His theory respecting the origin of the book was that Joseph Smith was its author. This he repeats at various places in his criticism.
"Smith," he says, "its real author, as ignorant and as impudent a knave as ever wrote a book, betrays the cloven foot in basing his whole book upon a false fact, or a pretended fact, which makes God a lair," etc.
Again:
The book proposes to be written at intervals and by different persons during the long period of 1020 years, and yet for uniformity of style, there never was a book more evidently written by one set of fingers, nor more certainly conceived in one cranium since the first book appeared in human language, than this same book. If I could swear to any man's voice, face, or person, assuming different names, I could swear that this book was written by one man. And as Joseph Smith is a very ignorant man, and is called the "author" on the title page, I cannot doubt for a single moment but that he is sole author and proprietor of it.[[3]]
From this it appears that the reasons which induced Alexander Campbell to conclude that Joseph Smith was the "sole author and proprietor" of the Book of Mormon, are,
First: that he is called the Author and Proprietor of it on the title page,[[4]] and
Second: that there is a uniformity of style throughout the book.
The reason for Joseph Smith calling himself "Author and Proprietor" of the Book of Mormon is easily accounted for. The copyright law of the United States, in force at the time of the publication of the Book of Mormon, secured the rights to copies of maps, charts, and books, "to the authors and proprietors of such copies during the times therein mentioned," but the law said nothing respecting the rights of translators of books, hence Joseph Smith adopted the legal phraseology of the law, and secured the copyright to the Book of Mormon as "author and proprietor," since he could not obtain the copyright as "translator."[[5]]
That Joseph Smith from the first claimed only to be the translator of the Book of Mormon is evident from the preface to the first edition, where he says:
"I would inform you that I 'translated' by the gift and power of God, and caused to be written 116 pages [of manuscript] which I took from the Book of Lehi, which was an account abridged from the plates of Lehi by the hand of Mormon," etc.