BENNETT, John C.

History of the Saints

Item #62651

BENNETT, John C. History of the Saints; or, an Expose of Joe Smith and Mormonism. Boston: Leland & Whiting, 1842. ii,344pp. Portrait frontis., portrait, plates, plan. Orig. blindstamped cloth. Cloth rubbed, wear to spine ends, outer hinges, and corners, ink stains on rear cloth, light scattered foxing, else a very good copy. HOWES B-358. Flake 403. "John C. Bennett's meteoric career is unique in Mormondom. During the twenty-one months following his initial contact with Joseph Smith in August 1840, he became the first mayor of Nauvoo, major general in the Nauvoo Legion, chancellor of the University of Nauvoo, and assistant president of the Church... [H]is philandering ultimately brought about his excommunication from the Church on May 11, 1842, and his resignation as mayor on the 17th... Bennett's retaliation was quick in coming. On July 8 the Springfield Sangamo Journal ran the first of seven sensational letters in which he accused Joseph Smith and those close to him of political despotism, wholesale land fraud, the attempted assassination of Lilburn W. Boggs, and wide-ranging sexual improprieties... Collected, revised, and fleshed out with generous excerpts from William Harris's Mormonism Portrayed (Warsaw, 1841), E. D. Howe's Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, 1834), and J. B. Turner's Mormonism in All Ages (New York, 1842), they formed the basis of Bennett's book..." Crawley, p.202. Bennett has been called "the Lucifer of the Mormon Church." With the bookplate of the noted Americana collector, Hall Park McCullough.

Price: $1,500.00