1844-11-08-New York Herald-Meeting of the Mormons Last Evening
Meeting of the Mormons last evening.
New York Herald
8 November 1844
Meeting of the Mormons last evening.
Agreeable to an announcement in the papers, Elder Winchester, one of Sidney Rigdon's men, addressed a meeting of the Mormons of this city, last evening, in their hall, corner of Hudson and Canal streets. The attendance was very slim, only about thirty persons being present, two-thirds of whom were females.
After a long rambling, and rather incoherent narration, descriptive of the early part of Joe Smith's carrer at Nauvoo, the Elder went on to speak of a "vision" which Joe had ten days before his death. He and Cole [sic] went out, he said, to the prairie to call on the name of the Lord, and then Joe beheld in vision the tragical scene in which he was soon to take a part at Carthage jail. From that moment Joe was an altered man -- he lost all spirit, and as the elder said, "his countenance fell" from that moment. The Elder went on to argue that Joe's death was ordained of the Lord, on account of Joe's transgressions, that he did not apostatize, but he "wrought abominations," and was therefore deemed unfit to direct "The Kingdom," and share in its triumphs. The transgression was in introducing the "spiritual wife system." On this subject it was expected that the Elder would have gone into the details and expose it fully. But he contented himself with a general denunciation of it -- said that it was universally prevalent at Nauvoo -- and that it was to free "the Church" from that evil, that Sidney Rigdon had taken a separate stand. Elder Winchester called on the faithful to come out and separate themselves at once from their corrupt brethren at Nauvoo, which was, he said, doomed to destruction, and was fast falling into decay on account of its iniquities.
Altogether the Elder's speech was rather tame, and did not present any point of novelty or especial interest. It is quite evident that the death of Joe Smith has given a fatal blow to this delusion.
