INTRODUCTION
________

The public career of Joseph Smith, Jr. was short and exceptionally eventful. It began in the late 1820s and ended abruptly, on June 27, 1844 at Carthage Jail. Within those few years, he burst upon the religious-political scene as a purported seer, recipient of visions, translator of dead languages, revelator of scriptures, president of an Ohio bank, mayor of the largest city in Illinois, and even a would-be candidate for the presidency of the United States.

To his family, close associates and numerous followers, (who sometimes addressed him as "Joe Smith") he was accepted as a man gifted with "second sight," as well as the chosen latter day prophet, "blessed to open the last dispensation" of the Christian gospel. To those who knew of him only by second-hand reports, he was a phenomenon of western news reports and the mysterious overseer of the desultory passing Mormon missionaries. Exactly how "Joe Smith" viewed himself and his unprecedented role in mid-19th century American society, remains a matter of controversy. Was the famous Joseph Smith, Jr. in reality a mere "Con Man?" This paper will explore that disturbing suggestion.

Consider, first of all, the implications set forth in the following two quotes (with emphasis added) -- one from an anti-Mormon writer; the other from an early LDS leader:

while Joe had been a-courting and developing into an A No. 1 backwoods confidence man, the neighborhood of Palmyra had been supplied with a new sensation to succeed the origin of the Indians, buried treasure, and eternal damnation, as topics for the crossroads' forums....
(H. M. Beardsley, 1931 Joseph Smith and His Mormon Empire)

I had no more confidence in Joseph Smith being a prophet, or in his knowing anything about religion, than I have now in a juggler or a wandering mountebank. I knew nothing at all about Joseph, except what I had heard from his enemies or read in the papers.
(Daniel H. Wells, June 30th, 1867)

In both cases (and in many others on record) the writers on Mormonism cannot avoid addressing the possibility that Joseph Smith, Jr., the famous 19th century Mormon leader, might be viewed as a confidence man -- as a sharp operator unworthy of people's confidence. What exactly does this mean -- for a "man of the cloth" to be typified as an equivocal solicitor of other men's confidence?

Steven R. Serafin and Alfred Bendixen attempt to provide some examples in their 2005 Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature, under the heading "Confidence Man." Among the "tricksters" and "peddlers" there cited are the historical "frontier evangelist," Lorenzo Dow and Sinclair Lewis' fictional hellfire sermonizer, Elmer Gantry. In both instances a dubious preacher solicits the attention and patronage of his Christian auditors (or potential converts) -- but Rev. Gantry seeks the sinners' cash, while Elder Dow wants to save the sinners' souls. We might imagine contemporary Mormons extending a wink and a nod to Dow's methods (their fifth President was named after him). On the other hand, our making close comparisons of Elmer Gantry and Joseph Smith will bring no smiles to LDS faces. Obviously this old-time label for suspect reverends, riverboat gamblers and snake oil salesmen requires some critical examination, ere Joseph Smith can be granted admittance to their disreputable ranks.

"Confidence Man" (also "Con Man," "Con Artist," etc.) was a term that Joseph Smith, Jr. probably never heard during his lifetime. In his day, the popular word for a purposeful deceiver was "juggler." This latter description was often applied to the young visionary himself during the 1830s and 1840s, as an explanation for his unusual ability to gain the trust of a certain group of people, such as the Mormon Whitmer family. As Eber D. Howe put it, in 1834: "They were noted in their neighborhood for credulity and a general belief in witches, and perhaps were fit subjects for the juggling arts of Smith." Although Howe called Mormonism an imposition, a juggler in Howe's day was not necessarily an impostor. The peddler of medicinal "rutes and yarbs" might occasionally resort to petty trickery and playing upon customers' superstitions, in order to hawk his suspect remedies; but such a juggler could also be totally honest about his own identity and personal activities. His salesman's task was not merely to swindle buyers, but to positively convince them of the importance of things they might otherwise ignore.

What then is a "confidence man?" The on-line Wikipedia supplies the following information regarding this 19th century appellation:

The first known usage of the term "confidence man" in English was in 1849; it was used by American press during the United States trial of William Thompson. Thompson chatted with strangers until he asked if they had the confidence to lend him their watches, whereupon he would walk off with the watch.

More precisely, the "American press" here referred to was, originally, the editor of a widely read newspaper -- James G. Bennett of the New York Herald. On July 8, 1849 he reported:

For the last few months a man has been traveling about the city, known as the "Confidence Man," that is, he would go up to a perfect stranger in the street, and being a man of genteel appearance, would easily command an interview. Upon this interview he would say after some little conversation, "have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until to-morrow;" the stranger at this novel request, supposing him to be some old acquaintance not at that moment recollected, allows him to take the watch, thus placing "confidence" in the honesty of the stranger, who walks off laughing and the other supposing it to be a joke allows him so to do.

In subsequent articles, editor Bennett revealed that William Thompson was a seasoned petty criminal who made use of a number of alias identities. This widely publicized reporting appears to have provided author Herman Melville with the basic plot idea for his 1857 novel, The Confidence Man: His Masquerade. While Bennett's coining of the designation confidence man might have earned the term a disreputable entry in American dictionaries without any literary assistance from Melville, the latter author's contribution to popular language should not be overlooked -- for in reading Melville's puzzling 1857 story we are brought full circle, back to "Joe Smith" and his Mormon religion.

