Part 17 (2/2)

* Copied in Howe's ”Mormonism Unveiled.”

”And now behold, verily I say unto you, I, the Lord, am not pleased with my servant Sidney Rigdon; he exalteth himself in his heart, and receiveth not counsel, but grieveth the spirit. Wherefore his writing is not acceptable unto the Lord; and he shall make another, and if the Lord receiveth it not, behold he standeth no longer in the office which I have appointed him.”

That the proud-minded, educated preacher, who refused to allow Campbell to claim the founders.h.i.+p of the Disciples' church, should take such a rebuke and threat of dismissal in silence from Joe Smith of Palmyra, and continue under his leaders.h.i.+p, certainly indicates some wonderful hold that the prophet had upon him.

While the travelling elders were doing successful work in adding new converts to the fold, there was beginning to manifest itself at Kirtland that ”apostasy” which lost the church so many members of influence, and was continued in Missouri so far that Mayor Grant said, in Salt Lake City, in 1856, that ”one-half at least of the Yankee members of this church have apostatized.”* The secession of men like Booth and Ryder, and their public exposure of Smith's methods, coupled with rumors of immoral practices in the fold, were followed by the tarring and feathering of Smith and Rigdon on the night of Sat.u.r.day, March 25, 1832.

The story of this outrage is told in Smith's autobiography, and the details there given may be in the main accepted.

* Journal of Discourses, Vol. III, p. 201.

Smith and his wife were living at the house of a farmer named Johnson in Hiram towns.h.i.+p, while he and Rigdon were translating the Scriptures.

Mrs. Smith had taken two infant twins to bring up, and on the night in question she and her husband were taking turns sitting up with these babies, who were just recovering from the measles. While Smith was sleeping, his wife heard a tapping on the window, but gave it no attention. The mob, believing that all within were asleep, then burst in the door, seized Smith as he lay partly dressed on a trundle bed, and rushed him out of doors, his wife crying ”murder.” Smith struggled as best he could, but they carried him around the house, choking him until he became unconscious. Some thirty yards from the house he saw Rigdon, ”stretched out on the ground, whither they had dragged him by the heels.” When they had carried Smith some thirty yards farther, some of the mob meantime asking, ”Ain't ye going to kill him?” a council was held and some one asked, ”Simmons, where's the tarbucket?” When the bucket was brought up they tried to force the ”tarpaddle” into Smith's mouth, and also, he says, to force a phial between his teeth. He adds:

”All my clothes were torn off me except my s.h.i.+rt collar, and one man fell on me and scratched my body with his nails like a mad cat. They then left me, and I attempted to rise, but fell again. I pulled the tar away from my lips, etc., so that I could breathe more freely, and after a while I began to recover, and raised myself up, when I saw two lights.

I made my way toward one of them, and found it was father Johnson's.

When I had come to the door I was naked, and the tar made me look as though I had been covered with blood; and when my wife saw me she thought I was all smashed to pieces, and fainted. During the affray abroad, the sisters of the neighborhood collected at my room. I called for a blanket; they threw me one and shut the door; I wrapped it around me and went in.... My friends spent the night in sc.r.a.ping and removing the tar and was.h.i.+ng and cleansing my body, so that by morning I was ready to be clothed again.... With my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached [that morning] to the congregation as usual, and in the afternoon of the same day baptized three individuals.”

Rigdon's treatment is described as still more severe. He was not only dragged over the ground by the heels, but was well covered with tar and feathers; and when Smith called on him the next day he found him delirious, and calling for a razor with which to kill his wife.

All Mormon accounts of this, as well as later persecutions, attempt to make the ground of attack hostility to the Mormon religious beliefs, presenting them entirely in the light of outrages on liberty of opinion.

Symonds Ryder (whom Smith accuses of being one of the mob), says that the attack had this origin: The people of Hiram had the reputation of being very receptive and liberal in their religious views. The Mormons therefore preached to them, and seemed in a fair way to win a decided success, when the leaders made their first trip to Missouri. Papers which they left behind outlining the internal system of the new church fell into the hands of some of the converts, and revealed to them the horrid fact that a plot was laid to take their property from them and place it under the control of Smith, the Prophet.... Some who had been the dupes of this deception determined not to let it pa.s.s with impunity; and, accordingly, a company was formed of citizens from Shalersville, Garretsville, and Hiram, and took Smith and Rigdon from their beds and tarred and feathered them.*

* Hayden's ”Early History of the Disciples' Church in the Western Reserve,” p. 221.

