ERRONEOUS THEORIES EXAMINED.
It has been a theory among some that Joseph Smith himself secured the Spaulding manuscript from the house of William H. Sabine of Onondaga Valley, N.Y., for whom Smith worked as a teamster in 1823.[37] According to another theory, Sidney Rigdon, while the "Manuscript Found" was at the printing office, copied it, the original being returned to Spaulding. A third theory supposes Smith to have copied it while working for Sabine about 1823, leaving the original there. A fourth theory makes Spaulding copy his story for the publisher while keeping the duplicate at home to be afterward cared for by the family. Under all of these theories, the original of Spaulding's rewritten story was delivered in 1833 to D. P. Hurlburt to be used by E. D. Howe in his then forthcoming book, "Mormonism Unveiled," but, according to the Spaulding family, was by Hurlburt sold to the Mormons, and, according to the Mormons, destroyed by Hurlburt because wholly unlike the Book of Mormon. These theories can claim for themselves no greater weight than that, in the opinion of their several non-Mormon advocates, they furnish a possible explanation as to the connecting link between Spaulding and Smith, but upon all essentials, except one, are without any evidence which involves the conclusion deduced from it, and not one of these theories is necessary as an explanation for the established facts. The one element which has direct evidence in its support is the allegation that Spaulding's rewritten story of the "Manuscript Found" was, after Spaulding's death, in the possession of his widow. That allegation rests upon the following statement of Spaulding's daughter, Mrs. McKinstry, and the family belief in it without any additional evidence upon which to base that belief. She says:
[Footnote 37: "Hand Book on Mormonism," 3; "Braden-Kelly Debate," 47 and 118.]
"In 1816 my father died at Amity, Pa, and directly after his death my mother and myself went to visit my mother's brother, William H. Sabine, at Onondaga Valley, Onondaga County, N Y. * * * We carried our personal effects with us, and one of these was an old trunk in which my mother had placed my father's writings, which had been preserved. I perfectly remember the appearance of this trunk, and of looking at its contents. There were sermons and other papers, and I saw a manuscript about an inch thick, closely written, tied with some of the stories my father had written for me, one of which he called the 'Frogs of Wyndham,' On the outside of this manuscript were written the words, 'Manuscript Found.' I did not read it, but looked through it and had it in my hands many times and saw the names I had heard at Conneaut when my father read it to his friends. I was about eleven years old at this time."[38]
[Footnote 38: "New Light on Mormonism," 238; Magazine of American History, June, 1882; Scribner's Monthly, August, 1880.]
The trunk remained at Sabine's until some time soon after 1820,[39] while in 1823 Smith is said to have worked for Sabine as a teamster, and almost certainly heard Spaulding's stories discussed as a matter of family history. If the rewritten story of Spaulding's "Manuscript Found" had been in the trunk at Sabine's while Smith worked there, which is doubtful, he might have stolen it or copied it, though the latter is made almost impossible by Smith's inability to write,[40] and by his youth.
[Footnote 40: ii Journal of Discourses, 197.]
Assuming, for the sake of argument, that it has been established that the Book of Mormon is a plagiarism from 'Spaulding's rewritten story, then we may still doubt that any of the above theories have sufficient evidence to warrant their acceptance as established facts. These various theories were all invented because of a supposed necessity of accounting for the alleged presence of the rewritten "Manuscript Found" in the trunk at Sabine's house after 1816, the date of Spaulding's death. If the "Manuscript Found" was never there, the theories constructed to explain that fact must fall.
That the first outline of the story which is now at Oberlin was then in the trunk is certain, because Hurlburt, in 1834, found it there. It is even possible that this first manuscript may at some time have been labeled "Manuscript Found." But was the rewritten story ever in the trunk at Sabine's? If not, Smith could neither have stolen it nor copied it, and, if never there, or if stolen by Smith, Hurlburt could not have secured the rewritten manuscript and sold it to the Mormons, as it has been charged he did do, while he gave only the first manuscript to Howe, by whom he was employed to secure another. It may not be amiss to here state that Howe never doubted Hurlburt's fidelity in this matter.[41]
[Footnote 41: Under date of September 12, 1879, E.D. Howe wrote to R. Patterson saying, "I am very certain he (Hurlburt) never had any Manuscript Found to sell to anybody. Whatever Mormons may say, I think Hurlburt was perfectly honest in all his transactions here." (Taken from a copy of the letter furnished by Patterson in his History of Washington County, Pa.)]