Those readers who are particularly interested in the Melville-Smith connection may wish to take a little break at this point, to read through some scholarly commentary * on the subject -- but all others can continue perusing the current essay, wherein some reference to Melville, confidence men and Joseph Smith will shortly follow.

~ SECTION 2 ~

JOE  SMITH  THE  SINCERE  DECEIVER?

Mormons have historically been quick to defend Joseph Smith, Jr., when faced with outsiders' claims that he was an "impostor." This response is understandable, in that questioning Smith's claims to prophethood amounts to questioning the authenticity of Mormonism itself. An example of the LDS response to such questioning is well illustrated in M. Guy Bishop's 1991 Dialogue review of Exiles in a Land of Liberty, (a generally objective history of the early Mormons, written by Kenneth H. Winn):

Winn casts Joseph Smith as the conservative defender of an older, crumbling America.... Readers of Exiles in a Land of Liberty will also increase their knowledge of Mormonism's opponents. Like the Saints, these opponents were well-intentioned folk, but they simply disapproved of what they perceived as fakery and fraud. Those who could not, or would not, comprehend Mormon consecration and communalism saw Smith as the ultimate con man. They were convinced that more than one of his timely revelations smacked of deception.

For M. Guy Bishop, the non-Mormon opposition to Smith's claims to be a revelator of divine communications came from those outsiders' failure to "comprehend Mormon consecration and communalism." But surely this is an inadequate explanation for the opposition. In fact, many of the early, outspoken critics of Smith and his religion were former members who fully understood the Latter Day Saint system and who still disagreed about the true origin of Smith's revelations and teachings. The popular belief in Smith being a con man originated before the Mormon order was solidified and expanded to significant proportions. It was Smith's observable behavior in his interactions with people in New York and Pennsylvania which first gained him the reputation of being a con man, and not his role in establishing the Mormon church. Smith himself must have been aware of this bothersome difficulty, because he dated his first theophany to the year 1820 and explained opposition to his subsequent activities as being Gentile "persecution" of the Mormon religion.

Turning to Winn's actual words from his 1990 Exiles in a Land of Liberty, we shall notice two relevant excerpts (emphasis added):

While revulsion against Joseph Smith as a confidence man and contempt for his followers as credulous dupes continued to typify gentile hostility to the church, by the mid 1830s their distaste for Mormonism was gradually changing into a fear of tyranny. ...
(Page 82)

It was an axiom of faith among church opponents that Mormon leaders created Mormonism solely "for the purpose of picking the pockets of the community." ... Anti-Mormons charged Joseph Smith, in particular, with an insatiable lust for money, and they occasionally reported his candid "admission" of the fact.,,, One need not be a republican ideologue to disapprove of swindling, but the common non-Mormon perception of Joseph Smith wallowing in his ill-gotten gain revealed a republican repugnance to the idea of decadent luxury.... When anti-Mormon writers moved their discussion away from the hierarchy to a more general treatment of the church as a whole... Smith did not so much corrupt the virtue of once good citizens as merely assemble those who had no civic virtue to begin with.
(pp. 68-70 -- listed in the index as "Smith... characterized as con man")

Fawn Brodie's 1945 Smith Biography

A sharper LDS push-back can be found in the apologists' various writings rebutting Fawn M. Brodie's contention -- that Joseph Smith, Jr. "was a self-conscious impostor," (as Dale Morgan once paraphrased her views). A fair specimen of this sort of rebuttal can been seen in Louis Midgley's 2001 review of Newell G. Bringhurst's Brodie biography:

[Brodie's]... meticulous research over a period of some seven years into the life of Joseph Smith, which caused her to conclude that Mormonism's founder was a "conscious imposter," a fraud....

Bringhurst reports that Brodie described the 1971 revision of No Man Knows as involving "numerous changes in the text"... He also recognizes that "she backed away somewhat from her original contention that Joseph Smith was a conscious impostor"... In 1945, following Morgan's lead, Brodie maintained that Joseph Smith was entirely aware that the Book of Mormon was fraudulent. By 1971 Brodie had shifted to the notion that Joseph Smith, in Bringhurst's words, suffered from "a complex, interrelated 'identity problem'"...

As Brodie moved beyond the influence of Dale Morgan and began toying with a psychological explanation for Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, she began to picture Joseph Smith as an "impostor," that is, as deeply psychotic. This new explanation was not, however, intended to entirely replace, but rather to supplement, her earlier notion that he at least started out consciously fabricating a hoax. Are there good reasons for linking Joseph Smith with the "impostors" described by Phyllis Greenacre, the current authority on what is called the "imposter syndrome"?...

Is it not also worthwhile to ask how Brodie thought that she could salvage her original theory that Joseph Smith was a "conscious fraud" once she had turned to an explanation that pictured him as dissociative? And what happened to the arguments -- and they were arguments and not bald assertions -- that Morgan (and Brodie) worked out in opposition to the position advanced by DeVoto? Did not Morgan and Brodie believe they had shown that, no matter how much one might be tempted to explain Joseph Smith as suffering from some psychosis, the existence of the Book of Mormon stood in the way of such an account? As much as Brodie dabbled in Freudian explanations, Morgan had persuaded her that no psychological explanation of Joseph Smith would work if it basically compromised what they both were convinced was a fact -- that he knew from the start he was presenting a hoax to the world.

