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Show Page 258 The Eastern newspapers, imagining the Godbeites the beginning of a major schism in the polygamous cult they so firmly and editorially detested, picked up Orson Pratt's replies to the heretics and gave great amounts of space to the debate going on in Utah. Thus Orson got his first nationwide exposure. Though Orson did not prevail with his recalcitrant friends at first, most of them eventually wandered back into Mormonism or lost interest in their own movement. Defending the kingdom against Eastern pressures became almost as worrisome for Orson as reclaiming the rebels within. Increasingly, he took the pulpit and the legislative floor in his capacity of chief unofficial apologist for the Mormon society. When the East visualized the face of Mormonism, it saw Brigham Young's rigorous countenance; but the voice it heard was Orson Pratt's - placid, stoical, but uncompromising in its own logic. He was always looking for an empirical rationale for the peculiar claims of Mormonism. While on a quick trip to New York, his first ride 46 east on the new overland railroad, he had the Deseret Book of Mormon published; but also took the opportunity to visit the famous Ethnological Society, where the exhibits included a stone found near Newark,Ohio, ostensibly carved with Hebrew figures of ancient origin. Whether or not the glyphics were genuine, this provided him with matter for an extensive discourse on "Scientific Dating of the Book of Mormon." ' When eleven Pullman Palace cars rolled into Salt Lake bearing over a hundred rich merchants, members of the Boston Board of Trade, it was Orson who was sent to greet them and to regale them in the Tabernacle with a lecture on "the physiological grounds" favoring the practice of polygamy. Orson also fought for "the principle" in the territorial legislature, where he served several terms as Speaker. An official protest went to Washington over his hand protesting the Cullom Bill, an act enabling the |