In publishing this volume I am discharging a duty solemnly imposed upon me by my lamented father, just before his departure on his last mission to the United States.
It affords me great pleasure to present the autobiography of the late author to his relatives, his numerous friends, and to the general reader.
The writer is well and favorably known through his A Voice of Warning, his Key to Theology, and other productions of his pen, as well as through his personal labors. He was one of the first Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having been called by revelation and ordained to that office by the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. He was intimately associated with the martyrs Joseph and Hyrum, with Presidents Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, and other leading men, almost from the first rise of the Church. His history, therefore, was so interwoven with that of the Church, that many of the most interesting sketches of Church history will be found therein.
The following pages, which embrace his life, ministry and travels, and some of his best miscellaneous writings in prose and verse, are the productions of his own pen.
He spared no pains to make the work a reliable record, and one that would be acceptable to all lovers of truth. It is written in the author’s happiest style. He was an early pioneer of the Great West, and traveled extensively in different countries.
His life was one of indefatigable labor, varied and complicated, crowded with public labors and responsibilities, and full of strange and extraordinary events—a life mingled with the extremes of joy and sorrow—or, in the writer’s own words, “a truly eventful one.”
With confidence and satisfaction I submit this work to the reader, feeling assured that it will stand upon its own merits. I also have an earnest and sincere desire that it may be the means, through the blessing of God, of accomplishing much good.
In editing the work I have been kindly assisted by the author’s personal friend, Elder John Taylor, to whom I feel deeply indebted.
The work embraces a period of history of fifty years—from the author’s boyhood to the time of his betrayal, by apostates, into the hands of his enemies, and martyrdom.
The writer, in his second preface to his A Voice of Warning, in 1846, gave expression to the following sentiment: “Should the author be called to sacrifice his life for the cause of truth, he will have the consolation that it will be said of him, as it was said of Abel, “He being dead yet speaketh.”
Parley Parker Pratt, Jr.
Salt Lake City, Dec. 1873