Although ostensibly framed as a summary of historical developments relating to Mrs. Brodie's expressed views, Dr. Midgley's article accentuates the Latter Day Saint uneasiness with any non-traditional discussion of Smith's motives and methods. The question of whether or not the "first Mormon" presented "a hoax to the world" takes precedence over any attempt to discover who the man was and why he behaved as he did. The possibility that Joseph Smith, Jr. may have been something other than either a traditional prophet or an impostor, appears to elude the Mormon mind.

No matter what Brodie's final conclusions were -- and no matter if they contained contradictions -- the outcome of her scholarship was that, after 1945, many non-Mormons began to view Mormonism and its founder as an important but relatively benign part of American religious identity. To the disinterested non-LDS observer, Joseph Smith may have been the rogue and charmer of Brodie's imagination, but, if so, his confidence game had resulted in a substantial new religion which posed no special threat to outsiders. Mormonism had evidently not risen from any secret conspiracy nor as a plan to concentrate financial and political power in the hands of its leaders. Viewed from this perspective, Fawn M. Brodie helped rehabilitate the Mormon public image, regardless of whether or not its founder was "a conscious impostor," a self-deluded "true believer" or a genuine latter day seer. After Brodie, bickerings over the intent and methods of "the first Mormon" became irrelevant, outside of the lilliputian realm of pro-LDS and anti-LDS polemics.

A 21st century proponent of the Brodie paradigm is Dan Vogel, who sees the Book of Mormon story as a reflection of the mind and early life of its sole author, Joseph Smith, Jr. For Vogel, the founder of Mormonism was a "pious fraud," who engaged in a few secretive and dishonest practices in order to promote a noble religious cause. In short, his Joseph Smith, Jr. was another, more successful Lorenzo Dow -- a self-promoter and attention-seeker whose basic purpose was saving souls and building the Kingdom of Heaven. The major difference being that Elder Dow never felt compelled to fabricate new divine revelations or new sacred scriptures. Dow never instituted a "gathering," organized an armed militia, or had himself crowned king by a secretive shadow government. We might here ask, does the "pious fraud" tenet of Fawn Brodieism go so far as to define Smith as a confidence man? Perhaps not: this revised, pious impostor is something far grander than a flim-flam man promoting heavenly ends. As "holder of the keys to the last dispensation," Vogel's Smith totally transcends James G. Bennett's 1849 cynical view of "The Confidence Man on a Large Scale."

Then again, it cannot be expected that contemporary LDS writers will simply fall back and allow "Joseph Smith version 3.0" to become the consensus conclusion, both outside and inside "the Church." The revised Joe Smith is all good and well for propagation among the unbelieving Gentiles. He may even merit the reputation of a great religious genius and ecclesiastical architect, but this new Smith still looks too much like an impious "conscious impostor" for any official integration with latter day doctrine. Besides which, it may not bother religious liberals like the Reorganized LDS, that Smith is credited with authoring the Book of Mormon, but such a notion can never be allowed to take root among "God's peculiar people," headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. No -- something must be done about Vogel's "pious fraud" of a Prophet. And so, Richard L. Bushman, Reid Larkin Neilson, and Jed Woodworth devote a little attention to the matter in their 2004 Believing History --

[a new breed of "tolerant" readers], I suggest, may not be satisfied with the choices that Dan Vogel... offers to readers of Joseph Smith biographies. In describing some of the supernatural events in Joseph's early life, Vogel says that we have three choices: (1) Joseph Smith consciously deceived people by making up events and lying about them; (2) he unconsciously deceived people by imagining events and calling them real; (3) he told the truth. Vogel asserts that we cannot believe that Joseph told the truth without abandoning all "rationalist categories of historical investigation."

... Like Brodie, Vogel leans toward conscious deceit. Vogel believes Joseph Smith knowingly lied by claiming that he translated the Book of Mormon when in fact Joseph was making it up as he went along.

For my hypothetical body of twenty-first century readers, Vogel's alternatives represent a hard choice. Readers are being asked to consider the revelations as either true or a form of deception. Joseph Smith either spoke for God or duped people. There is no middle ground...

Vogel thinks of Joseph Smith as a sincere deceiver. He sympathetically concludes, "I suggest Smith really believed he was called of God to preach repentance to a sinful world but that he felt justified in using deception to accomplish his mission more fully."
(pp. 266-67 -- duplicated on-line in Bushman's "A Joseph Smith for the Twenty-First Century, Part 2")

Well then, where in all of this 21st century revisionism do we find a place for "Joseph Smith: 19th Century Confidence Man?" Has the question become irrelevant in the post-modernist era? It is doubtful that the thoroughly conservative LDS Church will ever subscribe to such a notion. "Joe Smith the sincere deceiver" does not look very different from "Joe Smith the disreputable con man" when viewed in the light of traditional LDS doctrine. But perhaps writers like Bushman are attempting to look beyond the ecclesiastical walls of their own domain, to make some impression upon "a new breed of 'tolerant' readers" who are never destined to make a personal acquaintance with an LDS baptismal font. For the benefit of such a class of curious onlookers there may be some value in blurring the lines of demarcation laid out by Mr. Vogel. Perhaps there is room, somewhere, for "Joseph Smith 4.0" -- the sincere deceiver and conscious fraud, who inexplicably was also made "a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty."

