Mormon History
Misrepresenting President Garfield - 1881
The Salt Lake Daily Tribune
July 12, 1881
A MISSION AND A GRIEVANCE
The Bad Position of Those Who Have Both -- Sidney Rigdon the [Brain].
________
Eds.
Tribune. The Mormons have two spurs to prick the sides of their intent -- a
Mission and a Grievance. Fortunate Mormons. They believe God gave them the first
and the United States the last. Wofully deceived Mormons. As their mission was
given to Mormons by Sidney Rigdon, so, likewise, indirectly and directly too, is
the whole sum of their grievence to be fairly traced to him. He commanded
"Latter day Israel" to gather out from the four quarters of the earth; and they
gathered, and are still gathering. He commanded temples to be erected. It was
done, and is yet doing. ("Some one has evidently got Sidney Rigdon on their
brain -- badly." Some one? Some thousands have S. R. dreadfully on the
brain, if they but knew it.)
Said George Q. Cannon at the Mormon Tabernacle Sunday, July 3:
"President
Garfield knows better concerning us than any other man in public life;
he was brought up in Ohio, near where our people had lived, in early
days, in the days of his childhood. He was familiar with men who had
been members of our church, and I believe was connected remotely by
marriage with some of our people. [Yes. John Boynton, probably; an
early Mormon who got his eyes open to see the absolute fraud Mormonism
was and to detect Rigdon and Smith through all their disguises and to
track them through all their doublings,] and while President Garfield
has no sympathy with some of our doctrines, nevertheless he had
opportunities of knowing many things concerning us that others do not
know. He has visited this city twice, etc."
President Garfield was born in Mentor,
Ohio, just about the time Rigdon was going through the shameless farce of being
converted to Mormonism. Cannon would have it appear that President Garfield,
while having no sympathy with some of our doctrines (meaning of course polygamy)
yet he has sympathy with other [ones]. President Garfield is a man of immense
geniality and cordiality toward persons -- a whole-souled, high-souled
sympathizer with persons, especially if they are in trouble, but -- clear the
track! He has no sympathy with fraud. And President Garfield knows the fraud
Mormonism is, just as well as Hon.
A. G. Riddle, of Washington, knows it, or as this present writer knows it,
and we may be sure he will govern and shape his executive contact and action
respecting the Mormons in accordance with the intimate personal familiarity with
the case. May he live and may God bless him.
The Tribune never said a truer thing than what it said but a few days since. 'Tis
the very institution of Mormonism that is to blame; an institution that cannot
help betraying its hatred of all other institutions, because this is the very
essence of its nature and being, and the institution has such hold of Mormons
that they must be its slaves. It is an institution that makes a man, if not a
fiend outright, less a man than he naturally is. (What can be more demoralizing
than causeless and persistent hatred?) The enmity between Mormonism and mankind
is claimed, we know, as the necessary and customary enmity between a good God
and his bad children; but how if, as appears in this case, the children are far
less malignant and devilish than the God? These are your sentiments and
reflections. They are mine. They are truth's.
Now the one thing supremely needful is to get clearly down to the personality of
this vindictive, unscrupulous, malignant, and crazy Mormon deity. And if no one
else sees with entire clearness the personality of this Mormon God, I see it,
and it is none other than Sidney Rigdon. Let fools and knaves -- but O pity,
pity for the single-hearted, the honest! -- continue to be led by him, through
his specious and damnable revelations, to their final, their certain ruin and
discomfiture, if they will, if they must. Over and above (and yet through) the
Government of these United States the very genius of justice and truth has a
controversy with the stalwart and heaven daring Fraud. The mills of the gods
grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine. VINDEX.
SALT
LAKE CITY,
July 9, 1881.