Excerpt from The Adventures and Experience of Joseph H. Jackson: Disclosing the Depths of Mormon Villany Practiced in Nauvoo

The following narrative of my experience in Nauvoo, is submitted to the public in hopes that it may call attention to the character of the iniquities practiced in that city, in the name of religion. I am aware, that such is the nature of the disclosures made in the following pages such the black ness of the record, that it will be difficult to induce men to believe that such depravity could possibly exist. By what follows, however, it will be perceived that my motives in going to Nauvoo, were to gain the confidence of the Prophet, that I might discover and disclose to the world his real de signs and the nature of his operations. To do this, I was obliged to prac tice dissimulation and to seem to be a fit tool for him to work with. Some may say that such conduct on my part was not excusable; but let such bethink them that the secret designs and workings of this Heaven daring wretch, could never have been made public only by such means as I em played. The end, justified the means. Many are the instances on record, in which bands of robbers or counterfeiters, had so organized themselves that they were enabled to baffle the closest scrutiny of the law, and in such instances, it has been a common practice, especially in Europe, to employ men to become seeming accomplices, that they might thus be enabled to disclose the information necessary for a. Conviction. This was my object, and the inducement that prompted my action, will be found in what follows.

I tell nothing more than what I have seen and heard in Nauvoo. I have colored nothing, nor set down aught in malice. Many of my statements can be corroborated by abundance of testimony. I am content however, at present, to give my story and if contradicted, I can follow it up by proof, such as no reasonable man will doubt.

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