History of Mormonism

              “History of Mormonism.” Southern Quarterly Review (New Orleans) 1, no. 2 (April
1842): 398–413.
History of Mormonism
ART V.—Mormonism Exposed: being a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Latter Day
Saints. New-York. Harper & Brothers. 1841.
We take the occasion presented by the appearance of this work, to proclaim open
war against imposture in every shape,-in literature, in art, in science, in politics, and in
morals. It does positively seem that human gullibility, like a lover’s appetite, ‘grows with
what it feeds on,’ until all healthy taste is extinguished, and nothing left in its place, but
never-ceasing, gnawing hunger after imposition. From trifles, it has gradually assumed a
controlling influence over the graver and more important matters of social and political
government. Common sense and common judgment, frightened by the noise and clamor
of king humbug and his train, hide their diminished heads, and are no more allowed a
place in the counsels which direct men’s actions. He is the general idol. We run after him,
we bow down before him, we worship him. We ask of him concerning our business,-our
moral and social duties; we invoke his aid in the education of our children; we conjure his
presence to the couch of the sick and the dying. If we be elated with some great public
excitement, nine times in ten imposition is at the bottom of it. If we weep with
commiseration at the woes of our fellow creatures, imposture is even there; and a highsounding
society, or something which catches and fills the ear, receives the outpourings
of sensibilities, which plain, unvarnished misery would fail to excite.
Although we be no great believers in human perfectibility, and the steady
progress of intelligence, yet we had believed that that horrible monster, superstition, with
its multitudinous heads and horns, which has glutted itself with human victims, from age
to age, and from generation to generation, had, at length, fallen before the march of
civilization, to rise no more. We had fondly deemed, that burning men at the stake,
because they could not see how two and two made five,-or roasting them before a greenwood
fire, for opinion’s sake,-or imprisoning them in loathsome dungeons, for daring to
make new discoveries in science,-or burning for witches miserable old women who [398]
had lost their beauty,-or hanging sober, well-informed citizens, because they persisted in
wearing shad-bellied coats, were practices never more to be indulged in.