If this is where we are headed with the possibility of "Joseph Smith: 19th Century Confidence Man," the audience to be addressed is neither the faithful Saints nor their recalcitrant opponents. The auditors of this new gospel will be the hangers-on at the synagogue who only wish to admire the "Chosen People" and appropriate a smattering of their religion. For such an audience, "Joe Smith the Con Man" may be a refreshing and sympathetic figure -- an intermediary between the divine and the profane, who gathers a type of latter day flock he probably never dreamed of. If this constitutes Bushman's "hypothetical body of twenty-first century readers," we might all be well advised to brush up on our Melville.

~ SECTION 3 ~

The Melville Archetype

The title for this section is taken from a list of over 100 critical studies of Herman Melville's writings, as posted on-line at melville.org. A little more than halfway down that list we find Martin Pops' 1970 volume, The Melville Archetype? The following excerpt, from his page 164, may serve as an introduction to Melville's 1857 Confidence Man as the final specimen among a repeated characterization of tricksters, scattered throughout Melville's several notable works:

[in Mardi] is the "equivocal conjuror"; in Moby-Dick, "an unaccountable old joker"; in Pierre, "Juggularius" the juggler; in The Encantadas, an "enchanter"; in Temple First, a magician; in The Confidence-Man, a quick-change artist. The Con Man is Devil and God: but that is not all. He first appears as Christ -- his "aspect [is]... singularly innocent," his hat is "fleecy," his figure "lamblike," and he writes on a slate such aphorisms as "Charity thinketh no evil." "Charity believeth all things, "and "Charity never faileth." Nor does he try to swindle anyone, and perhaps only a critic who lacks confidence will assume that his function is to subvert the passengers with Christian propaganda, for The Confidence Man's public declarations avow precisely the same thing.... Nevertheless, it would be an error to suppose that Christ and the Con Man are different people or even that the Con Man is impersonating Christ; the truth is more devastating: the Con Man is Christ, a deaf mute unable to speak to a world unwilling to listen.

Now that readers have been confronted with the shock of this apparent blasphemy, we are ready to examine Melville's "Confidence Man," as presented in the author's mid-19th century novel (if a "novel" it really is).

The book's narration (it can hardly be called a story) takes place during the course of a single day, aboard a riverboat moving southward from St. Louis toward the seaport of New Orleans. We are not told whether the steamer ever reaches Melville's apocalyptic ocean waters, hades, or nirvana. The narrative extinguishes itself in the end, with a capricious dollop of ambiguity thrown in for good measure. If the book's substance bears any resemblance to that of Moby Dick, its nautical allegories are confined to the fluvial microcosm of the mighty Mississippi.

Along the way the boat makes a number of stops, continually shuffling and reshuffling its human cargo, as various new passengers come on board. Among these ever changing faces are a number of "confidence men," who sequentially conduct a series of odd scams upon their fellow travelers. Given the book's title, along with various hints offered in its pages, the reader naturally comes to the conclusion that these several con men are actually a single "quick change artist" whose modus operandi consists of multiple alias identities, each of whom is the perpetrator of a different type of frontier fraud. Woven all through this succession of attempted con games are dialogues and discussions centering upon the dichotomies of belief/unbelief, trust/distrust, charity/selfishness -- and, especially the contrasting interplay between confidence and doubt. At the most trivial level these conversations involve nothing more than the decision of whether or not a person ought to donate a few dollars to a previously unheard of charitable fund. At the most profound level, the topic verges upon consideration of the existence of good and evil -- of human nature and divine influence -- and even the question of whether the dual concepts of God and Devil are not part of a cosmic confidence scheme. At various points in the narrative Melville's atheism is evident; but then again, so is his quixotic spirituality. The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade is not a simplistic literary creation -- that is, it is not simplistic unless it was written as Melville's own pointless play upon the confidence of his readers.

Consider this on-line critique from Louis Proyect, of Columbia University:

"The Confidence Man" is set on a riverboat called the "Fidèle," that is sailing down the Mississippi. As the title implies, the boat is loaded with con men who are either selling stock in failing companies, selling herbal "medicine" that can cure everything from cancer to the common cold, raising money for a fraudulent Seminole Widows and Orphans Society or simply convincing people to give them money outright as a sign that they have "confidence" in their fellow man. The word "confidence" appears in every chapter, as some sort of leitmotif to remind the reader what Melville is preoccupied with: the meanness and exploitation of his contemporary America. Because for all of the references to the need for people to have confidence in one another, the only type of confidence on the riverboat is that associated with scams. -- For Melville, the act of scamming represents everything that is wrong in American society in the decade preceding the outbreak of the Civil War. It is a time when the power of capital is transforming the American landscape, turning everything into a commodity.

Such a dark assessment mirrors the editorial offered by James G. Bennett in 1849, but it does not entirely explain the motives of Melville's riverboat con men/man. There is more in the book than "everything that is wrong in American society." For example, in several of the narrated "scams" the con man stands to gain very little, even if his "mark" is totally duped and filled with counterfeited confidence. In other instances the arguments of the con man, promoting belief, trust, charity and courage will strike a resonating chord in the soul of the religious believer or the humane philanthropist. Divorced from their petty chicanery, many of the confidence man's entreaties would make perfectly good sermons.


And perhaps that is the very point Melville wishes to raise

Throughout the book the careful reader must struggle with competing inclinations to accept or reject nearly everything that Melville communicates, but this struggle for proper discernment comes to a climax in the reader's consideration of con man's repeated arguments for man's unguarded belief and trust. Are the progessions of Melville's scam artist(s) professions of a sincere disciple of eternal goodness, or are they the enticements of a demonic arch-impostor? Can they possibily comprise both of these seeming contradictions at once? What does Melville want us to conclude from our study of his mixed messages? Should we think that nobody lives up to their sacred principles -- or that no principles are truly sacred? Should we conclude that seemingly benevolent religions such as Christianity are actually elaborate disguises for extending self-interest? Might we determine that, in the final analysis, belief and disbelief are existential complements -- the very warp and woof of human existence?

