[Footnote 105: "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" p. 6.]
Mr. Schroeder next introduces what he would fondly have us believe is the testimony of the Reverend Cephus Dodd, "a Presbyterian minister of Amity, Pa." (where Spaulding lived 1814-16); Mr. Dodd was also a practicing physician and attended Spaulding in his last illness. "As early as 1832," says Mr. Schroeder, "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." Mr. French, we are told, fixes the date through its proximity to his removal to Amity. Following is the comment of Mr. Schroeder on the Reverend Mr. Dodd's "testimony:"
"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."[106]
[Footnote 106: American Historical Magazine, November, 1906, p. 519, ante pp. 31-32.]
But not so fast. Let us think of it. Who tells this story? Mr. Dodd in 1832? No. And is it of record that he did all these things that Mr. Schroeder surmises that he did? Again, no. And was Mr. Dodd's "conclusions expressed" in advance of all public discussion or evidence, respecting the Book of Mormon? Not at all. According to the authority Mr. Schroeder himself cites for this Dodd "evidence," and from which he gets the story, the Reverend Mr. Dodd lived until January 16, 1858. But there is no direct statement or evidence at all from him on the matter here discussed. Nothing was said about it until the publication of "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" in the "History of Washington County, Pa.," 1882; after the discussion of all the evidence, instead of in advance of it. Then Mr. George M. French, according to the author of "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" "in his eighty-third years," "retains a vivid impression" of the foregoing account of a visit to Mr. Spaulding's grave in company with Mr. Dodd; and then the story.[107] And Mr. Schroeder would lead his readers to believe that they have in this jumbled mass of second hand "vivid impressions" fifty years old, detailed by a man in his dotage, over eighty-two years old, an expression in "advance of all public discussion or evidence" respecting the Book of Mormon—in 1832, in fact! And Mr. Schroeder is a professional lawyer!
[Footnote 107: "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" p. 10.]
Of like character but weaker are the rest of Mr. Schroeder's witnesses to the "theft" of the Spaulding manuscript and its identity with the Book of Mormon. Such is his "tenth witness," Redick McKee (Joseph Miller, considered above, being his "ninth witness,"); and his "eleventh witness," the Reverend Abner Jackson; and, as Mr. Schroeder himself puts it,—"Last but not least," John C. Bennett, who also endorses the Spaulding theory of the Origin of the Book of Mormon; for which I had almost said, "thank God!" for nothing could so completely damn a thing as John C. Bennett's endorsement. Then I restrained the all but expressed exclamation and softened it to the quiet conclusion of—"fitting climax to such an array of testimony!"
Bennett claims to have had it from the "confederation"—that "there never were any plates of the Book of Mormon excepting what were seen by the spiritual and not the natural eyes of the witnesses."[108] All these witnesses are as incompetent and contemptible as those whose testimony we have examined, and with this we leave them. It is not necessary to demonstrate over and over again the same proposition, or refute every specific detail of falsehood when they can be classified and dealt with in mass.
[Footnote 108: "Mormonism Exposed," pp. 123-4.]