PRESIDENT YOUNG THE PROPHET'S FRIEND
Will you please explain on what grounds you charge President Young as being "under suspicion at the time of Joseph Smith's death?" Am I to infer by this that you mean to convey the idea that Brigham Young was in any way responsible for the death of Joseph Smith? The Prophet never had a truer friend. You know that at the time of the martyrdom Brigham Young was on a mission away from home. If this is the inference you wish to convey, it is not only contemptible but viciously false.[3]
With reference to my father's first wife, you say she died "broken hearted and insane." If you mean to insinuate that this condition, if true, was the result of any act whatever on the part of my father, it is also scandalously false. I have good reason to believe that she died neither broken hearted nor insane. If it were true, I would still think that you, as a professed minister of the Gospel, might employ your time to better advantage than as an aspersor or a scandal-monger.
Respectfully,
Joseph F. Smith, Jr.