Having arrived at this philosophical dead end, we can now turn our attention back to Joseph Smith and 19th century Mormonism.

On Nov. 26, 1845 the newspaper readers of Hancock County, Illinois opened their freshly printed copies of the Warsaw Signal to browse through an article that probably brought a grin (or a smirk) to the faces of many of that locality's non-Mormons:

A Spiritual Sister -- Her encounter with a doubtful Smith.

BY SOL TAIRE.
________

'There goes Smith, the Attorney,' said a man to his friend, as a tall figure, slightly stooped, hurried by them.

'I beg your pardon,' answered the friend, 'that is the Rev. Mr. Smith, a preacher. I have heard him in Tennessee.' ... On board the steamer was a Mormon sister, on her way from down east to the holy city of Nauvoo, and many and anxious were her enquiries, if any brother of the church was on board? None were able to inform her...

The humorous account goes on to relate how the "Mormon sister" encounters on board a certain man, whom she takes to be Elder William Smith, younger brother of the late LDS prophet. The spinster sister's overly amiable solicitations for the man's views relating to "the spiritual system" of plural marriage soon drive the embarrassed fellow away and the tale comes to a quick ending.

Compare that little (and obviously fictional) Mississippi river anecdote from 1845, to one of the shorter scenes in Herman Mellville's 1857 book:

CHAP. VIII.

A  CHARITABLE  LADY.
________

... Ere long he [the Confidence Man] goes laggingly into the ladies' saloon, as in spiritless quest of somebody; but, after some disappointed glances about him, seats himself upon a sofa... At the sofa's further end sits a plump and pleasant person, whose aspect seems to hint that... apparently she is a widow just breaking the chrysalis of her mourning. A small gilt testament is in her hand, which she has just been reading. Half-relinquished, she holds the book in reverie, her finger inserted at the thirteenth of 1st Corinthians, to which chapter possibly her attention might have recently been turned, by witnessing the scene of the monitory mute and his slate.

The sacred page no longer meets her eye... her volume drops. It is restored... the stranger breathes, "Madam, pardon my freedom...May I ask, are you a sister of the Church?"... "It is very solitary for a brother here,"... I prefer the company, however silent, of a brother or sister in good standing. By the way, madam, may I ask if you have confidence?"

"Really, sir -- why, sir -- really --I"

..."Pardon, I see it. No confidence. Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!"

"You are unjust, sir," rejoins the good lady with heightened interest... "yes -- I may say that"...

"That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars."
(pp. 66-68 in first edition)

In Melville's version of the tale, it is the man, rather than the woman, on the riverboat full of strangers who seeks the company of a fellow member of "the Church." As in the 1845 account, the newly met couple sit side by side and carry on a halting conversation relating to Christian virtue or charity. The man himself is a vague person -- identified by some passengers under one description, and by others under an alternate description. In both stories the ostensible male character (an advocate for widows and orphans, and the presumed LDS apostle) turn out to be something other than they appear to be. One is a shady guy, professing to be a charity worker, while the other is something like his opposite -- an innocent traveler mistakenly supposed to be the shady William Smith of Nauvoo.

None of these parallels prove that Melville appropriated some bits and pieces of the 1845 account for his own 1857 book, but the similarities of location, circumstance, characters and subject matter appear to be too strong for us to attribute to pure coincidence.

The Nov. 26, 1845 Warsaw Signal parody was reprinted from its initial appearance that month in the St. Louis Weekly Reveille. The writer of this short story, "Solitaire," was actually John S. Robb, a resident of St. Louis whose humorous anecdotes appeared regularly in the local press. His "Spiritual Sister" was copied into the pages of various contemporary newspapers, but Herman Melville most likely saw it under the guise of a chapter in Robb's 1847 compilation, Streaks of Squatter Life and Far-West Scenes, published in Philadelphia and sold throughout the country.

John S. Robb's "Spiritual Sister" and her "William Smith" (1847)

The intriguing possibility comes to mind, that perhaps Melville was initially planning to write a story with a Mississippi riverboat setting, including Mormon characters, when his attention was drawn to the 1849 New York Herald's report of William Thompson, the original "Confidence Man." Thompson's repeated question, "have you confidence in me to trust me...?," is inserted almost verbatim into Melville's story as: "Could you put confidence in me...?" One possibility is that Melville, around 1848-49, had already imagined such a fictional encounter aboard a steamship, and then added to that plot his paraphrase of the New York confidence man's perennial query. If this were the case, then that ""have you confidence?" question would easily been connected with a supposed traveling Mormon apostle or prophet -- a religious salesman whose pietistic message and churchly system demanded a unique degree of members' trust.

Recall also, that of all of Joseph Smith's brothers, only "Patriarch" William remained living in the fall of 1845. William was then (and later) accused of engaging in secret polygamous or extramarital relations with various women and thus was seen by some as a sort of con man in his own right. The real Apostle William Smith had just arrived in St. Louis, by steamer from Nauvoo, when the Reveille writer concocted his "Spiritual Sister" parody. Doubtless rumors of William's clandestine polygamy dogged him wherever he went. The year before, in Massachusetts, the Apostle was publicly accused of these practices by John Hardy, one of his own parishioners, in a pamphlet bearing the lengthy title of Startling Development of Crim. Con.!, or, Two Mormon Apostles Exposed, in Practising the Spiritual Wife System in Boston... exposing the "teachings and practices" of Elders G. J. Adams and William Smith.

