The Reorganized Mormon Church published the following false statement in the preface to their 1885 version of “The Manuscript Found”:
Herewith we present to the reader the notorious “Manuscript Story” (“Manuscript Found”) of the late Rev. Solomon Spalding. What gives this document prominence is the fact that, for the past fifty years, it has been made to do duty by the opposers of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as the source, the root, and the inspiration, by and from which Joseph Smith and Sydney Rigdon wrote said Book of Mormon and organized said Church… This seeming huge hindrance and insurmountable obstacle which is always thrown in the way of the investigator with all the skill and power that craft and cunning and malice and rear and blind zeal can invent and command, vanishes from the presence of this original witness in the case; for when it speaks it reveals the flimsiness and falsity of the claim that it was in any way or in any sense the origin of the Book of Mormon, or that there is the least likeness between the two. This newly found “missing link” complete the chain of evidence which proves that the “Manuscript Found” never was and never could be made the occasion, cause or germ of the Book of Mormon.
Shook, C. A., The True Origins of The Book of Mormon, Cincinnati, OH, page. 73.