The great preponderance of the evidence is against the allegation that the second manuscript was ever in the trunk at Sabine's. Mrs. McKinstry's evidence does not establish the identity of Spaulding's rewritten "Manuscript Found" and the trunk manuscript. Such assertion of identity is contradicted by that more satisfactory evidence to be hereafter reviewed, and which shows that the rewritten manuscript was stolen from the printing office before Spaulding's death; that the latter suspected Rigdon of being the thief; the possession by Rigdon of some such manuscript, and which, on one occasion, he said had been written by Spaulding; Rigdon's advance knowledge of the forthcoming Book of Mormon and his sudden conversion after its appearance, and coupled with a very plain connection between Rigdon and Smith through Parley P. Pratt as intermediary. These conclusions and much of the evidence upon which they are based will contradict Mrs. McKinstry's statement, if she meant by it to assert that the Sabine trunk manuscript contained the names "Mormon," "Moroni," "Lamanite," and "Nephi," which names, it will be shown, occur in and only in the rewritten manuscript and the Book of Mormon.
In determining what weight to give to Mrs. McKinstry's statement as to the contents of the trunk manuscript, several important facts must be kept in mind. Mrs. McKinstry made this statement in 1880, when she was seventy-four years of age. Her father died in October, 1816, very soon after she and the trunk went to Sabine's at Hartwick, Onondaga County, N.Y., and there she "many times" had it in her hand. At the earliest date this must have been in the fore part of 1817, and she tells us that she was about eleven years old at this time. If, in 1817, she was eleven years old, then, in 1812, when she, with her parents, left Conneaut for Pittsburg, she could not have exceeded six years of age. At the age of seventy-four Mrs. McKinstry testified that when she was eleven years old she looked through, but did not read, a manuscript, yet saw the names she heard her father read at Conneaut, between 1810 and 1812, when she was from four to six years old. That this woman, at seventy-four, should remember strange names, casually repeated in her presence, before her sixth year, and those names wholly unrelated to anything of direct consequence to her child life, is a feat of memory too extraordinary to give her uncorroborated statement any weight, as against valid contradictory conclusions drawn from established facts.
From 1834, when this alleged plagiarism was first publicly charged, until the giving of Mrs. McKinstry's evidence in 1880, it had necessarily been a matter of frequent discussion in the family circle that the Book of Mormon was a plagiarism from her father's "Manuscript Found," and always the identity of names must have been spoken of as the connecting link in the chain of evidence proving the plagiarism, since that identity of names was the principal item of evidence as it was first argued and published in 1834. With like uniformity, it was firmly believed (but as a mere matter of inference, be it remembered) that Hurlburt secured from the trunk that second manuscript, which contained these names. Hence it would be inferred by the Spaulding family that the trunk must have contained the names in question. This association of ideas through an almost infinite number of recurrences in mind became firmly impressed as a fixed fact during these forty-six years of frequent repetition. It is not strange, therefore, if, after these forty-six years, and with the failing memory of the age of seventy-four, Mrs. McKinstry should have forgotten the real origin of this association of ideas, and relate it back to the supposed inspection of the trunk manuscript and the Conneaut readings, honestly believing in her accuracy. In this conclusion Mormon authorities concur.[42]
[Footnote 42: "Myth of the Manuscript Found," 29.]
The only other statement which has ever been claimed as evidence showing Spaulding's rewritten manuscript to have been in the Sabine trunk is one by his widow, Matilda Spaulding-Davidson. She says that before leaving Pittsburg for Amity, her husband's manuscript was returned by the publishers. She seemingly remembers nothing of its second submission while her husband resided at Amity, or else those who wrote and signed her statement didn't see fit to mention it. "The Manuscript then [after Mr. Spaulding's death in 1816] fell into my hands, and was preserved carefully. It has frequently been examined by my daughter, Mrs. McKinstry of Monson, Mass., with whom I now reside, and by other friends."[43]
[Footnote 43: Boston Daily Advertiser, copied in iii. Millennial Harbinger, May, 1839; "Mormons' Own Book," 28; Boston Recorder, May, 1839; "Prophet of Palmyra," 417.]
By what follows, she makes it plain that the "other friends" referred to are the Conneaut neighbors, whose examination was made prior to 1812, and not at Sabine's. That she herself never examined the Sabine trunk manuscript so as to speak upon the matter of identity of manuscripts from personal knowledge, is apparent from several facts. First, although writing an argumentative article, the strongest part of which would have been her personal testimony as to some point of identity between the trunk manuscript and the Book of Mormon, she mentioned none such as being within her own knowledge. In the absence of personal knowledge, she repeats as a justification of her belief the evidence of Conneaut witnesses as to the identity of her husband's "Manuscript Found" and the Book of Mormon. Even upon the question of the existence of any manuscript in the Sabine trunk, she seems not to rely upon any personal inspection of the trunk manuscript, but with an apparent intention of putting the responsibility for her statement upon the inspection of her daughter, Mrs. McKinstry, speaks of the latter's inspection, while remaining silent as to whether or not she made any inspection of her own.