The term used by Elder Hardy -- Crim. Con. -- was only indirectly associated with the activities of a confidence man. "Crim. Con." was Victorian Era shorthand for "Criminal Conversation," in which the "conversation" referred to was illicit sexual intercourse. The designation is most often found in old court records, where one man sued (or had arrested) some other man for seducing his wife in a criminal manner -- that is, maliciously damaging her value as a virtuous wife, etc. E. D. Howe tried to make a slight joke at the expense of the Mormons, when he wrote in 1834:

The Lamanites were all cursed by the Lord, and all marked and transformed into Indians. A curse was pronounced upon all who should ever mix with them. The Nephites warred with each other until they exterminated the whole race except three, who were immortalized. Whether the object of their immortality was to perpetuate the notable branch of Joseph by crim. con. we are left to conjecture. --

Here E. D. Howe implies that the Book of Mormon's eternal "Three Nephites" could only "perpetuate" their race through sexual intercourse with the cursed (and forbidden) Lamanite women. History does not record whether Howe was also making a subtle reference to the "reproach" soon afterward admitted to by the Mormons, on page 251 of the 1835 LDS Doctrine and Covenants: "Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife..." Certainly such a "reproach" might easily be applied to a charged leveled against a Mormon member for engaging in a "crim. con." seduction.

Evidently the 1835 D&C prohibition was not effective in eliminating this sort of "reproach" altogether from the Church, for we read the following charge in the Quincy Whig of Dec. 22, 1847:

Divorced from a Woman who had become the "Spiritual Wife" of a Mormon Leader. -- Henry Cobb vs. Augusta Cobb. This was a libel alleging crim-con on the part of the respondent with Brigham Young, in Nauvoo, in August, 1844, and December, 1845. After living 21 years in good repute with her lawful husband, the respondent became led away with Mormonism, leaving her husband, went to Nauvoo, and joined the church there.

Although the newspaper notice does not directly accuse Brigham Young of having been a con man, in his seduction of Mrs. Cobb, the deception typically associated with a "crim. con." is implied in the words "led away with Mormonism." Had he been asked the question in 1844, Henry Cobb probably would have applied the charge of "deceiver" to the already married Brigham Young. What makes the Mormon apostle's case different from the average "crim. con." of that day, is that he evidently did not deceive Mrs. Cobb about his marital status, nor about his intention to eventually marry her as a Mormon plural wife. The deception Mr. Cobb might have pointed to was Brigham's assertion that LDS spiritual wifery existed in obedience to latter day divine commandments. If Mormon apostles can rightfully be accused as con men, then the most serious charge that could be brought against them is that they prey upon their converts under the false authority of fabricated divine commandments.

John C. Bennett may have had Brigham Young in mind when he headed page 226 in his 1842 History of the Saints with the caption: "AMOURS AND ATTEMPTED SEDUCTIONS, AND CRIM. CON. CASES." Bennett went on to say: "Under this head I shall arrange two descriptions of cases; -- amours and attempted seductions, as in the cases of Mrs. Sarah M. Pratt, Mrs. Emeline White, Miss Martha H. Brotherton, and Miss Nancy Rigdon, where the Prince of the Seraglio was signally defeated; and the amours and crim. con. cases..."

It hardly needs to be pointed out here that John C. Bennett was a full-fledged confidence man in his own right, as was Nauvoo's "booster" Isaac Galland, and various other 1840s associates of "the Prince of the Seraglio" (Joseph Smith, Jr.). Bennett had his own crim. con. difficulties to deal with, as did Apostle Parley P. Pratt, who in later years was shot and killed by an irate husband, following the apostle's appropriation of that man's legal wife as an LDS "plural."

Did Herman Melville plan to write a novel that included mid-19th century Mormons and their secret polygamy? If so, he must have thought the better of that prospect and evolved his religious con game plot to focus upon confidence men in general, and not just upon the activities of William Smith and his polygamous brethren. Had Melville written an openly "Mormon" novel, an interesting story might have been developed from Elder Isaac Sheen's 1850 accusation of "adultery and fornication by Wm. Smith" in Smith's attempt to seduce Sheen's wife -- or from the 1855 episode in Utah Territory, in which Brigham Young played the "badger game" upon Lieutenant Colonel E. J. Steptoe, in order to keep the territorial governorship in Mormon hands. But Melville was wise not to allow his stories to be drawn into the muck of Mormon misdeeds. By merely alluding to his 1857 "Confidence Man" as possibly being a "green prophet from Utah, and later in the book planting a hint of a "New Jerusalem" land scheme "founded by certain fugitive Mormons," Melville included more than enough LDS minutiae to remind the causal reader of Joseph Smith's unsavory reputation among America's non-Mormons.

Some additional thoughts on Melville's allusions to things Mormon follow in the next section, below.

