Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Use of sources/Killing Lambert Symes

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Killing Lambert Symes

Nauvoo police violence

A FAIR Analysis of: One Nation Under Gods A work by author: Richard Abanes

Irvine Hodge murder

Author's Claims

One Nation under Gods, page 213 (hardback and paperback)

• Heber C. Kimball and Orson Hyde "actually ordered Nauvoo's police force to kill apostate Lambert Symes, who subsequently disappeared without a trace."

Author's Sources

Endnote 38, page 551 (hardback); page 549 (paperback)

• D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 181.

Answer

ONUG misrepresents the source on multiple accounts:

• Only Heber C. Kimball was charged with making "Lambert Symes" disappear
• We are not told that this charge came from Jehiel Savage, an apostate who was supporting James Strang's break-off movement.
• We are not told that Quinn also wrote: "Savage said it was 'Lambert Symes' who thus disappeared, but I have been unable to find anyone by that name in Nauvoo's records."

Thus, ONUG gets the claim wrong, we have only an apostate's account as evidence, and there is no evidence whatever that the person who supposedly 'disappeared' ever existed. Furthermore, as Quinn notes (and ONUG likewise fails to tell us):

Nauvoo was not littered with corpses of dissenters, the most strident of whom lived long lives in opposition to Brigham Young.

There were many vocal, powerful, and well-known anti-Mormons around Nauvoo at the period. If Heber C. Kimball was going to have one of them killed, why pick someone so insignificant that his existence cannot even be confirmed? Why not someone with more power or prominence, to put fear in the others? Why did no one in Nauvoo notice this supposed murder?

Notes