SOLOMON SPAULDING AND HIS FIRST MANUSCRIPT.
Solomon Spaulding was born in 1761 at Ashford, Conn., graduated from Dartmouth in 1785, graduated in theology in 1787, and became an obscure preacher. The fact that Spaulding had become an infidel,[5] that in rewriting the first outline of his story he adopted, as he said, "the old Scripture style" to make it seem more ancient,[6] and the further fact that he told at least four persons at different times that his story would some day be accepted as veritable history[7]—all of these, combined with the peculiar product, tend to show that one motive for the writing of this supposed novel may have been the author's desire to burlesque the Bible and furnish a practical demonstration of the gullibility of the masses.
[Footnote 5: See Addendum to Spaulding Manuscript at Oberlin College and Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 288.]
[Footnote 6: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 288.]
[Footnote 7: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 283, 4, 6, 7.]
While at Dartmouth College, Spaulding had as a classmate the subsequently famous imposter and criminal, Stephen Burroughs,[8] which fact furnishes interesting material for reflection as to how far the subsequent ill fame of Burroughs, coupled with personal acquaintance, may have operated in Spaulding as a fruitful suggestion inducing this labor as a means of securing fortune through fraud. If Spaulding did not see the possibility of a new and profitable religion in his "Manuscript Found," then he was more short-sighted than was a nephew of his named King. This nephew told one Hale, a schoolteacher, of his belief that he could start a new religion out of this novel and make money thereby, at the same time briefly outlining a plan very similar to the one long afterward adopted by Smith, Rigdon and Company. If we can place any confidence in the report of an interview between a Mormon "elder" and a nephew of Solomon Spaulding, then it would appear that in the opinion of the latter's brother Solomon Spaulding was not a man who would be, by conscientious scruples, deterred from practicing such a fraud, if believed profitable.[10] Be that as it may, Spaulding did hope by the sale of his literary production to make sufficient money to enable him to pay his debts.[11]
[Footnote 8: "Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs," p. 26, ed. of 1811, shows Burroughs to have entered Dartmouth in 1781, which must have been Spaulding's date of entry, he having graduated in 1785.]
[Footnote 9: "New Light on Mormonism," 261.]
[Footnote 10: xxxv. Saints' Herald, 820.]
[Footnote 11: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 285.]
In 1809 Solomon Spaulding and Henry Lake built and conducted a forge at Salem (now Conneaut), O., where, in 1812, the former made his second business failure.[12]
[Footnote 12: "Prophet of Palmyra," 443; Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 279 and 282; "New Light on Mormonism," 13.]
Spaulding, being an invalid, possessed of a good education and habits of study, naturally took to literary work, which he probably commenced soon after 1809,[13] and continued until his death in October, 1816. During this seven years he seems to have written several other manuscripts[14] besides the two with which we are directly concerned.
[Footnote 13: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 279; "New Light on Mormonism," 13-14.]
[Footnote 14: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 285; "New Light on Mormonism," 20.]
Necessarily Spaulding's surroundings gave some direction to the course of his literary efforts. Environed as he was in a country where once dwelt the mound-builders, and having himself caused one of the mounds to be opened, with the resulting discovery of bones and relics of a supposedly prehistoric civilization,[15] like thousands before him, he was led to speculate upon the character of that civilization and the origin of those ancient peoples. Josiah Priest, in his "Wonders of Nature and Providence" (1824), quotes over forty authors, half of whom are Americans, and all of whom, prior to 1824, advocated an Israelitish origin of the American Indian. Some of these dated as far back as Clavigaro, a Catholic priest in the seventeenth century.
[Footnote 15: "New Light on Mormonism," 14.]
In Spaulding's first writing of his manuscript story, he pretended to find a roll of parchment in a stone box within a cave. In the Latin language, this contained an account of a party of Roman sea voyagers, who, in the time of Constantine, were, by storms, drifted ashore on the American continent. One of their number left this record of their travels, of Indian wars and customs, which record Spaulding pretends to have found and to translate.[16] How that resembles a synopsis of the Book of Mormon!
[Footnote 16: "The Manuscript Found." For Howe's synopsis see "Mormonism Unveiled," 288. Whitney's "History of Utah," 49-51.]