~ SECTION 4 ~

Ends  and  Means

...the implication is that American society is predominantly built on lying, cheating, and stealing; a place where all offers and promises are too good to be true; and where everyone is eventually betrayed for having faith. As such, the confidence man appears to be an ideal model for the kind of behavior needed to survive and even thrive in a cynically motivated, deceptive society: he demonstrates the behavior necessary to succeed in a system driven by self-interest, competition, and misrepresentation.
("False Promises... in Herman Melville's Confidence-Man," a chapter in Martin Brückner's 2007 American Literary Geographies, pp. 191ff.)

Perhaps Joseph Smith was not a Con Man After All?

If we stop to consider the facets of a man's character which would prove him not to be a deceptive con man, the point which first attracts our attention is this -- a con man would not knowingly and willingly endanger all that he holds dear, merely to succeed in deceiving people. Self-survival is a powerful instinct. Protection of family and loved ones is another powerful inclination in all decent human beings. And yet the actions of Joseph Smith, Jr. put the lives of those close to him in danger several times. His own life, as well as that of his brother Hyrum, was forfeited in defense of the Mormon cause. Such dedication and zeal, in the face of life-threatening "persecution," seems far removed from the modus operandi of the typical confidence man.

Another point worth consideration is that the con man generally picks his "mark," strikes and moves on. In Melville's book the deceiver appears to be a quick change artist -- which allows for an alternative to flight after pulling off a successful con. In the case of Joseph Smith, Jr., however, he neither disappeared from public view (for any extended period) nor changed his identity to escape vengeful detection.

It might also be argued that con men generally attempt to cheat the unwary victims out of their wealth, while "Joe Smith" was more interested in gathering the saints of the world together and having them all share in a bountious latter day commonwealth. A true con man might instead be expected to separate his dupes, pick them off one by one, and leave them all penniless. Joseph Smith, however, did gain great power over many people, their livelihoods and their property -- so this argument is not so convincing as are the previous two considerations.

A Third Possibility: From Occult to Cult

There may be another explanation for the controversy surrounding the first President of the LDS Church -- that he began his career as a small time confidence man, but quickly evolved into some more impressive and more complex. The late Wesley P. Walters was totally convinced that Smith had been a con man, and he summed up his conclusion thusly:

Mormon writers like Francis Kirkham and Dr. Hugh Nibley vigorously denied that their prophet could have participated in such a superstitious practice [as glass-looking], or had ever been found guilty in a court of law of what was clearly a confidence game. However, the discovery in 1971 of the bills of cost handed in to the county by Constable Philip DeZeng and Justice Neely for their services during the arrest and trial of Joseph Smith in 1826 have now established beyond doubt that the young "Glass looker" (as Mr. Neely's bill calls him) was indeed involved in glass looking for hidden treasure and lost objects, and that he was brought to trial for that crime.
("From Occult to Cult With Joseph Smith, Jr.," Journal of Pastoral Practice, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1977) p. 122.)

...In addition to the correlations that the [Judge Albert] Neely record [of an examination of glass-looking charges against Smith] has with the 1826 bills, further verification of the authenticity of the Neely record is found in the fact that the names of all those whom he lists as participants in the trial can be verified as real persons who were actually living in the South Bainbridge area in 1826. For example... Peter G. Bridgman... was the nephew of Josiah Stowell and his wife Miriam Bridgman. Apparently he became deeply concerned when he saw his uncle's money being transferred bit-by-bit into the pockets of a young "glass-looking" confidence man named Joseph Smith.
("Joseph Smith's Bainbridge, N.Y., Court Trials," Westminster Theological Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter 1974) p. 141.)

Whether this blending of religion and magic was inherited from his [Smith's] father's connection with the "Rodmen" movement of Middletown, Vermont, or was picked up from a magician named Walters with whom Joseph seems to have been associated for a while, or was stirred by the influence of the revival in Palmyra over the winter of 1824-1825, it is impossible to say. It is possible that this whole occult procedure was a mere theatrical trimming to make his confidence game seem more convincing. Mr. Noble reports that he heard one witness testify that he had asked Joseph on one occasion whether he could actually "see or tell" more than anyone else, and Joseph had admitted he could not but added, "Anything for a living. I now and then get a Shilling." However, it seems likely that he came at least half-way to believe in that realm of the occult...
("From Occult to Cult With Joseph Smith, Jr.," Journal of Pastoral Practice, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1977) p. 127.)

Having thus branded the young Joseph Smith as a criminal running "a confidence game," Rev. Walters goes on to describe Smith as "a young 'glass-looking' confidence man" and an occultist who blended "religion and magic" in order to "make his confidence game seem more convincing" among his money-digging dupes. Walters adds a surprising twist to the above summary of Smith's 1820s practice of magical chicanery by concluding, "he came at least half-way to believe in that realm of the occult." He also says this about Smith's second encounter with the Law in southern upstate New York:

...the 1830 trials marked Joseph's successful transition from a practitioner of the occult, searching for money, to the prophet of the new cult of Mormonism. When Joseph later recounts this early period of his life, he minimizes his money digging as a minor affair of manual labor for an old gentleman named Josiah Stowell, whom he finally "prevailed" with to abandon such useless activity, and the many testimonies to his money digging come to be regarded as slander manufactured to persecute the young prophet of the Lord. That period when he was a sorcerer and glass looker using occult religious practices in a superstitious confidence enterprise is transformed by Joseph into the period of preparation for him to become the instrument of the Lord for bringing forth the fullness of the gospel by the publication of the Book of Mormon.
("From Occult to Cult With Joseph Smith, Jr.," Journal of Pastoral Practice, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Summer 1977) p. 130.)

