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Show Page 61 Orson's closest friends Lyman Johnson and John F. Boynton. They suddenly found themselves stranded with a $20,000 dry good inventory in the midst of the alarm, and Orson Pratt's intimacy with both probably led to his brief estrangement from Joseph Smith. The spirits of "murmering, 26 complaining, and of mutiny" increased generally with spring as Joseph withdrew his backing from the Kirtland Safety Society and renounced its bad paper. Although his troubles can in large part be attributed to the nation-wide economic failure that dogged the Jackson "Specie Circular" in 1837, many of his followers reproached him for a false prophet and a swindler. Lyman Johnson and Orson Pratt brought a formal charge of "misrepresentation and extortion" against Joseph in May. The frustration of the younger apostles had grown into bitterness - they also accused him of lying and backbiting in their complaint before the Bishop's council, an 27 indication that the dispute was now as personal as it had been economic. Even Orson's zealot brother, Parley, confessed to his own bout with "the 28 very powers of darkness which war against the Saints," on account of the divisions of opinion about Joseph's conduct. The outcome of the dispute before the Bishop's council is unknown; presumably the matter was dropped. However, it is clear that Orson Pratt suffered great mental conflict over his vision of what a prophet should be. He farmed furiously that spring - an acre and a half of corn and vegetables he gave to his parents - while the fabric of Mormonism seemed about to dissolve around and within him. Orson Pratt Junior was born July 11, 1837, nine months to the day since the Pratts' arrival in Kirtland. With the end of Sarah's confinement and the feelings among the Saints deteriorating, Orson escaped instinctively into the mission field. His response to the conditions in Kirtland was tig#t-lipped; he may at length have realized that Joseph's troubles |