The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901

The first measure "to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States" was introduced in the House of Representatives by Mr. Morrill of Vermo...

The government at Washington and the people of the Eastern states knew a good deal more about Mormonism in 1856 than they did when Fillmore gave the appointment of governor to Y...

We may here interrupt the narrative of events subsequent to the restoration of peace in the territory, with the story of the most horrible massacre of white people by religious...

The only one of his New York neighbors who seems to have taken a practical interest in Joe's alleged discovery was a farmer named Martin Harris, who lived a little north of Palm...

The Mormons teach that, for fourteen hundred years to the time of Smith's "revelations," there had been "a general and awful apostasy from the religion of the New Testament, so...

The man who had more to do with founding the Mormon church than Joseph Smith, Jr., even if we exclude any share in the production of the Mormon Bible, and yet who is unknown eve...

The efforts of the church leaders to check too precipitate an emigration to the new Zion were not entirely successful, and, according to the Evening and Morning Star of July, 18...

On Tuesday morning, Joseph and Hyrum Smith were arrested again in Carthage, this time on a charge of treason in levying war against the state, by declaring martial law in Nauvoo...

In his accounts to his neighbors of the revelation to him of the golden plates on which the "record" was written, Smith always declared that no person but him could look on thos...

At eight o'clock the next morning the commander of the militia sent a flag of truce to the Mormons which Colonel Hinckle, for the Mormons, met. General Lucas submitted the follo...

The student of the history of the Mormon church to this date, who seeks an answer to the question, Who originated the idea of plural marriages among the Mormons? will naturally...

When Rigdon returned to Ohio with Smith in January, 1831, it seems to have been his intention to make Kirtland the permanent headquarters of the new church. He had written to hi...

When Major Van Vliet returned from Utah to Washington with Young's defiant ultimatum, he was accompanied by J. M. Bernhisel, the territorial Delegate to Congress, who was allowe...

The end of the complete seclusion of the Mormon settlement in Utah from the rest of the country--complete except so far as it was interrupted by the passage through the territor...

In 1855 the crops in Utah were almost a failure, and the church authorities found themselves very much embarrassed by their debts. A report in the seventh General Epistle, of Ap...

An intelligent examination of the present status of the Mormon church can be made only after acquaintance with its past history, and the policy of the men who have given it its...

The murder of the Smiths caused a panic, not among the Mormons, but among the other inhabitants of Hancock County, who looked for summary vengeance at the hands of the prophet's...

The next federal officers for Utah appointed by the President (in August, 1852) were Lazarus H. Reid of New York to be chief justice, Leonidas Shaver, associate justice, and B....

The first party to leave Nauvoo began crossing the Mississippi early in February, 1846, using flatboats propelled by oars for the wagons and animals, and small boats for persons...

Although there was practically no concealment of the practice of polygamy by the Mormons resident in Utah after their arrival there, it was not until five years from that date t...

In March, 1851, the two houses of the legislature of Deseret, sitting together, adopted resolutions "cheerfully and cordially" accepting the law providing a territorial governme...

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, "Th...

A tide of immigration having been turned toward the new settlement, the next thing in order was to procure for the city a legal organization. Several circumstances combined to p...

The winter of 1845-1846 in Hancock County passed without any renewed outbreak, but the credit for this seems to have been due to the firmness and good judgment of Major W. B. Wa...

The history of the Mormon Bible has been brought uninterruptedly to this point in order that the reader may be able to follow clearly each step that had led up to its publicatio...

There is no reason to believe that, to the date of Joseph Smith's death, Brigham Young had inspired his fellow-Mormons with an idea of his leadership. This was certified to by o...

There was something compulsory about all phases of life in Utah during Brigham Young's regime--the form of employment for the men, the domestic regulations of the women, the chu...

With the arrival of the later companies from Winter Quarters the population of the city was increased by the winter of 1848 to about five thousand, or more than one-quarter of t...

It is easy to understand that a church whose leaders had such views of financial responsibility as Smith's and Rigdon's, and whose members were ready to apostatize when they cou...

The director of the steps taken to announce to the world a new Bible and a new church realized, of course, that there must be priests, under some name, to receive members and to...

The elder Smith, as we have seen, was known as a money-digger while a resident of Vermont. Of course that subject as a matter of conversation in his family, and his sons were a...