This manifestation of hostility to the leaders of the new church was only a more p.r.o.nounced form of that which showed itself against Smith before he left New York State. When a man of his character and previous history a.s.sumes the right to baptize and administer the sacrament, he is certain to arouse the animosity, not only of orthodox church members, but of members of the community who are lax in their church duties.

Goldsmith ill.u.s.trates this kind of feeling when, in ”She Stoops to Conquer,” he makes one of the ”several shabby fellows with punch and tobacco” in the alehouse say, ”I loves to hear him, the squire sing, bekeays he never gives us nothing that's low,” and another responds, ”O, d.a.m.n anything that's low.” The Anti-Mormon feeling was intensified and broadened by the aggressiveness with which the Mormons sought for converts in the orthodox flocks.

Beliefs radically different from those accepted by any of the orthodox denominations have escaped hostile opposition in this country, even when they have outraged generally accepted social customs. The Harmonists, in a body of 600, emigrated to Pennsylvania to escape the persecution to which they were subjected in Germany, purchased 5000 acres of land and organized a town; moved later to Indiana, where they purchased 25,000 acres; and ten years afterward returned to Pennsylvania, and bought 5000 acres in another place,--all the time holding to their belief in a community of goods and a speedy coming of Christ, as well as the duty of practicing celibacy,--without exciting their neighbors or arousing their enmity. The Wallingford Community in Connecticut, and the Oneida Community in New York State, practised free love among themselves without persecution, until their organizations died from natural causes.

The leaders in these and other independent sects were clean men within their own rules, honest in their dealings with their neighbors, never seeking political power, and never pressing their opinions upon outsiders. An old resident of Wallingford writes to me, ”The Community were, in a way, very generally respected for their high standard of integrity in all their business transactions.”

As we follow the career of the Mormons from Ohio to Missouri, and thence to Illinois, we shall read their own testimony about the character of their leading men, and about their view of the rights of others in each of their neighborhoods. When Horace Greeley asked Brigham Young in Salt Lake City for an explanation of the ”persecutions” of the Mormons, his reply was that there was ”no other explanation than is afforded by the crucifixion of Christ and the kindred treatment of G.o.d's ministers, prophets, and saints in all ages”; which led Greeley to observe that, while a new sect is always decried and traduced,--naming the Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and Universalists,--he could not remember ”that either of them was ever generally represented and regarded by the other sects of their early days as thieves, robbers, and murderers.”*

* ”Overland Journey,” p. 214.

Another attempt by Rigdon to a.s.sert his independence of Smith occurred while the latter was still at Mr. Johnson's house and Rigdon was in Kirtland. The fullest account of this is found in Mother Smith's ”History,” pp. 204-206. She says that Rigdon came in late to a prayer-meeting, much agitated, and, instead of taking the platform, paced backward and forward on the floor. Joseph's father told him they would like to hear a discourse from him, but he replied, ”The keys of the Kingdom are rent from the church, and there shall not be a prayer put up in this house this day.” This caused considerable excitement, and Smith's brother Hyrum left the house, saying, ”I'll put a stop to this fuss pretty quick,” and, mounting a horse, set out for Johnson's and brought the prophet back with him. On his arrival, a meeting of the brethren was held, and Joseph declared to them, ”I myself hold the keys of this Last Dispensation, and will forever hold them, both in time and eternity, so set your hearts at rest upon that point. All is right.” The next day Rigdon was tried before a council for having ”lied in the name of the Lord,” and was ”delivered over to the buffetings of Satan,” and deprived of his license, Smith telling him that ”the less priesthood he had, the better it would be for him.” Rigdon, Mrs. Smith says, according to his own account, ”was dragged out of bed by the devil three times in one night by the heels,” and, while she does not accept this literally, she declares that ”his contrition was as great as a man could well live through.” After awhile he got another license.

CHAPTER IV. -- GIFTS OF TONGUES AND MIRACLES

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