professes to give the history of America from its first settlement by a colony of “Jaredites” from among the crowd dispersed by the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel down to the year 5 A.D. These settlers in course of time destroyed one another. In 600 B.C. Lehi, his wife, and four sons, with ten friends, all from Jerusalem, landed on the coast of Chile. Upon the death of Lehi, the divine appointment to the leadership of Nephi, the youngest son, roused the resentment of his elder brothers, who were in consequence condemned to have dark skins and to be an idle, mischievous race, the “Lamanites” or North-American Indians. Between the Nephites and the bad Hebrews a fierce war was maintained for centuries, until finally, in spite of divine intervention in the person of the risen Christ, who here founded a Church with the same organization “as was enjoyed on the Eastern Continent,” the Nephites fell away from the true faith, and in 384 A.D. were nearly annihilated in a battle at the hill of Cumorah, in Ontario county, New York. Among the handful that escaped were Mormon and his son Moroni, the former of whom collected the sixteen books of records, kept by successive kings and priests, into one volume, which on his death was supplemented by his son with some personal reminiscences and by him buried in the hill of Cumorah, where he was divinely assured that the book would one day be discovered by God’s chosen prophet. This is Smith’s account of the book: it was a contention of the early anti-Mormons, now however discredited, that The Book of Mormon as published by Smith was rewritten with few changes from an unpublished romance, The Manuscript Found, written before 1812 by Solomon Spaulding[1] (1761–1816), a minister and iron-founder who had become greatly interested in the prehistoric mounds of Ohio and wrote a romance to explain their origin and the Hebrew origin of the North-American Indians. The style of the book is poor; the speeches of primitive Indian chiefs are filled with the phraseology of the 19th-century camp-meeting; there are long extracts from the Westminster Confession, and a speech of Nephi contains a statement of doctrine which corresponds with heretical views held in Smith’s own time in the presbytery of Geneva, in which his home lay.
The time was singularly favourable to the founding of a new sect: religious unrest and receptiveness were prevalent; and western New York was the scene of the foundation of various new communities between 1789, when Jemima Wilkinson founded “Jerusalem” in Yates county, New York, and 1848, when the Fox sisters gave their first spiritualistic manifestations about ten miles from Joseph Smith’s home. His book and his claim to divine authority, upheld by frequent revelations, soon drew many followers to Smith. A Church was formally organized on the 6th of April 1830 at Fayette, Seneca county, New York; and in June a conference of about thirty members met at Fayette. Smith and Cowdery had previously (May, 1829) baptized each other, in alleged accordance with the instruction of John the Baptist, who had ordained them, conferring “the priesthood of Aaron”; while Peter, James and John afterwards made them priests of “the order of Melchisedec.” In October 1830 Smith sent out Parley Parker Pratt (1807–1857), Oliver Cowdery, Ziba Peterson, and Peter Whitmer, jun., as missionaries. One of their first converts, in Mentor, Lake county, Ohio, was Sidney Rigdon (1793–1876), whom Pratt had formerly known, who had preached as a Baptist in 1819–1828—a part of this time in Pittsburg—who had then joined Alexander Campbell and Walter Scott in establishing the Disciples of Christ, and who was pastor of a church in Mentor. Rigdon was baptized, became a Mormon leader, and, after a “revelation” of December 1830, made a new translation of the Bible, in which prophecies of the coming of Joseph Smith and the nature of The Book of Mormon are inserted in the 50th chapter of Genesis and the 29th chapter of Isaiah respectively. This translation was not published until 1866 and is not in use in the Mormon churches. In January 1831 Smith, who had been “persecuted” in his New York home, where several lawsuits, all unsuccessful, had been brought against him, accompanied Rigdon to Ohio, where at Kirtland (a few miles south-west of Mentor), Lake county, Ohio, the preaching of the new sect was very successful, partly because Pratt and Rigdon were so well known to the Disciples in north-eastern Ohio. Smith at this time seems to have intended to make the New Jerusalem at Kirtland; there he established a general store, a steam saw-mill and a tannery, bought