President's Office,
Great Salt Lake City,
July 1st, 1867.
Geo. Pauncefort, Esq.,
Sir:
Your letter of the 28th of June has been received. The pressure of business and the intervening Sabbath have prevented me from giving you an earlier answer, My reasons for not wishing to grant you your request to have an interview with me I will briefly state.
When you first visited this City, you came in the capacity of an actor, and as such you performed on the stage of our Theatre. You afterwards professed, I understand, to be enamoured with our principles, and offered yourself for baptism. You sought no counsel, asked for no interview that I have ever learned with any of the Bishops or presiding officers respecting this step before taking it, or what to do after you had taken it; but you were baptized. It might be imagined that a man of your education and knowledge of the world, if sincere, would not take this step without due consideration and a thorough understanding of the obligations he was taking upon him. Our efforts to gather the people together -- preaching to them and urging them to come out from the midst of Babylon and to forsake all its corruption and annually spending a large amount of means to enable the poor to fulfil this commandment, ought to have been apparent to you. the least investigation of our principles should have revealed to you the extent of the labors of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to accomplish this great end, as well as the object the Lord has in view in giving this commandment. No sooner, however, were you baptized than, instead of identifying yourself with the people whose faith you had professedly embraced and casting in your lot with them, to share in their labors, their sorrows and their joys, and to be one with them, you started for California. Then after you reached California the report came here that you had contracted marriage with a lady of some notoriety, and, as now stated, she bore you a child. This, it is presumed, you had the right to do if you chose. But is it gentlemanly according to the notions prevalent in the world (to say nothing of it being Saint-like) for you, after having occupied the relation of husband to her, to throw the odium of this connection upon her, and endeavor to exculpate yourself at her expense? You are credited with having accused her of deception -- with having stated that you did not know at the time of your marriage with her that she was the undivorced wife of a living husband, and that when she informed you of this you separated from her. This excuse or explanation from a man of the world, with the opportunities which you must have had of learning the real facts of the case, seems very paltry. You had but recently emerged from the waters of baptism; whatever determinations and resolutions therefore, you had made when you submitted to that sacred ordinance, must then have been present to your mind, and yet you form a most questionable connection.
In reviewing your course, so far as I have had opportunities of understanding it, I can not perceive any evidence of your determination to be a Latter-day Saint. Professions alone do not make a Saint; there must be fruits to prove that a man is sincere. However, if I form too low an estimate of a man's faithfulness and goodness, it always affords me pleasure to find myself mistaken It would give me great satisfaction to know that you are a Latter-day Saint in truth and in deed. But to establish this character for yourself among this people, you should take your valise and go forth to the world, among those who have no knowledge of this gospel, without purse and scrip, and labor in the ministry of the Son of God for five or six years. This is a labor worthy of the most exalted talents, and one of the most joyful labors that can be performed by mortal man.
Respectfully,
Brigham Young