"Has it ever entered into the thoughts of our opponents that if Sidney Rigdon was the author or adapter of the Book of Mormon how vast and wide spread must have been the conspiracy that foisted it upon the world? Whole families must have been engaged in it. Men of all ages and various conditions in life, and living in widely separate portions of the country must have been connected with it. First we must include in the catalogue of conspirators the whole of the Smith family, then the Whitmers, Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery; further, to carry out this absurd idea, Sidney Rigdon and Parley P. Pratt must have been their active fellow-conspirators in arranging, carrying out and consummating their iniquitous fraud. To do this they must have traveled thousands of miles and spent months, perhaps years, to accomplish—what? That is the unsolved problem. Was it for the purpose of duping the world? They, at any rate the great majority of them, were of all men most unlikely to be engaged in such a folly. Their habits, surroundings, station in life, youth and inexperience all forbid such a thought. What could they gain, in any light that could be then presented to their minds, by palming [off] such a deception upon the world? This is another unanswerable question. Then comes the staggering fact, if the book be a falsity, that all these families, all these diverse characters, in all the trouble, perplexity, persecution and suffering through which they passed, never wavered in their testimony, never changed their statements, never 'went back' on their original declarations, but continued unto death (and they have all passed away), proclaiming that the Book of Mormon was a divine revelation, and that its record was true. Was there ever such an exhibition in the history of the world of such continued, such unabating, such undeviating falsehood? If falsehood it was. We cannot find a place in the annals of their lives where they wavered, and what makes the matter more remarkable is that it can be said of most of them, as is elsewhere said of the three witnesses, they became offended with the Prophet Joseph, and a number of them openly rebelled against him; but they never retraced one word with regard to the genuineness of Mormon's inspired record. Whether they were friends or foes to Joseph, whether they regarded him as God's continued mouthpiece or as a fallen Prophet, they still persisted in their statements with regard to the book and the veracity of their earlier testimonies. How can we possibly with our knowledge of human nature make this undeviating, unchanging, unwavering course, continuing over fifty years, consistent with a deliberate, premeditated and cunningly-devised and executed fraud!"[145]
[Footnote 145: "Myth of the Manuscript Found," (1883) pp. 35-6.]
The last matter of argument in the quotation above, the unwavering adherence of the witnesses to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the relationship they sustained to that work, has peculiar force when applied to the case of Sidney Rigdon. He claims to have known nothing of the Book of Mormon until it was presented to him (as we shall see later by a statement of his) by Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery, some six months after its publication. But let us suppose for the sake of the argument, that he really took the part assigned to him by Mr. Schroeder in bringing into existence the Book of Mormon; that he stole the Spaulding "Manuscript Found" about 1816; that hearing of Smith through Pratt, he then sent the said manuscript to Smith to be announced as a revelation from God; that afterwards he collaborated with Smith to produce the Book of Mormon out of it. It will go without saying that a thief, and especially such a thief as Rigdon is here represented to be, is a very ignoble character; and it will not be too much to say that if such a character is hard pressed by his associates, or is, what he might consider, ill treated by them, he will very-probably betray them. Sidney Rigdon certainly considered himself both hard pressed and positively wronged by his brethren—but he never "revealed" the "fraud" in which Mormonism is supposed to have had its origin. Joseph Smith sought to be rid of him as his counselor at the October Conference of 1843. He directly charged Rigdon with treachery, of being leagued with his deadly enemies, and that he had no confidence in his "integrity and steadfastness;" that Rigdon had been profitless to him as a counselor since their escape from Missouri in 1839. By virtue of a vigorous denial on the part of Rigdon as to some of the charges, and a plea for mercy as to some delinquencies confessed, he was sustained by the conference in his office of counselor to the Prophet, notwithstanding the latter was not satisfied with the conclusion of the matter reached by the conference. "I have thrown him off my shoulders," said he, "and you have again put him upon me. You may carry him, but I will not."[146]
[Footnote 146: Millenial Star, Vol. 22, pp. 215-16.]
After the death of the prophet, Sidney Rigdon put in a claim for precedence in authority, claiming that right by virtue of his office as counselor to the prophet now martyred. The priesthood of the church assembled as a body to hear the cause, President Brigham Young presenting the counter claims of the Twelve Apostles as the proper presiding authority in the absence of the First Presidency. Sidney Rigdon was rejected by that body of the priesthood;[147] and shortly after left Nauvoo full of disappointment and bitterness; but he never in those trying days, or in any of the subsequent years of his life, by hint or direct charge or confession, revealed any "fraud" in which Mormonism is supposed to have had its origin; but on the contrary, as we shall see, emphatically reaffirmed his true relationship to the work, and his faith in it.
[Footnote 147: Millennial Star, Vol. 25, pp. 215, 279.]
There is one person, however, who undertakes to say that Sidney Rigdon "revealed" the secret concerning the origin of the Book of Mormon. This is Clark Braden, who quotes one James Jeffries of St. Louis, as saying in substance that in the fall of 1844, Rigdon in several conversations admitted to him the existence of the Spaulding manuscript; that it traced the origin of the Indians from the lost tribes of Israel; that the manuscript was within his reach for several years; that "He (Rigdon) and Joe Smith used to look over the manuscript and read it on Sundays. Rigdon said Smith took the manuscript and said 'I'll print it,' and went off to Palmyra, New York." On this "testimony," the Reverend Clark Braden comments: "On his way from Nauvoo to Pittsburg (in the fall of 1844) he (Rigdon) called on his old acquaintance, Mr. Jeffries, in St. Louis, and in his anger at the Mormons, he let out the secrets of Mormonism, just as he told the Mormons he would if they did not make him their leader."[148] This "evidence," however, since it costs him nothing to set aside such palpable absurdity, Mr. Schroeder, with a show of bigness and condescension, discredits by saying: "an alleged admission of Sidney Rigdon to James Jeffries I consider of doubtful value."[149] In this case, as in that of the item presented by Mrs. Ellen E. Dickinson, to the effect that it was "remembered" by some of the Conneaut witnesses in 1834, that the "Spaulding manuscript was the translation of the Book of Mormon"—the "evidence" manufactured in support of the Spaulding theory of origin, becomes a little too raw for Mr. Schroeder, and his gorge rises at it, and with an air of superiority he "considers it doubtful!"
[Footnote 148: "Braden-Kelly Debate," p. 42.]
[Footnote 149: American Historical Magazine, Jan., 1907, p. 75 and note 115. Ante p. 55 and Note.]
Closely connected with Sidney Rigdon's relationship to the coming forth of the Book of Mormon is another matter several times alluded to by Mr. Schroeder, in common with all other advocates of the Spaulding theory of origin, namely, the assumption that "Joseph Smith, the nominal founder and first prophet of Mormonism, was probably too ignorant to have produced the volume unaided." It is because of this assumed inability of Joseph Smith to produce the book that the Spaulding manuscript and Sidney Rigdon are brought into the scheme of production. And yet it is clearly demonstrable that Joseph Smith did not need the assistance of either Spaulding or of Sidney Rigdon in the production of a book equal, if not superior, to the Book of Mormon from a literary standpoint. I refer to the "Book of Doctrine and Covenants." It is true this book was not published until 1835; but the revelations of which it is composed began in 1828, and by the close of 1833, one hundred and one of the revelations forming the major part of the book, were received and are of record.