And so the variations run from beginning to end. They are just such variations, too, as would exist if the Taylor version was produced as conjectured. I trust I may be pardoned for being insistent at this point. I was personally acquainted with the late President John Taylor, and am also his biographer. His letters, official and personal, as also his journals, passed through my hands; his most private life was laid open to me, and I know him to have been a highly honorable gentleman, far above such low subterfuge as that charged against him in the coarse vulgarisms employed by Mr. Schroeder, and which, from no standpoint whatever, are justifiable.[83]
[Footnote 83: See "The Life of John Taylor," by B.H. Roberts, (1892). Lest in some rejoinder to this reply Mr. Schroeder should return to this subject of the Taylor variations, in the Haven-Davidson interview, and should seek further to establish his point of view by referring to what is sometimes alleged to be Elder Taylor's denial of the existence of the plural marriage system of the Church when he was in France, (1850) I wish to say that in the above "Life of John Taylor" the alleged denial is dealt with at length, pp. 222-5.]
MR. SCHROEDER AND THE DAVIDSON STATEMENT.
There is something amusing in the attitude of Mr. Schroeder towards this Davidson statement. Although Mr. Schroeder declares in so many words that "Mrs. Davidson never wrote it," and hence must admit it to be a forgery by Reverend gentlemen; yet, since the Haven interview represents Mrs. Davidson as saying that it was "true in the main," Mr. Schroeder dogmatizes thus in regard to this "piece of evidence:"—"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."[84] Why, in the name of all that is reasonable? If her re-affirmance is to re-instate any part of the story as worthy of belief, why not all of it, and all the parts equally? Is Mr. Schroeder to pick and choose from his own witnesses as he will, allowing this, but discarding that, as suits his personal view of the Spaulding theory?
[Footnote 84: American Historical Magazine, September, 1906, p. 394, ante p. 29.]
What is behind all this proposed jugglery? Simply this: I have already pointed out how vital to Mr. Schroeder's case it is to establish the existence of a second Spaulding manuscript, dealing with American antiquities, a "re-written" story different from this manuscript story now safely lodged in Oberlin college. There is nothing of all this in the Davidson statement. This in the eyes of Mr. Schroeder is its first sin, one of omission. Another thing essential to Mr. Schroeder's contention is a second submission of the Spaulding manuscript to the Patterson-Lambdin publishers, after the Spauldings had made their home in Amity, Washington county, Pa. Mrs. (Spaulding) Davidson "says," observes Mr. Schroeder, "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."[85] This is the second sin of omission in the Davidson statement. And right here it may be as well to notice another singular thing in reference to these Spaulding documents, the alleged Davidson statement and Mrs. McKinstry's affidavit, the former published in 1839, the latter in 1880—while both are very explicit as to affairs over at Conneaut, there is nothing said in the statement of either about the readings of the manuscript alleged to have taken place before the Amity neighbors, whence come the Amity witnesses, Joseph Miller and Redic McKee. This silence is all the more inexplicable because it was here that the final "polishing" and preparing for the press of the Schroeder-assumed "rewritten" manuscript was going on; and Mrs. McKinstry was more competent to remember such things than when at Conneaut, because then of less tender years. Indeed if the Davidson statement is insisted upon as evidence, then Mr. Spaulding refused to have his manuscript published, even though Mr. Patterson suggested it, as he had only written it for his own amusement!
[Footnote 85: American Historical Magazine, p. 392-3. (How careless of him!) Ante p. 28.]
The next sin of the Davidson statement is one of commission. The success of Mr. Schroeder's case against the Book of Mormon depends upon establishing his contention that Sidney Rigdon stole the Spaulding manuscript from the printing office of Patterson and Lambdin; and that, after October, 1816, (the time of Spaulding's death), the Schroeder-assumed "rewritten" manuscript was never in the hands of "anybody but Sidney Rigdon." But if the re-affirmance of the Davidson statement is to be admitted at all, in evidence, then, according to Mrs. Davidson, before the family removed from Pittsburg to Amity, the Spaulding manuscript was "returned to its author, and soon after," says the Davidson statement, "we removed to Amity, Washington county, etc., where Mr. Spaulding deceased in 1816. The manuscript then fell into my hands, and was carefully preserved. It has frequently been examined by my daughter, Mrs. McKinstry, of Monson, Mass., with whom I now reside, and by other friends."[86]
[Footnote 86: See Davidson statement in the text above.]
This statement, let it be observed, would not fall within the items which even Mr. Schroeder would exclude from the Davidson statement if readmitted as evidence; for it is very clear that as to this item the lady was speaking of a thing about which she had "personal knowledge," the "shibboleth" which gives "evidentiary weight" to what the lady is supposed to have testified to in this "shady" document. But against this damaging affirmation of the Davidson document, about the return of the Spaulding manuscript to its author, and Mrs. (Spaulding) Davidson's subsequent possession and care of it, Mr. Schroeder says: "Upon the question as to whether or not Spaulding's re-written 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."[87]