rational pursuits, I do not for a moment doubt. That you have not sufficient moral strength to attempt it, I know. The most the world can hope and ask from you is to save yourself, and spare your believers from the suffering and destruction consequent on the struggle to which you are endeavoring to incite them. I will say nothing to you of the wickedness or of the treason of your effort to establish such a kingdom in the center of your country. All I urge on you is its folly and its impossibility. This, in your serious moments, you must feel. Those sanguine aspirants of your advisers, who really entertain the hope of ultimate success, confide too much on the neglect or the imbecility of their country's government. Such a confidence is ridiculous. Perhaps you may rely on supernatural assistance: if so, where were your gods at Missouri, at Carthage, at Nauvoo? Your Adam-deity, like the Baal of Elijah's day, was "sleeping or taking a journey."
It is not presumption in me thus to direct your attention to this subject. Having made yourself so conspicuous, you have given any one the right to address you. I have spoken to you as a prophet; as a man to a man I now write to you. I admire your genius, but I deplore its exercise. I no more dread your enmity than I fear your priestly anathemas. The slanders your coadjutors may attempt to circulate, I despise. You told the people once, that your "words were but wind;" as wind they may be safely encountered.
I confidently believe the time will come when honest men will be undeceived, desert your standard, and leave you forsaken and sorrow-stricken to remorse for the past and terror for the future. To this end I shall labor, and constantly and fervently pray that your power and your system may find a speedy and an eternal grave; that it may be sunk in the oblivion of its own mysteries, and be buried under the mountain of its own ignominy.
JOHN HYDE, Jun.
New York, July, 1857