"Mormonism Unveiled: Or, A Faithful Account of That Singular Imposition and Delusion from Its Rise to the Present Time. With Sketches of the Characters of Its Propagators, and a Full Detail of the Manner in Which the Famous Golden Bible Was Brought Before the World. To Which Are Added, Inquiries into the Probability That the Historical Part of the Said Bible Was Written by One Solomon Spalding, More Than Twenty Years Ago, and by Him Intended to Have Been Published As a Romance."— Eber D. Howe1
Eber D. Howe published Mormonism Unvailed, an anti-Mormon book, in 1834. Hired by an anti-Mormon committee to compile evidence against Joseph Smith, Howe gathered 72 affidavits that criticized Smith's character and accused him and his family of being money diggers and irresponsible citizens. He also worked with Doctor Philastus Hurlbut on the book, an excommunicated member of the Church.2
The book posited the Spaulding-Rigdon theory—a theory that Sidney Rigdon had access to a manuscript written by Solomon Spaulding, which he then supposedly reworked into the Book of Mormon and convinced Joseph to claim it as a divine translation. Despite the initial intrigue for this theory, it was largely debunked in 1884 when the original Spaulding manuscript was found and it had no real resemblance to the Book of Mormon.3,4
