CHAPTER II

THE RIDDLE OF JOSEPH SMITH

THE name of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism and professed prophet of God, is destined, doubtless, as was said to him in one of his reported visions, to "be good and evil spoken of among all peoples." Apart from anything that may inspire respect or evoke mistrust, moving one to admire or dislike him, he remains one of the most romantic figures in history, also, perhaps, one of the most problematical. Although born of simpleminded and largely unlettered parents and reared in a wilderness, with only moderate educational advantages, his first appearance before the world is in the rôle of leader and teacher of religion, and the promulgator of a system of doctrine and life that is at once intelligent, logical, practical and persistent. His personality was such that it lent cogency to his teachings, and his teachings have been accepted by thousands, who still hold his name in reverence and endorse his every profession to a divine mission in the world.

Few men have been worse hated, on the one hand, or more thoroughly beloved on the other, in all the world's history. It seems strange, indeed, that a man of inconspicuous origin and defective worldly advantages, "a youth to fortune and to fame unknown," should have appeared so near to our own time to play such a part, and to win such distinguished regard. To the fairminded student of his career Joseph Smith must appear as a veritable riddle, a character not readily to be estimated at its full value, because evidently so many-sided, so versatile and so forceful. If it is difficult for any of us to understand the "secret of his influence," the reason for the lofty reverence of his followers, it must be equally difficult to comprehend the superlative bitterness of his enemies, particularly if we be asked to countenance or justify the deliberate lies that they have told about him and the savage truculence with which they have opposed him and his followers.

The personality of Joseph Smith, which those who knew him, as friends and sympathizers, describe as wonderfully magnetic

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and masterful, evidently possessing power and exerting influence, is characterized by others as "uncouth," "awkward," "vulgar" and otherwise disagreeable. Thus, this man who could command the devotion of thousands of sane and normal people, not only in days of calm prosperity, but in the midst of hardship and persecution-yet some people will tell us that many of Smith's disciples were attracted by the prospects of material benefits, not otherwise available to them-is represented to the intelligent public as some sort of buffoon or wholesale "confidence man." Such representations are familiar in the several "testimonies" of anonymous "ladies" and "gentlemen," who seem to vie with the affidaviting "old neighbors and "prominent citizens," none of whom figure very largely in history-unless, as asserted, a few were revolutionary soldiers”—in making descriptions which do not describe. Among such is the often-quoted "Girl's Letter from Nauvoo," which contains the following:

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"Joseph Smith is a large, stout man, youthful in his appearance, with light complexion and hair, and blue eyes set far back in the head, and expressing great shrewdness, or I should say, cunning. He has a large head, and phrenologists would unhesitatingly pronounce it a bad one, for the organs situated in the back part are decidedly more prominent. He is also very round shouldered. He had just returned from Springfield, where he had been upon trial for some crime of which he was accused while in Missouri, but he was released by habeas corpus. I, who had expected to be overwhelmed by his eloquence, was never more disappointed than when he commenced his discourse by relating all the incidents of his journey. This he did in a loud voice, and his language and manner were the coarsest possible. His object seemed to be to amuse and excite laughter in his audience. He is evidently a great egotist and boaster, for he frequently remarked that at every place he stopped, going to and from Springfield, people crowded around him, and expressed surprise that he was so handsome and good looking.' He also exclaimed at the close of almost every sentence, That's the idea!'"

Although the maidenly prejudices and phrenological predilections of this "girl" have evidently led her to discount the abilities of Mr. Smith, it is necessary to remark only that most of his published discourses seem to be of a far different character from the one presumably heard on this occasion. It must be refreshing, however, to the candid reader of the present day to learn that Mr. Smith possessed sufficient sense of humor to appreciate the absurdity of many of the so-called legal proceedings that were brought against him. That he described them in the humorous language suggested in this passage is scarcely remarkable. His critic was evidently deficient in ability to comprehend some situations.

Compared with the common run of estimates and incidents regarding this man's personality and character, we have the famous

account written by Josiah Quincy, son of the famous Josiah Quincy, and, himself, at one time, Mayor of Boston, which is competent in evidence to show how Smith affected a really intelligent and experienced mind. It is partly as follows:

'It is by no means improbable that some future text book, for the use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. And the reply, absurd as it doubtless seems to most men now living, may be an obvious common-place to their descendants. History deals in surprises and paradoxes quite as startling as this. The man who established a religion in this age of free debate, who was and is to-day accepted by hundreds of thousands as a direct emissary from the Most High-such a rare human being is not to be disposed of by pelting his memory with unsavory epithets. Fanatic, imposter, charlatan, he may have been; but these hard names furnish no solution to the problem he presents to us. Fanatics and imposters are living and dying every day, and their memory is buried with them; but the wonderful influence which this founder of a religion exerted and still exerts throws him into relief before us, not as a rogue to be criminated, but as a phenomenon to be explained. The most vital questions Americans are asking each other to-day have to do with this man and what he has left us.. A generation other than mine must deal with these questions. Burning questions they are, which must give a prominent place in the history of the country to that sturdy self-asserter whom I visited at Nauvoo."-Figures of the Past, P. 367.