The argumentative style and the failure to distinguish between personal knowledge and argumentative inferences is all readily understood when the history of this statement is made known. It seems that two preachers, named D. R. Austin and John Storrs, are responsible for this letter. Mrs. Davidson never wrote it, but afterwards stated that "in the main" it was true.[44] Even with her re-affirmance of the story as published, we cannot give it evidentiary weight except in those matters where it is plain from the nature of things that she must have been speaking from personal knowledge.
[Footnote 44: Quincy Whig, quoted in "The Spaulding Story Examined and Exposed," 5, to be read in connection with "Gleanings by the Way," 261-7. On p. 22 of the "Myth of the Manuscript Found" this interview appears with the statement that the Boston Recorder article was in the main true carefully omitted. For still more gross dishonesty see "Apostle" (afterward Prophet) John Taylor's lying perversion of this alleged interview as reported in his "Three Nights' Public Discussion," pp. 45 and 56. The dishonesty of the original publication of this interview is pointed out in "Gleanings by the Way," 261-4.]
Upon the question as to whether or not Spaulding's rewritten manuscript was in the possession of anybody but Rigdon at any time after October, 1816, Mrs. Davidson's statement as published cannot in any sense whatever be considered as evidence. And since Mrs. McKinstry's unsupported evidence, for the reasons already given, must be considered as of such very infinitesimal weight, I conclude that there is no believable evidence upon which to base the conclusion that the "Manuscript Found" was ever returned to Spaulding after its second submission to Patterson, or was ever in the trunk at Sabine's, and therefore, could not have been either copied or stolen by Smith. This also answers one Mormon argument made against Rigdon's theft of the manuscript from the printing office, which argument is always based upon the assumption that the original manuscript of the rewritten story was in the Sabine trunk long after the time of the alleged theft by Rigdon.
[II.]
When we digressed from the main lines of our argument, Spaulding's rewritten story had been traced into the hands of Robert Patterson, a Pittsburg publisher, and this prior to Spaulding's death in October, 1816. If the manuscript was never returned to Spaulding after its second submission to Patterson, then what became of it? John Miller, who knew Spaulding at Amity, bailed him out of jail when confined for debt, made his coffin for him, and helped lay him in his grave, says Spaulding told him "there was a man named Sidney Rigdon about the office [of Patterson], and they thought he had stolen it" [the manuscript].[45]
[Footnote 45: Gregg's "Prophet of Palmyra," 442; (date, January 20, 1882.) See also Times and Seasons.]
The Rev. Cephus Dodd, a Presbyterian minister of Amity, Pa., as well as a practicing physician, attended Spaulding at his last sickness. As early as 1832, when Mormonism was first attracting general public attention, and two years prior to the publication of Howe's book, in which Spaulding's story was first ventilated, this Mr. Dodd took Mr. George M. French of Amity to Spaulding's grave, and there expressed a positive belief that Sidney Rigdon was the agent who had transformed Spaulding's manuscript into the Book of Mormon. The date is fixed by Mr. French through its proximity to his removal to Amity; hence the date given is probably correct.[46]
[Footnote 46: "History of Washington County, Pa.," by Patterson. "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" p. 10.]
The conclusion thus expressed by Mr. Dodd in advance of all public discussion or evidence is important, because of what is necessarily implied in it. First, it involved a comparison between Spaulding's literary production and the Book of Mormon, with a discovered similarity inducing conviction that the latter was a plagiarism from the former. This comparison presupposes a knowledge of the contents of Spaulding's rewritten manuscript. The second and most important deduction is to be made from the assertion that Sidney Rigdon was the connecting link in the plagiarism. Such a conclusion must have had a foundation in Mr. Dodd's mind, and could have arisen only if he was possessed of personal knowledge of what he considered reliable information creating a conviction in his mind of the probability of Sidney Rigdon's connection with the matter. This conclusion, if not made on independent evidence, in all human probability had no less significant foundation than a confidence in the accuracy of Spaulding's expressed suspicion to the effect that Rigdon had stolen the manuscript from the printing office. Thus accounted for, Dr. Dodd's statement has less force than if presumed to have been made on independent evidence, yet it confirms Joseph Miller's statement that Spaulding suspected Rigdon, and that suspicion must be accounted for by those who deny Rigdon's presence in Pittsburg prior to 1821.