Brother Crockett vs...?

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Let me again point out that the words of the quote I left out would have improved the proposition I was seeking to advance; I merely edited that phrase out as well as dozens of others in an effort to eliminate redundant material to save space.

The simple fact remained that the quote, before and after my edit, established the same fact -- John D. Lee's lawyer William Bishop stated an intention to edit Lee's "confession" to add things -- things about the history and the case (in other words, all subject matters pertaining to the massacre).

The second fact is that Will Bagley is thorougly familiar with my work (which reviewed his); we have discussed it at length. We have discussed this particular letter at length. He was critical of some things, but not my use of the letter. Indeed, he admitted to me in writing that he should have used the letter in his work.

So, it is a malicious libel for you and Scratch to accuse me of dishonesty in my publications. But, I can't stop you, and you are certainly shameless about putting a period where a comma exists in a particular quote and then leaving out the rest instead of using elipses to signal your deletion. Shame on you.

Everyone knows my position on this. The words you replaced with the ellipses, in my opinion, changed the meaning of the quote in a way that improperly supported your conclusion. I don't care if Bagley caught it or not; my reading of the complete Bishop quote opposes your conclusion. I don't know why you did it (perhaps it was just an editorial decision, etc.), but I found the quote, manipulated in a way that supported your conclusion, completely improper ... and worthy of redaction or clarification. Just my $.02.

[Guest]

No, the fact continues to remain that the evidence is coming from a child

Does this put the word of a 14-year-old boy also in question with respect to matters of evidence?

It doesn't matter whether the child is a boy or girl, 14 or 94.

I wonder if you fully appreciate what you are saying here.

So, unlike the rest of you, I just don't accept what I read in Church history at face value -- whether it favors the Church or not. Having been a published author on issues of history, I wonder - just how strong is this evidence? Is it direct? Is it hearsay? How long was it after the event? Is it against somebody's interest (which makes it valuable) or self-justification? I mean, these are the historian's tools.

Or here.

But, because you hate and despise the faith of your fathers,

I may be guilty of many things, but hating and despising the many and varied faiths of my fathers is not one of them.

[Tator]

Let me again point out that the words of the quote I left out would have improved the proposition I was seeking to advance; I merely edited that phrase out as well as dozens of others in an effort to eliminate redundant material to save space.

The simple fact remained that the quote, before and after my edit, established the same fact -- John D. Lee's lawyer William Bishop stated an intention to edit Lee's "confession" to add things -- things about the history and the case (in other words, all subject matters pertaining to the massacre).

The second fact is that Will Bagley is thorougly familiar with my work (which reviewed his); we have discussed it at length. We have discussed this particular letter at length. He was critical of some things, but not my use of the letter. Indeed, he admitted to me in writing that he should have used the letter in his work.

So, it is a malicious libel for you and Scratch to accuse me of dishonesty in my publications. But, I can't stop you, and you are certainly shameless about putting a period where a comma exists in a particular quote and then leaving out the rest instead of using elipses to signal your deletion. Shame on you.

What you omitted made a world of difference. You said:

There is a letter in the massacre files from Lee's attorney to Lee, while Lee is in prison awaiting execution. Lee's confession is attorney Bishop's means of obtaining a fee for Lee's defense. Bishop urges Lee in this letter to implicate Brigham Young in the confessions, and the Bishop says that Bishop is going to add things to Lee's confession to spice things up.

Add things to spice things up? You seriously believe that is the equivalent of THIS:

I will at once go to work preparing it for the press adding such facts connected with the trial and the history of the case as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public.

In regards to my quote, I copied the quote as is from the website I linked. I changed nothing. I copied and pasted the citation. When you acted as if something were missing, I looked it up on other sites. Your insistence that I did this deliberately and maliciously, knowing it would change the meaning 180 degrees, is laughable - as I demonstrated by reference to the FARMS article. Were they also deliberately and maliciously changing the meaning? You're pathetic.

This is so typical of you, Bob. You sling insults and serious accusations right and left, but puff up like a bullfrog if anyone dares to impugn your integrity or person.

[_the road to hana]

So why weren't any other of Sylvia's children considered children of Joseph Smith? Why only Josephina?

Good catch.

No doubt there are many implied meanings to the use of the word "father." One can mean biological father, one can mean adoptive father, one can mean father in spirit, one can mean creator, one can mean father by sealing in the LDS sense.

While I understand the argument that Sylvia Sessions might have meant that Joseph was Sylvia's "father," but not necessarily biological, it makes no sense in the context of a deathbed confession to admit to that.

Any other sense Josephine would have already understood.

[_the road to hana]

Why wait until her death to state it in a sealing sense? Why keep it hidden from her daughter and the world?

Undoubtedly because Joseph told her not to tell anybody.

What evidence do you have for this?

[_rcrocket]

I will at once go to work preparing it for the press adding such facts connected with the trial and the history of the case as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public.

I did not leave this quote out of my work. You have it, once again, wrong.

The quote I used was "I will at once go to work preparing it [i.e., John D. Lee's autobiographical confession] adding such facts . . . as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public." The part I left out, as I was editing all my quotes, was "connected with the trial and history of the case."

But, according to several of Lee's biographers, what Bishop added dozens of pages and pages of accounts of crimes in northern Utah with which Lee would have had no familiarity, which were apparently drafted for Bishop (at least in my view) by a Salt Lake Tribune reporter.

