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.
Footnotes
[1.] This sentence in italics was omitted in Mr. Evans' publication of the entire matter in the Zion's Ensign, August 17th, 1905.
[2.] The quotations from the Saints' Herald which are in Italics were purposely omitted from Mr. Evans' "publication of the entire matter," as it appeared in the Zion's Ensign of August 7, 1905. The reason for the suppression of this evidence is easy to discern. The authorities of the "Reorganization" have tried to destroy the evidence, that it could not be circulated among their church members, therefore very few copies of this particular Herald can today be found.
[3.] These paragraphs in italics were also omitted from Mr. Evans' "publication of the entire matter," as it appeared in the Zion's Ensign August 17, 1905.
MR. EVANS' LETTER
Mr. Joseph F. Smith, Jr.:
Sir:—Your open letter published in the Toronto Star for February 25, is before me. You say: "I desire to be fair, dispassionate and also candid." Those who read your letter will see plainly that you have mispresented the interview, my faith and the facts concerning my visit to Salt Lake, and that you are guilty of a labored effort to cover up the true facts regarding "blood atonement," "polygamy," etc., and my faith in the Book of Mormon. So much for those desires.