Brigham Young died in Salt Lake City at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, August 29, 1877. He was attacked with acute cholera morbus on the evening of the 23rd, after delivering an address i...

The geographical situation of Nauvoo had something in its favor. Lying on the east bank of the Mississippi, which is there two miles wide, it had a water frontage on three sides...

With the return of the people to their homes, the peaceful avocations of life in Utah were resumed. The federal judges received assignments to their districts, and the other fed...

The precise date when Joe's attention was first called to the possibility of changing the story about his alleged golden plates so that they would serve as the basis for a new B...

All peaceable occupations were now at an end in Daviess County. General Atchison reported to the governor that, on arriving there on September 17, he found the county practicall...

Governor Doty died in June, 1865, without coming in open conflict with Young, and was succeeded by Charles Durkee, a native of Vermont, but appointed from Wisconsin, which state...

While the church, in a material sense, might have been as prosperous as Corrill pictured, Smith, on his arrival, found it in the throes of serious internal discord. The month be...

When the Mormons began their departure westward from Nauvoo, the immigration of converts from Europe was suspended because of the uncertainty about the location of the next sett...

"And now behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us,...

The death of the prophet did not bring peace with their outside neighbors to the Mormon church. Indeed, the causes of enmity were too varied and radical to be removed by any cha...

More than one day's march was now made without finding water or grass. Banks of snow were observed on the near-by elevations, and overcoats were very comfortable at night. On Ju...

When Colonel Johnston arrived at the Black's Fork camp the information he received from Colonel Alexander, and certain correspondence with the Mormon authorities, gave him a com...

Summing up his observations of the Mormons as he found them in Utah while secretary of the territory, five years after their removal to the Great Salt Lake valley, B. G. Ferris...

Among the families who settled in Ontario County, New York, in 1816, was that of one Joseph Smith. It consisted of himself, his wife, and nine children. The fourth of these chil...

Smith was now to encounter a kind of resistance within the church that he had never met. In all previous apostasies, where members had dared to attack his character or question...

Young soon had occasion to make practical use of the dictatorial power that he had assumed. The character which those members of the flock who had migrated from Missouri and Ill...

The first white men to enter what is now Utah were a part of the force of Coronado, under Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardinas, if the reader of the evidence decides that their jour...

The murders committed during the "Reformation" which attracted most attention, both because of the parties concerned, the effort made by a United States judge to convict the gui...

Having followed Smith's political operations to their close, it is now necessary to retrace our steps, and examine the social conditions which prevailed in and around Nauvoo dur...

During the winter of 1846-1847 preparations were under way to send an organization of pioneers across the plains and beyond the Rocky Mountains, to select a new dwelling-place f...

In order not to interrupt the story of the Mormons' experiences in Ohio, leaving the first steps taken in Missouri to be treated in connection with the regular course of events...

The Mormons were now equipped in their new home with large landed possessions, a capital city that exhibited a phenomenal growth, and a form of local government which made Nauvo...

Governor Cumming's report of May 2 did not reach Washington until June 9, but the President's volte-face had begun before that date, and when the situation in Utah was precisely...

Smith's autobiography gives incidentally many interesting glimpses of the prophet as he exercised his authority of dictator during the height of his power at Nauvoo. It is fortu...

The four missionaries who had been sent to Ohio under Cowdery's leadership arrived there in October, 1830. Rigdon left Kirtland on his visit to Smith in New York State in the De...

Just when Smith's attention was originally diverted from the discovery of buried money to the discovery of a buried Bible engraved on gold plates remains one of the unexplained...

Smith's latest triumph over his Missouri enemies, with the feeling that he had the governor of his state back of him, increased his own and his followers' audacity. The Nauvoo C...

Smith had shown his dominating spirit as soon as he arrived at Far West. In April, 1838, he announced a "revelation" (Sec. 115), commanding the building of a house of worship th...

Two things may be accepted as facts with regard to the migration of the Mormons westward from Illinois: first, that they would not have moved had they not been compelled to; and...

In June, 1865, a distinguished party from the East visited Salt Lake City, and their visit was not without public significance. It included Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House...

Rigdon was not alone in contending for the successorship to Joseph Smith as the head of the Mormon church. The prophet's family defended vigorously the claim of his eldest son t...

