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Introduction

By David J. Whittaker
book cover
Early Mormon Pamphleteering
Page iii

In attempting to explain American religious life to Europeans in 1843, Robert Baird noted that “no branch of religious enterprise had been more vigorously prosecuted in the United States than that of preparing, publishing, and circulating moral and religious writings in various forms.” In the promotion of truth, he saw that the press could be a powerful weapon.1 Although the production and use of printed matter for religious purposes was not a purely American phenomenon, Baird did identify an important aspect of American religious history. Emerging in western Europe in the fifteenth century, tracts and pamphlets quickly proved their value as tools of dissent and argument.2 This influence increased in the centuries that followed, reaching great heights (and perhaps depths) on the eve of the American Revolution. Recent studies by such scholars as Philip Davidson and Bernard Bailyn have documented the influence of pamphlet literature in the religious and political controversies of the eighteenth century.3 It has been amply demonstrated that the American Revolution was fought with words before it was fought with deeds.4 Because of such studies no historian of that period can neglect the role of the printed word in the movement toward Independence.

The “Second American Revolution” was also fought primarily [1] with verbal and paper bullets. Because of this, the social and intellectual aspects of the religious life of the new nation can also be studied through the written literature produced by various social and religious groups. This, of course, includes Mormonism, the early pamphlets of which offer an index and a reservoir for the study of the intellectual and social history of the early Latter-day Saint movement.5

In one sense, Mormonism began with a book. The Book of Mormon, by giving direction and content to the new religion, provided the foundation and justification for proclaiming Christ’s message for the last time to a new generation. This printed beginning soon spawned a prolific amount of published material expounding and defending the early doctrines and history of the movement.

Though concerned with the production and distribution of the printed word, Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of Mormonism, directed most of his attention to other activities, leaving the publishing business to his associates.6 These early Mormons, like their Revolutionary forefathers and the leaders of contemporary tract societies, knew the value of the pamphlet. In the early 1830s they experienced the devastating effect of the tracts and books written against them, but their initial reaction had been to ignore them or to send missionaries as a “living word” to counter these attacks. Although their primary intent was defensive, in time the use of printed matter was encouraged for a variety of [2] reasons. Mormon millennialistic expectations and consequent concerns to “warn the wicked” of Christ’s Second Coming gave assurance that early members would turn to the pen. In addition, in-house communication was fostered by the regular printing of official notices, reports, conference minutes, and letters to and from missionaries and their families. Essays on the doctrine and history of the movement and editorials and policy statements on items of major (and minor) concern guaranteed the increasing use of the press. Throughout this formative period their publishing activities can be traced as a movement from a freelance and informal press to a period of centralization, where the production of pamphlets tended to concentrate in the hands of a few. This process had and continues to have important ramifications for the Church.

There have been many studies devoted to early Mormon journalism.7 Many of the Mormon newspapers published before 1860 have received extended treatment by students of the period. These include studies dealing with individual periodicals8 or specific episodes where the role of the press was directly related to events in early Mormon history.9 In addition there have appeared several bibliographical studies of selected periods, or episodes.10 But with only one or two exceptions,11 nothing has yet been done which takes a more detailed look at the rise and development of pamphlet literature in the early Mormon Church. It is to fill this gap that this work was undertaken. The sheer volume of material to be researched makes a complete study under one cover almost impossible. This [3] work deals with selected works and authors during this period. It is hoped that the material that is presented will both do justice to the whole formative era and provide enough detail to give adequate coverage to the issues and works involved.

From Mormonism’s organized beginnings in 1830 to the eve of the Civil War about ninety Mormons wrote and published religious pamphlets and books. To study all of them would be a formidable task but it is my intention to provide a reasonably accurate picture of just what was happening during the first 25 to 30 years of the formative period of the Mormon Church. I do this by presenting case studies of several selected topics and/or individuals who were involved in the production of printed literature. In the first chapter I present a brief historical overview of the rise of religious journalism in early Mormonism, which also provides an historical summary of Mormon history to about 1857. This also includes the appropriate material necessary to provide the larger cultural and religious context of Mormon pamphleteering. Following this introductory section, I have examined the fuller story of early Mormon pamphleteering. In this chapter I sketch the evolution of the pamphlet literature to the eve of the American Civil War. I also classify these works and briefly treat the father of Mormon pamphleteering, Parley P. Pratt.

In the third and fourth chapters I present a closer look at two individuals. These case studies of Orson Pratt, who is well known, and of Benjamin Winchester, who is unknown, allow me to [4] focus and individualize some of my main theses. For both individuals I have provided detailed biographical information; for Pratt my purpose has been to examine his life in terms of the larger cultural environment and its relationship to his pamphleteering. Thus the section on Pratt is more intellectually oriented than any of the others. My focus on Winchester is more institutional than intellectual. This allows us to see the press in relationship to the administrative and bureaucratic development of early Mormonism. Pratt and Winchester are representative of the larger numbers of Mormon pamphleteers.

In Chapter Five, I examine Mormon publishing from a geographical perspective by focusing on the international setting, specifically looking at Mormon pamphleteering in England, South Africa, India and Australia during the 1840s and 1850s. In this section I continue the focus begun earlier, as we see Pratt’s influences on the missionary literature and the key role of pamphlets in the developing Mormon organization.

In Chapter Six, I focus on a specific early Mormon doctrine, Polygamy, and examine it in terms of its public announcement in 1852 and the subsequent pamphlet defenses.