Rev. Walters' theory regarding Joseph Smith's transformation from con man to would-be prophet is an important statement. Whether or not this summary accurately fits Smith's development into the foremost LDS leader, it provides the basis for a third alternative to the deceiver/truth-teller dichotomy so often encountered in Smith biographies. To some extent Rev. Walters' theory parallels Fawn Brodie's belief, that Smith was a "conscious impostor" who came to believe himself a prophet. Both of these views are somewhat compatible with Dan Vogel's deduction, that Smith was a "pious fraud" who became a prophetic religion-founder. What Walters' theory adds to all of this, is the unique observation that a small town con man made a "successful transition from a practitioner of the occult, searching for money, to the prophet of the new cult of Mormonism." Walters thus applies Smith's experimentation with magic as a sort of psychic catalyst -- a motivation and methodology which propelled the Palmyra farmboy into a role transcending that of a commonplace con man who had been pretending to be a treasure seer and fortune teller.

If Rev. Walters' conclusions are the correct ones, then Smith's involvement in the occult wrought a transformation his early confidence schemes, into a viable religious program, at about the same time that he was reportedly "translating" the Book of Mormon. We should keep in mind, however, that this religious evolution did not necessarily extirpate Joe Smith's stratagems for counterfeiting confidence in his followers. Smith's methods were sanitized and given an aura of holiness, but he retained them, all the same.

The ambiguity of Smith's choice of confidence-building techniques, before, during and after his supposed religious transformation is what makes it difficult to establish any particular chronological point at which he ceased being a con man and began being a "true prophet." Craig Criddle, in his examination of Smith's probable contribution to bringing forth the Book of Mormon, bypasses this problem, by focusing attention only upon Smith's activities prior to the publication of that book. He says:

The Smith-as-Sole-Author Theory asserts that Smith produced The Book of Mormon with or without supernatural assistance. This theory can be based on any of the following premises: (1) Smith was a prophet of God as he claimed; (2) Smith had a gift of some kind, perhaps like that attributed to certain artists and mystics and sometimes described as "automatic writing," and he was sincere in his belief that this was a gift from God that enabled him to translate the golden plates that he saw in visions; (3) Smith was a pious fraud who was trying to bring people to Christ by making up scripture that would support Christian belief; (4) Smith was a successful con man who needed to find a new gig after his treasure seeking business tailed off after skirmishes with the law.
("Sidney Rigdon: Creating the Book of Mormon," sec. 1)

There is abundant evidence that during the same time period that Smith claimed to be entertaining annual visits by an angel, he was also making a living as a con man... he was found guilty of perpetrating a money-digging scheme... Smith was no run-of-the mill con man. He was actually a talented magician, with an act that included seer stones, fortune telling, palm reading, divining rods, amulets, incantations, and participation in rituals to summon spirits and showed a remarkable ability to induce and retain belief. The Bainbridge trial transcript describes some of the ruses used by Smith to con people, and it includes testimony that he was a fraud... It is important to reiterate that Smith claimed to be receiving an annual angelic visitor in anticipation of the Book of Mormon at the very same time he was also engaged in activities that show him to be a con man...

[Any] evidence that shows Smith to have been an honest man is also consistent with the con man theory, because that is precisely how many successful con men normally present themselves. A successful con man must pass himself off as trustworthy in order to gain the "confidence" of his marks so that he can then take advantage of them. Con men may even believe at some level that they can actually do the improbable things they claim to be able to do.... the likelihood of former con men becoming real men of God and performing miracles is less than the likelihood of them remaining con men and performing tricks that appear to be miracles in support of some con.
("Sidney Rigdon: Creating the Book of Mormon," sec. 2, part 6)

Craig Criddle's estimation of Joseph Smith being a purposeful deceiver still allows for him to have been the sole author of the Book of Mormon (though Criddle elsewhere argues against the Smith-alone authorship theory). It also allows for Smith to have been sincerely convinced of his purported supernatural powers and to have evolved into a miracle-worker. But even after these theoretical concessions, Criddle still labels the Mormon leader as a con man, due the "ruses used by Smith to con people." In other words, Joseph Smith, Jr. was something much more complex than a "run-of-the mill con man," and he may well have believed in his own seership. The distinguishing feature which nevertheless marks Smith as a probable confidence man was his "remarkable ability to induce and retain belief" in his followers, by "performing tricks that appear[ed] to be miracles."

Criddle thus makes no claims for Smith having been a confidence man in his post-1830 career. What Criddle is interested in are Smith's "ruses" and "tricks," whereby he maintained himself as a confidence man in the period before the Book of Mormon was printed.

Could the 1830 publication of the Book of Mormon be the practicable justification for Smith's earlier deceptions? Clearly he could not see treasures buried under the ground -- and just as clearly he supplemented his income by wrongly telling people he actually could locate such riches. On the other hand, millions of people now living profess to have God-given testimonies that the Book of Mormon is not only an authentic ancient American record, but that it is also latter day revelation which provides the "fulness of the gospel." Either Smith's original deceptions have been multiplied millions of times, to produce colossal deluded testimony; or else the Palmyra farmboy really did progress from confidence man to divine prophet. But which of those possibilities is true and which is false? The undecided question presents an existential conundrum worthy of Herman Melville's attention. And, considering the fact that he once wrote about an ancient prophet of the true religion named Alma, it appears likely that the noted American author granted his attention to this puzzle, at least as far back as 1849.

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