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
