The Inception of Mormonism and the Persecuted Present

Writing to and about Latter-day Saints in the 1870s, both Thomas Stenhouse and Edward Tullidge understood what resonated with Latter-day Saint readers—a persecuted past to make sense of a persecuted present. For both authors, the default starting point for that story was Joseph Smith’s first vision as he remembered it in his persecuted present of 1838/39. Their respective books represented the present concerns in which the Saints’ memory consolidated—enemies at home and abroad intent on undermining Zion. Among those enemies was Stenhouse’s wife, Fanny, whose expose Tell it All, along with her lectures, reached large audiences in England and the United States. To the Latter-day Saints, her book and her husband’s were more reasons to respond in the defensive terms of Smith’s 1838/39 vision account, which begins by responding to many reports put in circulation by “evil-disposed and designing” enemies.