The state of Missouri, to which the story of the Mormons is now transferred, was, at the time of its admission to the Union, in 1821, called "a promontory of civilization into a...

Brockman's force was disbanded after its object had been accomplished, and all returned to their homes but about one hundred, who remained in Nauvoo to see that no Mormons came...

General Hardin announced the coming of his force, which numbered about four hundred men, in a proclamation addressed "To the Citizens of Hancock County," dated September 27. He...

In January, 1833, Smith announced a revival of the "gift of tongues," and instituted the ceremony of washing the feet.* Under the new system, Smith or Rigdon, during a meeting,...

During the halt of a part of the main body of the Mormons at Mt. Pisgah, an incident occurred which has been made the subject of a good deal of literature, and has been held up...

We have seen that Joseph Smith's desire was, when he suggested a possible removal of the church to the Far West, that they should have, not only an undisturbed place of residenc...

Surprise has been expressed that Smith would permit the newcomer, General John C. Bennett, to be elected the first mayor of Nauvoo under the new charter. Much less surprising is...

Brigham Young, the man who had succeeded in expelling Rigdon and establishing his own position as head of the church, was born in Whitingham, Windham County, Vermont, on June 1,...

The Mormon Bible,* both in a literary and a theological sense, is just such a production as would be expected to result from handing over to Smith and his fellow-"translators" a...

The state of Illinois, when the Mormons crossed the Missouri River to settle in it, might still be considered a pioneer country. Iowa, to the west of it, was a territory, and on...

I. THE FOUNDING OF SALT LAKE CITY: Utah's First White Explorers--First Mormon Services in the Valley--Young's View of the Right to the Land--The First Buildings--Laying out the...

Having presented the evidence which shows that the historical part of the Mormon Bible was supplied by the Spaulding manuscript, we may now pay attention to other evidence, whic...

Mormon accounts of the westward movement from Nauvoo represent that the delay which occurred when they reached the Missouri River was an interruption of their leaders' plans, at...

Ghost, which will not be forgiven through the shedding of Christ's blood. He also quoted 1 John v. 16 as showing that the apostle and Brigham Young were in agreement concerning...

The gauntlet thus thrown down by Smith was promptly taken up by his non-Mormon neighbors, and public meetings were held in various places to give expression to the popular indig...

Smith's leadership was now to have another illustration. Others might be discouraged by past persecutions and business failures, and be ready to abandon the great scheme which t...

The counties in which the Mormons settled after leaving Jackson County were thinly populated at that time, Clay County having only 5338 inhabitants, according to the census of 1...

When the pioneers set out from the Missouri, instructions were left for the organization of similar companies who were to follow their trail, without waiting to learn their ulti...

Meanwhile, the Mormons in Clay County, with the assent of the natives there, had opened a factory for the manufacture of arms "to pay the Jackson mob in their own way,"* and it...

The scenes at Kirtland during the first winter of the church there reached the limit of religious enthusiasm. The younger members outdid the elder in manifesting their belief. T...

On June 7, 1831, a "revelation" was given out (Sec. 52) announcing that the next conference would be held in the promised land in Missouri, and directing Smith and Rigdon to go...

III. THE BUILDING UP OF THE CITY: Unhealthfulness of its Site--Rapid Growth of the Place--Early Pictures of it--Foreign Proselyting--Why England was a Good Field--Method of Work...

As early as 1853 intimations of the doctrine that an offending member might be put out of the way were given from the Tabernacle pulpit. Orson Hyde, on April 9 of that year, spo...

I. FACILITY OF HUMAN BELIEF: The Real Miracle of Mormon Success--Effrontery of the Leaders' Professions--Attractiveness of Religious Beliefs to Man--Wherein the World does not m...

I. THE DIRECTIONS TO THE SAINTS ABOUT THEIR ZION: Western Missouri in the Early Days--Pioneer Farming and Home-making--The Trip of the Four Mormon Missionaries--Direction about...

I. PREPARATIONS FOR THE LONG MARCH: Uncertainty of their Destination--Explanations to the People--Disposition of Real and Personal Property--Collection of Draft Animals--Activit...

I. THE FIRST CONVERTS AT KIRTLAND: Original Missionaries sent out to the Lamanites--Organization of a Church in Ohio--Effect of Rigdon's Conversion--General Interest in the New...