In 1834, when E. D. Howe had in preparation his book, "Mormonism Unveiled," wherein the Spaulding story was first exploited, this first manuscript was given by Spaulding's family to D. P. Hurlburt, the agent of Howe. The Spaulding family, without having made any examination whatever of the papers delivered to Hurlburt, seem always to have believed,[17] though without any evidence, that he received and sold to the Mormons the rewritten story entitled "Manuscript Found," which will be more fully discussed hereafter. From Howe this first manuscript story went into the possession of one L. L. Rice, who bought out Howe's business, and later, with other effects of Rice's, it was shipped to Honolulu, and there, in 1884, accidentally discovered by President James H. Fairchild of Oberlin College.[18] This manuscript is now in the Oberlin library, and has been published by two of the Mormon sects as being a refutation of the Spaulding origin of the Book of Mormon. It can be such refutation only to those who mistake it for another story. Howe, in 1834, published a fair synopsis of the manuscript now at Oberlin[19] and submitted the original to the witnesses who testified to the many points of identity between Spaulding's "Manuscript Found" and the Book of Mormon. These witnesses then (in 1834) recognized the manuscript, secured by Hurlburt and now at Oberlin, as being one of Spaulding's, but not the one which they asserted was similar to the Book of Mormon. They further said that Spaulding had told them that he had altered his original plan of writing by going farther back with his dates and writing in the old Scripture style, in order that his story might appear more ancient.[20]
[Footnote 17: "New Light on Mormonism," by Mrs. Ellen F. Dickinson.]
[Footnote 18: Publisher's Preface to "The Manuscript Found," p. iv. Deseret News, 1886; Whitney's "History of Utah," p. 49; Talmage's "Articles of Faith," 278-9.]
[Footnote 19: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 288; Whitney's "History of Utah," 49.]
[Footnote 20: Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," 288.]
According to many witnesses, the re-written "Manuscript Found" (like the Book of Mormon) was an attempt at imitating the literary style of the Bible. So was the manuscript submitted to Patterson, according to his own statement.[21] No such indications are found in the Oberlin manuscript, which further evidences that it is not the manuscript of which the witnesses testified, and which Patterson says was submitted to him. The Oberlin manuscript also furnishes internal evidences of an improbability that it was ever submitted to a publisher by any man as sane and well educated as was Spaulding. The plot of the story is incomplete, and the manuscript is full of interlineations, alterations, careless or phonetic spelling, and misused capital letters. These are all easily explainable consistently with Spaulding's erudition, if we view the manuscript as a hasty and careless blocking out of his literary work, but it is not in such a condition as would make him willing to submit it to a publisher.
[Footnote 21: "The Spaulding Story Examined and Exposed," by John E. Page, 7; "Who wrote the Book of Mormon?" 7; "Mormonism Exposed," by Williams.]
If we bear in mind that from the beginning it was asserted that this manuscript now at Oberlin was not the one from which the Book of Mormon was alleged to have been plagiarized, then President Fairchild's conclusion that it disproves such plagiarism of course becomes absurd and only demonstrates his ignorance of the early testimony upon which was asserted the connection of the Book of Mormon and another manuscript. This also disposes of the Mormon argument most frequently urged against the theory here advocated.
Either through like ignorance of the evidence of 1834 that this was not the manuscript then being testified about, or through a willingness to play upon the ignorance of others, the two leading sects of Mormons have published this first manuscript as a refutation of a theory which no one ever advocated, viz.: That the manuscript now at Oberlin was the thing from which Smith et al. plagiarized the Book of Mormon. In my judgment, the publication of this first incomplete manuscript story furnishes additional evidence that the rewritten story did constitute the foundation of the Book of Mormon. When we remember what was said in 1834 as to the character of changes made in rewriting, and that the rewritten story was revamped by Smith, Rigdon and Company, we are astonished at the number of similarities retained; as, for instance, the finding of the story in a stone box, its translation into English, the attempt to account for a portion of the population of this continent, the wars of extermination of two factions, the impossible slaughters of primitive warfare, and the physically impossible armies which were gathered without modern facilities of either transportation or the furnishing of supplies—the fact that after two rewritings, the second being by new authors, there should remain these very unusual features, makes the discovery and publication of this first manuscript only an additional evidence that the second one did furnish the basis of the Book of Mormon.
By always remembering these separate manuscripts and their different histories, much seeming conflict of evidence can be explained, mistaken conclusions accounted for, and confusion avoided. The Mormons, in their publication of this first manuscript story, have labeled it "The Manuscript Found," though no such title is discoverable anywhere upon or in the body of the manuscript in the Oberlin library.[22] The evident purpose of this is to further confound that first story with the second or rewritten manuscript which it will be demonstrated really was used in constructing the Book of Mormon, and which manuscript the witnesses to be hereafter introduced described by that title. Having traced to its final resting-place at Oberlin College the first manuscript story, which had no direct connection with the Book of Mormon and never was claimed to have such, let us now, if we can, trace into the Book of Mormon Spaulding's rewritten story, entitled "The Manuscript Found."
[Footnote 22: xxxv. Saints' Herald, 130; "Prophet of Palmyra," 459.]