land, platted a great city, and built a stone temple, which was consecrated in 1836. But the church was “persecuted” again, especially by apostates; on the 25th of March 1832 Smith and Rigdon were tarred and feathered at Hiram,[2] Portage county, where they were then living. In February 1834 the Church was fairly organized; already on the 8th of March 1833 Smith, Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams had been styled the first presidency, and were entrusted with the keys of the last kingdom. About this time the licentiousness of Smith might have led to the dissolution of the Church but for Brigham Young (1801–1877), a Vermont painter and glazier, who was baptized in 1832 and soon afterwards was ordained elder. Young’s indomitable will, persuasive eloquence, executive ability, shrewdness and zeal soon made their influence felt, and, when a further step was taken in 1835 towards the organization of a hierarchy by the institution of the quorum of the “twelve apostles,”[3] who were sent out as proselytizing missionaries among the “gentiles,” Young was ordained one of the Twelve and despatched to preach throughout the eastern states. In 1836 the Kirtland Safety Society Bank was organized (in accordance with a “revelation” to Smith); as it was unchartered it issued notes under the name of “The Kirtland Safety Society anti-Bank-ing Co.”; but in March 1837 Rigdon and Smith, the secretary and treasurer, were charged with violating the state law against unchartered banks, and they were convicted in October; the society appealed, claiming that it was not a bank but an association, but in November the “bank” suspended payments and in Jan. 1838 Smith and Rigdon left the state for Missouri. In 1836–1837 there had been a determined attempt to depose Smith and make David Whitmer head of the Church; Rigdon and Young successfully opposed this movement, which was backed by Whitmer, Pratt, Williams and Harris. Probably in June 1837 (or in July 1838) there was organized under the leadership of Captain “Fear Not” (David W. Patten) a band called “The Daughter of Zion” (see Mic. iv. 13), the “Big Fan” (Jer. xv. 7), “Brothers of Gideon,” and finally “Sons of Dan,” or “Danites” (Gen. xlix. 17), bound to secrecy under penalty of death, and formed to punish all who opposed the Church and its supreme head. Numerous crimes and outrages were attributed to them.[4] In the winter
- ↑ It was supposed that Sidney Rigdon had been a compositor in a Pittsburg printing-office, that he had stolen Spaulding’s manuscript from this office, or had made a surreptitious copy of it, and that he entered into a plot with Smith to use this material for a new Bible. In support of this are vague stories of a mysterious visitor to Smith at the time he was making his translation; and the argument that Smith did not, and Rigdon did, know enough to get the book in shape. But there is no actual proof that Rigdon lived in Pittsburg or was employed in a printer’s shop there as early as when Spaulding’s “copy” must have been left with the printer; and there is no evidence that Rigdon knew anything of Mormonism until after the publication of The Book of Mormon. The discovery by Professor J. H. Fairchild, in 1884, in Honolulu of a manuscript romance by Spaulding (now in the library of Oberlin College, Ohio), which did not agree at all in style or matter with The Book of Mormon, does not entirely settle the matter, as this romance is so different in character from the story read by Spaulding to some of his friends in 1811–1812, that if it was really Spaulding’s, it must have been a later work than The Manuscript Found. Even, however, if it be true that Smith used Spaulding’s story, his own additions to it must have been large, for parts of the Book seem autobiographic, and one incident seems to be based on the anti-Masonic excitement prevalent in New York state after the disappearance of William Morgan in 1826—ten years after the death of Solomon Spaulding.
- ↑ Rigdon had formerly been well known and respected in Hiram, which was a stronghold of the Disciples; there he had taught Latin and Greek to the father of Mrs James Abram Garfield.
- ↑ Young received at this time the title of “The Lion of the Lord”; Lyman Wright and Parley Pratt, who also became apostles, were called respectively “The Wild Ram of the Mountains” and “The Archer of Paradise.”
- ↑ The existence of this organization has been denied by Mormons, but there is abundant evidence that it did exist. See Linn, pp. 212–214, and Bancroft, pp. 124–126; the latter, friendly to the Mormons, says (p. 124) that of the existence of the Danites “there is no question.”