Although Mr. Quincy states at another place, that Smith mingled Utopian fallacies with his shrewd suggestions," many of which he was compelled to endorse in the highest terms, and that "he talked as from a strong mind utterly unenlightened by the teachings of history," he concludes, as follows:

"Born in the lowest ranks of poverty, without book-learning and with the homeliest of all human names, he had made himself at the age of thirty-nine a power upon earth. Of the multitudinous family of Smith, from Adam down (Adam of the Wealth of Nations, I mean), none had so won human hearts and shaped human lives as this Joseph. His influence, whether for good or for evil, is potent to-day, and the end is not yet. I have endeavored to give the details of my visit to the Mormon Prophet with absolute accuracy. If the reader does not know just what to make of Joseph Smith, I cannot help him out of the difficulty. I myself stand helpless before the puzzle."

We may be prepared, then, for the statement that a careful study of Smith's life and work, such as would be cheerfully accorded to any other character in history-and even Judas Iscariot has had his defenders — will reveal the surprising fact that, where many writers have found only a vulgar and corrupt charlatan, we shall discern a born leader of men, one possessed of force and intellect, a real reformer along several lines, a thorough student of the Bible, and a teacher of religion, morals,

sociology and government with a real message, who evidently attempted to justify his every claim to the intelligence of mankind.

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At the very beginning of our study we find a host of alleged "affidavits" embodying the embodying the familiar traditional accusations against Joseph Smith and all his family, alleging depravity of several orders, both ordinary and extraordinary, which are swallowed whole, hair, hide and hoofs," in spite of various inconsistencies and irrelevancies, by the average critic and "student" of Mormonism. Thus, in the words of one Pomeroy Tucker, who has been largely quoted by all subsequent “investigators," we learn that:

"At this period in the life and career of Joseph Smith, Jr., or Joe Smith, as he was universally named, and the Smith family, they were popularly regarded as an illiterate, whiskey-drinking, shiftless, irreligious race of people-the first named, the chief subject of this biography, being unanimously voted the laziest and most worthless of the generation. From the age of twelve to twenty years he is distinctly remembered as a dull-eyed, flaxen-haired, prevaricating boy-noted only for his indolent and vagabondish character, and his habits of exaggeration and untruthfulness.'

Admitting fully the genuineness of the "testimony" upon which these statements are based, its competence is not established-things "unanimously voted" and "distinctly remembered" in this way are not always the justest and most intelligent things that may be said of people. We must remember, also, that, had Smith become a poet, artist or writer of fiction, or even a conspicuous figure in any other walk of life than that which he selected, he would have been remembered as a "dreamy and introspective boy," instead of one possessing an "indolent and vagabondish character." If we may judge from the careers and characters of many of the people noted in these other "walks," we must understand that the variant estimates in the two cases, as explained, indicate differing "animus" in the witnesses, rather than differing conditions in the environments and characters of the subjects. As for the remarks on "illiterate, whiskey-drinking, shiftless" parents, whatever may have been the real facts in the present case, the "cloven foot" of slanderous rural gossip is only too plainly evident. We should have expected to hear that Smith's father had been a notorious housebreaker, highwayman or horse-thief, instead of merely illiterate and shiftless. Á man of such a character would, very probably, have been of a grade of intelligence and energy likely to beget a son capable of engineering "hoaxes." To ask the public to believe that a merely worthless and indolent father can account for such a movement as Mormonism is only to insult intelli

gence, and betray one's own spite, ignorance and credulity. Of very similar value are most of the "affidavits " presented by Howe, Tucker, and others. Of these the following is a good sample:

"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."

Eleven "prominent citizens of Manchester" apparently swore to this "instrument," thus guaranteeing its truth "to the best of their knowledge and belief," but why any man sufficiently intelligent to write a grammatically-constructed book should consider it worth quoting as authority is very nearly incomprehensible. Without attempting to clear the characters of Joseph Smith, or those of any of his family, we must protest that the futility of such testimony is amply demonstrated in the fact that it never attempts to make really serious criminal charges, and is to be discredited as mere "railing accusation."

Nor, in protesting against this kind of "testimony" can we be justly charged with partiality: we complain only because we hear nothing worse, something colossal, enterprising and really depraved. In view of the results achieved by him, we are bound to recognize in Joseph Smith a really exceptional man, one worthy to rank far above the average of his associates in point of native abilities. If he was altogether evil, therefore, an "imposter," demagogue and self-seeking scoundrel, he must certainly have been more than merely idle and drunken in his youth. But, here we have no more serious accusations than he himself pleads guilty to, when, as he says in his journal, he fell into many foolish errors, and displayed the weakness of youth, and the foibles of human nature, offensive in the sight of God." He had the grace, at least, to acknowledge such shortcomings as may have been committed by him: nor does he offer excuses or “explanations."

Apart from the evident reasonableness of such a line of criticism, it is only just to say that the allegations of superlative worthlessness made against the family of Joseph Smith are entirely unproven by any decent show of evidence. The behavior of his parents and brothers in after-life shows no signs of the faults so confidently stated in the affidavits of "old neighbors" and "prominent citizens," who evidently follow the prevalent uncharity of judgment in ascribing poverty and business incapacity to "shiftlessness, whiskey-drinking and general worthlessness of character." Such allegations, however, have played their