1831-08-31-New York Morning Courier and Enquirer-The Mormonites

[Need to find original]

1831 Aug 31, Sept 1

“The Mormonites” by journalist James Gordon Bennett published in NYC’s Morning Courier and Enquirer

“In politics -- in religion -- in all the great concerns of man, New York has a character peculiarly her own; strikingly original, purely American -- energetic and wild to the very farthest boundaries of imagination. The centre of the state is quiet comparatively, and grave to a degree; but its two extremities, Eastern and Western; the city of the Atlantic, and the continuous villages of the Lakes, contain all that is curious in human character -- daring in conception -- wild in invention, and singular in practical good sense as well as in solemn foolery…

Mormonism is the latest device of roguery, ingenuity, ignorance and religious excitement combined, and acting on materials prepared by those who ought to know better. It is one of the mental exhalations of Western New York…

About this time a very considerable religious excitement came over New York in the shape of a revival…This general impulse given to religious fanaticism by a set of men in Western New York, has been productive among other strange results of the infatuation of Mormonism. This piece of roguery, folly and frenzy (for it partakes of all) is the genuine fruit…”