The Story of the Mormons | Page 3

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THE STORY OF THE MORMONS: FROM THE DATE OF THEIR
ORIGIN TO THE YEAR 1901
by WILLIAM ALEXANDER LINN

PREFACE
No chapter of American history has remained so long unwritten as that
which tells the story of the Mormons. There are many books on the
subject, histories written under the auspices of the Mormon church,
which are hopelessly biased as well as incomplete; more trustworthy
works which cover only certain periods; and books in the nature of
"exposures by former members of the church, which the Mormons
attack as untruthful, and which rest, in the minds of the general reader,
under a suspicion of personal bias. Mormonism, therefore, to-day
suggests to most persons only one doctrine--polygamy--and only one
leader--Brigham Young, who made his name familiar to the present
generations. Joseph Smith, Jr., is known, where known at all, only in
the most general way as the founder of the sect, while the real
originator of the whole scheme for a new church and of its doctrines
and government, Sidney Rigdon, is known to few persons even by
name.
The object of the present work is to present a consecutive history of the
Mormons, from the day of their origin to the present writing, and as a
secular, not as a religious, narrative. The search has been for facts, not
for moral deductions, except as these present themselves in the course
of the story. Since the usual weapon which the heads of the Mormon
church use to meet anything unfavorable regarding their organization or
leaders is a general denial, this narrative has been made to rest largely
on Mormon sources of information. It has been possible to follow this
plan a long way because many of the original Mormons left sketches

that have been preserved. Thus we have Mother Smith's picture of her
family and of the early days of the church; the Prophet's own account
of the revelation to him of the golden plates, of his followers' early
experiences, and of his own doings, almost day by day, to the date of
his death, written with an egotist's appreciation of his own part in the
play; other autobiographies, like Parley P. Pratt's and Lorenzo Snow's;
and, finally, the periodicals which the church issued in Ohio, in
Missouri, in Illinois, and in England, and the official reports of the
discourses preached in Utah,--all showing up, as in a mirror, the
character of the persons who gave this Church of Latter Day Saints its
being and its growth.
In regard to no period of Mormon history is there such a lack