A concluding section includes some interpretive comments which suggest what all of the above meant for the formative period of Mormonism. Since the focus of this study is as much bibliographical as social and religious, I have provided publishing information in the footnotes and also provided detailed [5] bibliographies in the appendices for the early Mormon pamphleteers. [6]

Notes

1. Robert Baird, Religion in America; or, An Account of the Origin, Progress, and Relation to the State, and Present Condition of the Evangelical Churches in the United States. With Notices of the Unevangelical Denominations (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844), bk. 4., ch. 20, p. 167. Originally published in Scotland in 1843.

2. A recent study having obvious parallels with the Mormons is by M. G. F. Bitterman, “The Early Quaker Literature of Defense,” Church History 42 (June 1973):203–28. See also Hugh Barbour and Arthur O. Roberts, eds., Early Quaker Writings, 1650–1700 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman’s Pub. Co., 1973).

3. See these studies: Philip Davidson, Propaganda and the American Revolution (1941; reprinted, New York: W. W. Norton, 1973); and Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967).

4. Bert James Loewenberg, American History in American Thought (New York: Simon and Schuster, Touchstone Book, 1972), p. 153.

5. This would help correct what Leonard J. Arrington has called “the solid achievement bias” in Mormon historical writing which argues that the only things that matter in Mormon history are the solid, pragmatic, useful achievements (i.e.: pioneer treks, buildings, irrigation canals). See his “The Search for Truth and Meaning in Mormon History,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Summer 1968):62. An early plea for the use of “tracts of the times” in writing intellectual history was Franklin L. Baumer, “Intellectual History and Its Problems,” Journal of Modern History 21 (September 1949):192.

6. In a technical sense, no “official” press existed until after January 1845. “Official” is used here to label those publications specially approved by church leaders to the discouragement and even exclusion of any others. More will be said of this later in this essay. There were, however, several publications (in addition to the scriptures and Smith’s “Manuscript History”) before 1845 which, either because Joseph Smith was intimately connected with them or because they were published by key church leaders in the areas of church domination that could be (and have been) identified as “semi-official” publications. These would include The Evening and the Morning Star (Independence, Mo., and Kirtland, Ohio), Latter Day Saints’ Messenger and Advocate (Kirtland, Ohio), Elder’s Journal (Kirtland, Ohio, and Far West, Mo.), Times and Seasons (Nauvoo, Ill.), and The Latter-day Saints’ Millennial Star (Liverpool, England). The “unofficial” press is used here to designate all of the printed matter published between 1830 and 1857 except the scriptures and those items mentioned above and falling into these categories: newspapers, broadsides, pamphlets, hymnals, books, and published petitions of various sorts.

7. These studies include Virgil V. Peterson, “Early Mormon Journalism,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 35 (March 1949): 627–38; Andrew Jenson, “Papers and Periodicals,” The Historical Record 8 (March 1889):844; Jenson, “Church Publications,” The Liahona 1 (25 May 1907):85–7; Loy Otis Banks, “Latter-day Saint Journalism,” (Master’s thesis, University of Missouri, 1948); Walter W. Smith, “The Periodical Literature of the Latter Day Saints,” Journal of History 14 (July 1921):257–99; Harrison R. Merrill, “The Latter-day Saint Press, 1830–1930,” (Master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1930); Joseph Sudweeks, Discontinued LDS Periodicals (Provo: BYU Press, 1955); A. Richard Robertson, “A Comparative History of Periodicals of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” (Master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1951); and Monte Burr McLaws, Spokesman for the Kingdom, Early Mormon Journalism and the Deseret News, 1830–1898 (Provo: BYU Press, 1977).

8. These include Loy Otis Banks, “The Evening and the Morning Star,” Missouri Historical Review 43 (July 1949):319–33; Herman C. Smith, “Independence Publications,” Journal of History 5 (January 1912):144–55; Max Parkin, “Mormon Political Involvement in Ohio,” [re: The Northern Times] BYU Studies 9 (Summer 1969):484–502; Parry D. Sorensen, “Nauvoo ‘Times and Seasons’,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 60 (Summer 1962):117–135; Douglas Crawford McMurtrie, “Early Printing in Utah Outside of Salt Lake City,” Utah Historical Quarterly 5 (July 1932):83–6; J. Cecil Alter, Early Utah Journalism; A Half Century of Forensic Warfare Waged by the West’s Most Militant Press (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1938); Wendell J. Ashton, Voice in the West: Biography of a Pioneer Newspaper (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950); Monte Burr McLaws, Spokesman for the Kingdom; and McLaws, “Mormon Deseret News: Unique Frontier Newspaper,” Journal of the West 19 (April 1980):30–39.

9. These include Warren A. Jennings, “Factors in the Destruction of the Mormon Press in Missouri, 1833,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (Winter 1967):56–76; Peter Crawley, “Two Rare Missouri Documents,” BYU Studies 14 (Summer 1974):502–27; Loy Otis Banks, “The Role of Mormon Journalism in the Death of Joseph Smith . . . ,” Journalism Quarterly 27 (Summer 1950):268–81; George R. Gayler, “The ‘Expositor’ Affair, Prelude to the Downfall of Joseph Smith,” The Northwest Missouri State College Studies 25 (February 1969):3–15; and Dallin Oaks, “The Suppression of the ‘Nauvoo Expositor,’” Utah Law Review 9 (Winter 1965):862–903.

10. See Peter Crawley, “A Bibliography of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York, Ohio, and Missouri,” BYU Studies 12 (Summer 1972):465–537.

11. See the following studies by Peter Crawley: “The Passage of Mormon Primitivism,” Dialogue 13 (Winter 1980):26–37; “Joseph Smith and A Book of Commandments,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 42 (Autumn 1980):18–32; and his as-yet-unpublished “Parley P. Pratt: The Father of Mormon Pamphleteering.” [Published in Dialogue 15 (Autumn 1982):13–26.]