Did Joseph Smith attempt to sell the Book of Mormon copyright?

Criticism

David Whitmer claimed that Joseph Smith received a revelation and prophesied that Oliver Cowdery and Hiram Page should go to Canada where they would find a man willing to buy the copyright to the Book of Mormon. When they failed to sell the copyright, Whitmer states that Joseph admitted that the revelation had not come from God.

Source(s) of the criticism

• Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 81. ( Index of claims )
• Grant H. Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002) 65–66. ( Index of claims )
• Mormonism Research Ministry, web page "The Attempt to Sell the Book of Mormon Copyright"
• Jerald and Sandra Tanner, The Changing World of Mormonism (Moody Press, 1979), 417.( Index of claims )

Response

Background

This criticism is in all likelihood the product of a false memory by David Whitmer.

Joseph Smith had been told there were people in Canada willing to buy the copyrights to useful books. Due to the dire financial position of the Church, he decided this could be an opportunity to relieve some of the financial pressure associated with publishing the Book of Mormon. Four men went to Canada. Before leaving, Joseph Smith received a revelation directing them to go to Kingston, Canada, with other conditions for success.

Hiram Page, who was one of the individuals sent to Canada, laid out the event in a letter in 1848.^[1] Page wrote that the revelation Joseph Smith received conditioned success upon whether those individuals in Canada capable of buying the Book of Mormon copyright would have their hearts softened. When unable to sell the copyright, the four men returned to Palmyra. Hiram Page stated he for the first time understood how some revelations given to people were not necessarily for their direct benefit. Hiram Page believed the revelation was actually fulfilled.

Historical Development of the Erroneous Story

Hiram Page’s 1848 account of the Canadian Mission trip was sent to William McLellin. Because it was private correspondence, its existence and details were unknown until the 1930’s, when the letter was donated to the RLDS Church’s archives as part of a larger collection of McLellin materials.^[2] The content of the letter was not broadly known until after the document was stolen in 1985, but a copy of the original was donated by a private collector around the year 2000 who had made a copy prior to the theft of the original.

In 1872 William McLellin wrote about the journey to Canada.^[3] He had no first hand knowledge of the event, as he did not join the Church until 1831. He apparently got the description of the event from Martin Harris, who was likewise not there and had no first hand knowledge. From the published account, McLellin ignores Hiram Page’s 1848 letter, and asserts that all involved in the Canadian Mission viewed it as a complete failure. Since all involved were dead, and the only known account by one of the participants, who obviously viewed it as a success, was in McLellin possession, he apparently did not worry about being corrected. In 1881 or shortly thereafter a man by the name of J.L. Traughber wrote a letter to a German correspondent, who published it in 1886, retelling McLellin’s second or third hand knowledge of the event.^[4]

Beginning in 1886, David Whitmer reports for the first time of the Canadian Mission.^[5] Initially he reports it in the third person, but by the time of his 1887 pamphlet An Address to All Believers in Christ, 57 years after the event occurred, he reports to having been a first hand witness, and Joseph Smith had given a false prophecy. His account is at variance in several ways with Hiram Page’s account. He gets the destination city in Canada wrong (he says Toronto, the other accounts say Kingston) and who did not correctly identified who all went (he identified Hiram Page and Oliver Cowdery, while Page noted Joseph Knight and Josiah Stowell). Page also makes no mention or even a hint at disappointment in Joseph Smith, and accusing him of a false prophecy, so naturally no “revelation” is noted by Page of a revelation explaining the Mission’s failure.

One must remember that not only was Whitmer looking for evidence to support his theory that Joseph Smith was a fallen prophet, but he also wrote with no fear of contradiction, as all the witnesses to the event were dead. In Whitmer’s 1887 account we learn for the first time of the supposed post-mission revelation where Joseph Smith is told that some revelations are from God, some from devils, some from men. This account is in all likelihood a fabrication. Unlike his consistent, life-long statements concerning the witness of the Gold Plates, this account, which is probably a second-hand retelling of events 57 years after their occurrence, suddenly appears and is wrong on several of the documentable facts, and inconsistent with the first-hand testimony of Hiram page, given 40 years earlier than Whitmer and by comparison much closer to the actual event.

Subsequent Review

The letter from 1848 by Hiram Page was not publically available until the 20th Century. As a result, various LDS responses to the accounts by Whitmer and McLellin of necessity must explain why the apparent anomalous revelation does not make Joseph Smith a fallen prophet. As it happens, time has vindicated that confidence.

Conclusion

The primary evidence supporting the negative aspects of the Canadian Mission story come from David Whitmer, who had left the church many years before. With the discovery of the Hiram Page letter of 1848 showing the people involved felt Joseph Smith delivered an accurate revelation of what would transpire on the Mission, and found the event uplifting not negative, both from a historical documentary standpoint and from the known historical evidence that no one contemporary to the event felt this represented a false prophecy by Joseph Smith, we see excellent evidence in fulfillment of the teachings of Deuteronomy 12 and 18 that Joseph Smith was perceived as a true prophet of God by those involved in the Mission to Canada in early 1830.

Endnotes

1. [note] Letter to William McLellin, February 2, 1848, as cited in Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, Vol. 5, pages 257-9.
2. [note] Ibid., page 257
3. {[note|mclellin.1872}}William McLellin to Joseph Smith III, September 8, 1872. See Vogel, Early Mormon Documents, Vol. 5, page 328.
4. [note] John L. Traughber correspondence, which appears to date from 1881. Dan Vogel’s editor comments in “Early Mormon Documents”, Vol. 5, page 333, explain his assumption this was written to James T. Cobb. See page 334 for relevant statements concerning the Mission to Canada.
5. [note] David Whitmer Interview with Omaha (NE) Herald, Oct. 10, 1886, as quoted by Dan Vogel in Early Mormon Documents, Vol. 5, pages 174-181. See page 180 for relevant material.

Further reading

FAIR web site

• FAIR Topical Guide:

External links

• Jeff Lindsay, What about the failed prophecy of selling the Book of Mormon copyright in Canada? Joseph even admitted that it was a false revelation from Satan!