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Rewriting Eden With The Book Of Mormon: Joseph Smith And The Reception Of Genesis 1-6 In Early America, Colby Townsend

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The colonists living in the new United States after the American War for Independence were faced with the problem of forming new identities once they could no longer recognize themselves, collectively or individually, as subjects of Great Britain. After the French Revolution American politicians began to weed out the more radical political elements of the newly formed United States, particularly by painting one of the revolution’s biggest defenders, Thomas Paine, as unworthy of the attention he received during the American War for Independence, and fear ran throughout the states that an anarchic revolution like the French Revolution could bring the …