BLOOD ATONEMENT
I will now consider your "labored effort to cover up the true facts regarding blood atonement."
In my letter I candidly placed the true belief and teachings of the Latter-day Saints in relation to this doctrine before you. This fact appears to be displeasing to you, as it overturns your conclusions and accusations against our people. If you desire to know the correct position of the Church on this doctrine, I would recommend a careful study of John Taylor's Meditation and Atonement and Charles W. Penrose's Blood Atonement, which was published in answer to such wicked misrepresentations as I claim you have made in relation to this principle and our belief in relation thereto. There is no reason for any person to misunderstand our position, unless he desires to do so. I claim, too, that we are in a better position to teach that which we believe than is the stranger who attempts to present our case, especially if he is antagonistic or unfriendly.
If you do not believe the doctrine of blood atonement as that doctrine is taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which church you are pleased to call "Utah Mormonism," then I say that you do not believe in the atonement of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To this I will refer later.
You delight—as all anti-"Mormons" do—in referring to statements made by President Brigham Young, Jedediah M. Grant and others during the troublous times preceding the advent of Johnston's army into Utah. I see, too, that like many others, you place your own desired interpretation on their remarks, place them before the public in a garbled state, taking care to give the darkest interpretation possible from which the public may gather false conclusions. You take great pains to cover up the conditions prevailing which called forth such extreme and in some instances unwise remarks. Conditions in some respects akin to those surrounding the Saints in Missouri in 1838-39 when other unwise remarks were made by members of the leading quorums of the Church, but in a sense justifiable and which should be condoned under the trying circumstances that called them forth.[1]