The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901
- Pages
- about 924
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 17 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
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.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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