Moreover, unknown to Bishop, Lee gave another confession to U.S. Attorney Howard, and the details varied in material respects. So, whatever Bishop added was meant to make the confessions much more salacious and more untruthful. The part I left out, again solely in the interest of brevity, was "connected with the trial and history of the case." That stuff was not material, because "trial and history of the case" encompassed the world of the massacre -- I left it out because it was just redundant.

But, your critique expresses confusion because you apparently think I left that entire sentence out, and you take issue of my use of the sentence, not my removal of ellipsed material. It shows you have merely read Scratch's stuff, not my work.

However, in your case, you cited material without attribution as if you had the original quote, and the original quote as you had it ended with a period, rather than a comma and a whole lot of other words which made my case. Shameful. Sloppy. Dishonest. Just like Scratch and Rollo to cite original material from secondary sources without mentioning the secondary.

Hmm. This is too fun.

[_Chap]

I will at once go to work preparing it for the press adding such facts connected with the trial and the history of the case as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public.

I did not leave this quote out of my work. You have it, once again, wrong.

The quote I used was "I will at once go to work preparing it [I.e., John D. Lee's autobiographical confession] adding such facts . . . as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public." The part I left out, as I was editing all my quotes, was "connected with the trial and history of the case."

But, according to several of Lee's biographers, what Bishop added dozens of pages and pages of accounts of crimes in northern Utah with which Lee would have had no familiarity, which were apparently drafted for Bishop (at least in my view) by a Salt Lake Tribune reporter.

Moreover, unknown to Bishop, Lee gave another confession to U.S. Attorney Howard, and the details varied in material respects.

So, whatever Bishop added was meant to make the confessions much more salacious and more untruthful.

In your post, the material quoted above runs continuously. But there seems to be something missing between the last sentence quoted here and what precedes it - from which it does not seem to follow.

Did you accidentally miss something out?

[_the road to hana]

Moreover, unknown to Bishop, Lee

Ah, yes, that triggers a memory. Bishop Lee. Lee Bishop.

Two more anonymous cowards who previously posted on this board.

[_beastie]

I'm not going to debate the Lee quote. It's been sufficiently discussed, and I linked a detailed explanation of it. Readers can decide for themselves whether or not you intentionally changed the meaning of the citation.

In regards to this accusation:

However, in your case, you cited material without attribution as if you had the original quote, and the original quote as you had it ended with a period, rather than a comma and a whole lot of other words which made my case. Shameful. Sloppy. Dishonest. Just like Scratch and Rollo to cite original material from secondary sources without mentioning the secondary.

Wrong, as usual. I linked the website right above the citation. From page 3 of this thread:

beastie, page 3

Sheesh. The affidavit stated that her mother told her Joseph Smith was her father.

Now, either Josephine lied, her mother lied, or her mother had sex with Joseph Smith which led her to believe Joseph Smith was her daughter's father.

So one must question what possible motivation Josephine or her mother would have had to tell such a lie.

This is why these debates are pointless. There is no evidence that defenders of the faith will accept in regards to this point. They'll accept that Joseph Smith had sex with his other plural wives, generally, because it's pretty idiotic to do otherwise. But they draw the line at the polyandrous unions, and insist that, for some reason, THOSE marriages were different.

At any rate, it is still possible DNA may shed some light on the question of Josephine's parentage, according to this website. I'm going to provide the entire citation, because it offers other pertinent information.

http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/DNA.htm

Quote:
(Last Updated: November 2007)

Because Joseph Smith practiced polygamy in relative secrecy, the details of children he may have fathered by his plural wives is uncertain. In a 1905 speech at Brigham Young University, Joseph's wife, Mary Elizabeth Rollins explained, "I know he [Joseph] had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I know he had three children. They told me. I think two are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names." ("Remarks", April 14, 1905, BYU Lee Library).

Josephine Lyon, daughter of Sylvia Sessions Lyon, wrote, “Just prior to my mothers death in 1882 she called me to her bedside and told me that her days were numbered and before she passed away from mortality she desired to tell me something which she had kept as an entire secret from me and from all others but which she now desired to communicate to me. She then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith”.

[/quote]

[_Mister Scratch]

I will at once go to work preparing it for the press adding such facts connected with the trial and the history of the case as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public.

I did not leave this quote out of my work. You have it, once again, wrong.

The quote I used was "I will at once go to work preparing it [I.e., John D. Lee's autobiographical confession] adding such facts . . . as will make the Book interesting and useful to the public." The part I left out, as I was editing all my quotes, was "connected with the trial and history of the case."

Which is problematic. Your omission makes it sound like Bishop is trying to "spice things up," though that's not what's being said in the original quote.

But, according to several of Lee's biographers, what Bishop added dozens of pages and pages of accounts of crimes in northern Utah with which Lee would have had no familiarity, which were apparently drafted for Bishop (at least in my view) by a Salt Lake Tribune reporter.

Again: problematic. This has nothing to do with things "connected with the trial and history of the case." Instead, it sounds like you were just trying to tar Bishop's credibility.

Moreover, unknown to Bishop, Lee gave another confession to U.S. Attorney Howard, and the details varied in material respects. So, whatever Bishop added was meant to make the confessions much more salacious and more untruthful.

On what do you base this assumption? Certainly, it's not based on the original quote, which you mangled, for whatever reason.